17 Apr
1998
17 Apr
'98
2:29 p.m.
Amateur radio is't dead. One of my co-workers is a
storm chaser, he lent
me his
2-meter handheld so I could listen in.
(Alinco DJ-S11. Little bitty thing! He says it does 1/2watt TX, it runs from
3 AA batteries, and I can palm it. I can even smuggle it into school with an
earpiece and listen during class... :-)
Alinco makes a few intersting radios.
Personally, I like the DJ-C1(and C4),
the little credit card radios with an incredibly small antenna and only
300mW output, and to top it off no internal speaker(not enough room!).
Kinda expensive at almost $200, though. The S11 is nice, 340mW(about 1/3W)
output, small and selling for $88 at HRO right now. I think everyone is
closing out on this, they may have stopped production. Or maybe just behind
schedule in production, I'm not sure. I heard someone on the air with one,
and it has a cute little end of transmission beep like some repeaters do...
And storm chasing sounds like fun, too bad(or maybe too lucky) that there
aren't many in the northwest... But I get to read the stories posted to the
WX-CHASE email list. Lots if interesting stuff. I actually had an
interesting idea, putting an ATV, packet and voice radio into a truck and
chasing tornadoes. See what it looks like from a chasers point of view with
70cm ATV! :-) Kinda expensive to setup(commercial video and packet
equipment can be expensive), but it would be a lot of fun...
Nothing interesting came of it (Where's a tornado
when you need one?) but
I was listening to the normal traffic, sounds like fun, so I'm gonna go get
a no-code Tech license and join in. Always wanted to, but never thought
I'd get
the time. I think I'll make this a priority...
I'm a no-code Tech right
now, working on upgrading to General. Lots of fun.
I want to get started with packet and maybe some ATV/SSTV if I can get some
video equipment. A very fun hobby(some debates over that occasionally), and
not too expensive depending on how you go about it. Right now I have maybe
$80 worth of equipment, being a Kenwood TH-205 handheld 2m radio I got for
$35(and a new battery that cost $38), an antenna I built for about $5, and
a Radio Shack antenna that my uncle gave me... Morse code is most of what
I'm stuck on right now, but I'm slowly getting better.
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