New gear day.

[N7YA]

I-80, or I-70/76 (Pa Turnpike)?

I know, you don't know yet... but if it's the I-70/76/Turnpike route, I can arrange to meet up with you guys for a quick stop (if you're up to it, of course) anywhere from the WVa line through New Stanton (where I-70 merges into the Turnpike)

I-80 most likely won't be practical, too far north. But if you're planning on going through or near Carlisle, you most likely aren't looking at that route across the state for the same reason.

Now, if you'd be coming across OH on the OH Turnpike (I-76), then down the Pa Turnpike, something around the Wexford/Warrendale exit could work as well. Or you could swing down I-376 and actually cut through Pittsburgh... but that probably wouldn't be practical anyway.

Just a few thoughts.

We will likely be passing through the area, but with 4 cats in a sedan, we will likely be pushing straight through...we are even passing my dear old mom by! But all this info is helpful and will be considered once i get down to making the route. I appreciate it, of course. Once we get settled in, we will be headed back to PA to visit mom and see some sights, at that point, i think some of your experience with local eateries could cause a meetup and some lunch. Right now, we just need to hunker down and get out of here...we also need to defrag from people for a bit. Once we have the beauty of Maine in our souls and fresh air and kind people around us, we will be able to make a "people trip" again. :)

[N7YA]

From Vegas to the I-70 turnoff on I-15, you are in range of the Intermountain Inertie System. http://www.utahvhfs.org/snowlink.html I've found it to be
very impressive - the repeaters are mostly RF linked and have tremendous coverage. Once you start up into the mountains, the Colorado Connection
repeaters start to appear. http://www.colcon.org/repeaters.html The one in Grand Junction and the one in Glenwood Springs will cover the canyon
pretty much all the way to the summit. Once there, you can start picking up the Denver area machines. The Colorado Repeater Association also has a
nice network of linked machines covering the Front Range, and quite far out onto the prairie. http://www.w0cra.org/new/

Things get sparse in Kansas, but I've found activity in most of the larger cities along the route, particularly Topeka and Manhattan. Once you approach Kansas City,
there are tons of repeaters. Activity there is up and down. On my last trip through, last February, there was a lot of activity on several of the repeaters, but in many previous trips, I heard little to none. KC is where I turn left to go home.

The way I do these trips is to have a mobile rig with 1,000 memories that I can divide into scanning banks, and have banks of 100 set up for eachof the regions I'm passing through, and I also have the ability to change it while I'm on the road by use of a programming cable and a little netbook. I have one 100 memory bank programmed with all of the two meter repeater frequency pairs along my route, so I can scan them all if I'm in an area where I don't know where to listen. With 128 memories, you could do that too, and have 28 left over for important repeaters you know about along the route.

Thanks Bill! Great info. I was wondering about the Rockies, i will be taking all of this info as we will be going through there.

All you guys basically kick ass!

[N7YA]

I was fooling around with it, and somehow I turned on a siren, and the flashlight was blinking on and off.

I found the flashlight...but theres a siren that broadcasts on the air?

I think the Chinese are up to something. :chin:

[N7YA]

Make sure you let me know when you are driving through Denver. :stickpoke:

I'm likely going to be updating on here from the laptop in the hotel while en route....and trying to figure out how to program an HT from it too. I may have to make up a few eyeball qsl's for this trip.

[w2amr]

No kidding! Its a trip how solidly it appears to be built. For the price, you cant beat it. The flashlight is cool too. I notice the PDF you sent was for the UV5RA, i just have the UV5R, will it still work?

It seems to.

[w2amr]

Just FYI, unless you flip a bit via CHIRP or some other programming software, that siren goes out over the air on whatever frequency you happen to be tuned to.

I guess the bit has been flipped on this one cause it doesn't do it.

[NQ6U]

I guess the bit has been flipped on this one cause it doesn't do it.

That's good. Maybe enough repeater operators complained about it so the radio comes from the factory like that now, but mine sure didn't.

[wa6mhz]

I am trying to get my MONEYSWORTH out of a Yaesu FT1DR! that cost me around $300!!! and add to that a drop in Charger and spare battery and we are towards $400!
It's all cuz our Radio CLUBS are ditching the war surplus MOTRAC REpeaters and installing new Yaesu DR1-Xs Digital and Analog repeaters So far almost every club in town has gotten these. Our ARC of El Cajon bought TWO of them!
So FT1DRs are selling like Hot cakes!! Yaesu was very WISE in discounting the repeaters to only $500 for clubs! They are making MILLIONS off of users buying new HTs!!

[W2NAP]

I am trying to get my MONEYSWORTH out of a Yaesu FT1DR! that cost me around $300!!! and add to that a drop in Charger and spare battery and we are towards $400!
It's all cuz our Radio CLUBS are ditching the war surplus MOTRAC REpeaters and installing new Yaesu DR1-Xs Digital and Analog repeaters So far almost every club in town has gotten these. Our ARC of El Cajon bought TWO of them!
So FT1DRs are selling like Hot cakes!! Yaesu was very WISE in discounting the repeaters to only $500 for clubs! They are making MILLIONS off of users buying new HTs!!

Hell I could have saved the club $500, should have just got 2 gm-300's and slapped them together as a repeater. that is all the damn yaesu repeater is, 2 mobiles slapped together. totally not worth the $500 they want for it.

[WØTKX]

I am trying to get my MONEYSWORTH out of a Yaesu FT1DR! that cost me around $300!!! and add to that a drop in Charger and spare battery and we are towards $400!
It's all cuz our Radio CLUBS are ditching the war surplus MOTRAC REpeaters and installing new Yaesu DR1-Xs Digital and Analog repeaters So far almost every club in town has gotten these. Our ARC of El Cajon bought TWO of them!
So FT1DRs are selling like Hot cakes!! Yaesu was very WISE in discounting the repeaters to only $500 for clubs! They are making MILLIONS off of users buying new HTs!!

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