My Equipment

This page lets me put a very brief list of what it is I'm operating to make all those awesome QSOs. Along with the list, I do have a few musings included — it is entirely possible I could be wrong about some things... we're all learning. Also, this list is quite incomplete.

My main setup (in my house) is:

• Icom IC-756 Pro III - it's an older radio (depending on what you consider older), but it has an excellent display and a phenomenal internal tuner.
• Inverted L-sloper (on an extended painter's pole) - seriously, it's just really high-quality wire (silver tinned copper) that could easily be mistaken for speaker wire. It works on nearly everything I want to work; due to its proximity to my house (and therefore bedroom), I do have to reduce power when working certain modes or bands.
• A new AFCI circuit breaker from Eaton - because older ones are not exactly friendly to amateur radio (or other types of radio in some circumstances). It took me a little while to figure out what was going wrong at my house every time I transmitted, but fortunately for me, other hams had discovered this particular problem. See this page: RFI to Arc-Fault Circuit Interrupters or this YouTube video: RFI Trips GFCI Breakers... Fortunately, Eaton was kind enough to send me a new one as soon as I contacted them. All I had to do was say, "I'm a ham radio operator and I just installed an anten....." and the kind lady on the other side of the phone interrupted me with, "I need to send you a new arc fault interrupter." Apparently, they know about the problem.

My mobile setup:

• Icom IC-2730A - I had a hard time picking a mobile radio. I went back and forth on the subject, seriously considering some others, like a Kenwood that had "built-in" APRS. None of the radios that had features that I though I had to have actually worked as I thought they would after reading more about them. I settled on this radio because of its dual-watch, dual-listen, dual-do-anything-you-want-basically design. It's really two dual-mode VHF/UHF rigs in one that share some stuff. I can control volume, squelch, frequency, VFO/memory selection on each side of the radio independently. If someone asked me what I think a good mobile radio would be, this would be the only one I would recommend. It is superb. ^{* see under things I want below}
• Nagoya NMO-200A - using a lip-mount on my car's trunk. It seems to work just fine with some reported picket fencing depending on my location and speed of travel.

Things I want (eventually):

• Icom IC-7300 - this thing is just a workhorse, plain and simple. Its built-in USB interface and real-time waterfall make this hard to beat. I enjoy operating the one we use when our radio club makes the annual trip to Paradise.
• * An item that doesn't seem to exist - when mentioning my mobile radio, I did say the 2730A is the only one I'd recommend. That's partially because Icom doesn't make a radio with every feature I want. I wish they made an Icom 2730 with an APRS TNC built in. It doesn't make sense to me that this isn't a thing already — my Anytone HT has this feature. Come on, Icom, get on this already! (I did find that the Icom ID-5100A seems to have built-in GPS but it uses that for DPRS. I want/need APRS so it can be useful no matter if there are any D-Star repeaters around or not.)