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Road trip!

posted Sep 9, 2019, 9:34 AM by Charles Boling
AD7UF and his family are on a 3-month road trip! Covering all 48 states and 8 provinces, there will be opportunities for operating from a lot of neat locations.  While he's not bringing as much gear as he'd like due to time constraints, supply problems, and spousal concerns (Michele wasn't happy when she found out that he was planning to bring his 13-lb. CAP HF rig along!) so he scaled back both radios and antennas, but he's still got enough to be fun and useful.  Focus will be on VHF, since he doesn't have an HF antenna configuration that won't get bridge-whacked, and he will be too busy to do that much operating while stationary.  Basic Amateur gear on the bus includes:
  • Front:
    • Cheap Chinese VHF/UHF radio (QYT KT-8900D) & fairly short dual-band antenna.
  • Rear:
    • Yaesu FT-897 all-band rig. VHF is attached to a 1m dual-band antenna. HF goes to a stud mount that gets a variety of generic Ham Sticks attached. A 1/4mi spool of aluminum fence wire provides the opportunity for a variety of longer antennas.
    • Alinco DR-590T dual-band rig operating primarily as a cross-band repeater for family tactical ops.  It feeds separate UHF & VHF antennas w/ a diplexer on the VHF side acting as a low-pass filter to further reduce self-desensing.
  • Plus:
    • A whole bunch of HTs for portable & supplementary use.
KF7JZN's parents are mostly following along in their motorhome, so radio is useful for commiunicating with them.  They have a KT-8900 with a mag-mount antenna attached to an aluminum cookie sheet (with a magnet on the back to help hold it) on their dash board to supplement their HTs.  Charles brought a laptop (necessary, since he's continuing to work throughout this trip) and programming cables so he can customize the radio memories for each area.  Pictures are promised; check back later!
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