Just joined my local HAM club

unsung

Active member
I posted over on Mud about this too but I wanted to look here for more opinions. I finally got going and joined my local group last night, it was the first meeting that I went to. I am not yet licensed but want to get my General at least. They are somewhat trying to push me towards Yaesu for mobile but my limited research has given me the opinion that my two choices are going to be the Icon ID-5100 and the Kenwood TM-D710. I want to be able to go digital as well. Still learning all of this so I admit not knowing a lot but I did want to get into something so I am installed and ready to roll once I get licensed. Can anyone offer opinions on these two please? Also I may go with a Yaesu for a handheld since HRO has them on sale right now.

Thank you.
 

prerunner1982

Adventurer
What digital mode are you wanting to use? or what is most widely used in your area?
They are not compatible with each other and each manufacturer has their own (in most cases).
You might be better served by getting whatever mobile and handheld you want and then something like an OpenSpot that allows you access to DMR, Dstar (Icom), and System Fusion (Yaesu), if that is within your budget.
 

Billoftt

Active member
Everyone here is going to have a different opinion, but if it were me I would begin by evaluating what my goals are. Are you doing this just for trail comms? Are you wanting to do D-Star? What kind of digital modes are popular in your area? Do you need APRS? What will you use APRS for?

Right now in my little group of off-roaders, I have been trying with varying success to convert people from CB into Amateur Radio. Right now Midland has a nice little 2m/70cm rig that will go for just under $88 with the 20% off code. And I am hoping that will help them get over the initial cost barrier. https://midlandusa.com/product/dbr2500-amateur-dual-band-two-way-radio/

You mentioned the TM-D710. Don't get me wrong, Kenwoods are good radios, I run a TM-V71A myself. I will say that they are well behind the others in features and modern displays. I personally do not believe a radio such as the D710 for the Yaesu FTM400 are worth the extra expense to get APRS when there are so many stand-alone APRS solutions out there.

As far as digital modes, I would take note of what modes are most popular in your area. The specific digital mode will not matter much for trail comms because you will be running analog anyway on account of the diverse amount of radios in your group.

Again, this is just me talking about things from my perspective. If I were to recommend a dual-band rig for trail comms, I would go with the Midland I linked above or go to a few hamfests or tailgates sponsored by local clubs to find some used gear that you may be able to get a deal on first. That way you will start to get a feel for any other "extra features" you might want in your next radio. Then, when you do upgrade you can sell your previous rig at a discount to help another overlander convert from CB to Amateur and mentor him/her.
 

DaveInDenver

Middle Income Semi-Redneck
That Midland DBR2500 is a rebadged Anyone AT-778UV. Most major brands are rebadging the Chinese radios. The Alinco DJ-MD5 is an Anytone AT-D8x8UV, for example, and I think the Yaesu FT-65R is an evolution of the Baofeng UV-5R. Anyway, it's the company who's name is on the FCC label that ultimately matters.

I agree generally with the comments, there's no reason to throw a ton of money in upfront. Several of the friends of mine have jumped in feet first with FTM-400s because that's what other people have. Which is fine, you have help that way, but they are using a fraction of the features and could have done what they needed with a $100 2m FM mobile.

I personally have had a FTM-350 for the built-in APRS capability, which is convenient to some extent. But limiting, since you're left with a single band voice radio and a somewhat limited APRS station. So I sold it and went to two radios that each do best what they are supposed to do best. If I was to go back to a dual band, dual VFO radio it would be perhaps to install my TM-V71 with a stand alone TNC. But as it is I have a Connect Systems CS800D (I personally do DMR, which is most popular here) and for packet I have a little data radio with a Argent Tracker3 TNC and APRSdroid.

So if anything I would use the TM-V71 or the FT-8800 I still have sitting around as a real dual VFO radio, which is very handy. You can stay on a trail frequency and monitor something else, NOAA weather, a repeater, another simplex. With an APRS running on one half of a TM-D710, FTM-400 or something else like that it's just IMO throwing away half your expensive radio. It gives up too much flexibility. That's not to say it's not with a purpose, it does simplify interior layout and antennas.

If I was to make a point it would be that you can always spend more money in the future, so start simple and inexpensive and see what features you actually use or would like to add. Buy something used to start, being in a ham club you might even find another ham will give you a good deal since most of us tend to collect radios over time and are happy to unload them to help a new ham.
 
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unsung

Active member
I believe my local guys are running D-Star.

I am starting with trail comms, and emergency use as we solo out in search of ghost towns and camp for days in secluded places. At the meeting last night they were talking about different levels of emergency response and I suppose at some point in time it could be something I would pursue. I support a group called Citizens Assisting Citizens so I know they would be willing to have the assistance and maybe helping the County out in case of need. Long way to go for that though.
 

dreadlocks

Well-known member
APRS is pretty much mandatory around here if you want to join ARES, S&R or 4x4 Recovery teams..
Ive got a D710 and I love it, but im a kenwood guy.. Ive had a ton of Kenwood radios over the years and other than the deaf VHF on my TS2000 I dont have many complaints.
 

Airmapper

Inactive Member
Most (not all) ham club type guys have no clue about what you would want out of a mobile radio for trail comms. Many of them sit in a hut and talk all day, and the radio gadgetry is all they focus on or care about. Digital is great for them, they are in a fixed position on an ideally positioned and tuned antenna with ample power and are easily overkill for anything they want to talk to in the nearest 50-100 miles. Even on their mobiles, they run around town no more than 5 miles from a repeater. They are not worried about actual "mobile" use because it's not something they do much (and frankly no one here does it that much either despite being set up for it.....I know I don't because I only have 1 friend I run with semi regularly that has ham....)

Now I'm not knocking them, I've chatted with guys like this on my commute. They are super friendly and on occasion quite interesting characters. But they have a different perspective on how they use a radio than someone looking at it as a tool for the traveling off road vehicle in a remote place.

For a vehicle radio, you just want the darn thing to work, and work with the radio of whoever you travel with. You want to just set it to a channel and leave it, you don't want to have to fiddle with it much while driving, and when you do stop to use it, you just want it to tune a repeater easily.

I have a Kenwood TM-D710GA. Yes it cost too much, and yes it's overkill. It's the best APRS rig you can get, as it was made for APRS with input from the guy who invented APRS. If you don't care about APRS, it's of no use to you. In my opinion, it's a darn good radio and I wouldn't trade you 2 Yaesu's for it. It does not do digital voice at all. APRS is the only "digital" communicating it does natively. But it will run as an APRS tracker all by itself and leave you a whole analog radio half to talk on.

I don't know much about digital. I know I don't really want it because I have a hard enough time getting anyone to share a single radio service let alone a common digital mode. I know Yaesu has it's own flavor, Fusion I think, then there is the more generically adopted DMR, and a few others used enough to be considered common, like D-star.

Ham is a hobby, and there are many aspects of it I enjoy as a hobby. (I'm a big fan of APRS) But as a useful tool, I have not been impressed with ham radio. It's wonderful if I find someone else who uses it to travel with, but that is rare.

My recommendation would be get your Technician license ASAP (go for General if you like, I'm a General, never used HF once though...) and get you a HT. I like a Baofeng, some don't, but if you study over it, program it, and listen on it and learn it, you can run about anything, it will only get easier from there. You'll want an HT no matter what you put in the truck so no money lost. The more you play with it and talk to the locals, understand how radio works, you'll get a better idea what mobile you need.

I will make this jab at ham though, because I see people using "emergency use" as a reason for ham. It's not. If you want emergency comms, get a Garmin inReach. Ham radio is for people who would rather tinker around for an hour than actually get help. I can think of no emergency situation where my first thought is let me see if I can reach someone on ham...... Even if it's not a real emergency, an inReach can set up reliable comms with a contact of your choice to help coordinate assistance. As long as you know someone who will reliably check their texts, you are good. You can tinker on ham while you wait on that person to get going. And of course, if it is a real emergency, you can get emergency services moving within minutes and 2-way comms with someone who's job is to sit there and watch for your message.
 

Billoftt

Active member
That Midland DBR2500 is a rebadged Anyone AT-778UV. Most major brands are rebadging the Chinese radios.
I noticed that, but right now it is $40 cheaper than the AT-778UV and you have an American customer service number to call. I mean, just an actual customer service department is good...
 

DaveInDenver

Middle Income Semi-Redneck
Most (not all) ham club type guys have no clue about what you would want out of a mobile radio for trail comms. Many of them sit in a hut and talk all day, and the radio gadgetry is all they focus on or care about. Digital is great for them, they are in a fixed position on an ideally positioned and tuned antenna with ample power and are easily overkill for anything they want to talk to in the nearest 50-100 miles. Even on their mobiles, they run around town no more than 5 miles from a repeater. They are not worried about actual "mobile" use because it's not something they do much (and frankly no one here does it that much either despite being set up for it.....I know I don't because I only have 1 friend I run with semi regularly that has ham....)

Now I'm not knocking them, I've chatted with guys like this on my commute. They are super friendly and on occasion quite interesting characters. But they have a different perspective on how they use a radio than someone looking at it as a tool for the traveling off road vehicle in a remote place.

For a vehicle radio, you just want the darn thing to work, and work with the radio of whoever you travel with. You want to just set it to a channel and leave it, you don't want to have to fiddle with it much while driving, and when you do stop to use it, you just want it to tune a repeater easily.

I have a Kenwood TM-D710GA. Yes it cost too much, and yes it's overkill. It's the best APRS rig you can get, as it was made for APRS with input from the guy who invented APRS. If you don't care about APRS, it's of no use to you. In my opinion, it's a darn good radio and I wouldn't trade you 2 Yaesu's for it. It does not do digital voice at all. APRS is the only "digital" communicating it does natively. But it will run as an APRS tracker all by itself and leave you a whole analog radio half to talk on.

I don't know much about digital. I know I don't really want it because I have a hard enough time getting anyone to share a single radio service let alone a common digital mode. I know Yaesu has it's own flavor, Fusion I think, then there is the more generically adopted DMR, and a few others used enough to be considered common, like D-star.

Ham is a hobby, and there are many aspects of it I enjoy as a hobby. (I'm a big fan of APRS) But as a useful tool, I have not been impressed with ham radio. It's wonderful if I find someone else who uses it to travel with, but that is rare.

My recommendation would be get your Technician license ASAP (go for General if you like, I'm a General, never used HF once though...) and get you a HT. I like a Baofeng, some don't, but if you study over it, program it, and listen on it and learn it, you can run about anything, it will only get easier from there. You'll want an HT no matter what you put in the truck so no money lost. The more you play with it and talk to the locals, understand how radio works, you'll get a better idea what mobile you need.

I will make this jab at ham though, because I see people using "emergency use" as a reason for ham. It's not. If you want emergency comms, get a Garmin inReach. Ham radio is for people who would rather tinker around for an hour than actually get help. I can think of no emergency situation where my first thought is let me see if I can reach someone on ham...... Even if it's not a real emergency, an inReach can set up reliable comms with a contact of your choice to help coordinate assistance. As long as you know someone who will reliably check their texts, you are good. You can tinker on ham while you wait on that person to get going. And of course, if it is a real emergency, you can get emergency services moving within minutes and 2-way comms with someone who's job is to sit there and watch for your message.
InReach or SPOT are of course defaults but don't knock ham for its usefulness. Had a club member (most of the members of my 4wd club are hams) slide off a snowy trail in a fairly remote Garfield County that did not have cell coverage (this is common in Colorado and the West, I believe you are back east and may not be aware of that). He used the linked repeater system in Colorado to contact one of those stationary hams 200 miles away in Denver.

Those guys are part of the Colorado Emergency Reporting Net (CERN), who are a group of hams who volunteer their time in shifts within earshot of a radio at home tuned to the Colorado Connection Repeaters just for this purpose, to be dispatchers and perhaps place a phone call for their fellow hams telling someone you will be late or need help.

https://colcon.org/wp/scheduled-nets/cern/

No, it's not 24/7/365 paid 911 dispatchers. But if you have a flat tire and just need a call to your club mates, it's perfect. They are doing exactly what amateurs are supposed to do, help each other and the community.

They contacted another group of volunteers, the Colorado 4x4 Rescue and Recovery, who also utilize the ColCon linked system to coordinate state-wide assistance for 4WD drivers who get in trouble but aren't critically in need of SAR. They actually work with sheriffs, BLM, USFS and SAR groups when they need specialized assistance specific to recovering 4WDs. They, along with a couple of members of the club, got up there and helped him get out and home.

http://www.co4x4rnr.org

The ColCon system is being enhanced and expanded with the help of another group, the Rocky Mountain Hams, who are building a robust IP-via-microwave system statewide. They've already linked about two dozen DMR repeaters between northern NM and southern WY and are working east-west now to connect the state across the Divide. The ColCon system is currently linking their repeaters with its own dedicated UHF backbone, which has a controller station in Denver and a critical relay station in Breckenridge. It works fine but is prone to issues to getting several hops deep at the fringes, so linking all these FM stations over an IP backbone will be a tremendous improvement.

https://www.rmham.org/wordpress/amateur-microwave-network/

So, yeah, if no one puts any effort into volunteer organization then nothing gets done. We only get out what we put in.
 
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Airmapper

Inactive Member
InReach or SPOT are of course defaults but don't knock ham for its usefulness. Had a club member (most of the members of my 4wd club are hams) slide off a snowy trail in a fairly remote Garfield County that did not have cell coverage (this is common in Colorado and the West, I believe you are back east and may not be aware of that). He used the linked repeater system in Colorado to contact one of those stationary hams 200 miles away in Denver.

I don't know about that, cell phone is the least reliable form of comms around here. My more rural travels are in Eastern KY and West Virginia, and satellite is the only way you can even get out in many places. I actually carry 2 cell phones on different networks so when I do have signal it increases my odds one may actually work. (And that's not just for travel, that applies around where I live, I can't make a call on my main phone from the town I get my mail from.) My main cell works on Wi-Fi (from landline DSL) as a phone or I could not even use it at home, and that actually got me phone use in some towns in WV where no one else could call thanks to stores with landline based Wi-Fi. The reason I have that particular service is because of poor cell coverage.

So, yeah, if no one puts any effort into volunteer organization then nothing gets done. We only get out what we put in.

This might be the more relevant observation. My take based on that is any benefit from ham radio is a geographical variable. I'm hard pressed to see any use for it because there is no organization to work with here, only a few clubs that mostly focus on swapping postcards over HF. Mostly fuddy duddy retired old fart stuff a guy my age has no interest in. I can turn my radio on and not hear anything from local repeaters for hours. If you do catch a conversation, it's about someone's foot disease or something. Granted that comment is slightly in jest but not too far off. The most activity in my listening range is literally a married couple using a local repeater in lieu of cell phones, I mean I could tell you what the guy has for dinner if I listened because she tells him what to bring home from the store. (Really nice couple though, I even bought a radio from the guy. I mean they might as well use it for that, nobody else is using it.)

If you have an active local ham resource that is not a geriatrics club or den for social rejects, with a scope of activities that goes beyond only talking on the radio about pointless stuff, count yourself fortunate. I wouldn't count on that in every region of the US.
 

sonoronos

Usually broken down on the side of the road
I posted over on Mud about this too but I wanted to look here for more opinions. I finally got going and joined my local group last night, it was the first meeting that I went to. I am not yet licensed but want to get my General at least.

Congrats! Supporting your local ham club is a great thing to do, I'm sure your local club is the better for your participation :)

Getting a General license is an achievement unto itself, so props to you on your goal. If you do electronics and enjoy making/building things, HAM clubs tend to support that as well.

They are somewhat trying to push me towards Yaesu for mobile

Everyone has an opinion - just look at the responses here. In general, it's best to take everything with a grain of salt.

but my limited research has given me the opinion that my two choices are going to be the Icon ID-5100 and the Kenwood TM-D710.

Make sure that you're ok with the LCD screen on the ID-5100.

Still learning all of this so I admit not knowing a lot

Just learn first. My biggest regret is buying a radio too soon. If you get your general and want to get deeper into the HAM hobby, then it might be worth purchasing an FT817 or FT857. IIRC these will both do broadcast radio in addition to HF, which is actually kind of nice because then you'll have something to listen to the 99% of the time your radio isn't being used. They're not the best 2m/70cm radios in terms of features (for example - only one VFO) but they are versatile in other ways.

Things are also moving to SDRs now. Who knows...maybe a year from now, 2m/70cm mobiles will have full simultaneous sampling of 2m and 70cm, along with waterfall displays? Built-in all-digital-mode hotspots and on-radio CPUs with full touch maps and displays? The tech just keeps getting better and better...
 

wirenut

Adventurer
If you want to talk on D-STAR then the Icom 5100 is really your only choice for a true dual band (both band at the same time) rig. The only non-com rig that will do D-Star is the Kenwood TH-D74A but it's a handheld and a very expensive one at that.
If you want to run APRS the Kenwood will do that but the Icom won't. There are ways of bridgine D-STAR's version of APRS over to the real APRS network but it takes other people putting up the right computer equipment in the right places. I don't know much about that as I don't run D-STAR.
I have 2 Yaesu radios that I bought mainly for their built in APRS functionality, an FT1XD handheld and an FTM-400XDR mobile rig. Both of them happen to also do Fusion digital. I've tried it, I'm not impressed. The audio quality is below that of traditional analog and the useful communication range is slightly less. For just talking to people, particularly on a trail ride, there isn't much use for digital audio. The only benefit I can think of is that the other station's call, distance, and position are encoded in the digital information. So, when talking to people in your group you would know how far away they were and what direction.
I really like the FTM-400 for APRS because it has a nice color touchscreen that is used for sending text messages. It's a lot easier to type in a text message with a full keyboard rather than trying to use the microphone DTMF pad like you have to do on the Kenwood rig. That was my main reason for buying it over the Kenwood. (That and the fact that I've had horrible experiences with Kenwood radios.) The screen on the Yaesu is way way better than the Kenwood for just about everything.
Really though you don't need a fancy radio with APRS built in. You can use most any radio for APRS with a small external Mobillinkd TNC that connects with Bluetooth to a smart phone or tablet. That is really a great way to go for mobile APRS use. I just like having everything in one box instead of 3 pieces of equipment.
 

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