w00t!

Now, gotta wait until my call sign is up on the FCC site and I'll be good to go...

Now the fun begins from what I'm told...

Have a friend (fellow arfcommer) who is into packet radio..Says it's cool stuff.. He's the one who inspired me to finally get it...Been wanting it before Y2-Que...

Congrats!, AL7JR

ATTA BOY, BOY!

Congratulations!

Got a rig in mind yet?

Quoted: ATTA BOY, BOY! Congratulations! Got a rig in mind yet?

Not yet..My friend that I mentioned above is going to let me borrow one of his handhelds until I get comfortable..I'll probably end up getting another handheld though rather than a base or mobile for the time being..

The one he's going to let me borrow has all the bells and whistles though from what he said..Might just have to talk him into selling it to me if I like it

Congratulations.  de N8ILG.

I got my old Code Tech about 20 years ago now.  My first HT was an IC-02AT and that was considered to have all the bells and whitles.  Now it's a brick and  barely functional compared to todays hts.

Bells and whistles are nice, but many you will never use.  I prefer the larger models as they are easier to hold and press the buttons on.  The super tiny ones are  tougher to press the buttons on with big fingers, and sometimes the  extra work to needed b for entering functions is a pain, Trying to do too many things with fewer buttons.

I recently got a Yaesu FT-8800R for the truck and it is a joy to use, but confusing as hell if you don't fiddle with it on a regular basis.  4 dual knobs, two for each side.  two are volume and squelch and two are channel  change or other input.  Plus 3 have push in switch functions. , and you use long or short pushes gaaaaaah.   My first mobile single band 20 freq memory and two VFO, the 8800 500 or so freq memories on both sides, freq or alphanumeric display and 6 "hyper" memories which take the full 1000 memories out and swap a different 1000 memory pattern in.  So if you do search and rescue in one county you can arrange all your freqs for that call out scenario and contacts,  another hyper memory if you haave another activity, etc.    You might have a lot of overlap but you can customize your scanning etc.

I heartily recommend you get one of the programming cables and programming software . The software lets you set all your freq information information up on a spreadsheet similar to an Excel spreadsheet and then load it in in about 5 minutes as opposed to taking hours pushing buttons and twisting knobs.

AZ_Redneck, keep me posted on how things go once your on the air.

WA7***