The IC V8

An icy V-8 sounds like a cold tomato juice drink.  In this case, however, an IC-V8 is a hand held 2-meter transceiver made by Icom.  Dear Friend, Neighbor and Ham Elmer, Gary W.(N7NUU) swapped out the Yaesu for this IC-V8 yesterday afternoon.  The Yaesu could receive but not transmit and it's keys were balky, too.  Both of us are "new" to this radio so we spent about 90 minutes fiddling with the various memory programming functions and so forth.  Icom's 80-page manual isn't the clearest of manuals.  (Click here to access the manual from our Google Doc's account.)  We will order the aftermarket "quick start guide" today.  Gary says those little laminated, pocket-size "cheat sheets" make a world of difference.

After we finally programmed in the VVARA 147.22 Mingus repeater and it's corresponding PL tone, Gary called up Jack C. (W7JLC) in Prescott.  (The Mingus repeater is a little over 20 miles line-of-sight from our location.) Jack pointed me in the right direction March 15 when I called around looking to find the soonest Technician exam.  Jack was very encouraging and gave me some tips on where to begin to study for the exam.  It was only fitting that he would be our first call with the "new" IC-V8.  We used the The MFJ Long Ranger 2-meter half wave antenna for the call and Jack said our transmissions sounded really good.  Gary and I then used 145.50 to talk on simplex with each other.  I still need a lot of "Elmering" before we even think of using the HT all by ourselves.

We spent a couple of hours yesterday messing with this website.  Each person we asked permission to use their material sent a nice email graciously giving us the green light to use their online resources.  We started a "Kudos" page here on the blog to thank everyone who is helping us.  The Kudos page needs some more work but it's a start.  We submitted  the online paperwork to join the VVARA and were happy to note a blog comment here from Capt. Bob (KØCKE) this morning.  Thanks, Bob!

Meanwhile, we shipped off the IC-V8 manual to Office Max so it can be printed.  Hopefully, we will pick it up today.  I can easily see one thing I will want and need to learn is how to use cloning software to interface this computer with the HT.  We will need to program a lot of repeaters in the areas we travel in five states: Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.  There's no way I want to think of inputting all those frequencies by hand!

We are looking forward to our very first visit to the Ham Radio Outlet store in Phoenix next Tuesday.  I'm sure my wife will want to zip tie my hands behind my back while I am shopping in there.  Hopefully, I will be able to exercise some discipline and keep the expenditures relatively low.

Well, that's about it for yesterday.  Many Cheers & 73's. jp