{"id":6227,"date":"2011-04-09T11:03:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-09T15:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=6227"},"modified":"2011-04-13T07:55:28","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T11:55:28","slug":"an-expensive-hobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/09\/an-expensive-hobby\/","title":{"rendered":"an expensive hobby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looks like this amateur radio thing is going to get expensive.<\/p>\n

The rig I was looking at \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the Yaesu FT-8900R<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d appeared to be considerably cheaper than all the other multi-band units. It appears that it’s FM only, which is rarely used on the HF bands. The considerably more expensive FT-857D<\/a> is the cheapest unit that will do 10m\/6m\/2m\/70cm, which I reckon is pretty much where my interest lies.<\/p>\n

Then there’s power supplies. Yeah, these beasts need external power supplies. Great big honkin’ 13.8V DC power supplies; about $200 for a rig of this size. Yet more desk space taken up; more cables, more clutter.<\/p>\n

If that weren’t enough, there’s the antenna issue. I appear to live in a Faraday cage surrounded by overhead TX lines. Something’s going to have to go on the roof. Well, actually two<\/em> somethings, as the chance of getting an antenna to work even roughly well on HF and VHF (unless I splash on the expensive and fiddly looking Maldol HVU-8<\/a>) is close to nil.<\/p>\n

So basically, I’m looking to drop a couple of grand on this. Eep.<\/p>\n

In better ham news, last night I received my first radiogram<\/a>, welcoming me to the hobby. Thanks, Paul (VA3PB)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looks like this amateur radio thing is going to get expensive. The rig I was looking at \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the Yaesu FT-8900R \u00e2\u20ac\u201d appeared to be considerably cheaper than all the other multi-band units. It appears that it’s FM only, which is rarely used on the HF bands. The considerably more expensive FT-857D is the cheapest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2290],"tags":[2284,951,1215,2286],"class_list":["post-6227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-radio","tag-amateur","tag-eep","tag-radio","tag-va3pid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-1Cr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6227"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6230,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6227\/revisions\/6230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}