A friend of mine had a ZD. I think he was the last one of us to hold onto a 101. I remember I was over for a visit one day and asked him where it was? He let it go to save up for his FT-1000MK5....(like so many of us have to do). He also said he thought he would regret doing that.
If I remember they are pretty cool rigs.....kind of a hybred with the digital readout. Was just looking at it again this moring.

http://www.rigpix.com/yaesu/ft101zd.htm

Have you been to this site?

I'll probably get out to the shack some day. Where do you guys hang out if 10 happens to open up for us up here?

Hope Santa was good to you...!!!
73

 

Hello again Dave, that is my rig !! I also have an FT-101E sitting along side of it which I may sell because the ZD is that much better than the 101E...

I had my first DX contact today on the ZD since I bought it....A ham in Bradenton, Florida broke into are local rag chew on 10m....We meet up on 28.400 usually them move very slightly up or down if the band opens up..Today we were on 28.435 most of the day..

I also gave my commitment to buy today from a ham near Philly, PA an FT-990...So its been a good day !!

73

Mike KC2OVA

N2MWL has been applied for, just waiting for it to be issued...

 

First post here...
I initially looked at this forum to find out how others were installing radios. I have a 2008 Wrangler X, absolute base model. It's my second wrangler and I love them. As far as ham radio, I installed a Kenwwod TMD-710 and have an old GPS connected so that I can do APRS... For those not familiar, APRS is a digital ham signal that reports my GPS coordinates to the internet, so wherever I go, folks just punch my callsign into a web browser page and it brings up a map with me as a moving target on the map. Shows my speed as well. My wife likes it as I work out of town some days and she can pull me up on the net to find out how long until I get home. It's really quite cool. I use the radio to keep in touch with local folks, and have found it useful to get directions or just to chat when I get bored with driving. If you'd like to see the APRS, use my call at:

http://wulfden.org/APRSQuery.shtml

Where it says location of call type KC9JCH That's me, and the map that comes up will likely show my car in the driveway. I came from the world of cb too. If you like cb, you would love ham. Testing is now easier, no morse code and you can go from basic comms to quite exotic digital, but in every way, 50 watts fm on 2 meters beats 4 watts am 11 meters for reliable local communication.

The hard part of my radio install was the antenna. I ended up making a right angle mount and drilling and tapping two holes on the "front" side of the third brake light over the spare and mounting a half wave there. It works great. I used the existing hole in the rollbar to mount the radio with all of the wires zippered under the rollbar padding and the control head for the radio top center of the dash. Wish I had a way to post photos as it came out fantastic. The radio mounted to the rollbar means the speaker is right above my right ear and it can be heard well even with the top down.

Great forum, thanks for all the information

Tim

 

Great first post!

that APRS is simply awesome! I be the Volunteer EMT's use this alot for tracking emergencies.

What is the cost of this service?

 

APRS is free. The only cost is the equipment you buy. The infrastructure is already in place in most locations. VHF ham (2 meters) is a relatively short range proposition, 50 or 60 miles under good conditions. Most places have "repeaters" that listen on one frequency and re broadcast on another. The idea is, you talk to the repeater and the repeater, usually with a good, high antenna, rebroadcasts your signal for a much larger audience to hear. It sounds complicated, but is really quite simple. Most repeaters have a "digipeater" associated. These listen on 144.390 and rebroadcast on the same frequency. Some, but not all digipeaters are connected to the internet as a gateway and when my radio reports my position to a digipeater, it will get passed from one to another until it get to a gateway, then my position is reported to the net. In the olden days, the digi's were used for packet radio,which was much like the old bulletin board system we all used before the internet became what it is today. Not many people use packet radio now, but APRS uses the same infrastructure.
See:
http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs.html
for a more extensive explanation of APRS. This is just a tiny bit of ham radio. I have now talked to over 150 countries as well as the international space station... Yes, they have a ham rig on the ISS and sometimes, when they don't have something better to do, the astronauts/cosmonauts will just get on and chat with regular folks as they pass overhead.
Where I live, in the far northern part of Wisconsin, there are few cell towers. Coverage is terrible with a cell phone. When I am out fishing, hunting or even kayaking I am almost never able to get a cell signal. With a good radio in the Jeep, I am never out of range of a repeater, and although I have never had to use it for an emergency, when you are up to your armpits in snow and miles from anywhere is not the time to find out your cell has zero bars!

 

Thank YOU Tim for sharing that info.......just more for PC people to get into that are thinking about HAM Radio. You also mentioned "50 watts fm on 2 meters beats 4 watts am 11 meters for reliable local communication." You are so right because heck, even my old Icom IC-2000H mobile gets out over 75 watts. When using it as a base from home through a Cushcraft 148-10X (10 element yagi), I can hit repeaters in Anchorage well over 100 miles away. I've even been lucky enough to use the mountain, (Denali) to bounce my signal off and hit people simplex far up into the interior of AK. Talk about great coms...!!! And get this....I've been thinking about 2m SSB, and trying moon bounce from here into the lower 48. I guess guys are doing it, and having good success with the right gear. It's all about being ready for when the moon just comes up over the horizon. Talk about how much a kick in the ass that would be...!!!

BTW Tim, you can post pics here by using the "My Project JK" site. I had to do it this way also. Guys are also using photo buckett. I would love to see your install, as I'm sure others would too.
Welcome fellow HAM'er...!!!
73

 

Thanks for this thread.

The only reason why I purchased and installed a CB recently was because that’s the only communications that is common between Jeepers on the trails around here. Right now, talking around the world does not interest me, but some of the things that could help us out if/when we get into trouble with our Jeep does interest me. I’m especially interested in the recent posts Tim and information provided by Dave. Thanks for the ideas!

 

Dave,
Will give the photo thing a shot and post in the AM if I can. It really is a cool install and I'm especially happy with the antenna mount, works fb. Be happy to meet you on 20m any time.
73 de Tim

 

Yes, I totally agree....to many, talking all over the world just has no appeal and I can understand that. But, like you said, getting help quick in an emergency is very appealing to most. That's why, in this case HAM radio is, and will continue to be a far more reliable source for emergency coms. than your basic 40 CB channels.

Case in point.....a few years ago I was headed back home from a trip to Anchorage. It was the dead of winter and the roads were extremely icy. I watched ahead of me as a guy in a sedan swerved left, then right and contiued right on off the road up into the snow and trees. At that time I had no cell phone, but I did have my 2 meter mobile. Before I even got stopped, I had hit the repeater about 20 miles away, got ahold of someone, and told him to standby for a possible emergency. Luckily, the guy was not hurt but he didn't have a cell either, so I was able to have the guy monitoring the repeater, call a tow shop and have them send a truck. What I'm getting at is via that 2 meter HAM repeater, help was instantaneous. Yes for the most part a lot of jeepers wheel right on top of each other, but what about the poor jeeper that took a wrong turn and is in trouble a few ridges over, just out of range over all the dx hash and trash? Cell phone coverage?.....maybe, maybe not.

I've even been lucky enough to help a couple truckers in the lower 48 get hooked up with each other via my radio station in Alaska. For one reason or another, (ie possibly the band changing from day to night) these two guys got to a point where they couldn't hear each other but they could both hear me, and I them. After I passed a few messages with directions and such, the guys closed the gap and ended up at another trucker friend's house for coffee. Call me crazy, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Again, what I'm getting at is, coms via HAM radio are pretty much limitless.

 

I had a CB in the 70s, and used it mainly to chat with other CBers in the area. I thought about a Ham license back then, but the CB was enough. I moved in the 80’s and never used the CB again until this year. We got our Jeep and found that for some reason the Jeepers out here are still only using CBs (I thought they would be using FRS or some such). I didn’t get the CB for an emergency (it didn’t seem like it would really be much better than our cell phone and FRS - which we already owned), but wanted to have the capability to talk to others when on group runs. It really has worked well for that purpose.

On the other hand, most of the time we are out on the trail by ourselves and well out of range of cell towers. A Ham radio would certainly be beneficial if we got into trouble. I also like the idea that we could mark our location on a map that others could see on a Web page. Guess I’ll just have to add this to my “Upgrades” list.