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I get that.. I brought up 'Broadcast TV' in my comment as a reference to Marine VHF because Broadcast TV is VHF. Most of us know VHF Broadcast TV reacts to skip off the ionosphere like VHF Marine radio and UHF TV does not, so it was a reference. His first line comment 'Not Sure Thats Right' and the rambling after was a bit boggling.. Thats all.

I had interference issues on 2m when transmitting on 10m when I first installed my Comet GP-9 and my home made 10m inverted v dipole. The 1:1 balun is about 2 feet below the base of the GP-9. I never noticed the issue until I was transmitting on 10m FT8 and talking on the 2m repeater. People told me I had an occasion buzz on my transmission. That only happened when transmitting on 10m FT8 while talking on the 2m repeater. The fix was five clamp on ferrite beads right at the 1:1 balun and I put three on the coax right at the GP-9. Both coax cables run within 2 inches of each other from the mast all the way until they enter the house. 5 clamp on ferrite beads works for the higher HF bands while 7 works better for the lower HF bands.

someone do my home work for me NOW. I have the world at my fingertips tips. I can find anything in the world. Anything in history. I can find singing cats doing the cha cha on mars singing in a lost 10,000 year old language. BUT I can’t find some random radio that is so junky no one even sells it. THATS the radio I want to use in my “portable home base” what ever that is. And I want to run it at 2xs legal watts. Geesh oh I’ll help…… ever heard of eBay? It’s this new thing I found that no one has ever heard of. Geesh. one could just buy 2 regular radios and set one up at home and have one portable. Not that I really get the portability thing anyway. A good radio in The car/truck is much better then lugging a bunch of weight around.

He didn’t initially bring broadcast TV up; you did. All he did was reply to your comment from Saturday:

Check Ebay,, they have a few advertised as fully tested and ready to shop.. Some are a bit pricey.. Check Surplus Two Way Radios as well.

what the hell are you saying there? sounds like 'Bud' talking. 99.9% of us would not argue that broadcast TV is oneway transmission and no way compares to a GMRS signal. We know that, why do you bring that up. Sorry, but i cant wrap my head around your comment. 'Bud' will do that sometimes.

There’s a guy named Steve who sells them to people all fixed up for GMRS. Of course for GMRS use they must be limited to 50 watts.

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