Road Trip: 2M?

[cockpitbob]

I'm about to embark on a trip involving 30 hrs of driving in the next week. Is there a 2M or 440 simplex frequency people use on the road similar to CB ch-19? Any other way to make contacts besides constantly looking up repeaters along the way, that I'll only be in range of for short periods of time?

Thanks.

 

[Mike-Mike]

That is the issue. I have had to program several out of state repeaters for this reason. You can always try 146.52?

 

[drgrant]

You need to know the score in the places your going to... Concentrate on wide area/popular repeaters. If you are driving at night don't even bother, 90% of the repeaters will be dead silent past 10 pm. Honestly the CB is more useful for road travel. (I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but it's the truth. )

Usually on 2M the national simplex though is 146.520. You will often find people just hanging out on it.... that's what I'd probably do if I was in a place where I didn't know much about the local repeaters, but i'd also have a CB, too.

-Mike

 

[cockpitbob]

Thanks guys. I'll be going from North Shore to Lancaster, PA then 4hrs west of there. It looks like 146.52 is my answer. Some day our HTs and mobiles will have GPS and a database of repeaters and we'll be able to push the "nearest 10 repeaters" button. Meanwhile my GPS will be laughing at my mobile as it tells me the location of everything I could want.

 

[patio]

What kind of radio are you taking? I have programming files for the FT60 and FTM350 that will get you to the NY border with coverage down 95 and 84.

My suggestion for last minute road trip is to program in Skywarn repeaters. They tend to select repeaters with wide coverage.

 

[Zappa]

There are 87 repeater pairs in the 2 meter band.
Modern radios have a silly number of memories.
My FT-7800R has 1000, which is way more than I'll ever use.
If you only have 100 memories, you can try programming it with a channelized list.

http://www.bloomington.in.us/~wh2t/two.html

That way you can scan the entire band, regardless of where you are.
The tricky part will be looking up and assigning a PL tone to whatever freq it stops on.
It's still light years better than the old 10 memory radios with dip switch PL boards.

 

[cockpitbob]

I've been silent for 2 days because I'm 1/2 way done with the driving. 9hrs on Saturday and 5 today. I'm in western PA right now. I monitored 146.52 for much of the trip and the squelch never broke.

What kind of radio are you taking? I have programming files for the FT60 and FTM350 that will get you to the NY border with coverage down 95 and 84.

It's a beat-up old FT2600. I think it's possible to program via RS-232, but I haven't looked into that yet.

There are 87 repeater pairs in the 2 meter band.
Modern radios have a silly number of memories.
My FT-7800R has 1000, which is way more than I'll ever use.
If you only have 100 memories, you can try programming it with a channelized list.

The tricky part will be looking up and assigning a PL tone to whatever freq it stops on.
.

This is a great idea. I know newer radios can figure out the PL tone just by listening to other transmissions. My old klunker won't though. May be time to upgrade.

Thanks for all the great advice. My license is now 4 months old and I'm still on the steep part of the learning curve.

 

[cockpitbob]

Well, my trip of ~1,400 miles is over and the radio was silent for most of it. I never heard one person on 146.520 (simplex calling freq.) and I threw out several calls for company, but no takers. I guess that between traffic reporting GPSs, cell phones and radar detectors, Hams don't have much reason to get on the radio when they are driving far from home.

 

[maee]

146.520 FM simplex calling frequency ~ CH 19

 

[the_doctor]

146.52 IS NOT THE CALLING FREQUENCY. IT IS THE EMERGENCY FREQ.

Try 146.400.

Anyways there is hardly any activity on 2 meters. Where are you going? Once you leave NE a lot of people are into 440 versus the very quiet 440 south of Boston. The only really active 440 machine is Waltham or Tac 2. You can head to California and see some real repeaters on 440 or 220.

Most repeaters are very quiet. Ham radio is not exclusively chatting on 2 meters. You would had more fun with a mobile rig on 40 meters.

 

[cockpitbob]

146.52 IS NOT THE CALLING FREQUENCY. IT IS THE EMERGENCY FREQ.

I hate to disagree, but 146.52 IS the national simplex calling freq. (Link to ARRL's band plan page) And no where on any of the band plans does the word "emergency" appear.