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Getting twice the distance through the pasture compared to the woods tells part of the story. Southern pines are easily 50' tall.

7.2dBi and the pattern is just fine. The antenna has an 11º output and my declination is in the 10ths of a degree. I have no issues with the house antenna, just the HT which falls below LOS in lots of places. We shall find out when I raise the antenna and put an even higher gain up there.

Agreed that the duplexer is maxed out. I am really shocked. I also agree on the antenna issue as well. @LeoG, I know you mentioned it, but I don't remember what gain your antenna has. Gain between zero and 3dB would be in order for local comms or wildly varying terrain. 6dB or more is good for relatively flat areas and if you are trying to get the most range out of it.

Interesting results, pretty maxed out for a "mobile" duplexer. As for your coverage, I have to wonder if your antenna is mismatched for priority coverage. It's not uncommon to go for higher gain, then shooting your RF pattern over your intended close coverage. This isn't an uncommon problem. No doubts that neighbor's household items and the vegetation can be part of the issue, but unless its all pine, I have my doubts that it is the next biggest issue you have to correct/improve.

The Horseshoe Amateur Radio Club, Inc. is pleased to announce the activation of a new GMRS repeater located on Wopsononock Mountain at an elevation of 2,500 feet. Repeater Details: Frequency: 462.675 MHz PL Tone: 123.0 Hz Location: Wopsononock Mountain (2,500 ft elevation) We invite all licensed GMRS users to give it a workout! Your feedback will help us evaluate its range and performance. Please Report Back: Send your location and signal report to help us gauge coverage in the region. Learn more at: horseshoeradio.com (GMRS page coming soon!) Thank you for your support and enjoy the airwaves! — Horseshoe Amateur Radio Club, Inc. (W3SO) “Stronger Signals, Greater Reach”

I'd likely go. What area?

The 675 Winslow repeater is on the air and working great, there is also a brand new repeater in Lincoln on Ch-22 462.725 with the travelers tone 141.3

I'll come up from Woodbridge! Im game for pretty much anything.

I have always heard that objects I.e. other antennas, should be horizontally spaced at least one wave link away from operating antenna. So with that, your concern would be with your CB antenna. At 27MHz you would need about 17 feet of clearance from other objects. GMRS antenna would need around 2 feet. Now how critical this is to radio performace, I have no idea. But if you Google the subject, you’ll find lots of theories

Good evening folks! I've often heard many of your comments that we should have a get together and I figure why not? So I wanted to put some feelers out there on what kind of get together we should have. Should we reserve a table at a restaurant? Maybe a pavilion in a park and bring our own food (cookout or potluck)? Also, when should we have it? I figure maybe sometime in the late summer or early fall. Let's get some ideas together!

They should not affect each other significantly. Edited to add: Mount one above the other rather than on the same level.

How do you unlock it?

I have a CB antenna and gmrs Jpole antenna on the same mast 3 apart. Will the two antennas in close proximity to each other lessen radio transmitting power? Will one radio bleed over to the other radio while transmitting?Only one radio will be transmitting at a time. My gmrs radio is 20 watts and the CB is 3 watts. Any help is appreciated!

@SvenMarbles what firmware is that? I have completely different results on power output in the 460s

You're likely right. I just put an RTSystems package for a newer Yeasu radio on my W7 machine and it did exactly the same thing as the OP's setup. All their other software has run fine under 7. After RTFM/system requirements, I realized I had to put it on a W10 machine to locate/load the driver and program the radio.

The MXT500 programming software requires Windows 10 or 11 OS.

I'm suspecting that whomever just does not make a driver for an ancient OS that was pretty much win95 minus DOS underbelly. literally no one, save maybe the embedded industry, still develops for XP

The GD VirtualComDrive does not install on Windows XP when I install the programming software. Under device manager I get a yellow icon indicating an error and when I install the software, the system tried to locate the MXT500 driver but fails. I know that this is a really old version of Windows, but the machine is used for programming old radios that require Windows XP. The serial # of the radio begins with 25. Any help would be appreciated. Larry

LOL, yeah, there is that.

I’m not sure I follow. Firstly, rescue from what? As far as I’m aware, only explicit military targets were targeted, and pretty surgically.. Secondly, I think you underestimate the Persian people there.. They’re actually pretty capable and educated.. I’m sure they’re not for want of all of the Baofengs they need..

You’re a ham radio guy. Enjoy it!

That's just what they do around here. Its the only way to find out who the smartest one is!

I searched through the archives and found this thread: Does anyone have any experience with using the Rugged Radios Suction Cup Antenna Mount? Suction Cup Antenna Mount – Rugged Radios This picture is almost identical to the set up I would like to run.

So far real world results comparing the wideband tune and the single channel tune aren't vastly different. My neighborhood is a mix of hit or miss when I'm walking around with my Tidradio H3. I have certain "stations" I stand at and do my repeater testing specifically so I can do comparisons. Time of day and day to day make a difference in my area. I am in LOS but have at least 1.6km of heavy treed areas in the way. My repeater antenna is only up 13m at its center radiating point which puts it in the thick of the leaves. That night when I put it in I did notice the transmission from the repeater seemed a bit more smooth, meaning the background hiss was much more mellow and it seemed like better quieting. It is by no means anywhere near full quieting. I have my base station and I use a digital recording app to record my tests. And just like any night it will vary. I have tests that are LOS and testing areas that are not. Most of the tests last night were comparable to the last couple of tests except for my last station in front of my house. That one usually is nice and it cut out this time. I had other tests that are usually not so good come in better than usual. So like I said it varies. Today when my wife called me on the radio from the home base (50 watt, CA712EFC, 13m high) it came in much better than usual. That was one time and only about a minute of conversation. That too can vary from time to time. So far I can say that the single channel tuned is doing at least as good as the wide band tuned. Was hoping for better, but given my circumstances it's understandable that the 5 watt has a tough time getting through the trees. On the original duplexer I couldn't make it at all, I could trip the repeater but almost never get audio through. The wide band replacement usually gave me acceptable audio and the single channel tuned duplexer does about the same. I still need to do some farther out testing which I haven't done in a while. The goal is to reach my family one town down and that's going to take more height.

I'll just say that there are many flavors of the SGQ 450D duplexers out there and this particular one came directly from Btech and who ever they use to manufacture them. The original one that came with the repeater had the same numbers but it definitely wasn't made in the same place. The replacement they sent me and the one I purchased are the same. Thanks again for all your hard work tuning these for me Marc