HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: R4002 on April 10, 2013, 0223 UTC
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Hello all,
New to the board, interested in its 10/11 meter board but wanted to post here since this section deals with equipment. I like to focus my monitoring on the 11-meter "freeband", including taxicab dispatch DX and STLs. I am currently running a CRE 8900 mobile and a Ranger Voyage VR9000 (Superstar 3900 clone with a frequency counter).
I'm wondering what the other 11-meter guys on this forum are using for monitoring. My main antenna is a NMO mounted base loaded quarter wave land mobile antenna cut for 27.5 MHz.
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I'm not an "11 meter guy" anymore, but I used to be active on sideband (channels 33-40) during the late 80's / early 90's, and got out really well with a Cobra 148 and 3 element wire beam. Never tried the freeband thing (aside from listening on my SW rigs) because I just didn't have the equipment to do it with, and didn't want to mess with the 148.
I also built a quad loop that worked well. I was able to talk to Alaska and California with it. Both antennas came down in a windstorm.
The quad loop also worked very effectively for receiving between 26-33 Mhz. I was able to get VHF low band skip very well on it (Spanish talking dispatchers, Oil rigs in the Gulf, etc), as well as 10 meter FM repeaters from as far away as Chicago. This was with a Radio Shack multiband radio with Low Band on it.
If I were to try any of it again I'd build another quad loop. Mine was easy to make, and worked really well.....
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Thanks for the reply!
Apparently all (or most) of these Ranger/RCI manufactured rigs are clones of the original Cobra 148 with features added or subtracted. Apparently they did make versions of the 148 with extended frequency coverage and the 27.60125 to 27.99125 UK CB band (some with just one band down and one band up so 26.515 to 27.855 and another one with something like 24-30 MHz coverage so you could do 12 and 10 meters in addition to CB and freeband.) Ranger/RCI makes pretty much every export out there (Galaxy, Superstar, Connex, General, Voyager, the list goes on), interestingly enough.
I used to use a homemade dipole (I live in a duplex and I'm a renter, graduate student) and that really got out. It was facing North-South so I got a lot of Spanish language taxi cab traffic as well as DX from Europe. I love hearing the UK CBers on their channel 19 (27.78125) when the band is open.
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I used to frequent a CB shop and bought my 148 there. The owner of the shop had a Cobra 148DX. He let me look at it. It looked like quite the radio. I guess they are now collectors items. If I remember right, it had AM-SSB-FM and even CW capability, and three ranges of frequencies.
I've heard of the Galaxies, Superstars, and Rangers. Back in the 80's and early 90's most of them seemed to be made by Uniden in Taiwan. I guess production has moved elsewhere (Philippines, and other places) since then.
I haven't monitored the shortwaves much lately, but last summer and fall I heard some Latin Americans on 27445 -- Mexico, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama mainly, the receiver being a DX398 and indoor wire. I know just enough Spanish to get the gist of what's said, or catch location info. I don't know how the band has been propagating lately, but compared to earlier sunspot peaks, 11 meters sure seemed dead last summer & fall.
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My buddies used a Ranger 2900.
Here's some stuff 8)
http://www.cbtricks.com/radios/rci/rci_2900/index.htm
Peace!
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My buddies used a Ranger 2900.
Here's some stuff 8)
http://www.cbtricks.com/radios/rci/rci_2900/index.htm
Peace!
lol, I still have a 2900 packed away, somewhere, along with a slightly newer 2950. That 2900 provided a lot of entertainment back in the day in the mobile. Thanks for those links.
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I bought a RCI-2950DX maybe 2 years ago. Nicely made radio and it was very easy to modify for extended TX. Ended up selling it during a shack purge to pull together some money for an HF amplifier, but I've been thinking of getting another.
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The RCI-2900 is apparently a very nice radio.
You should take it out of storage while the cycle is still active :D
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I have a Uniden (President) HR-2610, several Browning Golden Eagles, but my all time favorite is my 1976 Siltronix 1011D with original Shure 444D mic and digital freq counter. I worked the ARRL 10 Meter contest with it and received a lot of unsolicited comments on the outstanding transmit audio. They were surprised when I replied I was using a 35 year old tube set.
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Ahh the Siltronix 1011 (Swan). I ran one of those on 10 meters during the early 90's great radio. I still have that radio in the garage somewhere.