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our stick your phone in a Faraday Bag

That's only 4 paragraphs...

It seems I have a reputation to either change or uphold. Here are the ten paragraphs and big technical sounding words. Sorry. Lossy cable will always make your SWR appear artificially low when measured at the radio. If lossy cable is attenuating your forward power there will be less power that reaches the antenna and then whatever power is reflected by an imperfect impedance match is attenuated before if gets back to the radio. So an RF power meter/SWR meter placed at the radio will see erroneously low reflected power, resulting in an erroneous calculation of forward power and an erroneously low calculation of SWR. If your radio has an ALC circuit, it limits output power as SWR increases and allows greater power if the SWR appears low. Where are you measuring the power? At the radio or at the antenna? If you want an accurate reading of the SWR of the antenna, you must read at the antenna feed point. If you want to see how much power is reaching the antenna, measure it at the antenna feed point. If you want to see how much power your radio is emitting, measure at the radio. Sometimes it’s very helpful to measure power at both places at the same time to see the difference. How are you measuring it? Some RF power meters are simply better than others. Expensive ones are calibrated to a standard for a specific frequency and power range. Inexpensive ones may lose accuracy at different frequencies and power levels which can make things appear better or worse than they really are. Are all measurements at the same transmit frequency? Our radios often (always?) have a range of power output levels that change at different frequencies.

Seeing higher return power would be due to the antenna having a high SWR as it is reflecting power back down the coax. That's why a dummy load should be used to test power output as the dummy load is a perfect 50 ohm match and should show a 1:1 SWR. That takes out coax loss and reflected power returning down the cable.

If you leave it at home you have an alibi also. I was home, check my ping...

Good Morning, I have great news to report. Progress has been made and we are getting closer to putting our GMRS repeater on the AIR! The calculations on this repeater show a substantial coverage area for Perry and surrounding counties. This repeater is free for use to all properly GMRS Licensed users. There are common sense rules of use that need to be followed, such as emergency traffic and Emergency Operations have priority to air time. No unsupervised minors etc. the rules of use can be found at our club page: https://forums.mygmrs.com/clubs/41-claarc-gmrs/ Although participating on our club page is not mandatory it is recommended and appreciated. To formally request access to this repeater please use the following link: https://mygmrs.com/repeater/6858 If you are in need of a radio or advice on how to proceed you can reach out to us at: https://cogentradios.com/contact/ If you are interested in this and active on facebook you can follow us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/claarc

Happy Friday the 13th !!

Oh, so "exactly nobody in the US uses FM CB" was just an exaggeration. I get it. But again, there's three users around here that I know of. What's your handle? I'll tell them to give a call out to you if they are ever in your area.

FM CB is still new and most of the radios in service don't have the FM capability. I imagine FM will become used more as users either upgrade or replace existing radios.

Not that I'm planning to participate in any crimes, but it seems the best solution is just to leave it at home. If they did that, FRS radios could certainly be handy for coordination.

I hadn't thought about loss in the cable causing an artificially high power reading, but now that you mention it...I guess it could. Thanks. None of the antennas I tested are likely to be the one I ultimately end up using, and I have 50' of LMR400 Ultraflex to feed it. There's always going to be some loss. All we can do is keep it to a minimum. As far as I know, anything you can easily coil up and carry is going to have quite a bit of loss at 462 MHz.

Yes, I have driven extensively in the central US with a CB and I hear some traffic on AM but nothing on FM. Others in CB forums have had the same experience. Most (all?) CBs sold in the US today have both AM and FM capability, but it seems that it rarely gets used. I don't count myself as a "user" of FM CB because I just listen. I haven't randomly gotten on CB and announced my presence for several decades. Would someone answer if I did so on FM? I don't know. I use CB almost exclusively to monitor road conditions, and all of that is on AM. My TYT TH-9800 will scan both AM and FM frequencies and I have yet to hear anyone on FM. I have a CB on a separate antenna in case I want to transmit, but I hardly ever do. Mostly I just hear a sh*tshow with occasional business use and highway conditions.

I've had the same experience with the monster sized dual band Ham antenna on my ride. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/471-mobile-mount-with-antenna-rear-view/?context=new It doesn't look like any common "CB antenna", but I guess people just go with what the are familiar with.

How did you come about with this determination? Do you have a FM CB radio and monitor it for others operating in the FM mode? If so, then you would be someone using FM CB. Or did you conduct a survey and have the results published somewhere? I genuinely would like to know how you came to your conclusion because I know of three people who have a Cobra 25ltd in their dump trucks.

The XTL allows up to 4 control heads per deck. Ive installed up to 3 on a radio in a command post/mobile communications unit. Many ambulances and firetrucks have 2 heads, one in cab and one in rear. There was a special cable (SP) made to allow control of 2 decks from one W3 head but was specific to three letter agencies. Some have made it to the public but they were not higely used. THE APX series allows dual deck or multi head or both.

Lol you can probably look up Wendy's and Burger King in McDonald's radio frequenties and talk to them and see if they got your order right just kidding guys I actually went through some of the frequencies and I got through to some but I didn't transmit

I was wondering if anyone wanted to do any daily or weekly talk times during the day to check and see how everything is going with everyone and what's going on with the club I used to keep my radio on it just depends on if I'm around it I use a mobile I have a five and a eight. I would kind of like to have like a daily or weekly like I said check on at least just to see who's active if you can't make it you can't make it you know but anyone just give me a shout out about the idea WSCE405

Radio Dork?

I have no idea why anyone would want to.

I still have a ways to go before I reach @SteveShannon status

less than 10 paragraphs and no big technical-sounding words, so you did good!