GEARS W TX (146.115 MHz) recordings for 2026-03-01

Speaker A: Newcastle. Moving right along.
Speaker B: My dad's car passed bog unit on a previous message. Jb6wc mobile. Yeah, hopefully you're avoiding all the traffic. So. Yep, good job there, unit.
Speaker A: Well, it does show whatever, orange or
Speaker B: something like that on the time, so that means there's traffic along the somewhere, but I'm expecting that to be at the Ridge. San Francisco. Sometimes there's that little uphill stretch out of Vacaville headed towards Fairfield. There's that little bit in there. But otherwise it should be a clean, clear shot for you. Some guys get awful L.

Speaker A: Still pretty warm up that way. Magic. I hit around 83, 84 coming up the Altamont as soon as got into Livermore. It's all good here at home. It's. Can't quite read it. I think it's 70 something.
Speaker B: That's a pretty bumpy one you got there yet.

V6vsc mobile David.

Speaker A: Oops. I just gave you a big, long answer on local, so I bet you didn't hear it. JKV is doing a whole lot of nothing. Yeah.
Speaker B: Let the slowdown be it.
Speaker A: Why is it slowing down as I approach Dixon? What's going on in Dixon? There can't be anything going on in Dixon. It's just fields, right? Yeah, it's a whole lot of nothing. There is a little downtown, and it's pretty nice. They have some pretty good burgers and stuff there. Hung out there in years.
Speaker B: I am down to less than 20 miles an hour.
Speaker A: Oh, you know, I would expect that kind of traffic on a Sunday, not today. Take a listen there. Double. What? There was a slowdown earlier. I think it was a Tesla that probably ran out of shoes because it was on the side of the road and its occupants were further off the side of the road. Oh. Saw one of those also on the way home. Yeah, it's a Tesla all by itself. And it just brought those. Look at owners standing by. Yeah. Can only be one thing, right? I don't think they ran out of gas. Now. Maybe they pray for a lightning strike and get a big surge charge of, you know, 121 gigawatts or gigawatts or whatever it is.
Speaker B: Once those things go down to,
Speaker A: like, 10%, they go into limp mode. You have very limited range, and then they just turn all the way off. My kid tells me there's two, I guess, two networks of battery. One that runs the car and one that runs the accessories. And they're totally isolated, so you can't tap into the other when big things get dire, you know, 27th link up. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker B: Are you on Backer
Speaker A: or are you on five on clueless? You know that I'm on four. 43050. What is that? Same way I do it. Yeah, that's five. That's the East 80.

Now I'm back up to the limit. I have no idea why the slowdown or stop was all about KV6WSD mobile.

Speaker A: They don't even have
Speaker B: Budweiser on the plane anymore. Yeah, they used to suck a lot of water out of Lake Berryetta.
Speaker A: Maybe Lake Perrycliffe would have attracted more people if it was full of beer.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah, and if the PLM hadn't shut down all the campsite. As a matter of fact, they turned our place after we sold it, though. They turned all those properties at Chuda Creek into campgrounds. So they went and pulled all the mobile homes and the 50 footers out, and we had a big one. So anyway, that kind of sucked. He must be around Cherry Glenn. That's a bit of a hole.

Cordelia. Yeah, moving right along.

Speaker A: All right. Well, anyhow, seeing
Speaker B: all the
Speaker A: hills, it's all green and all. And the cows mowing the lawn. CB6, WSC mobile. Hey, how's 32 doing up there? I just noticed when I was out on the San Mateo Bridge, it was only half scale, so I think it might even be lower power.
Speaker B: So cables are wrapping around it more,
Speaker A: or the RF output has dropped more.

Speaker A: By the way, I did a quick comparison between the quad end antenna and the normal 5 1/2 6dB game Omni that I usually use on the vehicle. Well, the 6dB Omni on two different machines was about half steel on UHF. And then with that quad band antenna, both the machines I tested were like an F1 or an F2. So a large difference, not too scientific, but it was enough of a difference to make me not leave it on the car for the ride home. Plus there's always a possibility of the wind blowing the thing loose anyway. So I think, you know.
Speaker B: Roger. That's the pretty long antenna. Well, it's probably about as long as a 6 meter antenna, but it has coils for 10 and whatnot. That kind of thing.
Speaker A: Yep, that's the one. Yeah, it looks serious. It's quite heavy duty, but, you know, have to do the old signal generator check. And that's how I can do a conclusive test. Signal generator and see antenna A versus antenna B into the repeater and see what happens.
Speaker B: I never did like those antennas because of the stuff hanging off of them. But that's why I always ran. I never ran anything on 10, but at 6 I had a separate antenna. And then either I run mono band for 2 meter and 70 centimeter or I do a dual band antenna. So what I have now is a dual band and seven DBI or more. And it used to
Speaker A: work quite well. Yeah, I was gonna try one of those dual band Larsons. Yeah, it's physically a little longer than what I have, but I guess that seems to be pretty much the standard nowadays. But when I was doing the three fans in the car, I used the 2 meter 5, 8 and that worked great on 6. And then the 441, I did that, you know, a separate one that worked well. The only thing I didn't have was gen. So there's a way around that. Yeah, I still got a triplexer laying around that handles that quite well. It gives me three separate antennas with the common feed lines. Three One I used to use on Chrissy's Camaro back in the day.

With any luck, you might not have the sun in your eyeballs. Rut Row, you're in the shadow.

All right.

Poor milady used to have a big old swig of milk. And that had chunks in it. Oh, how rude.

Mobile should be able to go local now.

Speaker A: K7boc. Radio check.
Speaker B: K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.
Speaker C: Thank you. Am I hearing a koc? Is that right?
Speaker A: Okay, I think I heard a k7 aoc alpha oscar charlie. You're a little bit scratchy. What's going on? Ken here, n6, kenny.
Speaker C: Ocean, charlo. All right. Yeah, you're not making it. You're
Speaker A: dropping out of the repeater. And 6K and E.
Speaker C: Okay, I copied
Speaker A: k7b, o, z. And that you're in kingman. Very good, ron. What's going on there? Kingman? I'm actually on the airport here at Las Vegas, Nevada. Just wondering if I could hit the repeater and everything was working. All right, thank you very much for the comeback. Okay, I'm sorry. I thought I heard. I thought I heard Kingman. Okay, you take care and enjoy the airport. Ken here, N6. Kenny, I'm down here in Genota, Columbia.

All right. I heard another station in there. You are also very scratchy. Yeah, you're not making. I'm sorry. I don't know why. Everything is very scratchy this evening. N6KLE, Columbia, Ki6fxa. Can I get a radio check, please? Los Angeles link up. All right, the Los Angeles station. You're good. The radio check there. You're. You have good, good audio, good Signal. Thank you. KI6FXA. My name is Michael. Where are you located? Hello, Michael. The name here is 10, and I'm down here in Chinatown, Columbia, South America. Here in South America. Wow. What's your call sign? November 6th. Kilo, november echo. And I'm coming in. Radio list. Wow, that's cool. How's the weather in South America right now? Beautiful. I'm only four degrees above the equator, so our weather doesn't change much. Oh, I'm in for a treat tonight. I didn't know I would be DXing like this. I didn't copy that last one. It's currently 79 degrees. I think we may have seen a high of 86, maybe today. Roger that. Roger. We're kind of warm here in California as well. Yeah, yeah. Kind of unusual weather. I was born and raised down there in Southern California there in the very north end of Orange County. And, yeah, definitely, definitely. I'll say three seasons at least. And then I moved to Northern California where there was definitely four seasons. All right, good. I'm glad it's. Glad it's finally warming up for you guys down there. Time to put on the shorts and start enjoying the beach. Yeah, Roger that. What brings you to South America? My wife, she's Colombian, and when we retired, we decided to move down here and spend more time with her family. And. Yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. Yeah, Roger that. I happen to be Puerto Rican, Ecuadorian and then Italian. Okay. All right. Yeah, I've been down here for a little more than a year now, and I can't imagine giving it up for anything, you know, I enjoy California, and I spent 59 years there in California, so I'll stay down here and enjoy the rest of my days here. Plus, I have kids and grandkids who love to travel, so it's all good. Without ambulance. That was a little bit scratchy. I didn't copy. Yeah, it's getting, getting better. Keep practicing. Yeah, you know, Spanish, of course, is the primary language down here, so, yeah, I definitely need to pick it up as quickly as possible. Okay, you take care. And whereabouts in Southern California are you now? I'm in Riverside, California. Okay. So you're kind of right below that repeater. Okay. Well, you enjoy and hope it doesn't get too hot for you there this summer. You take care. And I'm in Chinatown, Columbia. I will. Have fun in the weather, in the nice weather in Colombia, and have a great day. God bless you. I think that next day.

This is Cam 6, JQE. Can I get a radio check, please, on this frequency?

Perfect signal in reading n60rt. I didn't catch your call. I had the TV up too high.

Los Angeles link up.

Man 7 Tandy.

M7ld m7ld m17. N7ld, n7tnd.

System 19 link up.

Los Angeles linked up.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

Los Angeles link up.

System 2 link up k6lnk system 36 snow mountain range. And 6mbt san francisco.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

This is system nine link chat in.

This is system 9 link champion.

Los Angeles link up.

Speaker A: M17.
Speaker B: How are you doing?
Speaker A: Hey, good morning. Doing okay. Just getting ready to leave Yuma head back back home. We are at the Hamvention here for the last couple days.
Speaker B: Okay, very good. How was it?
Speaker A: It's not near Dayton or an Orlando or a Huntsville or nothing like that. It's okay. It's fairly decent size up. Didn't have any of the radio vendors. Well Flex Radio. Flex was here. I don't consider them a radio vendor but HRO was here and then just some other cats and dogs type people selling stuff. Really good swap meet. I was hoping to get that new Kenwood tribander but they haven't released a doggone thing yet. It's still in FCC type except I guess didn't get that.
Speaker B: Yeah a lot of people little pre orders down on.
Speaker A: Yeah I asked the HRO guy he, he. He didn't do this. We. We're not even speculating it's going to be. It's going to be expensive radio but I'm interested in thinking about. I got a. An ICOM 880D star and I want to get rid of that and replace it with this radio but I'm not you know I don't, I'm not going to pay a thousand bucks buddy thing but we'll see. But they got some other. They got some really. They got a lot of interesting radios out there is one I saw a demo of. It's a.a tri bander2 22440 analog completely programmable via Bluetooth either via an app on your phone owner or a computer. APRS has a, has a KISS TNC in it. It's just you know GPS everything it built into the damn thing and really good, a good quality radio. You hold it in your hand it feels fantastic and the HT is like 180 bucks and the mobile is like 330. And I'm looking at this going you know how the heck are ICOM and Yezu and Kenworth guys, you know justifying what they charge for VHF and UHF radios anymore? I don't know. Those guys are. I don't know how in a way anybody would buy those things anymore.
Speaker B: Notes.
Speaker A: I. I'm gonna have to get back to you. I got, I got it written down someplace. It's a. It's an awful dude name Catco or something like that. I'll send you something but anyways yeah it was got. Got a little talk. It had like a one hour talk on it was pretty doggone compelling.
Speaker B: As far as he. I got the 74, seven years ago. Still use it. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Decent size.
Speaker A: Yeah, I've got the 74 also. And the reason I'm interested in 7500 is the audio. The quality of the audio on a Kenwood P Star radio is just so superior.
Speaker B: But.
Speaker A: All right, Larry. Well, I'm my. My buddy Lee just got in the car, so we're going to get some gas and start heading back to Las Vegas. So I'll sh. Later. Have a good day out there at 7 p.

System 21 lift off. Dan6grg on the Sunday morning net.

With a terrible 80 meter bound.

Speaker A: W7oqf, w7oqf
Speaker B: m7c andrew. W 70qf and 7p andy.

Los Angeles link up.

Speaker A: W7lqf&7 chandra
Speaker B: k6lnk system 36 no mountain range.
Speaker A: W7lqf, m7tnz.

Los Angeles link up.

K4 0k mobile.

How are you, Sir? I believe we've got about a week of it coming. Getting ready for springtime. Gotta get things greened up. The end of the day. So you're cutting out just a little bit. Say that one more time. What's on your agenda today? A member of a search and rescue team and we just got done practicing and I'm just heading back to the house now. How long have you been doing that? Back in August of last year and I joined up with two teams and they're both canine teams and I apply the drones for the teams. Very interesting. It's pretty interesting. Those dogs are amazing. To watch them do what they do. Can outsmart running dogs. That's definitely for sure. Once a week and then just try to stay ready. Although it happens more often than you think. I mean, I've only been with them for Microfitzer August, and I've been on like five already. Quite a few in a little bit of time. How about you? What's. What's on your agenda? Playing around on HF earlier today. Okay. Finally got my two shift vertical up. Been listening on a coaxon and extension. Just don't work that great. Oh, gotcha. That's awesome. Heard you in there. I want to give you a shout. 73.73k. 40k is monitoring on the side.

Ku0tsl radio check. Dsl k40k. You were coming through loud and clear. Thank you.

Los Angeles linked up.

System12link op.

Kn6slm Metro California.

The that last station. You were very scratched. You want to try again. For me? You are very scratchy. I just couldn't pull out your audio. N6 knee. Maybe there's another repeater you can try.

K7gnd. Larry, are you listening here on this one? N6k80. Okay, give me a yell on your eight. Four. Roger, roger.

Speaker A: Three is I connected.
Speaker B: I disconnected.

Speaker A: And 7p and the las vegas. And when did you get back?
Speaker B: 12:30. Put my dance I guess. Yeah around there.
Speaker A: Yeah. When you we left. It's late. It's just leaving Quartzite. There's no way to reach them. But then I just saw flying through you coming up your searchlight
Speaker B: were you you back in town or are you still up in.
Speaker A: No, I'm on Angel. I'm home. I got home about an hour ago.
Speaker B: Okay. Yeah I heard the couriers beep I knew you are on Angel. I just wasn't sure if you were driving in. Yeah, cool. I got got home and I got Lee home and got home and went to the gym and just got the car washed and I'm running a quad errand that be about it?
Speaker A: No, that's a lot compared to the drive you had you drive from you'll know this morning what time to leave
Speaker B: probably around 8:30 ish or so I think we went we stopped by the swap one more time to go see Bob and they were just getting ready to. They were. They were trying to get out there by nine so I would say about 8:30 quarter to nine we probably left.
Speaker A: Okay. All right, I'll let you go. I just wanted to say welcome back. Yeah, I got to give up this. Bob, a couple things we talked about with regards to the radio said there's a trash can nearby that's where you want to camp it.
Speaker B: What radio are you talking about?
Speaker A: The E.F. johnson.
Speaker B: Oh, okay. All right. Very good. All right man. Sounds good. Good to see you. It's been a while since I beeped in high ball M7 tube.
Speaker A: I know it was good. I didn't spend much money and I just wanted to see everybody so I got everything I wanted out of it. So give me 7 ore.

Kf0upn mobile monitoring 4 19.

Kn6 so n monitoring.

Speaker A: Hey, john, welcome home. N6 grt,
Speaker B: Is that you, Mike?
Speaker A: Yes, sir. You copy?
Speaker B: Yeah, we're on a little handheld, so we might be kind of sketchy there, but. Yeah. Oh, about 13 miles south of Red Bluff.
Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah, you sound fine.
Speaker B: If you're hearing.
Speaker A: Hearing okay, then you got it made.
Speaker B: Yeah, we're fixing to go over to the. We're over here at the casino. My fish can go over here and eat a hamburger and win my fortune. Hopefully. Hopefully I don't lose my fortune.
Speaker A: Well, I have this genie. And if I rub its head and you win, then will you give me half of it?
Speaker B: You think it works, guaranteed.
Speaker A: You just have to tell me you'll give me half of it.
Speaker B: Well, yeah, yeah, I'll give you half that. Win or lose, right?
Speaker A: Well, you only have to give me what you won. You don't have to give me what you lost.
Speaker B: Well, you know, like I said, when we go over there, we don't, you know, we really don't go over there to win. We go over there just to have fun. If we win, that's more fun. But anyway, so what's been going on around the neighborhood?
Speaker A: Well, I bought an ark. It's otherwise known as Noah's ark. And I bought this ark because I think I might need it.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I heard. I heard it's been raining quite a bit. We were down in the desert for two and a half months and it started getting up to 90 degrees. So we decided we better head north.
Speaker A: Yeah, I heard that. I did this poda made this PODA contact with one of my buddies and he did a hike up to about 6 or 7,000ft and it was about 80 degrees there. He was in Arizona, so, yeah, weather's changed everywhere, but here we had 28, 24, 6 degrees just recently.
Speaker B: Yeah, we always started to get our 20 and 10 meter up, but we started working on the solar panels and all that kind of good stuff. Started having fun with that. Then we didn't have time to the 10, 20 meter up. So we got, you know, all we got a solar. Well, we got a second system. The first system works flawless. The second system, Bill, we had to work on in a little bit.
Speaker A: Oh, it almost sounds like you're on a boat.
Speaker B: Well, you know, like I said, the first system was as professional that knew what they were doing, put it together
Speaker A: and it works flawless.
Speaker B: Always has for the last eight, seven years. The one I put together myself there was the acid batteries and you know how they work. Everything worked, but they Just didn't last very long so I might have to end up getting split in batteries.
Speaker A: Yeah, I, I bought a Renault solar controller and you know I've got the all huge number of batteries but I just got this 40amp renov controller at job. Takes care of everything I need and it'll run on lithium or lead acid or.
Speaker B: Seems like there was a third one. Yeah, well you know I got me a. Well in the coach here that runs everything is a 2800 magnum inverter, inverter charger and like I said it runs the TV and stuff so I didn't want to mess with it. So I left it all alone. Two lithium batteries and runs all day and part of the night. Then we turn it off, then wake up in the morning, run it again. But then I went and bought a 3,000 watt inverter, hooked it up and run the TV for about, I don't know, about two or three hours and shut down. That was because the batteries were about 8 years old. Plus it was acid acid lead or lead acid batteries. And so that's why I need to get a couple new batteries.
Speaker A: Well, I'm pretty happy with my, my setup that I designed and it's running like that renergy charger.
Speaker B: But I built the batteries, I told
Speaker A: you about that how I built the batteries and I've got eight times 320amp hours total. If you multiply it out in the kilowatts it's 25W, 25 kilowatts and then I've got a couple more batteries. I got 100amp hour out there in the RV. It because it's capable of, of not being wiped out. When it goes down to like 26 degrees it doesn't get damaged. And these other batteries are inside the house so they're never going to go down to 26 degrees.
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we had a good time down there. We went through the tent, all that good stuff. All you know got got this and that. Like I said, we had a good time. And the thing was there was a guy down there that had a huge motor home. Actually he was in Stockton. He come over and asked me about my solar and he had a brand new motorhome, I mean big old diesel pushers. I asked him and he said well what his problem was that he was just getting 132 and he had 2000 watts of solar A2 controllers and amber and they had two 450amp hour batteries and it would last him about a day and a half. And he was wondering are there Something wrong with that. I said, well, yeah, are they.
Speaker A: Here's lithium.
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's what he said. He said there was lithium. He had big ton and nice guy. He was just, he just didn't know a whole lot about it. The people that put it in for him put it on. His coach didn't tell him how to set it up and it was just set at 13:2. And I told him that those batteries, remember 13:2, I think they're full. And, and so what he has to do do. I told him to call Victor and they would go through the setting and you know, charge him up to 14 2, 14 3, something like that instead of 13 2. So hopefully he got his going because he spent a lot of money on. And he should be able to run 247 with that much power.
Speaker A: Yeah, 132 might be what I mean, I don't, I've never heard of a Victron working for lead acids, but I, I suppose they, they must.
Speaker B: They, they do it.
Speaker A: It's about anything, anywhere, everywhere. So I'm thinking he's set up. He's got that Victron set on lead acid instead of lithium.
Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. I looked at. He said there was a lithium deal. No, these now make clear that there were 450. Now this is what he said. He said he had 450amp hour batteries, two of them that were lithium. And I said, boy, you paid a dollar and a half for that. He was. Oh yeah, his wife. He said, yeah, he paid for it. And I said that should last all through the night and then charge back up next day and keep you going 24 7. And he goes, that's what he thought.
Speaker A: And.
Speaker B: But he can only get 132 out of every morning. You know, I said, well, you know, call Victron. They show you how to do the settings. I do my own custom and had Magnum, you know, actually do the custom there unless the same.
Speaker A: Okay, well it, I, I kind of thought what you're saying is. Or I thought maybe what he was telling you was that the maximum voltage he can ever get out of with them charged is 13:2. Is that what he's saying?
Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's the high. Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to say is the highest that would ever charge is 13:2. And I told him, I said what has happened is that. Now I don't know, but this what the guy from Magnum said, he said on mine, what has happened is charge 132 so many times that that's what the Battery is saying, so I hooked it in shore power, I roll it
Speaker A: up to 14:3 and then it settles
Speaker B: out at 13:8 for the unplugged.
Speaker A: Yeah, but I'm thinking what he's actually telling you is there's a regulator in there. It's like a solar charger. And the solar charger is saying, well, that's as high as I'm going to go. And if that's, if that's what it's saying, then it's for lead acid. And if you set it over to lithium, then it'll go up to 14 in fact. Right. Right this very second, mine is at 14.4 and it's totally charged at 14.4. And yeah, that's what it really sounds like. He's got lithium batteries and they need to go up to 14 4.
Speaker B: Yeah, you know, you're probably right, Mike, because he was telling me that it had bulk charging, absorbance absorption and float charging. Well, on mine, I turned flip charging off, but made it silent because lithium won't take a trickle charge. Now, that's what they say. But you know, I told, I told him, I said, best thing to do. I said, you spend enough money, you ought to be able to call technical sport. They walk you through it, you know, so that's what you'll do.
Speaker A: Yeah, because some of them are a little tricky, like this Renogy, I have to set the type of battery. It's got this LC LCD screen. And you look at that screen and you find this one spot where you're setting the type of battery. And when you've got it set that li, then you've got it. Well, the thing is, is the letters LI are really small. And you know, you're going, oh, wow. You know, you can hardly tell whether you got it set right. And then even after you got it set right, I don't know that it actually says on my screen that I've got li. Nope. In the regular screen it doesn't say what type of battery you got it set for. So I suppose I should go back and look. Go back into the menu and look and make sure it still says li. But there's no reason why it wouldn't. Although I never. My, my system, the lowest it's ever gone is 13.2. And right now, because I'm not running my HF radio 24. 7 transmitting on it quite often and so forth, even when I'm not here, it's still transmit because I'm not doing that. It only. Even at the, even in the early Morning after, you know, running all night long. Running my refrigerator and everything. There's still. There's still only down to about 13.8 or something like that. So. Yeah, if you get this set right, with that amount of power from those solar panels, even I. I'm running way, way more amp hours in batteries than he is. I'm running three times as many amp hours as he is. And I don't have near that many solar panels. So know.
Speaker B: Yeah, he should.
Speaker A: It's got to be set wrong. It's got to.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's what me and him came up with. But there was. So he's, you know, he spent a lot of money on that system. And me not knowing a whole lot about it. I wasn't going to advise one way or the other. I just told him that you spend enough to go to somebody that knows what they're talking about and have him walk you through it. I gave him the settings that I have mine set at. And it works fine, you know, and, But. And I will have 200amp hour batteries. You know, two 100amp hour apiece, two batteries.
Speaker A: But.
Speaker B: And they're lithium. So. But anyway, anyway, Mike, it's good to talk to you. Good to hear you. I'll be on there off and on for the next couple days anyway. But I gotta run over to the casino and win my fortune. And I'll keep you in mind there. You. You talk to that genie you got there. Help me out.
Speaker A: That's this little cute genie. Don't. And I was told that if I. If I have a friend going to a casino.
Speaker B: Because I don't go.
Speaker A: If I have a friend going to a casino and I rub the top of the head of this genie for just a few minutes. And then, you know, as long as that guy gives me half the money, it'll keep working for him.
Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. I make a sure bet I'm gonna buy me a big old fat bur. That way I know I'm going to get my money's worth. But anyway. All right, Mike, I'll talk to you after a while there. Maybe tomorrow, later on tonight. Maybe. I'm not sure. But anyway, I'll be on and off there. We'll talk to you later. And this will be knc. Yeah.
Speaker A: Really good to hear from you, John, and family, and hope to Hear you again. N6GRG.