Had a yaesu 2600M fall into my lap

[arktrekker]

I was at a friend's house the other day and his neighbor came over. He was throwing away a box of junk out of his garage and wanted to see if my friend was interested in any of it. He had a new looking Yaesu 2600 in it that I ended up with.
I know it is an older radio with very few features, but I did like the fact it is a sealed model with no internal fan to suck in the dust. I can rig an exterior fan easy enough.

So I guess I need to go take the test and get the license I have been saying I was going to get for the last year or so.

What reading or books would you guys suggest? Not for the testing, but for learning more overall?

Last but not least, I will be installing this into either my suburban or crew cab truck. I would like to mount the antenna on the roof, so what antenna would you suggest? Thanks

 

[sjk99]

The Yaesu line of 2m ruggedized radios are great machines.

Getting a book for the class will give you a good overview of the subject and narrative that you will not get from the test questions. Like participating on a forum, there is a culture and cultural rules which are not listed in the test questions. Even before you get your license you can listen to get an idea of how it is in your area.

Find some repeaters to listen to: http://www.artscipub.com/repeaters/ (use the state list on the left)
Search on "your state repeater club" to see if there are any groups maintaining one or more repeaters & see if they have a web site or newsletter that provides more info on local usage.

Get one of the Technician class books here.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_24?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ham+radio+license+manual&sprefix=ham+radio+license+manual"]Amazon.com: ham radio license manual[/ame]

Practice tests can be found here.
http://www.qrz.com/ham/

Another way to study is to download the document of all questions and answers for that class, called the Question Pool. The test you take will be a subset of questions from the pool. Print out the whole list of questions. Black out all the wrong answers or highlight the correct answers. Only review the correct answers, don't even look at the wrong answers. Take some practice tests at QRZ and then go take the test in your area.

http://www.arrl.org/question-pools


check this site out: http://4x4ham.com/


also: http://www.eham.net/