I must admit, the coolest radio I have ever owned, for the VHF bands anyway,
is the V7A.  I could be almost rock bound for what little tuning I do and I
used to hunt the bands even more.  Regardless, and even if I have to look
things up in the manual all the time that I can't remember, it is one cool
radio.  I had one of those diamond 25 foot verticals that ran something like
9.3 DB on 2 meters and 13 DB on 70 centimeters.  I put it up on my tower at
55 feet.  About a year ago, a  little more than a year ago, we had horrible
January and February winds.  Way worse than normal.  It damaged the antenna
so I bought a 9 footer, for a whole lot less money, and put it on my house.
I'm thinking, since it is shorter, of putting it up on the tower now, too,
although I don't know why.  It really hacked me off to have a 40 dollar dual
band antenna torn up, too.  I'm considering going all mode on 2 meters and
putting up another beam.

Phil.

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