First and foremost, I owe everyone on the forum an apology, for my rant and ill place remarks posted yesterday! 48 hours and 5 hours sleep, and then another 20 hr run with 4 hours sleep toady, is not conducive to making good decisions and conversations!
To WD8CHL especially, I mistook some of your comments about the ham gear, and should not have posted that publicly, especially with lack of sleep! As far as our repeater council, that is a whole nother can of worms we will not go into! The band spectrum in Texas is not as congested as in some other areas, and we have few closed systems, unlike California and a couple of other states! For my personal purpose, purchasing a bunch of purpose built or specialized equipment was what I was trying to a avoid, the main use occurs once a year, with possible use a couple of other times besides that! Although it would be nice to have available, if a Search and Rescue operation needed to occur in that or similar area! In other areas and events, we usually have the use of one or more of the many wide area coverage repeaters located throughout the area and state! I had seen a set-up similar to what I was interesting in building, and everything fit in a small pelican case! The big problem was I cannot remember who had it! It used a crystal based HT for receive and the FT-2800 for transmit! Did not have the opportunity to see how else it was assembled! I can only assume it used some sort of crystal ladder in the HT for isolation, not sure. The rig worked well for about a 10 mile square area, although not as rugged a terrain as our event is in! Was hoping someone on this group had knowledge of the set-up! Guess I will work at saving up some spare change and find some sort of commercial radio (possibly one suggested) that can be converted to a portable UHF rig! Seems that is much easier to accomplish! Again, thanks to everyone for their advice and wisdom! And please except my apology for being a jerk! Now, I am going to bed, since I have to be on the road again tonight at 2200! 73 Louis - K1STX
