Technician Class KD8PFB is now on the air. Thanks for the encouragement, y'all.
Now if I can just figure how to turn this damn radio on...
Gently move the off/on switch to the on position.
What kind of radio did you get?I got mine over a year ago, finally got a radio a few months ago and have yet to speak to a soul on the damn thing. KF5DBR
i use mine in my snow trac all the time great security blanket when i'm out in the middle of no where and i can use the phone patch to call home and say i'm ok up here there are no cell towers out of town as far as chatter i talk with guys regularly in texas i will get some irlp info for you and once you get on to irlp it will open up a whole new world kind of like a radio version of ffYaesu FT60R. A guy I work with got me started with all this, but I think I lack
having enough entheusiasm to get very far in to it.
Jev where are is your qth you need to get hooked up with irlpI looked at that radio today because I was not getting any chatter on the 2m radio I bought off Craig's list. I talked to a fellow ham, and he said in our area there is not much chatter on 2m, but there's a lot on 70cm (430mhz). As he was describing the radio to me in the store, there was a lot of chatter going on, just as he said. They had it on sale for $174 + tx, but I hesitated spending the bucks.
When I got home I looked around online and found a ADI 70cm radio just like my 2m, and the outfit has it for $50 brand new in the box, plus $10.67 for shipping. I already have a Diamond antenna that will work on either radio. So I ordered it and should get it next week sometime from the left coast.
Just out of curiosity, did any of the volunteer exam coordinators invite you to a meeting of their local club? The guys who did my exam didn't even introduce themselves, and never said anything about coming to a meeting. Actually, they acted very aloof and I was glad to just get the heck out of there. Reminded me of the old timer fly fishing elitists who look down their nose at anyone coming into the hobby, like it's their personal turf. Makes it tough to recruit newbies into the hobby when the old timers are not very welcoming. They seem to forget they had a first day themselves. I met a ham today at the electronics store who is e-mailing a schedule of meeting dates for his club in the adjoining county. He said the club in my county flat out doesn't want any more members, especially newbies. No wonder I got such a warm welcome.There's a lot of chatter going on around here in the DFW area, there's a repeater
on every pole I think. I thought it might be useful when I'm Jeeping, but none of my
buddies have one, so far it just sits.