KC9HJX Introducing..

[KC9HJX]

Hello, I am KC9HJX

My main setup in my room consists of:

Motorola CDM1250 VHF
Motorola GM300 VHF
Motorola MaxTrac 800 x6 (Various County 800 Stuff)
Motorola AstroSaber III UHF (1C5E)
Motorola MT2000 VHF
Motorola HT1000 UHF (x2)
Motorola HT600 UHF
Motorola HT750 VHF
RadioShack Pro-2051
Yaesu FT-1500M (In my Car)
Yaesu VX-170



Heh, as you can see, I use alot of Motorola gear. I am currently
a member of the FishFar and STROKE Motorola repeater systems for
the greater Northern Illinois/Chicago Area.

I will try to post a picture of my setup if I can, if not, there is a picture of it
over at RadioReference, I would post a link, but I believe that you cannot do
that here.


73,
Ray

[KC0KBH]

Wish I had all those /\/\ rigs. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif I hang out around Batlabs, under the username of my call sign, but I'm a pager guy. I love my pagers! Every aspect of pagers- programming, recrystalling, protocols, transmitters, etc.
I do own 10 or 12 commercial rigs-
A load of Standard HX240 UHF HT's
1 Standard HX241 VHF HT
1 Maxon UHF HT
1 Midland UHF mobile

I have gear to program all my Standard commercial HT's. The HX240/241 is really a nice little radio. For what it cost new, it is a very durable radio. I got a box of 9 or so, with the Maxon HT, free. I bought the Midland UHF mobile and HX241, since I wanted a indestructible VHF HT (I put quite a few chips in my VX-7r, and tested its waterproofing, many times purposely, and once, I dropped it in a swollen stream in spring, that was murky, and had a heck of a time finding it. It was extremely lucky I did find it. It was even still on, when it was found. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[KC9HJX]

Yeah, Yaesu's are tough. They're not as tough as some of my Motorola's, but damned are they water-proof like them. The VX-170 is really water-sealed; I would say that it's only weakness is the Keypad. After preforming a modification, I peeped around inside the case and the DTMF/Front Buttons are it's only weakness.

------
Oh, and for antennas:

Comet GP-3 at 14ft above rooftop -or- 45ft HAAT. (30ft CQ RG8 (9913 Equiv) Coax)

And RS Discone at the Base of the Mast, with 20ft Commscope Telecom Cable

[kj5t]

Welcome Ray to the youth forum. It looks like you have a great deal of knowledge in commercial radio gear, and you will be an asset in the youth forum, certainly for those young hams who get involved in converting commercial gear for use with amateur radio. I say, on the behalf of the youth forum, that we hope to see more of your postings here.

As for the image, you will find a button on your reply box that says "image" you can use this to post images. The rules of QRZ.com forbid posting images which contain vulgarity, also the rules forbid posting images that are copyrighted. However, if the picture is yours, feel free to post using the image tags. Or you can just post a link to the image. Again the rules of the road apply.

73
Steve/KD5OWO

One of the QRZ.com moderators

[KC9HJX]

The image is a bit outdated, with some newer Motorola Astro/Apco25 Portables in the mix (Apco,Astro25, Digital, whichever you prefer to call it http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif )

I will try to post a newer picture tomorrow after school/work

[KC0KBH]

http://www.qrz.com/hampix/h/b/kc0kbh.1137513562.jpg

That's my shack. I got my license when I was 9 in '01, and upgraded to General a couple years ago. I also have this-
http://i2.tinypic.com/ve4sqf.jpg

My beautiful 1985 Kawasaki 185 four wheeler, which I have a homebrew bug catcher that I can bolt to the back rack, and run my FT-817 in the event of an emergency, with a power outage. I got the four wheeler really cheap, and it is a blast to ride (though it seems a little on the small side, after riding a newer Yamaha). I also have a tripod I found for the bug catcher in the junk pile, so I can and have used that antenna, portable, with the FT-817.

In the shack picture, the rigs are as follows-
ICOM IC-765
Yaesu FT-817
Standard C158
Yaesu VX-7r
Rat Shack HTX242
1 Maxon commercial UHF HT
1 Standard HX241V VHF commercial HT
9 or 10 Standard HX240U UHF commercial HT's
1 Midland UHF commercial mobile (70-526, I think)

Also, not pictured, I have a box of 50 450 MHz Motorola Bravo numeric pagers, a Motorola Wordline pager (cheap), and a Motorola Advisor Pro. None of them have service, but, the Advisor Pro gets weather and lottery numbers, for free, still, without service. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif I've also got probably 6 laptops, including a few military surplus ones, a couple desktops (the one that is running in the pic is a homebrew Celeron 566, since my PIII 500 motherboard crapped out on me; the PIII was a much better processor, in my opinion), 2 Palm OS based devices (Handspring Visor, IBM Workpad), and a Casio Cassiopeia Windows CE based handheld PC. There's also my G3 15GB iPod I got very cheap (less than half of what it is worth on eBay) sitting, charging on the desk.

[KC0KBH]

There's KCØKBH/M.:D
http://i3.tinypic.com/vqju5g.jpg

[k6pme]

Quote[/b] (KC0KBH @ April 17 2006,06:32)]http://www.qrz.com/hampix/h/b/kc0kbh.1137513562.jpg

That's my shack. #I got my license when I was 9 in '01, and upgraded to General a couple years ago. #I also have this-


In the shack picture, the rigs are as follows-
ICOM IC-765
Yaesu FT-817
Standard C158
Yaesu VX-7r
Rat Shack HTX242
1 Maxon commercial UHF HT
1 Standard HX241V VHF commercial HT
9 or 10 Standard HX240U UHF commercial HT's
1 Midland UHF commercial mobile (70-526, I think)

Also, not pictured, I have a box of 50 450 MHz Motorola Bravo numeric pagers, a Motorola Wordline pager (cheap), and a Motorola Advisor Pro. #None of them have service, but, the Advisor Pro gets weather and lottery numbers, for free, still, without service. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif #I've also got probably 6 laptops, including a few military surplus ones, a couple desktops (the one that is running in the pic is a homebrew Celeron 566, since my PIII 500 motherboard crapped out on me; the PIII was a much better processor, in my opinion), 2 Palm OS based devices (Handspring Visor, IBM Workpad), and a Casio Cassiopeia Windows CE based handheld PC. #There's also my G3 15GB iPod I got very cheap (less than half of what it is worth on eBay) sitting, charging on the desk.
Cool shack Devan, it looks almost exactly like mine with one exception. I mounted the monitor shelf ABOVE the monitor which gave me a bit more 'shelf room' for odds and ends. Just thought I would pass that one on to you.....

73 de Monty

[KC9HJX]

I just took these pictures a few moments ago.
Also, my UHF/VHF/X-Band Repeater (However I choose to set it up at the time)
is mounted in the attic, it is a Motorola RadiusGR300. About 110W ERP

[KC0KBH]

How did you get all the /\/\ stuff? Did you have to drop a real chunk of money? Also, is the laptop on the left an NEC Versa, or a Toshiba Tecra? http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[KC9HJX]

It's a Toshibe Satellite 75MHz, I used to use it for MDC ID voting on my repeater, just as an experiment. Most of the Motorola Stuff is from HamFests, and trades/sales from people on BatLabs+HamSexy. Yes, it is not cheap.

The laptop on the right is a P4 Custom, in a Dell Case. AMD64 1meg ram, 80gb HD, running Knoppix STD Distro. There are 4 custom built machines of mine in the closet, 2 of which run as servers, and another as a server for my house network that I setup (My Documents and others, mainly), and another one for NOAA Radar/Lightning Tracker. The Desktop running on the floor to the right, with it's monitor on the left, is used for QSO Logging/Radio Programming, and the one on the shelf on the left is used for varioius alignment stuff.

[KC0KBH]

Why don't you set up a WX pager system in your area, on 440 MHz? Paging terminals, like my Zetron, can be bought for a couple bucks on eBay.

Stupid question-
I've never understood what repeater voting is. What is it? http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[KC9HJX]

Well, as far as MDC is concerned, well, first of all, if you listen to police, and you hear kind of a "Sqwack" data sound, that is MDC, proprieitary (sp?) to Motorola radios. ANYways, that decodes as a 4 digit number, with letters A-E in it, and FFFF would be an all-call. Well, some friends of mine have moto's, so I setup the repeater so that only someone with a Registered ID can bring up the repeater, so, if you were to TX with a MDC ID that wasnt registered, or none at all, the repeater would not acknowledge your signal, and not transmitt it, either.

Also, my Moto base radios have QC II, Data, Digital, MDC and Voice paging built-in, heh, so there's no need for a Zetron. Just flip to the channel you want to page on, hit menu>radio call>selective call> and the signalling tones you want. I have some cheap Motorola POS pager sitting around here that I got from the local SkyWarn group, and a few 800mhz ones that can inter-connect with one of my 800mhz base radios, but I only have 15w on 800, so it would not be effective.

[KC0KBH]

The old Advisors seem to be build well. The Advisor Elites appear to be cheap crap. I've got an Advisor Pro, that is built as heavy duty as my old Bravos, which seem to be able to really take a beating. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[KC9HJX]

Eh, paging really wouldn't do me any good....

If I receive a page of Severe Weather in the area, chances are, I can already see/hear it outside, or I've already been informed of it prior that day via NOAA Forecast. If I'm not in an area where I have access to a TV/WiFi spot, well, then I'm either too far away from shelter (outside), which in that case I would have more to worry about than a dinky little pager. And if that was the case, 440 wouldn't travel that far to get the page out to the pager in my pocket, and, if it were, I would already be outside.....thus being able to see/hear weather changing in the area, eliminating the need for a pager, once again.

Things may be different as they are in your circumstances, however.

[KC0KBH]

Four wheeler is dead. My guess is, that it broke the connecting rod. I've already had that dang engine apart to replace the valves, when I bought it, since one broke off. I parked it in the driveway, earlier today. Started it up, and noticed it made a knocking noise at first, that it never made. I disregarded it. It made that noise, again, a few hours later, when I started it up. I just started it again, about 10 mins ago, to put it in the shed. It died after about 5 secs, with no compression. I heard a rumbling noise when I would press the starter button. I looked in the cylinder with a flashlight, and the piston wouldn't move when I turned it over. This stupid thing is going to cost me a good $100; more like $300, if I buy Kawasaki parts from a dealer. The engine is 21 years old, so I'm not real surprised. It must have over 10000 miles on it. Dang!!! http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif