Fieldcraft Comms, What do you have for base, mobile and protable?

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So what kind of radios do you all have for comms? I personally am a Yaseu whore. For base station use, I run an FT-950. If I am going to operate 2 meters/ 144 MHz, I will use either a ft-60 or ft-817 into a 50 watt amp. I don't operate 440.

The 60 and the 817 can and do go with me. I don't really prefer one over the other as they both have a tiny bit of overlap. The 817 does get the nod though if I am hiking around back country for a few days.

My base antenna set up is a Hustler 5 band vertical with the 17 meter and 12 meter mod, a 200 foot horizontal loop (both for HF) along with a 2m/440 vertical and a 6 meter inverted delta for summer fun. I also have a 2 meter folded dipole that rarely gets used as 2 meter ssb around here is pretty non existent.

I just bought a used arrow antennas 2 meter/440 dual band hand held yagi beam at a ham fest that will now serve as my primary back country VHF/UHF antenna. I had been thinking about a portable window line jpole, but found this for dirt cheap and for the weight and gain, I figured this would be better.

Now, what do you guys and gals have? FRS? CB's? Sat-Comm of some sort?
73 de N4EGA

 

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Gunfighter,

Sounds like a pretty good set up. Tell me about your NVIS (near vertical incidence skywave) that you carry. I like vhf for local, but up here in the hills, line of sight is sort of all or nothing. I'm either seeing over 100 miles or looking into the side of a mountain. My loop is about 20 feet off the ground so it does a fairly effective job of NVIS on 80. Does a heck of a job for DX for 40-10 (little bit of 6 too, haha). But I have read that people use a regular 80 meter dipole laid on the bushes for 80 meter NVIS. If it works that's cool. Just wondering if you had something different.

I see you do a lot of MARS. I had considered joining, but don't know if I would be able to meet enough for the minimum training. I assume you are Army MARS. Is it as active as it used to be for passing traffic or is mostly training nets now?