Mark86 said:
Nice. It looks good without the running boards. I am a little scared to take mine off because I do not know how it would look with the cladding.
do what I did, take off one side (drivers side, of course) and try that for a couple of days. it's easy to remove...6 bolts and you're there. might be nice to have an extra set of hands if you decide to put 'em back on, but it'd prolly be doable by yourself.
Also, what is that antenna for that you have mounted on the front passenger side?
Hehe, yeah...notice the radio operator license plates?
: There's actually another one on top of the roof, above the driver seat. The front one's a 5/8 wave 2 meter antenna used for voice communication via the radio that was in the close-up interior picture. The one on top is a 1/4 wave 2 meter antenna for data, specifically APRS, which (in a nutshell) beacons out gps locations, so that I (and others running the system) can be tracked. It's great in that a friend can say, "hey, come meet me." I set his callsign as my destination in the gps and it updates as he moves. once had to catch up with a ham friend on the highway, could tell pretty close to how far behind him I was.
Take a look at
this thread for a pic of the device that beacons the location and the opentracker (the thing that beacons).
Next, I'll need to go for the grill guard to get me a good ground plane to mount an HF antenna for really long distance communications.
Ham radio's a lot of fun, plus it provides legal communications over longer distances than CBs...there's a couple of off-roaders around here that are studying up to take their test. they like the idea of being able to get in contact with someone if they get stuck/stranded. Our local repeaters have what's called a phone patch on it, so that you can, essentially, make a public phone call via the radio...that was the "selling point" for them.
Kev
Yeah, I use the etrex there in the non-map mode to get me to a waypoint. Then when I'm there, I pull out my other etrex (also a legend) and use that to get to the actual cache. last night we joked as we had 4 gpses on and running in my truck. (my handheld, my friend's handheld, my etrex that's mounted, and my nav system). *laugh* guess that might qualify as overkill, but hey...I don't believe there is such a thing in my world!
