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8.8K views 62 replies 44 participants last post by  ohgary  
#1 ·
My wife and I both have our technician license, and we're going to be studying for our General shortly (in the next month or two). We've already picked up a few handhelds and have two mobile setups in our vehicles.

Here soon, we're hoping to begin looking at getting a nice base station for the house. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on a good base station, mostly for the 2m and 6m bands, but I would like to get on some of the other bands as well.

I've looked at craigslist some for some older equipment but in my area (really all over the central indiana area) I found one radio for sale, and it wouldn't do the 2 meter band at all.

I've looked at Yaesu and Icom a little bit, just really wasn't sure which one I should start with. I know I'm going to put a pretty decent antenna up when I get this going, but I would like to stay in the 100w range at least to get a little distance out of it. It doesn't have to be real long range, but I would like to get a solid 50-100 miles or so out of it, which if I have a good antenna, I think it should be fine.

I do want to point out, my wife and I are very new to this, so if I've made some incorrect assumptions, please let me know.
 
Discussion starter · #5 ·
Thanks for the input so far. I'm sure I'm going to have lots of questions about getting this whole thing setup.

Windowshopper, getting our technician license was VERY easy. I highly recommend the following book. It has the entire question pool on there.

My wife is what we always refer to as "electronically challenged" and she had no real problems passing her tech exam on the first try. Within a month she had added a general license study guide to her amazon wish list and ordered it the next week :)
http://amzn.com/0945053797
 
Discussion starter · #8 ·
So one of the ideas that has been proposed to me is to use a mobile for my 2 meter work, and get a base station for everything else. If I do that, would I pretty much set up two different antennas for that, or is there a way to run them together through the same antenna or on the same mast at least?
 
Discussion starter · #16 ·
JDBushcraft said:
Most don't know what they mean by "base station" other than it isn't mounted in a car.
Click to expand...
By base I mean that it is my house / permanent location. As in non-portable. This doesn't exclude portable equipment, but that it will be setup in a non-portable fashion. Yes I know what I mean by base station. It may not be the same as others definition, but that is what I mean.

My wife and I have been to two different HAM fests in our area (indianapolis) and both appeared to be more of a flea market than anything radio related. We were very disappointed. We are going to another one next june or july, hopefully it will be better. I've tried to find a club to get some help, but so far that has been a bust as well, seems most of them have ceased to exist :-/

I was really looking more along the lines of the Icom IC-718 or something in that price range if I went new. I'm really not adverse to trying something alot cheaper (I'm going to keep an eye out at that HAM Fest for some well priced used gear, like that Kenwood TR-7950 you mentioned).
 
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