I have a fleet of Yaesu HTs here at my QTH; I own two FT-11R 2-meter HTs, which have been my workhorse takes-a-lickin'-and-keeps-on-tickin' handheld radios. Apparently these are well appreciated by amateurs elsewhere too, they have a surprisingly high resale value for such an old HT.
But after using my brother's Yaesu FT-50R dualband HT, I decided to watch eBay for them. Now these can be had worth the money — commonly found for $100, which isn't bad for a full-featured HT. I wound up this summer with two of them; the Yaesu dual HT drop-in charger can work with both the FT-11R and the FT-50R with only a change of charger cups, so I have enjoyed the FT-50Rs.
They're a bulky little radio though, they get thick with a 5-watt battery pack, but still a very compact, tough-as-nails rig.
I wound up spotting a real bargain at Thanksgiving — a guy had an FT-50R with two good battery packs and a dual HT drop in charger (not mentioned in the list headline or in the photo) for a Buy It Now price under $100. Sold!
Now I like HTs, but programming them can be a pain in the butt. Fortunately, the same software package that programs the FT-11R also works with the FT-50R and the VX-1R (I own all three). But there's a hitch — they software only works with a com port, and what new computer is equipped with a com port these days?
The usefulness of the FT-50Rs has been lessened because I didn't want to program all three of them by hand. I decided to buy one of those fancy USB-to-serial interface thingies on eBay. For less than $10, I was in business.
Or I thought I was.
As I once again found out, you often pay a price for being cheap. The El Cheapo interface was junk and it might work in Hong Kong, but it didn't work worth spit in Coxs Creek. Bummer.
I decided to see if one of my other two ancient HTs had a serial port. Ah-ha! Yes! Now all I needed to do was to install the software off the CD … oh wait … hmm … the damn CD drive isn't reading the software CD. ARGH! And this laptop (running Windows Me) doesn't have a floppy drive (which isn't a problem since the software isn't on a floppy anyway). Bummer Deux.
With my brain fried by cabin fever and frustration, I made a mid-afternoon trip to Radio Shack today. I needed a low-wattage soldering iron, some spaghetti tubing and very small solder to repair a broken wire on my son's MP3 player (don't ask how that happened). While there, I also looked over their USB-to-Serial interface. At $25, it wasn't cheap, but the salesman said if it didn't work I could bring it back. He was confident it would work; it looked more substantial than the Hong Kong crap I purchased, plus it actually had a driver CD.
Long story short — the cable worked flawlessly. After I set the frequencies on the FT-50R, I programmed all three of them with the same memory assignments. The FT-50R is nice because it also covers 800 MHz, which includes the school board frequencies (the county school bus frequency is one of my favorite frequencies to listen to in the afternoon when school is in session).
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Other than some Christmas gifts a couple of weeks ago, I've pretty much sworn off shopping on eBay. Christmas drained my ham radio budget, plus I already need to have a wheel cylinder replaced on my Dodge SUV. I have a few things to list on eBay sometime, but I've not yet done it. I went on eBay tonight to browse the CW key listings and was shocked how few listings there were; they were down by nearly half from this summer.
I assume that's just due to the nature of the season; who has money to buy on eBay?
But one thing I am going to buy soon (hopefully) is a SignaLink USB soundcard interface. This interface was reviewed a number of months ago in QST. The USB has a built-in high quality soundcard, so all you need to do is hook it up to the rig and a USB cable to the computer. This would allow it to work with my laptop, which isn't really compatible with sound card modes due to the lack of sufficent sound card.
The inteface is $99, which is a deal. And I can buy cables for my other rigs for $14 if I want. I want to run soundcard modes on my FT-2000, and I would also like to run packet on 2M FM. I'm planning on buying a SignaLink USB and an extra cable to use it with my FT-7800 dualband.
I still have some old gear I bought on eBay a couple of years ago but never set up in the shack, and that's the stuff I need to put on eBay to fund the SignaLink. Or hell, its only $100, I'll just buy the thing! If you order it before Jan. 1, they offer free shipping (a $9 savings).
That's all this entry, more to come soon. Where's the 6 Meter eSkip? C'mon Six!
73 de KY4Z … dit dit