For 14 years I was driving through the countryside with my aged Volkswagen Golf. For a radio amateur this car was, just like many cars of that generation, a great vehicle. No state of the art technique, so it was possible to lay some extra cables without too many effort or issues. And plenty of space to mount a transceiver. So I was driving around for years with a Kenwood TM-D700: dual band with one frequency fix at 144.8000 MHz for APRS and the other to use for some other nice things. But as I’d to buy a new, modern car the fun was gone. There was simply no space available to mount the transceiver (and especially the big front). Radio sold, APRS down…
But after some years I’ve found a Byonics TinyTrack SMT in a box. Properly built into a solid aluminium housing. In the same box I’ve also found the accessory TomTom GPS mouse. I’ve quickly soldered a cable to connect the TinyTrack to a handheld. And after powering it up the data bursts immediately came up. Everything still up and running… So I got the plan to put the whole thing in my car. But now with a 70cm transceiver connected: APRS at 430.5125 MHz.
From a fellow HAM I got a Motorola GM1200. This in fact is a trunking transceiver, but also able to handle 10 analog frequencies. Next step is to make a cable between the Tiny and the GM1200 before stowing everything into the trunk. This is something for later, so to be contiued…