You guys were there as well? I was too busy looking at those stuff to notice though. There was a crowd there but generally more a social gathering than anything else. Even have a small party going on?

Second that, I have a 8900 at home and a 8800 in my car. 8800 beats 8900 hands down. Go for the 8800.

Nah I cant reach this part of Malaysia with VHF, so the 8900 cant be me. I am currently in KL on duty for 4 months carrying my handy around. I have send back my HF set cos Hotels dont allow me to put up antenna

8800 have separated memory management, when in real world usage, its easier to operate. Right side its own memory and so does the left side.

8900 have shared memory management, easier when first time input. But when use one on standby and the other scanning, it becomes not that smart. Though 8900 you can work around that by using scanning mode to make it feels like separated memory.

More poison for you BingYao, check out the dual bander Icom.

This post has been edited by santacruzer: Nov 17 2008, 12:30 PM

IC2720H = good
IC2820H =

Would the Yaesu 897 be any nicer ?

Why not choose a frequency for this weekend and let me see if I can join in. I am on the 26th floor hotel in KL itself. I might be able to hit some of you guys on simplex.

You would actually learn more using simplex. Tuning of your antenna system and all those stuff. Going duplex on repeaters is not technical but more on how to speak their lingo and also picking up known mistakes too Nobody in KL this weekend so I think the idea is shelf for time being

Icom MK2G is a good set but gets hot real fast but its a norm. The standard mic that comes with the MK2G is still the best sounding mic I know of to date. Strong mid penetrating audio with spike in the 4k region I believe.

Yeah I had one for a while but replaced it with a Yaesu 897 I am using now. I think I posted this pic over here earlier on the VX7 topic.
MK2G is much easier to use with readily available short cut buttons opposed to Yaesu 99 pages of menu driven crap ( but flexible in every area and won on this ). MK2G has pre-amp for all bands while 897 only have pre-amp for HF. The rest 897 wins hands down, especially in managing noise and ah beng's colorful backlighting.

Hi Paul,

My VX7 is a 2007 November unfortunately mine still suffers from the speaker problem when there is a pressure or temperature change. I have emailed to Yaesu and they asked me to send it back. Too bad its just too far and I am not bothered. I will live with the problem

I don't think you can transmit when you are hooked up to the charger. The AMP is too low to support full power transmit. Try lowering the transmit.
You can however transmit full power with car adaptor though.

Nah I dont think you need a lot of tx power to hit repeaters. Unless the repeater's rx antenna got problem or just normal propagation low.
Get a nice antenna and you will rx and tx much better.

Hi Paul, I too have a slight problem with the sub audible tone for the Yaesu Handheld. It happen even when the handheld is on battery power and not charging. Again Yaesu online tech guys claim it batch to batch and asked me to send it back for repair which I did not.

Hi Paul, I got the VX7 and I have tried bringing up the Max Dev from the default 73 to 99 but with the increase in tx audio comes the increase in PLL too. So I backed it up to 80 couple months back. What setting are you using for your Max Dev? I could be having the batch of VX7 with the dirty PLL tone

My VX3 do not have any such problem though, maybe its just way too low on TX power to have any QRM

Get a long long antenna
Residential area how big? You can get respectable reception on handheld within 2km radius

I am not sure how many ladies there be in matrade today. One lady would be there right about now. Wishing her good luck.

My "student" says not much technical electronics but majority on operating procedures. Looks good and I believe this time round alot will pass. Those who went for the classes would score well as at least 40+ questions were past years. Matrade building surely nice place although my GPS was going haywire that day.

PC PowerSupply can be used but it is only producing 12 volts. Your rig will need and design around 13.8volts.

[quote=NxNSquares,Dec 29 2008, 05:05 PM]
You’re not suggesting a design using the PSU as DC-DC Step Up from 12V to 13.8V, right??? Just for the minuscule increment of 1.8V is plain ridiculous to me…we are talking about the 12V input here.

No I am not, I am saying the normal PC PSU supplies 12Volts at around 8-15amps depending on which PSU you bought from PC shops. In reality all Mobile Radio are designed to work around 13.8volts min 12 amps on full power. One could get away with it when you use a car battery solely because car battery have high amperage. On the average 40-60 AH battery would not be much of a problem.
With 12volt PC PSU when you ram up the TX level to 10 or 25watts you will get extremely bad humming into the rig. With Icom you will even experience a dimming LCD or worse the rig reset itself.

Thats why commercially available power supply for amateur radio are powered at 13.8volts 35-60amp and not based on 12volts. Measure your car voltage when the engine is running is 13.8volts.

Yes monitoring and TX below 10w would not be a problem. If you google, there are ham operators detailing how to mod the ATX power supply to go 13.8volts but that is way beyond me, some good technical people might attempt to do it but for me I am a chicken when dealing with switching power supplies that have a stored 40,000volts inside.

You have lots of nerve to said that. Not knowing what was going on exactly in terms of proposed 12V PC PSU usage, etc. Foremost, ICOM and others branding would certainly never endorsed such practice.

[/quote]


Why dont you explain instead of barking?