As mentioned on my picture in the Miscelanious Gallery, my car was broken into sometime Monday night, Tuesday morning, and my Kenwood TM-733a was stolen. (Along with a few other items.)
Strangely enough they also ripped out the speaker wire that was supplying power to my trunk, which means that the equipment that was powered there is down as well. At the moment that means my APRS equipment is out of order. This is not a critical long term issue, as I have no problem stringing new wire, though I will re-route through a cleaner path, and there is some logic to putting together a better power system with leads from the battery, or a few other ideas I may have, such as a seprate battery system for my electronics with an independent power down process.
Short term however I am restricted to using my VX-2r for mobile operations, which at 1 watt in the 440 band isn't very impressive. I am going to have to hang a new cable end on the end for my dual band antenna, which should give me better performance while operating mobile, and may improve my radiated power. Though with the various adapters needed to go from the pl-259 that I will ultimately need for whatever radio I install, to the SMA connector needed for the vx-2r radio, there may be some insertion loss. I suppose I could just install a crimp on or screw on SMA connector for now and replace it with the pl-259 when I finally install the radio. I'll have to think about that.
Of course this means that I am back in the market for another dual band radio. Perhaps I should check the local Pawn shops...
73
-Rusty - kc0vcu