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But then I wouldn't get to watch my pitbull bite their leg off on my surveillance cameras.

The one in Oklahoma City appears unused, but I'm trying to breathe some life back into it. The problem is that people ignore it because nobody uses it, but if everyone ignores it, there will never be any activity on it. I do know a guy who said he and his wife use it to stay in touch when they go to the state fair in the fall, so I guess it isn't completely devoid of life. I throw out my call sign every time I'm within range but haven't gotten a response yet. However, Tulsa has four 1.25m repeaters which get quite a bit of use, and I travel there fairly often, so I want to have that capability.

Since it seems to have worked for you, I'll give it a try. It's the only antenna I have that has good readings on 2m, 70cm, GMRS, MURS, and 1.25m. It has good signal on 70cm, GMRS, and 2m; I've never keyed up on MURS since I had a pair of MURS radios about 12-15 years ago. It would be convenient if it worked on 1.25m, because my car has limited real estate for antennas. I could have one antenna that did it all. On the truck, I have 3 antenna mounts, so it's no problem to have one antenna for GMRS/2m/70cm and another one for 1.25m.

You guys are lucky that you have 220 activity. I have four repeaters in my area that I can get into and they are totally devoid of any human life. What a great but wasted band.

Oh, come on, show the man a little sympathy. What he's suffering from is a very common disease. Many years of not using the proper coax can fester strong emotional and cognitive disorders.

Agreed. Strangely my Comet 2X4 also shows acceptable swr readings on 222 mhz. 20 mile simplex @30watts out and 30 miles to my closest 222 mhz. repeater @ 50 footup up with steel mending plates for a ground plane. a usable signal was surprising.

SOCAL has proved time and time again, he's not wrapped tight ...

Maybe YOU should read what you wrote. I never implied that 30Mhz and below would NOT reflect. I did say that about anything over 100 would NOT reflect off the ionosphere however. Which is basically what this post says. And is correct. You said that VHF maritime radio would reflect, you never mentioned HF marine radio. If you ever operated Sporadic-E you know that it opens for a few minutes at the longest and then fades. It's not a consistent method of communications. Yes, this is an exception to the normal rule that frequencies above 100 Mhz pass through the ionosphere. Just like there were 10 meter (29Mhz) downlinks on some ham satellites. Of course they worked better when the sun spot cycle was in a null and the MUF for DX never got above the 15 meter band.

You pronounce it your way, I'll pronounce it mine.

It's pronounced: reet-hard ..

I looked. Apparently I scanned over it. I looked on page 39 and didn't find what I needed. Stop being an arrogant azz.

AMAZING!!!! What a very small amount of literacy does. Manuals come with radios for a reason. They are also available on the internet webby thingy.

The only reason I don't run the 2x4 on my truck is that it doesn't like the very limited ground plane I get on the back of the bed. It works like a dream on the roof of my car, though. It's probably the most versatile multi-band antenna available. Mine even shows excellent SWRs in the 220 MHz band. A good SWR doesn't necessarily mean it will transmit well on that band -- the ability to transmit is dependent upon the electrical and physical characteristics of the radiating element -- but it does mean that if I try it, it's very unlikely to damage my radio. I likely will try it sometime just out of curiosity.

Thanks guys! Great help.

Confirmed, it works. Thanks.

Yes the Comet 2x4SR will be an improvement if you want multi band use. You are correct that you would not have to change the mag mount to go from the MXT-26 to the 2x4SR. All you have to do is swap them out on your mag mount. I would run the 2x4SR on my Ford Escape all of the time if I didn't have height restrictions to deal with.

While I like the ut72 and think it would work well for most people the mxt26 is a big step up. However the 2x4 is a much bigger step up. It doubled our tx and made our rx much more clear. Other then one old truck still running the 72 all our other trucks now run 2x4s. Even with 20w radios if we can see it we can hit it out over 100miles simplex in the clear and we get all the available weather stations and murs comes in RX perfect as well.

Alright, so I have a Retevis RA25 mounted in my Xterra. Right now I'm using an NMO mag mount MXT-A26 antenna. It works great for GMRS. I used to have the Nagoya UT-72G mag mount hooked up to a TD-H3. I seemed to be able to get a lot more reception on that set up, using both GMRS and HAM. With the UT-72G, I was able to get NOAA channel 5 in super clear, plus I think channels 4,3, and 1 a little bit. With the MXT-A26, I can only get NOAA channel 5, from the same spot. I know the MXT-A26 is tuned specifically for GMRS. My question is, should I get the Comet 2x4SRNMO antenna? I would like to be able to just screw it into the NMO mount and not switch out the whole thing. I'm not HAM licensed yet, but I like to listen. And also I would like to have it in case of emergency. Plus I probably will eventually get my HAM license.

This is why it's good to have Socal around. Eventually he get's a NOOB that deserves it.

Gotta be the battery BMS because you use standard USB wall wart chargers. The battery itself shouldn't allow the charger to cause it harm.

Same issue here - I programmed one radio, did a wireless copy to the rest, and at least two batteries were charged in the charging stand while attached to a radio. So all four have the same setup, two were charged while attached and turned on, and no idea which one the dead one was because they all look the same and I wasn't smart enough to number them beforehand. They do seem to be aware of the battery charging issue - at the bottom of the "we're shipping you a new radio" email, they added this at the bottom:

I’m not sure. It’s not my problem. I did nothing to them that should have made them fail. The very first tdh3 I bought still works today and it was programmed abd used identically as the other 4. And none of these were DOA. All worked out of the box. Then approx 2 to 3 weeks later I noticed issues hitting repeaters and at that point realize no output. So not sure when these failed after charging or after programming.

TBH, I'm not sure. It has that dull sheen like aluminum, but that could just be the finish. I don't have a magnet handy, but a lot of stainless steel isn't very magnetic anyway. I think the whole "dissimilar metals" things is a bit overblown anyway. Cars and motorcycles bolt aluminum to steel all the time. If it were a part that carries a current, it might be different, but I've seen lots of aluminum wire secured to an outlet with steel screws for decades without any issue, so maybe not even then.

I'll recheck it when I have the antenna stood up. I hung it a few feet off the ground for the initial test. I wanted to be sure there wasn't anything to address before I got it 40' in the air.

Have you considered the TK-8180H model? You’re limited to 50 watts anyway on GMRS. https://www.kenwood.com/usa/Support/pdf/TK-7180_8180.pdf