For those ham radio guys out there....

gismo said:
JOOC, what's the practical difference between setting a starting bid vs a reserve limit? I think the reserve costs a little but are reserve limits more successful?
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Honestly..I have no freaking idea. I'm not a big ebayer. I generally only buy things "buy it now" and I rarely sell.
 
Oops..wrong forum..moving to classifieds before someone slaps my wrists :)
 
gismo said:
JOOC, what's the practical difference between setting a starting bid vs a reserve limit? I think the reserve costs a little but are reserve limits more successful?
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I usually set a starting bit at my minimum selling price. I think this is a better way as when people set the price to zero and then set a reserve it gets to be a good guessing game as to what the reserve really is. I know that annoys me a little. So this way if I get one bid it sells for my price. Where if I used a reserve I might 30 bids until someone gets to the right amount. I think it also keeps some of the tire kickers aways too.
 
OTOH, often a reserve and a low starting bid gets things rolling enough that a higher final price is reached, without running the risk that the item will be sold for an unacceptably low price. This works better when there are not a lot of the same item available on eBay.
 
jmaynard said:
OTOH, often a reserve and a low starting bid gets things rolling enough that a higher final price is reached, without running the risk that the item will be sold for an unacceptably low price. This works better when there are not a lot of the same item available on eBay.
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Sometimes you catch a sale that way. I know that I sometimes just get bored and bid on something. I did that last year on a Ashdown 210 bass cabinet that I was moderately interested in but really did not need. I got it at the reserve price of $140. It was a new cab that sells for $300.

Each way has a strategy. If set your reserve or base price right you do not have to worry about the item selling for less than you are willing to take.
 
Jesse, is this thing connectorized such that you could interface it (easily) with an airplane audio panel?
 
SCCutler said:
Jesse, is this thing connectorized such that you could interface it (easily) with an airplane audio panel?
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I'm not really sure Spike -- I'm not that familiar with avionics. I would think it could be done. The mic jack is:
mic.png


You can get an adapter to convert it to:
mic2.png

It also has a speaker output on the back. You connect the antenna with a PL-259. The power requirements are 13.8 volts -- it warns you not to connect it to 24 volts. Transmit will result in 15 A drain at 13.8 volts. You can control the transmit power. Transmit: 144-184 mhz, receive 136-174 mhz, FM only.

I can't remember exactly..but I'm pretty sure this radio was modified to transmit to 136-174 mhz. They make it easy to do -- you just remove a diode.
 
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I have often thought about 2M through repeaters and autopatch as an answer to the occasional need for in-flight telephony. Of course, I have no idea whether this is practical, or even do-able, and i lack... ummm... a license.
 
SCCutler said:
I have often thought about 2M through repeaters and autopatch as an answer to the occasional need for in-flight telephony. Of course, I have no idea whether this is practical, or even do-able, and i lack... ummm... a license.
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Well first, the 70 Watts in this radio is overkill for inflight 2m FM.

The other issue is that you can hit lots of repeaters from up high and may cause interference. But I have run my 2m HT, that interfaces to my aviation headset from up in the cockpit several times and it is fun. Usually when you call to talk and sign aeronautical mobile the person you are talking to will ask you how you got the airline to allow you to use 2m inflight. I just reply that I know the captain real well. ;)

I have never done an autopatch while in flight but I cannot think of any reason why it would not work. FM is an analog technology and you are doing a point to point type of communication without frequency reuse nor handoff that would plauge a cellular call.

I don't know about the mounting of the 2m rig in the plane. You would really need to talk to a avionics tech about the specifics. But I know it would require FAA approval.

The other thing is that auotpatch is something that hams do pay for as part of a repeater club dues. So if you pay on one in your town that does not give you access to one in a city that you are travelling to. There is no romaing agreement. I have only ever run into one open autopatch repeater. I am sure that are a few more but they are in the minority.
 
smigaldi said:
Nice radio good price
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Megadittos.

As for aeronautical use and hitting multiple repeaters, I thought most repeaters were now running PL - er, tone squelch. At least in some areas it's virtually a requirement.
 
gismo said:
JOOC, what's the practical difference between setting a starting bid vs a reserve limit? I think the reserve costs a little but are reserve limits more successful?
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The power seller wisdom is to set a starting price of 0.01 and no reserve and trust that the sale will go for what it's worth.

I believe that watching Total Wrecklamation and seeing her not get a starting bid of $900 and dropping and dropping until $600 at which point 4 people bid it up to $1200 in seconds.

There's some human psychology if only wanting it if somebody else does and then beating them at it....or more practically, getting some consensus on what the thing is worth.
 
mikea said:
The power seller wisdom is to set a starting price of 0.01 and no reserve and trust that the sale will go for what it's worth.

I believe that watching Total Wrecklamation and seeing her not get a starting bid of $900 and dropping and dropping until $600 at which point 4 people bid it up to $1200 in seconds.

There's some human psychology if only wanting it if somebody else does and then beating them at it....or more practically, getting some consensus on what the thing is worth.
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Unfortunately, what does that say about the value of Jay's plane? Though the rules may be somewhat different when dealing with something like an airplane.
 
wsuffa said:
Megadittos.

As for aeronautical use and hitting multiple repeaters, I thought most repeaters were now running PL - er, tone squelch. At least in some areas it's virtually a requirement.
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But PLTM or the generic name CTSS, is just a subaudible tone transmitted with your signal. It is used to 'break' the squelch on the receiver at the repeater. You can still block other people from using that repeater if you are transmitting. While the receiver may not be de-squelched your strong signal will prevent weaker signals from being 'heard' at the repeater. If one valid signal does get through it unblocks the squeslch and you COULD be heard, desense the receiver, or if the valid signal is strong enough do nothing at all.
 
gprellwitz said:
Unfortunately, what does that say about the value of Jay's plane? Though the rules may be somewhat different when dealing with something like an airplane.
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There are timing issues as well. It could have been that no one was looking for a plane like Jay's when he had it up on eBay. But next week or next month it would sell.
 
smigaldi said:
But PLTM or the generic name CTSS, is just a subaudible tone transmitted with your signal. It is used to 'break' the squelch on the receiver at the repeater. You can still block other people from using that repeater if you are transmitting. While the receiver may not be de-squelched your strong signal will prevent weaker signals from being 'heard' at the repeater. If one valid signal does get through it unblocks the squeslch and you COULD be heard, desense the receiver, or if the valid signal is strong enough do nothing at all.
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Understood. Guess it just depends on what the definition of "hits" is.... from my standpoint, "hits" is fully opening the repeater for retransmission. Blocking is an issue if the signal is high enough to capture the receiver over a local signal.
 
SCCutler said:
Jesse, is this thing connectorized such that you could interface it (easily) with an airplane audio panel?
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It'd take a bit of interface circuitry, for two reasons: the audio panel is expecting to talk to a radio that's looking for a carbon microphone, and so the impedance is different, and aircraft radios generate sidetone (so you hear yourself talking in your headphones when you're transmitting), and amateur radios don't.

smigaldi said:
Well first, the 70 Watts in this radio is overkill for inflight 2m FM.
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Yup. A 5-watt handheld is more than enough.

I don't know about the mounting of the 2m rig in the plane. You would really need to talk to a avionics tech about the specifics. But I know it would require FAA approval.
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Not necessarily. It depends on whether you can get it signed off as a minor modification. That's a real can of worms.

The other thing is that auotpatch is something that hams do pay for as part of a repeater club dues. So if you pay on one in your town that does not give you access to one in a city that you are travelling to. There is no romaing agreement. I have only ever run into one open autopatch repeater. I am sure that are a few more but they are in the minority.
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Autopatches are fading from the scene, simply because of the rise of the cellphone. Even so, when I was interested in such things in the Houston area, all of the autopatches but one were open and available for any ham to use, member or not. This varies from one area to the next.

wsuffa said:
As for aeronautical use and hitting multiple repeaters, I thought most repeaters were now running PL - er, tone squelch. At least in some areas it's virtually a requirement.
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It's becoming one, as a way to allow packing more repeaters into the bands without generating significant interference. Several repeater coordination councils are requiring it as a condition of coordination, and more are every year. Minnesota is in the process of overhauling its repeater coordination process, and CTCSS or some other method of input access control is part of the new requirements.

wsuffa said:
Understood. Guess it just depends on what the definition of "hits" is.... from my standpoint, "hits" is fully opening the repeater for retransmission. Blocking is an issue if the signal is high enough to capture the receiver over a local signal.
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From the coordinator's viewpoint, it's considered being to provide the repeater with sufficient usable signal to communicate through it. It's certainly possible for an airborne station farther away than the normal coverage radius of the repeater to cause interference in the manner you describe. I've always understood airborne use of repeaters to be frowned upon for this exact reason.
 
jmaynard said:
It'd take a bit of interface circuitry, for two reasons: the audio panel is expecting to talk to a radio that's looking for a carbon microphone, and so the impedance is different, and aircraft radios generate sidetone (so you hear yourself talking in your headphones when you're transmitting), and amateur radios don't.
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Most modern audio panels (PSeng, Garmin, etc) provide the sidetone internally and block all audio from the radios when transmitting so that shouldn't be an issue. And on the microphone side, impedance matching and bias won't matter because the mic audio is buffered. The mic audio level might be off but that's probably correctable in the radio. On the receive side, you need a low level audio output from the radio if you're using headphones. The speaker output could be attenuated to provide that but a headphone output would probably work better.
 
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