JimJ

Work? Well, wiring the radios aren't that different than wiring amps, you need power/ground through the firewall, in my case i mounted the chassis under the seats and remotely mounted the control heads up in the cab. Drilling the 3/4" holes in the roof (and the almost 2" hole in back for the ball mount) with a hole saw was the scariest part of the entire thing. There's something cathartic about taking a power drill to your exterior, and seeing light come through a nice hole in the sheet metal of course, playing around with fast food joints is a legal no-no... to do the APRS stuff i was talking about earlier, and to talk to other people on it instead of just listen, you need a license. which, if you know how to install a basic system, you've got the basic theory down for the entry level exam.

i don't know if i told the story on here about me and baby monitors...a family about three miles down the road got these wireless baby monitors that kept interfering with me on around 50MHz...got pretty annoying after a while...so i turned my antenna to their house and gave them a piece of my mind, and told them what they could do with their cheap consumer electronics; although maybe not in those exact words I never heard it again, I think they got the message...after probably getting scared chitless from hearing that coming out of it, heh. It's always good fun to get the input/output frequencies of local fast food places you don't particularly like, park in a line-of-sight to the drive-through and order food for people...or confuse the fudge out of the people taking orders

and that isn't even mentioning landline carriers, although with the coming of fiber it isn't as easy as taking a lineman's handset and jacking into your nearest PBX box with a test tone generator... be afraid, be very afraid...

Yes...yes she is oh, some more ranting. it really bugs me about how people think cell phones (or any wireless technology, for that matter; bluetooth, wifi, wan's) are safe or secure...let's face it, folks, if it's over the air, it can be compromised. More often than not, somebody's listening that's not on the other end. Most scanners are pitifully easy to modify to pick up cellular traffic, maybe just a clipped wire or diode here and there...if the Paris Hilton/Fred Durst thing isn't enough to get that in their minds.

my last two Sprint phones had that option...turned GPS off except for 911 tracking. I've never actually called a 911 dispatcher on them, so I can't tell you if they work or not. Cell phones are great for everyday chatting, and the minor annoyance (flat tire, car problems, etc...). When the chit hits the fan, so do the cell networks. That's why I've got the radios in the truck. Those don't go down.

cell phones are teh suck, though...probably one of the most overrated technologies in existence.

they do if you have a newer phone, unless you specifically turned it off. By federal law, if you call 911, they have to know where you are...because otherwise, paramedics respond to the cell tower's site instead of you. nah, thanks man...i think i've found what i need. some of the newer Garmin units are hella cheap, and hella accurate.

basically what cell phone companies are doing, the theory is identical.

That's what I was thinking, hell, it looked like a street in Mogadishu or something Don't like the car a lot, though...too ricey.

http://findu.com/ to give you an idea of what you can play around with.

above the ground, the vhf/uhf dual band whip is only around three feet tall. a 2-meter band antenna (around 144mHz) for GPS position tracking and that sort of thing. basically takes the input from the GPS into a circuit that takes the NMEA data and spits it out into a format that the radio will recognize, and send that out over the air. As long as I'm within a hundred or so miles of the nearest internet gateway repeater, I can look on any internet-connected computer in the world and know exactly where that tracker is, down to a few feet.

i'll probably be adding another antenna soon

well, the big antenna will clear 13 foot bridges, and that comes off...but the two on the roof aren't removable - the dual band coil loaded one tops out at around seven feet.

i get that on my front ones...a lot.

trying to find a carwash to get into is also an interesting exercise...not all are high enough.

i think i last washed the van in january when i drove it back up here. i hate having to pay $5 or $10 in quarters to wash the damn thing myself when i could do it for free back home...sigh, when i get a place up here... road salt + sand + trying to keep rims clean = teh suck. also gets in the antenna spring and does chit in there, so need to keep that cleaned out.

it's just an all-around sweet looking sub...they were looking good before, now they look even better can't wait until Kent sends my box, although i don't have an amp for it yet

so... any new projects lately.

hmm...

amazing the tricks i have up my sleeve?