Equipment

My ham radio equipment is a mixture from stone age to state-of-the-art. The oldest piece which I have to take apart from time to time as Icom had not learned how to make plated through vias is a 1977 Icom IC-211E. If I can find my manuals again I may even attempt to increase its 144-146MHz range to the US range of 144-148MHz and add a PL-tone generator in the microphone. Right now it’s more or less a paperweight but it was my first transceiver which I just can’t see trashed.

For mobile use I own a slightly more modern Yaesu FT-4700. As it was purchased in Europe the frequency range was wrong for the US too and I modified it to cover the US 2m and 70cm band

My latest machine is a really new one, Icom IC-746PRO. Thanks to the decision of the German PTT Morse code is no longer required for a ham license and as the other parts of the exam were identical all old licenses were automatically upgraded to be valid for the HF bands too.

As strange as it sounds: Icom had a special where you get a free PS-125 power supply with the IC-746PRO but the scheduled delivery was more then 2 months after I received the transceiver (which was backordered too). As a simple solution I decided to just buy a Diamond GZV4000 power supply and sell the PS-125 on arrival via ebay. The GZV400 looks much better then the Icom anyhow...........

There are some more transceivers which I built over the years but are too difficult to modify for the US frequency ranges:
a 70cm FM unit based on cards I designed for the German C-Net cellphone system and which worked “by accident” in the ham radio range too.
a 2m all-mode transceiver with a tuned crystal frequency generation.
Packet radio TNC’s and other gimmicks and gadgets which all “dream in moving boxes” until I have the luxury of time and can dig them out again.

For the HF bands (up to 30MHz) I installed a Glomex RA700 marine antenna. What’s good for the salty environment on a boat should be good “in the humid woods” of NJ too.

Mainly for APRS a used FT-212RH aquired via ebay joined the list of transceivers:

For Packet Radio and APRS a uTNT plus made by Elcom in Greece and an OpenTracker by Scott, N1VG, “cloned” and reduced in size to fit into a DB9 adapter shell are used.