Re: Re: Cheap and easy HAM?
By: Phantomrage to Corey on Wed Jun 27 2012 12:12 pm
Kill's me every time you come up with this stuff...
yup, so what's "CB's" Chopped Beef? ;-)
Phantom, you'll be happy and said probably... I just bought a Ranger RTI 9550 10 meter / 12 meter radio. Will be in around the 3-10 of July. I understand fully why most hams are 200% against getting one, and I understand sorta why my ham club keeps saying you won't be satisfied with 10 meters... Sure, the bands closed a lot, but I understand from one guy he's actually been getting a lot of DX lately. I know I have an app called HF Propigation on my phone, I've been watching it and a few weeks back, seems like every 2-3 days 10-12 meters had "Fair" on both days and nights. It's been "Poor" the last couple of days, but... Either way, I wasn't wanting it for what most people call DX, just longer distance than 2 meters.... I can personally tell you, looking at the videos on Youtube irratates me to death! So many people buy this radio and talk about how good of a "CB" it is.... Granted, it is easier to make it into a CB than some of the other exports, but it doesn't make it Legal... I also am understanding what some mean by your never satisfied... ;-) So like this radio supports AM, FM, USB, LSB, and CW. With that in mind... I just have to try again and learn CW, so I can pick up a cheap pair of paddles or that computer interface thingy that types for you, and use the CW mode. I have to admit, the bandwidth of CW is darn small! It'd be cool to setup a BBS interface to do like a chat mode with CW.... Tell you what though, this radio has some really nice features on it... I was wanting 10 meters, and I ended up getting 10 and 12 for just a little more than I was going to pay for 10! And 12 meters has no dedicated modes, you can use the entire (but limited compared to 10!) segment for whatever you want, FM, AM, USB, LSB, etc... Except the data portion.... It's also a continous tuning (think that's what they call it...) If you do the Mod to expand the channels, you can go from the edge of 12 meters on up to 35mHz without having to change bands! 12->10+ free band and never switch bands! They had a clown modify his 2950 for CB use, then on the bottom added like 10-15 switches, had so much junk on there, he just trashed off the radio. one switch plays some siren like noise, another 3-tone rodger beep, another 5-tone rodger beep, and then he said you can leave them all on and the built-in rodger beep, and they'll play in sequence.... He demonstrated... I thought "I hope like heck I never hear him on the air!" Now some of the mods you can do are pretty cool. I'm not into all the "Noise toys", but unlike most radios, you can use your rodger beep button on the radio, and squelch, and a another one to enable certain mods... Like if you have a pre-amp, talkback, or echo and need to turn it on, find the right pin on the CPU and use it to enable the feature, then basically it disables the original function and that function becomes the new function... No drilling holes in the radio and it still looks original... I wouldn't mind having the frequencies expanded out, and adding the option to show CB Channels, to monitor the CB frequencies, but as someone put it, not going to risk my General Class License transmitting on CB radio with a non type certified radio! As far as the 35mHz, I see that like this... Someone said free-banding is supposed to be perfectly legal... But the FCC sets up what frequencies we can use by what is allready in use.... I'm not walking around with 10 feet of books constantly checking if someone else is using 30-35mHz.... There's a reason they didn't allocate those frequencies to hams... If I decided to try to use them, I may cause harmfull interference to someone, or worse talk on a law enforcement frequency.... That's the Primary concern... Second, my whole point of getting the 10-12 meter radio is to talk to someone.... If these frequencies are not "Common", then that means not many people will be able to use them, so I'll have a handfull of people who can use them and most will most likely not be near me! So why bother risking in violation when you most likely won't have anyone who can hear you to begin with.
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