Neat geek day.

[penk]

I spent about 2 hours today finally redoing the radio installation in my car, finally. My old 2meter ICOM radio had finally bought the farm (it was circa 1975, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did), and I picked up a Yaesu Ft-2600 on ebay for about $100. This is a nice radio, though a bit bigger than the ICOM, but has a better display and functions on it.

There's not a lot of room on the inside of my car (this is a 2003 VW Golf TDI), so I've mounted posts on the dash to hold the GPS and the radios.

After turning things on and cleaning up, I decided to fiddle around with the radio, and tuned into the local 147.270 repeater, which is in Marlboro, MA.. This repeater, on weekends and off hours, is linked up with the reasonably famous 10meter repeater "W1OJ", which happens to be located here in Bolton. 10 meter is far better for long distance communication, aka 'DX' operation. This sort of linkup allows me (with a Technician class license to operate in the 10meter (aka 'HF', below 50mghz) ranges. Normally I operate in 2meter, which is around 146mghz, aka 'UHF').

ANYWAY. 10meter is around 28mghz, and carries long distances quite easily. I'd listened in on the W1OJ repeater a little once before, and heard long distance stations, but never started up a convo. I decided today I'd take the plunge. The first station I heard within 30 seconds was calling entirely in spanish, though I could understand they were saying their callsign... I decided not to respond to that one, becaues it was fairly weak (a lot of noise), and i was nervous.

Then, 30 seconds later, clear as a bell, a fellow with a texas accent. I pick up the convo, and I'm off.

Within an hour, I've talked to 4 stations. This from sitting in my driveway, and on the drive to get some pizza for lunch:

Ft Worth Texas
Ft Smith, Arkansas
the Florida Keys (this chat was -crystal- clear. like he was right next to me)
and back to another town in Arkansas, where i talked to a different person who know the first guy I had talked to.

This was FUN!. My total entry cost here is about $100, and here I am talking all over north america. A little more time and I could have done more, I'm sure, but I was just blown away by a quicky fiddling and voila, I'm having a point to point (that's it.. Me, the repeater, 1500 miles of open air, and their little 10' antenna) chat with someone who is going out to mow his lawn because its 80 degrees out, and the grass is getting long.

Ahh, I love being a geek sometimes.