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The one on the right is the exact one I'm using. Thanks for the photo as it helps a lot. Again, I put it real close to the original balun on the antenna.

I can’t find a Kenwood TK-890H that has been fully tested or is fully intact. This is the 110 watt radio. If someone could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to acquire all the items I want for my portable/home base setup and this is the radio for me.

Not sure that's right. Part of analog VHF TV was below 100Mhz, but went as high as 210 Mhz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_channel_frequencies But, satellite communications are done, at least with ham radio, at 145Mhz. Now, there isn't much satellite happening below that, and the reason is the reflection. But low powered handheld radios with modest gain antenna's are used with great success at 145Mhz. So there isn't much 'skip' happening on the upper portions of VHF. TV signals are NOT a good measure of coverage distance, reason being is thousand foot towers and 100KW plus ERP's. You can't sit and have a discussion of GMRS or ANY type of non-broadcast radio and compare it to TV or even AM /FM radio. The antenna heights and power levels are so much greater with commercial radio and TV stations that it's not even apples and oranges. Its apples and steak, or beer, NOTHING is similar when it comes to coverage. And broadcast anything is just that, broadcast. It's all one way. Now if you operate simplex (without a repeater) it's at least one way at a time RF, unlike a repeater that's listening to something and transmitting it somewhere else.

I run common mode chokes at the antenna feed points and also use clamp on ferrite beads on all coax and computer cables inside my shack. A common mode choke helps keep RF from coming back down the coax into the shack. And that is a must especially on 40m. You can either use a toroid with the proper number of wraps of coax or you can use clamp on ferret beads. You want to use between 5 and 7 clamp on ferrite beads right at the antenna feed point to be effective. Less than 5 ferrite beads will not be very effective. I had a lot of RF issues with my computer when operating on 40M until I put 7 ferrite beads on the coax at the antenna. Another source of interference that is often overlooked is network cables. I kept getting interference on my HF radio until I swapped all of my cheap Cat5 cables for shielded Cat 5 and shielded RJ45 connectors.

Welcome Tim! Jeffrey Davis, WSDV406 here, in Hermitage. The Gallatin Repeater at 650 is by far the most active that I hear, in the area I'm able to monitor at least. Other than that, Brentwood 600 and Brentwood Grasslands (also at 650) are the next most active for me. I can't currently reach a lot of yall's great repeaters further south with my current setup. Looking forward to reaching you soon though. Welcome to the group brotha. Looking forward to making contact with ya

Hello, Tim Roper WRMN250 in Fairview. I run a Retevis RT95 on a Comet GP-3. I’ve been checking into nets on the Gallatin repeater, but am looking forward to this club and learning which repeaters y’all use.

Are you talking about a "Current Choke" very specifically or are you talking about a "Common Mode Choke"? Many people use Current Choke and Common Mode Choke interchangeably. These are 2 of the 3 Common Mode chokes that I own... I also have a 100w LDG Current Balun for when I am in the field without the amp (it's not handy for a photo). I think with the ACOM 1010, the Palomar would be the best choice.

WMPT is cranking a meg these days. If I recall correctly, they had a temporary experimental licensed increase to 2 for a few months. My father bought a beam/yagi so far back I don't remember not having it. Probably on advice from my godfather who was a navy radio tech in the very early 1960's.

Keep the original balun on the antenna and put the 1:1 current balun right before it with a short jumper of good quality coax. Get a good balun rated for 5kw from DX Engineering. They are decent quality.

Oh! That's good to know. I'm running an OCF 80m dipole, too. There is a balun at the antenna, but maybe I need one in the house? Maybe on the output of tuner? I have 2 of them that i use when portable, but didn't think about trying one at home. I can try a couple different spots and see what works best.

What type of antenna you using? I had the problem with my 80m OCF dipole. I don't think it is a USB problem. A current balun cured my issue. I have USB cables going to all the radios and amp. Even have ethernet cables going to a few radios.

I can't run more than 100w in any mode that I use my computer for radio control, because the RF messes with my computer. I think it's because of the USB cable, but im too lazy to go buy another one to test.

Something I always found interesting is most VHF stations were using about 3kw ERP. Some UHF stations were 150kw ERP, but high-power stations were 500kw ERP. Between the higher power and shorter wavelengths, UHF always had better image quality compared to VHF. I remember dang near every house had a massive TV beam antenna on the roof and a rotator controller on top of the TV. We had a list of what direction to point the antenna to watch specific channels, and we would kind of fiddle with it to get it just right. But the best was if you had a set of TV top 'rabbit ears' and loop. I remember (before we got a beam) we weren't allowed to move around the living room while mom and dad were watching TV and we all had specific spots to sit when we watched TV, because our bodies would impact how well the TV signal were received. Or we would stand there touching the rabbit ears so grandpa could watch the news. LoL

I generally don't do FT8, but when I do, the amp gets turned down to 600 watts to keep the spirit of making weak signal contacts. When I retire I think that will be a great time for EME.

Don't tell the EME guys that. Well, maybe they fit "very unusual circumstances" LOL

"With ease" is a stretch as well. I remember reading these in real time.

That explains why I could pick up VHF stations from Buffalo [2, 4, sometimes 7] & Syracuse [3, 5, never 9] when I lived in Rochester, NY, I couldn't get any UHF from Syracuse [24. 68] at all, & only once from Buffalo [29, never could get 17], & I think that was because of a band opening I probably would have needed a very tall tower to improve my reception chances There was a house just outside the city limits on the NW side that had vertically stacked TV antennas, I'm sorry that I never knocked on the door to ask what they were able to pick up

exactly what i was thinking

Then do that. If you have a tipping mast then there is no real down side to using the temp ground plane.

Access is just a matter of tipping the mast up and securing it to a post with hose clamps. I just now emailed Comet about the radials. In the meantime, I'm going to stand it up and do some tests with the improvised radials. It will be easy enough to tip it back down and change them when the "correct" ones arrive.

If you have easy access to your antenna I say go for it. In my case my antenna is only accessible by bucket truck at my house. Trying to be one and done but that didn't work because I had water infiltration on my last setup. No idea how, I waterproofed the heck out of it and when I took it down I saw no signs of water. Yet since my setup worked at 26ºF and stopped at 32ºF I can only conclude it was water and when it froze it let things be right.

The rods I got are also stainless steel. I'm going to email Comet, but I'll use what I have until the new ones arrive.

Either way, bad things can happen when dissimilar metals are put together and exposed to the environment over time.

Nope, probably cheap chynese SS. I still have a 712 in it's bag. Maybe later today or tomorrow when I'm back at the shop I'll take a look. 95% sure it's not aluminum, too heavy.

Here is the USCG page for channel/freq assignments: https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/us-vhf-channel-information. Even though I'm just a recreational boater, it's still fun to monitor some of these channels, especially when overseas.