Starting the new year with some new gear!

The last few weeks have almost been like a second Christmas for me. I’ve picked up a bunch of new radio gear and I’m now on my way to being on a new band and back on another.

Thanks to a generous club member, I’ve been given a Ten-Tec 1209 2m to 6m transverter. I am super excited to be able to work the magic band! This is a great acquisition since one of the other rigs I’ve picked up recently is a Yaesu FT-726R V/UHF all mode transceiver. The Yaesu is on loan but that is fine with me. It only has the 2m module in it right now but I’m keeping my eye out for others. This rig works quite well but does need a bit of tuning as it is a few Hz off frequency.

The third rig I’ve recently acquired is a commercial Motorola Phoenix SX UHF radio. This one did cost me about $30 but that’s still a great price. There’s not a huge amount of UHF activity around here but we do have a couple of repeaters locally that I use, so it’s nice to be back on.

The unfortunate part is having to wait for better weather to get some more antennas up. I’ve got two antennas waiting to go up along with the final section of my 32ft tower. A new V/UHF dual bander is the first one to go up. Then I will be tuning a Cushcraft Ringo Ranger for 6m. After those are up and working, I will need to sort out what I want to do for 2m and 6m SSB. I’m thinking of mounting a couple of beams, if I can sort out where to put them.

Anyway that’s about all that’s new from here. It’s been quiet around the shack lately. I’ve included some pics of the new gear below.

73 for now!
VE1XT

Bonus Link: An awesome VHF propagation map with live updates