So not much activity here for various reasons:

• took a cross-country driving trip with the family from California to Indiana and back again in July
• also finished the distribution of my late grandfather’s estate in July
• had several major deadlines for my master’s degree thesis in August
• successfully defended my thesis and submitted it to the Thesis & Dissertation Office in September, not to mention the start of the academic year at work too
• had to deal with a major event for work that took several weeks of planning and a couple days of working in our EOC in October
• undertook a few home improvement projects including an unexpected termite fumigation also in October

Goodbye old truck…

Needless to say, it’s been a busy few months. But in the middle of it all, I did get my new truck in September, which was the prerequisite for setting up a mobile station. I had been driving a 2001 Ford F-150 with over 150K miles, a dead a/c compressor and a failing transmission, so I didn’t want to put the time & money into setting up radios in it for less than 6 months. Not that I’ve had time for radios, but it seems like a valid additional reason.

…hello new truck.

But now I’m the proud owner of a brand new 2013 Ram 1500 Laramie 4×4. Bit fancier than I’d planned to get (was looking for an Outdoorsman model at first) but I like it. And with a new truck comes the chance to finally install a radio (or two). I previously mentioned I inherited a 2-3 year old Icom IC-7000 from my grandfather and do plan to install it, in the truck, but since I’m more interested in APRS than HF right now I decided to get a Kenwood TM-D710A along with the AvMap G6 GPS unit and install those first. I may install the Icom for VHF use only (and hold off on the HF side for now) or at the very least get the bracket & power supply in place to make things easier down the road.

Have to take a road trip this weekend (last step in the thesis process) so probably won’t get anything done with the radios for at least another week, but have my plan in place and all the various pieces in hand or on order. I’ll be documenting the installation process here as I go.