Are any of you into ham radio? If you are, you might be interested in one of the things I use the M-10 for.
Each May, we have a 200 mile bicycle ride that starts in Davis, CA. It goes through probably 100 miles of deep canyons and general mountainous areas around Lake Berryessa and Clear Lake. For years, our radio group has provided radio communications among all the different parts of the course, including 11 rest stops, several vehicles and the start/finish point in Davis. Communications has always been marginal, because of the mountains and canyons. Usually we'd use two or three mountain-top repeaters and many base and mobile stations, and we had to use several different channels because no single repeater would cover the whole route. It was a hassle because you had to change channels as you drove the route, and many areas had no radio coverage. This was a bad deal if there was an accident and we needed to call someone. Well, all that changed this year when another guy (he has a 150) and I temporarily installed small repeaters in our airplanes. Mine sat in the baggage area behind the seats and used a small 6" antenna mounted to the belly of the plane. The repeaters allow anyone with a handheld portable (amateur) radio on any part of the route to talk to anyone else on any other part of the route. We take turns going up to about 10,000 feet over the center of the route, and fly in circles for two hours at a time. It's amazing...the users can be in canyons, anywhere, and radio coverage is solid no matter where they are. Most of them have no idea the repeater they are using is in an arplane. There's a 100 mile ride coming up in October, I'll probably be doing it then too. It's kind of fun to have a reason to be up there, with everyone depending on you :-) ------------------------------------------------- Steve Dold [EMAIL PROTECTED] Say NO to useless over-quoting -------------------------------------------------
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