I made my first QSO this afternoon, pretty much by accident.
All of the peripherals that I needed to get on the air came in the mail yesterday. I’ve been playing with the radios that my son gave me all afternoon. He also loaned me his SWR meter, so I was seeing how everything paired up. My plan is to install my antenna in my attic for now, and since my attic is not easily accessible, I wanted to see if I needed to do any tuning first to limit how many trips through the hole in my closet ceiling it will take to get started.
So, for the time being, I’m in my basement, wires and boxes everywhere, checking things out. I put the Tram antenna together and propped it up in the corner, screwed the coax in to it, and the radio, powered everything up and started trying to figure out how to operate the radio. I should mention that I’m using a Yaesu FT-2500M mobile radio. Its probably 25-30 years old, and have no idea when it was powered up last. At the VERY least, its been 5 years, since my son got it shortly after getting his license, but he never even powered it up.
I hooked it up to my new power supply, hit the button, and the old radio powered right up. The backlight on the display doesn’t work, so its hard to see, and the numbers on the buttons (which are really soft and squishy) on the mic are rubbed off. I immediately started trying to figure out how to program it to a local repeater that I know I can hit with my Baofeng, but was not having any luck. I couldn’t program the CTCSS codes, then I figured out that the radio needs a particular add-on accessory board which I don’t think it has. As I was working through it all, I switched from frequency to channel mode. The radio already had some channels programmed into it, but they were labeled as something known only to the person who programmed it. As I scrolled through them, I heard voices on a channel labeled HND3! I just caught the end of the conversation, and both of the guys had arrived at their destinations, so I didn’t bother trying to jump in.
After they left, I keyed up a couple of times, and could hear the repeater opening. I figured out how to see what frequency was programmed to that channel, and started scrolling through the Repeater Book app to see what it was. I was surprised to see that it was a repeater over 27 miles away, and it required no tone. I wasn’t really sure that I had the correct information, so I kept researching, and trying to figure it out.
I was flipping back and forth between the owners manual, and Repeater Book app, thinking there was no way I hit that repeater from my basement. Pretty soon one of the gentlemen whose conversation I heard earlier came back and announced his call sign, W8JI. I figured I would see if he could hear me, and to my surprise, he answered straight back, and asked how he sounded. We had a friendly conversation, and he confirmed that it was the repeater that I thought it was, and that he happens to own it. He also told me about all of the scheduled nets that they have during the week. These guys have 4 per week! He let me know that I sounded decent, that I faded a little, but came back. Honestly, and I was talking, I was waiting for this radio to puff a little smoke and quit, but it kept chugging along.
So, my first official QSO was almost by accident. As I was scrolling through the owners manual, trying to figure out what buttons do what, someone who owned the radio many years before me hooked me up and didn’t even know it. Not really how I expected things to get started, but not a bad way to get started either. Also, since I know all you nerds want to know, my SWR was 1.01, and my power output was 39 watts. The radio might be a little tired, since its advertised at 50 watts, but its still getting the job done. Now, I have to decide if I want to fork out $35 for a CTCSS board and install it, or just move on to something else. I do have a Chinese dual band radio (with tone capability) sitting in a box in the corner.
I’ll let y’all know what I decide later.
Peace out, and 73!