The Yes or No questions at the beginning of the Wednesday net 04.20 were, ‘Do you have a dummy load’ and ‘Are you good on QRZ (is your EMail published there)?’ Then we got into comparing the Icom 7100 all band with the Yaesu 991 all band / all mode radio.
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Both radios are popular in this area, some people favoring Icom and others the Yaesu brand. The major difference between the radios seem to be the thousand dollar 7100 does not have an antenna tuner while the $1200 Yaesu 991 does have a tuner (works at HF and 50Mc, but not 2M and 440). Of course the other major difference is Icom has DStar and Yaesu has the Fusion (C4FM) digital mode.
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Someone on the net suggested the Icom doesn’t do Sideband on 2M. Wrong. Both radios are all band / all mode. Here’s the list of ck-ins that night:
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Rich WAOZQG So. CoBlfs
Keith KEOAEP nr Boystown
Dwight WBOGUA NW Omaha
Paul WBOGXD No. CoBlfs
Casey KGOHY Plattsmouth
Rick KFOIQL CoBlfs
Kevin KCOKJK So. Omaha
George KDONME SW Pott. Co.
Nate KONWJ Papillion
Joel KEOQGD W. Omaha
Rick KAORLR W. of dwntn
Rich KORWJ W. Sarpy Co.
Rob NOSNW Lk Manawa area
Art KBOUWR Glenwood
(14)
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Back in the old days I bought a Kenwood 520 HF rig for $599, over a tenth of what I paid for my new 1975 Chevy Nova LN at $5k. It ran 5 bands, 80 thru 10, and had a lot of features (Noise Blanker), but no gen’l cov’g receiver. You can get a similarly capable 100W HF rig today for a similar price, or these all-bands for a little over a kilobuck (mobile mount an extra $40) which is 1/20th the price of a new car. Use that argument on the XYL.
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REGARDING SIDEBAND
Sundays at 2 and 8 PM we do 6M and 2M local nets (50.2 and 144.250). Don WOAF often runs the 2M sideband at 8 and gets ck-ins from all over, the furthest Dick WOHXL 80 miles out in Carbon IA. The point is, you can get further on SSB than FM because your entire output is contained within a 3 kc bandwidth, and the receiver only picks up 3 kc of noise versus 30 kc worth. (much better signal to noise ratio) Also, Don usually gets 15 to 20 ck-ins, and on a good night, over 20 of us. Instead of horizontal, we all use our FM vertical antennas.