Ham radio

Take the test and you'll get a good start. I took a class offered by the local ham club. You can get this book and in a day or two be ready to take the test.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0872599639/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=1155590621&ref=pd_sl_9rs2n0yimh_b

I got my copy from the library so it was just the cost of the class and the test.

I don't know what they use at the Rally. I assume there is a repeater. I think $400 would get you a nifty dual band and antenna for your car.

 

You can get a good used dual band handheld with a better antenna for half that $400 figure. To get any distance you need a repeater in the area with the VHF & UHF bands.

 

^^some rallys use a repeater, but many do not. usually no repeaters in the woods, and if there is a local town one... the locals don't want their morning coffee chats being interrupted by a bunch of them 'noisy car, crazy drivin' rallyists in the woods.

you could go with a single band vhf radio and get by for about $200. i've seen them in the mid hundreds range. a couple benefits of a single bander would be that the overall size is usually smaller than dual banders (although many radios have remote mount face plates, so a bigger radio might not matter) and the other thing i can think of is that they tend to have a little bit more power out since they aren't dealing with 2 radios in one case. not a huge issue, a good antenna makes a bigger difference.

a dual band radio will have a couple benefits. and would run about $400. i think most are in the mid 300's... then add in an antenna. (and possibly remote face plate mount cable/kit)

so the benefits for a dual bander... first on most of them you can set them up as your own repeater, but then you'd also need a handheld radio. all the rallys i've worked use vhf freq, so you set up the mobile for that freq, and a seperate uhf freq. it picks up the vhf signal and sends it back out on uhf... and you'd then have your handheld programmed for that. you talk on uhf from the h/h to the mobile, and it sends the signal back out on vhf. makes for good handheld coverage in the woods when you're out of your vehicle. just make sure to check the specs or ask about crossband repeat, some radios won't do it.

another good thing about some dual banders, it that you can actually use both band displays as 2 single bands... so you could listen to 2 vhf freqs at the same time. handy if the rally runs 2 nets, or if the people you are working with want to be on a seperate freq, and also be on the official rally freq. again, check the specs, some dualbanders have this, others only work with 2 seperate bands.

check out radio city in mounds view www.radioinc.com
or several locations (none local, unless u fancy a drive to milwaukee) of amatuer electronic supply. www.aesham.com

oh and i guess a third option would be a h/h with an amplifier. my opinion... too much messin around, and probably won't work as well as a mobile. but some people like this type of setup and it works fine for them.

dave

 

For rally, either things will be run with a net control that can reasonably be hit via simplex transmission with a good mobile unit (but often not a handheld), or there will be repeaters in place.

Minimum, for rally, you need a 2M unit, and having one modern enough (and it doesn't take much) to handle repeater tones (not here in MN, but at say LSPR where they use repeaters).

A Yaesu FT-1802 will get it done for $130 for the radio. If you get really heavy into this stuff, you may wish to step up to a unit that can cross-band repeat like the Yaesu FT-8800, which is about $355.

You'll need an antenna mount. I made a mistake when I started buying gear and went for a PL-259/SO-239 type base. They work Ok, but are a lot more susceptable to corrosion than an NMO-mount. Mounts range all over the place in cost and quality and functionality, so you have to look at where you will use the radio. If you're going to move it around a lot, you can go for a magnetic mount. If you're going to permanently mount it on one car and you want the best possible mount, you drill a hole in the roof and do a permanent mount. In the middle there are lots of mounts that attach to trunks, truck beds, mirrors, hatches, luggage racks, etc, etc.

My WRX had a luggage rack mount (wagon), my Sentra has a permanent through-roof mount, and my truck gets a mag mount that follows me if I'm using the radio in someone elses car.

Then there's the antenna.

I like the Comet antennas. I have two, one is a 1/2 wave which is my primary antenna, the other is a 1/4 wave that's super tiny and mostly keeps the antenna mount covered when I'm driving around the cities (and need to park in garages, etc). I also have a ginormous Opek 5/8 wave that i can mount when I'm parked for a long time and need every last little bit of gain. It's way to heavy to use on most mounts while mobile.

 

About $255 for an FT-7800 dual-band. I used to have one, but found that I either wanted a simpler radio or a dual-transceiver with repeating capability. I opted up to an FT-8800.

Most "dual-band" radios only have one transmitter, and so can't function as a repeater. The true dual-transceiver units can, but are $100 or so more.

I buy a lot of my antennas, etc locally at Radio City, but the radios themselves are so much cheaper at http://www.hamradio.com that I can't bring myself to buy the actual units locally.

 

how do you like your 8800? i was going to list that as a good option, but i don't personally own one.
i've got a very similar 'tri bander' which i like lots... but it was made by 'standard'... a mfg no longer in existance. i think they were bought by yaesu (many years ago), who then made the 7800/8800/8900 models.

 

Yeah, Vertex Standard/Yaesu are the same company. I think they call the commercial radios "Vertex Standard" and the HAM stuff Yaesu.

Performance-wise, the FT-8800 is great.

Interface-wise, it can be a pain in the ass. Tiny little buttons each of which does 100 different things depending on which other buttons you've pressed (and what function they had depending on what other button you pressed, etc, etc) an/or the phase of the moon. You need to have the manual around lest you look at it funny and put it into some esoteric mode that transmits only to radios with 7-dimensional antennae.

99% of the time it's fantastic. 1% of the time it's sheer frustration.

 

I know Yaesu better, so I tend to suggest it. Icom and Kenwood also make very good radios. The Kenwoods are $pendy, but Amy seems to like hers.

 

I use to work rescue for rally and was also a co-driver for rally. The best setup that I had for my truck and rally car was the ICOM v-8000 75 watt output and at a great price.
I think that there about $200 bucks, leaves plenty of money for a good antenna.
I would recommend a short antenna for in town and then a bigger one for rally. ALL MN RALLYS run off of line of site no repeaters, the only rally that you may work at that may have a repeater would be LSPR. So invest in a good antenna. YES you need to take a test for the license for ham radio, its assigned by the FCC. They will give you a call sign.

feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

IMO it would be great if we had a couple ham radio operators on here to help with crusies etc. HAM is better then FRS and CB.

 

Russ what vehicle are you going to use this with, and are your thinking more of a permanent install, or something just to use for rallys?

 

there's lots of used equipment you get get too to keep costs down. You'll probably want a 50 watt mobile rig. The "antenna" for that is usually just a magnetic mount you stick on your trunk/roof that sticks about 2 feet in the air.

Remember with Ham radio that it requires a license. Please don't underestimate this. Also, remember that you AND the person you want to talk to have to have a license.

-mosc
N3XKG

 

MAXXON makes some cheap whip antennas that you can trim to fit for you on the 2m vhf band that worked great for me at rally's. comet makes some great universal mounts that work very well. Mag mounts work well to.

 

Plus, twice I've seen a mag mount come off, swing by the cord and smash out a window (not mine, thankfully).

Also, when you do mount the antenna, make sure there's no way it can whip around and catch any glass. When you clip a branch at speed, those things can and will reach places you never thought they could. Mark Utecht managed to take out the rear window of his Mustang (? maybe the WRX, but I don't think so) with an antenna at an event.

A lot of HAM ops will tell you to go to:
http://www.k0bg.com/

There's a lot of good info there, but much of it is focused on getting the last fraction of a percentage of performance out of the installation, and not necessarily worth the effort for mere mortals.

 

I do like my Kenwood D700 and I got it off of EBay so it was about $300. One of the reasons I chose it was Public Health offices in the state got the D700 for emergency communications and I didn't want to learn two radios.

I also have an Maldol auto folder antenna mount so I don't have to get out and fold over my antenna to pull into my garage or into a parking garage. Its a luxury but boy is it nice! Also good for lowering antenna on the fly in the woods when the tree cover gets low.

I've since added an older Yaesu Ft-530 HT to my arsenal this winter. I wanted to get an HT after an incident at LSPR last year. I had checked out of the net and got out of my car to walk around a bit. Since I was out of car, I had no radio and couldn't tell what was going on. There was an accident and they were looking for the race doctor and I didn't know it. Once I found out about it, Carrie and I located him within 30 seconds but we could've found him sooner if we had known. I have used the HT to crossband to the mobile a few times and it really works well when you are out of the car but want to hear or need to transmit farther than the HT can reach.

The cabling isn't as complicated as it sounds. Pick NMO as the connector type and go from there. And they make some nice roof rack adapters if you have a roof rack.

Amy

 

There's plenty of perfectly good used 50watt mobile rigs running $50 or so.