Hi All,
New to ham, former CB'er in the process of obtaining my license. Would
appreciate any feedback, advise or suggestions on what is best 10M base
station rig. Don't have a lot of $$ but was looking at the Galaxy-2715
or Ranger-2890WX.
Thanx in advance & any info is appreciated.

I don't know your budget but you can get a brand new real ham radio that
covers nine bands with 100 watts for around $545 - the Icom 718. It may not
look as fancy as some of the CB base rigs but it will abosutlely blow them
away in performance, particualry for the reciever. Going up from there and
your options are many as far as rigs. --- Steve KK9ZZ

http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamhf/0718.html --- Icom 718
http://www.hamradio.com/ --- one link to ham radio equipment.
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/947 -- subjective reviews of the Icom
718 and to eham.

"Dennis" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi All,
New to ham, former CB'er in the process of obtaining my license. Would
appreciate any feedback, advise or suggestions on what is best 10M base
station rig. Don't have a lot of $$ but was looking at the Galaxy-2715
or Ranger-2890WX.
Thanx in advance & any info is appreciated.

Dennis wrote:
New to ham, former CB'er in the process of obtaining my license.

Congratulations, and welcome to the world of amateur radio.

Those two radios you listed are primarily sold to truckers and other
illegal radio operators, not to real hams.

Consider an entry-level multi-band radio that will provide you with much
broader horizons and a much better introduction to the breadth of ham
radio. Examples include the Icom IC-718, Yaesu FT-840 or Kenwood
TS-570.

In article .com,
Dennis wrote:
Hi All,
New to ham, former CB'er in the process of obtaining my license. Would
appreciate any feedback, advise or suggestions on what is best 10M base
station rig. Don't have a lot of $$ but was looking at the Galaxy-2715
or Ranger-2890WX.

Don't be taken in by the flash of the Galaxy and Ranger. They are
really freeband radios. Some are sold to hams, most are modified to
work on freeband an used illegaly.

10 meters is truely a "magic band". 10 meter propigation is only there
when the sun is "hot". In the summer you get some international propigation,
during the late day (just before sunset is best). During the peak of
a sunspot cycle, you can get worldwide propigation all day and night.

When it's open 25 watts on SSB or CW and you are cooking. When it's dead
1000 watts on CW won't do much.

There are also 10 meter repeaters. Many of them existed before 2m
repeaters and are linked to them. Almost all of them now require a CTCSS
(PL) tone to work them.

When I lived in the Philly I had several conversations with people in
their car in Florida and the midwest using 2m and 440 fm rigs. I
was working them with a 10m FM transceiver. (TS-430). I also brought
my 10m FM handheld with me when I spent some time in D.C. and
worked a linked repeater on it.

If you don't want the FM capability, you should be able to get a Radio
Shack HTX-100 used pretty cheap. They have hot receivers and excelent
transmitters. They only do SSB and CW, but they do it well.

You might also look for a good used miltiband rig. I have a fondness
for Ten-Tec. You can get a Triton IV digital for less than $300.
It was made a long time ago, but there are many that are in good shape.
They lack the bells and whistles of more modern rigs, including
general coverage receivers, WARC bands (5mHz, 10mHz, 17 and 12 meters)
and FM. They do CW and SSB very well. Nothing IMHO beats tuning in
an SSB signal with a PTO (permably tuned oscilator (analog)).

Since you will have passed a morse test, you can get on CW and the
TenTec rigs do QSK (being able to hear the band) between dits and das,
better than anyone else.

If you haven't started to learn morse yet, buy a copy of "Code Quick".
It's the best way of learning morse code ever made and it's about $50.
For me it was the best investment in ham radio I ever made.


Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
VoN Skype: mendelsonfamily. Looking for work as a CTO or consultant in
handheld gaming, large systems development, handheld device construction, etc.
Support amateur (ham) radio, boycott Google!!!

Dennis wrote:
Hi All,
New to ham, former CB'er in the process of obtaining my license. Would
appreciate any feedback, advise or suggestions on what is best 10M base
station rig. Don't have a lot of $$ but was looking at the Galaxy-2715
or Ranger-2890WX.

Junk to the core. Forget 'em.

Thanx in advance & any info is appreciated.

It's nice to see another CBer "cross the bridge", welcome aboard and
best of luck to you Dennis.

The only 10M-only ham transceievers out there which I know about are
the Radio Shack series of adaptations of their 5 watt Realistic 11M CB
mobile rigs like their 25 watt HTX-100. Which is a lousy radio by most
hams' standards but they work and you can get one for around a hundred
bucks used. You can't beat that no way nohow on a budgetary basis
assuming that all you want out of ham radio at this point in your
development is a cheap and dirty way to get on 10M ssb and CW from
home. Which is a not a very good idea because 10M is dying fast at
this point in the sunspot cycle and you'll wind up talking to yourself
on 10M.

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/2158

At the risk of being another snotty supremely predjudiced old fart ham
who takes a very dim view of CB radio don't use the term "base station"
which is straight-up CB jive talk. Avoid it. Hams have "desktop rigs",
"mobile rigs, "portable rigs" and vhf/uhf handhelds.

In general you'll have to spend several hundred bucks more for a used
"real" MF/HF ham desktop rig. And a whole lot more on a new desktopper.
But in return you would get would get far better receiver performace,
usually 100 watts out, the ability to operate in the other nine ham
bands below 10M and in most cases you'd also be able to contiuously
tune for shortwave broadcasts and such and even your local AM stations.


There are gobs of those rigs out. Used version can be had for maybe
half of their MSRPs. I have an FT-847 which I bought new for $1,350 on
sale a couple years ago. You can get a used 847 for $700-800 by surfing
around the Web which is quite typical of the kinds of savings you can
find in the used gear market. With a bit of diligence you can find an
oldie but goodie desktopper which does it all for $300.

http://www.eham.net/reviews/products/14

w3rv

On 16 Jul 2005 05:05:12 -0700, "Dennis" wrote:

Hi All,
New to ham, former CB'er in the process of obtaining my license. Would
appreciate any feedback, advise or suggestions on what is best 10M base
station rig. Don't have a lot of $$ but was looking at the Galaxy-2715
or Ranger-2890WX.
Thanx in advance & any info is appreciated.

No sense in spending $3-400 for a one band rig, especially when the
sun spot cycle is declining and 10 meters is slowing down, when you
can spend about $5-6-700 for an all band HF-rig like an Icom 718,
Yeasu 840, Kenwood TS-50 or Alinco DX-77T.

Rangers and Galaxys are glorified CB rigs. You can do better.

bob
k5qwg