I'm a writer by trade: I blog for The Unofficial Apple Weblog, which is an AOL-owned property that covers the Apple beat. I'm not just a writer; I'm an editor, I also do a weekly video show, and I have a daily podcast that provides Apple news in a nice, concise audio format. But for the most part, I'm a nerd, a geek ... whatever you choose to call me. I love technology and always have, and although I was trained as an engineer, I chose to steer my career into the uncertain winds of the personal computer revolution in the mid-1980s, and I haven't looked back.
Well, back in the late 1990's I decided to take after my Dad -- we'll call him NRØP -- and get a ham radio license. I had tried before and failed miserably. Unlike the amazing signal recognition hardware that is my Dad's brain, I could never get the hang of Morse Code, which used to be a requirement for a ham license. Fortunately, the FCC dropped that requirement, and I received a Technician Class license. I'm now a General Class ticket holder, although I don't see any reason to move beyond to the rarified realm of Extra Class.
When I first got started, I bought a cool little radio -- the Kenwood TH-D7A, which was a dual-band (2 meter, 70 cm) handheld that had some interesting features like the ability to act as an APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) station. I had a lot of fun with that radio, including making a contact with the International Space Station as part of the ARISS program, and also driving around with a GPS unit connected to the transceiver so that I could report my position. Think of it as Glympse, before the iPhone...
I also ended up buying a dual-band unit for my car, which I used while commuting to talk to my Dad in the mornings. Unfortunately, I ended up taking light rail to work, which kind of killed that... Eventually I sold the portable unit that I had in the car, then sold the TH-D7A. In 2011 I had dreams of getting back into the hobby, so I bought a Yaesu FT-817ND.
There's one thing they don't show you in the ads in QST Magazine -- how fucked up the user interface of the FT-817ND is. Between that and the fact that to do anything I would need to build some stealth antennas that would work in my covenant-controlled neighborhood, I never got anywhere with the radio. I finally got disgusted a few weeks ago while watching the dust pile up on the FT-817ND, and decided to sell it. This is what I'm referring to in the title of this post: for our non-English-speaking readers, there's a term "changing horses in mid-stream" to refer to making an unexpected change at an inopportune time. This change happened very unexpectedly -- I just got pissed off once to often at the FT-817ND collecting dust.
What I really wanted was something that was at least as powerful as my iPhone 5! I mean, something that I could use to broadcast my position from built-in GPS, and something that I could use a Bluetooth hands-free headset with. The only radio that fit the bill was the Yaesu VX-8DR. I sold the FT-817ND, and now I'm on the verge of picking up the little HT that could.
Now what I really want to do is create a website that others can use to figure out how to do things with their VX-8DR. My background is in writing technical things understandably, so that's what I'm going to do. As I take the VX-8DR through the unboxing and first connection with a local repeater, then set itup with the GPS card for APRS, and eventually to some ARISS contacts, you'll be with me. If I have issues figuring something out, I'll research it until I have an answer that makes sense -- and then I'll tell you about it.
If I can get this concept to work for the VX-8DR, I'm going to see if I can get others to do the same for other ham radios so that we have a community of well-written blogs that tell people step-by-step what to do to perform fairly benign tasks without digging through a horrible manual.
So there you have it in a large nutshell -- what this blog is all about. More to come once I actually buy a VX-8DR and start using it. This blog will most likely have a limited appeal, but if you're a ham and you're interested in a powerful quad-band handheld transceiver, this is the place to be.
