HAM Antennas/AMPs?

[Brett Adair]

I just got my Technician liscense finally and I have a Radioshack HTX-202 (5 watt Handheld) that I am going to have to use as a base station and a mobile for a while. I know I can get amps and antennas for the house and for the car. Any suggestions? I want to find an entire kit and I was looking on ebay, but honestly I am just getting into radio and have no idea what I am looking at. Thanks for the assistance.

 

[Andrew Geil]

I'd dump the HT for a good mobile (Alinco, Yaesu, Kenwood, ICOM, etc). Ratshack stuff has never really impressed me. You can get mobiles that are easily transferable between vehicles/base, and have a lot more power then a little HT. I'd high;y recommend upgrading for storm chasin'.

 

[Tim Johnson]

Congratulations on your ham ticket Brett! Very fun hobby all of its own.

I know you are asking specific questions about using your already bought HT, but I tend to agree with Andrew.

HT's are fine for starting out, and can be very useful in times of high lightning. They are very limited in range due to low wattage, and antenna's however. You could spend money on power amps etc, but by the time you do all of this, you could probably buy a new mobile rig for about the same price.

Again, nothing wrong per-se' with the HT, but IMO, it makes better sense to save your money for a good mobile unit and antenna, unless you just prefer having the HT style. You can probably pick up a good used mobile unit for about 100 bucks at a hamvention, or local club sidewalk sale. You can also move a mobile unit from the house to car or vis-versa fairly easily. Since you already have an HT, that might not be necessary.

Whatever you decide, congrats again on your ham license, and welcome to the (ham) hobby!

 

[Max Slover]

Originally posted by Brett Adair
I just got my Technician liscense finally and I have a Radioshack HTX-202 (5 watt Handheld) that I am going to have to use as a base station and a mobile for a while. I know I can get amps and antennas for the house and for the car. Any suggestions? I want to find an entire kit and I was looking on ebay, but honestly I am just getting into radio and have no idea what I am looking at. Thanks for the assistance.

For a under a hunderd bucks you could get ahold of a fairly nice used 2meter mobile that will fit your needs much better than a handheld. By the time you purchase an amp for the HT you've spent more than enough to snap up a decent single band 2M rig. Take a look around at a local hamfest or at swap.qth.com (try to avoid ebay for this stuff if you can, IMHO). For the antenna, take a look building a JPole or a couple of the easy and fairly inexpensive projects that are out there. It doesn't take a lot of money to set these things up. Just time and patience.

 

[Robby Lock]

Hey Brett, I would agree, you could get a pretty nice mobile at around 50 watts of output power, for the price of an amp that would bring an HT up to 50 watts.

 

[J West]

Brett;

Realistically, your choice for a mobile radio wil depend on what type of geograhic area you operate in and freqs you need to cover.

If all you need is a VHF radio, then look at getting an 75w Icom IC-V8000 or 65w Yaesu FT-2800M mobile radio. Both are high power, have a decent amount of memories (~200 channels) and have NOAA alert if you want it. I've had both and can't complain about either.

If you need VHF and UHF, then get a good dual-band mobile with crossband repeat. There are radios available from Yaesu, Kenwood and Icom.

I personally use Motorola and GE/Ericsson commercial radios, as do most of my associates, but we still deal with ham equipment from time to time. I still have a couple ham mobiles in reserve in case some off-the-wall need arises for freq-agile equipment.

 

[Brett Adair]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I appreciate all of the comments and for the advice. I must say I will take the advice on the ebay deal. (considering the 202 I bought died with battery failure) Right now, I virtually have no radio so I was going to check around here and see if any of you had radios for sale?

KI4KUN

 

[Chris Sokol]

This will not help you in the field, but if you want to play around some (since you do have your license and are radioless) and work some contacts, you can do this without a radio:

http://www.echolink.org/

I love this software. I spend quite a bit of time on here, working different repeaters around the world. Depending on your location, there may even be local repeaters in the link.

 

[Brett Adair]

This will not help you in the field, but if you want to play around some (since you do have your license and are radioless) and work some contacts, you can do this without a radio:

http://www.echolink.org/

I love this software. I spend quite a bit of time on here, working different repeaters around the world. Depending on your location, there may even be local repeaters in the link.

Thanks, Chris! I installed Echolink a while back and I haven't really used it as of yet. Didn't really know if there was any use. I have noticed some hurricane nets out there. Hopefully I can find some central AL repeaters to talk on.

 

[Chris Sokol]

Here is the link to all that are currently (real time as of this moment) online around your area:

http://www.echolink.org/links.asp?lat_deg=...&country=US&d=2

 

[J West]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I appreciate all of the comments and for the advice. I must say I will take the advice on the ebay deal. (considering the 202 I bought died with battery failure) Right now, I virtually have no radio so I was going to check around here and see if any of you had radios for sale?

KI4KUN

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