Old trucker/new ham

[slim6596]

After watching some reviews, I bought a TidRadio TD-H3 and a ComMountain speaker/mic. (The YAESU was inconvenient for use in the truck; to charge it I had to bring a power inverter and the charging cradle)

My rationale was that I can charge the H3 via a usb c cable while listening to the radio (and for the Bluetooth programming option that turned out to be not so useful).

A few YouTube reviews said that it put out a relatively clean signal. I had a conversation with a local guy here in the Indianapolis area that was shocked when he heard what I was using and that I was driving on the highway while we were talking.

All that being said, I’m now looking at actual mobile (non HT) radios. The conversations that I’ve had so far are much better than anything currently on the CB band.

 

[K6GBW]

Using HT's inside a vehicle can work...or be a total pain, depending on where you are and what repeaters you're trying to work with. I'm in Los Angeles and it's relatively easy because we have LOTS of repeaters and the mountains surrounding the LA basin are really high. If you are in an area with lower-level repeaters it might be harder to cover. The HT's transmitting from inside a vehicle have the signal attenuated, but you're in a truck with "mostly" plastic so it may not be as big a problem. I find that inside a car UHF works a lot better than VHF because the UHF signal is shorter (about 3 feet tall) and makes it out the windows where the VHF signal is just over 6 feet tall and the top and bottom of the car block it. You can also see if you can put a magnetic mount dual band antenna somewhere on the roof? There might be something metal you can attach it to. There are also window clip antennas. I've used those with rental cars, and they work better than I would have expected. In the end, you can make hand helds work with a bit of experimentation.