900 Mhz is a very exciting band. But you do have to have some know-how, or someone who does. I do have a 900 Mhz repeater on Sacaton Peak, and it is really fun. I have it hooked up to Echolink and it is frequently on the 902 HUB.
K5TRA’s Presentation
A friend of mine Tom K5TRA, put together a great Presentation on 900 Mhz. It goes into detail about good choices in radios, and some pictures of his repeaters. Tom’s repeaters are up in Oregon, and I got to know him through the 902-HUB, which is all 900 mhz repeaters and simplex nodes tied together with echolink.
Motorola Gear
Typically 900 Mhz Motorola Gear takes a RIB (Device that allows your computer to program the radio) and RSS (Programming Software). Some of the RSS needs to be Hexed to allow the radio to operate in the Ham band, and some most of the RSS will on work in DOS. You can pick up RIBs at Wiscomm.com
GTX
Both the Mobile and Portable are great “Starter” radios for getting on 900 Mhz. They are limited to only 12 watts, and 10 channels. The power isn’t a constant 12 watts either. It might be 12 watts TX on 902, but only 3 watts TX on 927. There is a mod for this, but I haven’t tried it. There also is a software mod to get 15 channels in it. I have tried it and the results weren’t very good. The display starts messing up by only displaying parts of the channel. Also some repeater pairs came up as simplex, so I put it back to 10 channel.
MTX “Jedi Series”
Very nice radios. Again, takes a little software mod to make work. But it is well worth it. I have two of them, a full Keypad model III, and model I with no display or keypad.
Kenwood Gear
Kenwood gear is more forgiving. You can get the software a lot easier, and one kpg-4 programming cable will work on most mobiles. Portables are similar, but use a different cable. That is why I and a couple of others have made the switch to Kenwoods. Alex KD6VPH has put together a really good site with much more info, it is http://www.kw902.com/
TK-931(HD)
I have a couple of TK-931HDs that I got from my friend Alex KD6VPH. He sells them from time to time on ebay, so be sure to keep and eye out, they are great units. It has a huge heat sink, and 30 watts. With a good 5db antenna, you should have no problem.
TK-981
The TK-981 works out of the box with no modification. Only a little programming hurdle.
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