10 Meter Radio Questions

Depends on what frequencies you want to talk on....

As a technician you can do non voice activities (code) on 28.000 to 28.299....you can talk voice on 28.300-28.499 on USB.....

28.500 thru 29.700 is for general class and above.

 

Yea, I've been thinking about the 10-meter lately too. So whatever anyone can share would be awsome.

 

I can help. Are you two looking at getting your ham tickets and using 10 meters for long distance dx contacts?

 

I don't know enough about them to even know what to tell you, I guess its the part of learning about them and stuff that makes them cool, so I want one. Ha Ha.

 

You might want to hold off on getting one until you learn them. Those 10 meter radios have the ability to get you fined heavily by the FCC if you get caught on one talking where you should be.

 

I'm thinking they want a 10 meter radio but they want to use it on 11 meter and be "legal" about it...................not gonna happen.

 

To add to the great advice already given by my learned brethren above, please allow me to add my suggestion to get something other than a "10 Meter" (export radio) for legitimate use on 10 Meters with a ham license. Most of them are designed to be *really* broadbanded, to the detriment of performance on the actual 10 Meter band; most are thinly disguised CB radios awaiting merely a jumper change or clip of a wire to enable use on CB. And anyone who performs only said jumper to enable CB will find their receiver is typically less sensitive and less selective than a dedicated CB rig, or more susceptible to adjacent channel interference.
Some of the "10 Meter" radios already don't cover the Technician Licensee's allowed range of 28.300 to 28.500, where SSB only is allowed, and have no CW key jack for using Morse on the very lowest part of the 10 Meter band that's reserved for non-voice communications.
Add in the fact that most of those same "10 Meter"/(export) radios are a sorta-compromise across all the bands they can cover, and you get a radio that's a relative power hog (for your DC supply) compared to a "real" ham rig. Plus most of them won't even work legally on the U.S. 10 Meter band for any mode or band segment they can dial up.

My suggestion would be to pick up a "real" ham radio, with all the switched band filtering inherent in most such rigs. For less than around $800 a new all-band radio can be had with performance enhancements like Digital Signal Processing for transmit audio, I.F. shift and notching for separating closely spaced signals on receive, better use of the DC running the radio, a CW key jack for Morse and inputs for other digital modes. And there won't be knobs wasted for useless things like Robo-voice, echo, a zillion kinds of beeps, Super-Splatter modulator circuits, and the like.

With a little judicious shopping, I was able to find an older (~ 20 years) Icom IC-730 12-volt base station, which also runs directly off my vehicle's battery circuit. 100 watts (roughly) on all the bands from 3.5 to 29.7 MHz (although no FM) in a package about the size of two Cobra 29s stacked one upon the other. It *won't* do CB without losing one of the 10 Meter sub-bands via a crystal change, but I solve that by having a Cobra 25 mounted nearby in the van.

I paid $200 for a crate of radios from a ham who was selling off his SK brother's gear, so the box included two 2M FM mobiles and two 2M FM handhelds. The '730 was the only one that needed any work, but it's such a popular rig that the short list of failures are already well known and the fixes are well documented; it took me less than two hours to get the radio back to working better than new.

Hope that helps, and isn't more information than you were looking for.
73

 

Excellent advice handlebar.. One area that may seem a little grey to those asking is the different bands they can access with those all-band radios you mention. There's plenty of documentation on the internet and there's also an excellent book called Now You're Talking http://www.amazon.com/Now-Youre-Talking-First-License/dp/0872597970 that will explain everything and then some. If you get the latest version, it'll even have test pool questions in the back.

The main thing about the HF bands is you have to take a Technician, General, and Extra Class license test. All the questions are on the 'net and there are even places you can take practice tests online. General will get you most of what you need for the HF frequencies, Extra just gives you a little more. Technician gets you into the 2 meter and 70cm bands which are excellent for communications between rigs and you can always reach out to a repeater and really expand both your transmit and recieve range. You can also make an 'auto-patch' which is a phone call for when your cellaphone dies on you..

ICOM makes some great rigs. I have several of them. The two multi-band rigs I use are ICOM 706, the original versions. 100 watts is more than enough power.. From there, go to a better antenna.. Much more cost effective. Cleaner too.