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2M SSB

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Matt285:
Anyone here on the site work 2M SSB or CW? If you do or have please post comments. Thanks

ThaDood:
I did heavily in the mid-1990's. At a hamfest, I bought a 2nd hand TS-711A 2M multi-mode rig and a modified 140W Mirage 2M repeater amp, (Modified with T/R switching and SSB delay.), then bought a Hamtronics 2M +18dB 2M RX amp. For a beam, I built my own 5 element copper and PCV beam, matched at 144.200MHz. That set-up talked all over the Northeast USA and Ontario and Quebec, Canada. I could talk anytime to the NE states and NJ from WNY. Weekly weekend mornings, there was a group up in the Canadian St Lawrence Seaway, so I shot my beam up there and had some neat QSO's. I'm trying to get back into 2M SSB again. For now, I have a TS-2000X to a homebrew 2M Delta Loop. About the only time that I hear anything around 144.200MHz is during contest times, like the January, June, and September ARRL VHF Contests and ARRL Field Days. I've had local 2M SSB QSO try-outs, but few here are set-up for 2M SSB / CW antenna-wise. Anyway, I want to do it again as well as 432.100MHz SSB again. It was fun and worked distances when HF F2 and Sporadic "E" would be dead. A decent 2M SSB station could reliably work +300 miles anytime. Open some Tropo enhancement, and the sky's the limit, literally.

Matt285:
Thanks for your reply. I am thinking about selling my current rig to buy an Icom-7000. I know 2M weak signal work is not that common, but I wouldn't mind eventually having a small/med size Yagi set up horizontally for 2M. I used to work a fair amount of  6 meters with my Yaesu FT-817 and occasionally I would hear some 2M SSB/CW activity. I also know that the guys that are big into it run a fair amount of power, use preamps and run very low loss hardline to large arrays. It would be an expensive investment and im not sure if it would be worth it. I suppose I could try dabbling in it with a modest set up and see what I think.

Josh:
I doubt there's much activity in 2m ssb anymore but you can always try and see. I had a Ic210 or whatever it was in the 90s and with a Cushcraft 2m beam could talk within a few hundred miles when there was no tropo ongoing, when tropo was going it was amazing.

A IC7000 is a worthy rig, they used a lot of tech from the IC7800 program to devise it. One could consider the IC7000 to be a mini IC7800. The IC718 is a worthy rig too, but the IC7000 offers so much more versatility. No filters to buy, amazing dsp filtering you can just dial in, etc etc.

Matt285:
Yeah. I love the simplicity and feel of my 718. However I need a cw filter and by the time I pay for that I would have put enough money into it that I could have purchased a number of rigs that already have filtering and 6M capability. At least HF rigs have come down in price finally.

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