On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Brian Mury<[email protected]> wrote: > As I said, I don't have a DSTAR handheld :-(. I could try to borrow one > if I can find someone nearby who has one. Maybe I shouldn't tell them > what I plan on doing with it! ;-)
Just make sure you have it nicely secured... On my third freefall, I tucked my IC-24 AT into the upper arm of my jumpsuit. It was a really tight fit getting it in there, and I figured it would be good there. I ran the mic cable down my arm, and out the cuff. The mic was clipped onto the cuff. Well, after 6500 feet of freefall, and a nice deployment, I looked for the mic... uh-oh, it's dangling out my sleeve. A quick pat of my shoulder looking for the radio brought a moment of panic. Where's the radio? Uh-oh, did the radio jump out, and make a mad dash for the ground? Nope, after a frantic pat-down, I found it in the small of my back. A little rearranging and it was back where it should be. I spent almost a minute chatting with some friends back in town, about 50 miles away on a local repeater. At about 1000 ft AGL, I signed off, telling them I needed to prepare for final approach and touchdown. I flew the whole time in free flight, after pulling the toggles down, and getting headed in the right direction. No serious complaints of wind noise or anything. That would have been the summer of 1990... I always wanted to try a hop and pop with the radio, but never did. You could hit a lot of repeaters from 10,000 feet up. We get great coverage from our balloon borne crossband repeaters at that altitude, and it gets better as you go up. James VE6SRV
