Ham Radio Install Question

[RangerVol]

its close to the transmission tunnel. I hard wired my GMRS radio and have left it on all night by accident, it hasn't affected my ability to start. It pulls so little power.

I'm on the hunt for a 2m radio, but I am also the only with my amatuer license, so I can really only talk to myself... ha! Waiting for my wheeling buddies to get their liceneses.

Gotcha
You can always try to talk on a repeater but like a lot of those, it's just crickets

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[Jason B]

Just curious and for fun, do Canadians call Ham radio Canadian bacon radio?

 

[VegasRanger]

Can you send and receive APRS on that thing via analog RF like an FTM300/400 can?

 

[RangerVol]

Can you send and receive APRS on that thing via analog RF like an FTM300/400 can?

It will send RF APRS and DMR(I haven't played with the DMR APRS though)
Technically it doesn't receive APRS as far as messages on your screen but I've heard the APRS packet noise and the radio screen shows the receive transmission status along with the receive LED lighting up even though I have packet noise turned off I still sometimes hear it on RX but not TX.

They may could do something in the firmware to allow messages which would be nice. I was wanting to try and hit the ISS if it was possible.

I've tried playing with the APRS send but for me the GPS takes forever to get a lock. I've had it take anywhere for 8-20mins. I don't have it sitting up high on the dash but still feel it should lock sooner than it does. I need to test and time it to see how long it takes to lock if I sit still before taking off and driving.

Wish I could find a pigtail and maybe try moving the antenna higher. One lazy weekend I may take the radio out of the bracket and sit it on the dash to see how long it takes for a GPS lock.

The times that I've got a GPS lock and noticed it and tried APRS I've appeared on aprs.fi

While not the best place to have the GPS antenna. I still think it should lock a lot sooner. I orignally had the radio tilted up but lowered it to see if that helped with the GPS

The programming software is buggy still. There's a 3rd party CPS for it that I think is less buggy https://www.cpeditor.co.uk/ I haven't played with it yet.
They did a firmware update back in Oct and one in Nov. The one in Nov took care of one of my main gripes in that you couldn't make the radio go into single band mode without going into the menus on the actually radio. Now you can assign that function to one of the programmable keys.
Friend and I tested it after it was installed and said my audio on it was very good. The sound quality on RX isn't bad either. I have no problem hearing it so I don't plan on hooking up an external speaker
Radioditty has them still on sale for $189, down from the 239.00 regular price.


ETA: I just ordered a 20" SMA extension cable off Amazon, should be here Monday. I used some string to test measure and that should allow me to put the GPS antenna right at the top of the dash and get it a little better view of the sky for GPS reception.
Figured it's worth a shot being it only cost $10

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