A VHF Diary

I became involved in VHF and repeaters as a result of joining my first ham club in Boston. That was in 1991 and I needed to get a 2M HT of course, to keep in touch with my friends in the club. I also found out about the repeater network (NEW TO ME).
A buddy in NYC gave me his old Henry S1, 1 watt max. I used it both in my car with a 1/4 wave, and at home with a good 6db vertical he also gave me. To my amazement I could actually just about get into Mt. Greylock with that from my deck. Extrapolating f rom my interest in "reaching as far as I could on HF, I realized that within the limitations of the band, 2M could support communications farther than I ever imagined. I got the bug then, but I didn't have the equipment. (Nor could I afford it). Eventuall y I did buy a used FT227, a 10W FM "base rig."

A Fortuitous Gift

Then a fortuitous gift sealed my fate in my already developing interest. I was given a Cushcraft 17B2. (That's a 16 element beam.) I gladly accepted this and set about to make it vertically polarized. Subsequently I also added four elements. From my deck I was now hitting repeaters 70+ miles away and Mt. Greylock was like a local station. This to me was, and is - what ham radio is all about. I was pushing to the limit with the equipment I had. To me it makes no difference if a distant contact is direct or on a repeater, it is still stretching and succeeding in making the technology involved, work at its limits. Please keep in mind that I did not have the resources to go out and buy a multi-mode to operate direct on SSB. So I used what I had to fit my operational capabilities, ie: 2m FM.
In addition I acquired a loan of a 100W+ amp, and began to realize that there was a more interesting challenge than even on HF. Over-The-Horizon VHF communications -- and I was going for it.