- Joined
- Jan 15, 2011
- Messages
- 26
- Likes
- 2
The best advice I can give to you is to buy the best radios that you can afford the first time.
Forget about buying someone else's junk.
Some of those other web sites are full of people who are theifs, who are just trying to pawn off their old broke junk.
The only good thing about hams is that they use their call letters and that most people does not want to tarnish their good names.
Most honest hams will not sell you something that is going to cost you more money to repair then what it is worth.
My best advice is that unless you have a real purpose for a handheld radio - to not buy one right off the bat.
The purpose of transmitting is to sound as good as you can.
The handheld has a very limited range.
Buy a good radio and put your money into a base station antenna and put it up as high as possible.
This is the antenna that I use - http://www.rfparts.com/diamond/d3000n.html
The second most important component is the wire that you use between the antenna and the radio.
One of the highest rated coax wires is the 9913 Belden cable.
Another important component is the connectors - I use the Amphenol connectors, and I protect the connection with a dab of C-5A anti seize.
A important thing to remember is to tie the antenna into the house ground stake with at least a 10 gauge piece of wire - it is better to use multiple stakes along side the ground stake for the electric service entrance.
A very good performer would be a Yaesu 8900r radio, since you were probably looking for the cross repeat function at some point and time and it is probably the most technical of the mobile rigs out there.
The only mod I performed to my rig was to do the extended range function which puts out 60 watts as opposed to the factory default 50.
It's nothing more then pressing a set of buttons in the right sequential order.
SAVE YOUR MONEY!
Ham radio is a hobby.
Like most hobby's, if a person spends too much of their money all at once, they will get burned out and they will eventually just stop using what they have and they will either put it up on a shelve someplace when they get tired of it all or they will sell their junk and get out of it all together when it gets too expensive.
You can blow a large chunk of change - very easily on all the stuff that a experienced ham will tell you is a must have item for your station.
A top of the line HF is always nice to have, but you need a good antenna system to compliment the radios.
Some antenna's - beam, tower, rotor, long wires - by the time you are done buying them and putting them up - costs as much as the radio does.
There is usually three camps, the Yaesu camp, the Kenwood camp and the ICOM camp.
Each camp will tell you that they have had good luck with their radio and that all the other radios are junk.
Most times if you talk to them long enough, everybody will tell you that sooner or later something happened and they had to send their radio in to get repaired. There isn't much of anything that a regular old guy can fix in one of those rigs anymore and a oscilloscope is big bucks for as much as you would use one - to diagnose any problems, and you have to know how things works and how to use it.
Again, my advice is to buy what you want - a radio such as a Icom 746 is a real stable platform and has the options that you are probably looking for.
But even in my case, there was no one out there that was willing to stick their necks out to say this radio is better then that radio and this is why i think you should buy this radio.
Being a newbie myself and living a couple of hundred miles from the nearest ham radio store, I bought the Yaesu 8900 from Ham Radio Outlet.
I have had nothing but problems with it.
I have gone so far as to buy two programming kits for it.
I have had the PL codes change inside of the radio on a almost daily basis.
No logic behind that one other then that the Encode shut off.
I have lost the audio on one side - and got it back by changing some of the programs around inside of the radio - until I found what was wrong and turned it off.
Now it is to the point of where it talks better then it listens.
I can't explain it, but a friend of mine said to bring it over to his shop and he will test it out for me.
The other thing is - the only receipt I got from HRO is a internet email version.
I have asked for a printed version for a whole month now with no avail.
Add to that - I sent back the one programming kit and it has been 3 weeks and I still have not yet received a refund.
I even called their main office in California yesterday to try to get some satisfaction.
So if at all possible - deal with a company face to face.
It might cost you a little more to travel to a store, but then you can look at what you are buying and you might even be able to try it out before you buy it and if you have a problem - you can grab the guy by the throat and make him make it right.
The telephone and the internet it is pretty hard to collect your money or get something fixed 2 weeks and one day after you bought the radio and have problems. HRO's policy is the first two weeks - they replace it, after two weeks you have to send it in to be repaired.
Pretty stupid if you ask me, because if you got the radio on a Friday and it broke on a Friday - then if you couldn't call them until 10 AM on a Monday - you would already be past the 14 days - eh! That leaves them off the hook and sticks you with paying the shipping to send it in to be repaired.
If a radio breaks in two weeks - chances are - there was something wrong with it when it left the factory. Do you see my point.
The other thing is - when you buy coax, get a experienced ham - who has a lot of experience building cables to make your cable for you.
Don't let the store build it for you.
I came to find out on my last order of 9913F that the technician who put the ends on it had 3 strands of the shield stuck up against the center conductor.
That's a big no no - and will give you problems every time and could burn out the finals on some radios.
After I told HRO what they had done - the technician said - next time put your own ends on it. Geesh - one of them wasn't even tight.
If it had been tight - I wouldn't have even wanted to cut the ends off and put better ends on it.
There is two ways to put ends on - either you crimp them on with a special tool or you screw them on and solder them in place - with Amphenol connectors.
http://www.mgs4u.com/PL-259-connectors.htm
The good ones are the old ones that has the red or yellow glastic in the middle.
The other thing is power supplies - Astron is the Larson of power supplies.
If you buy a mobile antenna - buy a Larson, if you buy a power supply - buy a Astron, that was some of the best advice I ever got!
Forget about buying someone else's junk.
Some of those other web sites are full of people who are theifs, who are just trying to pawn off their old broke junk.
The only good thing about hams is that they use their call letters and that most people does not want to tarnish their good names.
Most honest hams will not sell you something that is going to cost you more money to repair then what it is worth.
My best advice is that unless you have a real purpose for a handheld radio - to not buy one right off the bat.
The purpose of transmitting is to sound as good as you can.
The handheld has a very limited range.
Buy a good radio and put your money into a base station antenna and put it up as high as possible.
This is the antenna that I use - http://www.rfparts.com/diamond/d3000n.html
The second most important component is the wire that you use between the antenna and the radio.
One of the highest rated coax wires is the 9913 Belden cable.
Another important component is the connectors - I use the Amphenol connectors, and I protect the connection with a dab of C-5A anti seize.
A important thing to remember is to tie the antenna into the house ground stake with at least a 10 gauge piece of wire - it is better to use multiple stakes along side the ground stake for the electric service entrance.
A very good performer would be a Yaesu 8900r radio, since you were probably looking for the cross repeat function at some point and time and it is probably the most technical of the mobile rigs out there.
The only mod I performed to my rig was to do the extended range function which puts out 60 watts as opposed to the factory default 50.
It's nothing more then pressing a set of buttons in the right sequential order.
SAVE YOUR MONEY!
Ham radio is a hobby.
Like most hobby's, if a person spends too much of their money all at once, they will get burned out and they will eventually just stop using what they have and they will either put it up on a shelve someplace when they get tired of it all or they will sell their junk and get out of it all together when it gets too expensive.
You can blow a large chunk of change - very easily on all the stuff that a experienced ham will tell you is a must have item for your station.
A top of the line HF is always nice to have, but you need a good antenna system to compliment the radios.
Some antenna's - beam, tower, rotor, long wires - by the time you are done buying them and putting them up - costs as much as the radio does.
There is usually three camps, the Yaesu camp, the Kenwood camp and the ICOM camp.
Each camp will tell you that they have had good luck with their radio and that all the other radios are junk.
Most times if you talk to them long enough, everybody will tell you that sooner or later something happened and they had to send their radio in to get repaired. There isn't much of anything that a regular old guy can fix in one of those rigs anymore and a oscilloscope is big bucks for as much as you would use one - to diagnose any problems, and you have to know how things works and how to use it.
Again, my advice is to buy what you want - a radio such as a Icom 746 is a real stable platform and has the options that you are probably looking for.
But even in my case, there was no one out there that was willing to stick their necks out to say this radio is better then that radio and this is why i think you should buy this radio.
Being a newbie myself and living a couple of hundred miles from the nearest ham radio store, I bought the Yaesu 8900 from Ham Radio Outlet.
I have had nothing but problems with it.
I have gone so far as to buy two programming kits for it.
I have had the PL codes change inside of the radio on a almost daily basis.
No logic behind that one other then that the Encode shut off.
I have lost the audio on one side - and got it back by changing some of the programs around inside of the radio - until I found what was wrong and turned it off.
Now it is to the point of where it talks better then it listens.
I can't explain it, but a friend of mine said to bring it over to his shop and he will test it out for me.
The other thing is - the only receipt I got from HRO is a internet email version.
I have asked for a printed version for a whole month now with no avail.
Add to that - I sent back the one programming kit and it has been 3 weeks and I still have not yet received a refund.
I even called their main office in California yesterday to try to get some satisfaction.
So if at all possible - deal with a company face to face.
It might cost you a little more to travel to a store, but then you can look at what you are buying and you might even be able to try it out before you buy it and if you have a problem - you can grab the guy by the throat and make him make it right.
The telephone and the internet it is pretty hard to collect your money or get something fixed 2 weeks and one day after you bought the radio and have problems. HRO's policy is the first two weeks - they replace it, after two weeks you have to send it in to be repaired.
Pretty stupid if you ask me, because if you got the radio on a Friday and it broke on a Friday - then if you couldn't call them until 10 AM on a Monday - you would already be past the 14 days - eh! That leaves them off the hook and sticks you with paying the shipping to send it in to be repaired.
If a radio breaks in two weeks - chances are - there was something wrong with it when it left the factory. Do you see my point.
The other thing is - when you buy coax, get a experienced ham - who has a lot of experience building cables to make your cable for you.
Don't let the store build it for you.
I came to find out on my last order of 9913F that the technician who put the ends on it had 3 strands of the shield stuck up against the center conductor.
That's a big no no - and will give you problems every time and could burn out the finals on some radios.
After I told HRO what they had done - the technician said - next time put your own ends on it. Geesh - one of them wasn't even tight.
If it had been tight - I wouldn't have even wanted to cut the ends off and put better ends on it.
There is two ways to put ends on - either you crimp them on with a special tool or you screw them on and solder them in place - with Amphenol connectors.
http://www.mgs4u.com/PL-259-connectors.htm
The good ones are the old ones that has the red or yellow glastic in the middle.
The other thing is power supplies - Astron is the Larson of power supplies.
If you buy a mobile antenna - buy a Larson, if you buy a power supply - buy a Astron, that was some of the best advice I ever got!