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I put together a hotspot for ham radio. Tonight I picked it up while driving on the interstate about half a mile from my house. It continued until I was nearly a mile away. It has 10 milliwatts and a 3 inch antenna. I was surprised. I already owe you beer!!

Had a nursing home near me using Channel 1 and 67.0 PL. Occasionally, usually late at night, I would say something like, "I just crapped my bed again. Can someone please come clean me up and change my sheets?" There would be several "Who said that"'s and confused chatter between the staff for a while. It helps if you can do a good "elderly person" voice. I could do that since my teens. I AM elderly now so it just gets easier.

Wanna have some fun? Belch a couple of times and listen as there is a panic to verify possession of all radios by the teacher they are assigned to. They think a kid has one of the radios. Orrr...after hearing names of teachers or administrators (Mr Jones, Mrs Smith, etc) in the school for a while, if you can get your voice high enough to genuinely sound like a kid, say something like "Mr Roe and Mrs Doe are sleeping together." Pandemonium will ensue. Don't ask how I know this.

My background is petroleum industry and water treatment. Always use anti seize. That one fastener you think you will never have to remove and decide to skip coating is the very one you will have to take apart. Anti Seize (the brand doesn't matter, they all work) is about the cheapest sanity insurance you can buy. And take it from experience, it will save lots of skin. Also, always repeat always make every electrical connection (even those in "water resistant" housings) as water tight as humanly possible. Long story short I grabbed an electrical conduit that had been out of service for a couple of years. Lit me up like nobodies business. Two lessons learned, never believe lockout/tagout tags, and never trust an electrician unless you verify it yourself. Water had gotten into the conduit.

Negative Nancy AKA REEH-TARD, aka Mr 250 miles needs some serious professional medical help! @BobDiamond glad you figured it out and I'm sure ShowMeCables will take care of things for you.

^Come to my place sometime and show me how your HT will go 50 miles. I'll buy the beer.

wow

WOW! someone's off their meds again. @marcspaz gave good advice.

I used GMRS radios when I moved from Alaska to Oklahoma 3 years ago. There were 4 of us with an RV and a pickup truck pulling a trailer. There are long stretches of the Alaska Highway where cell service is nonexistent. It was orders of magnitude better than pulling over and talking in person when we needed to pass on information.

Thanks for your reply. Turns out the jumper cable has an intermittent short. And I bought that cable custom made to length using Times low loss cable from a company called ShowMeCables.com. So that will be returned to them. I located another jumper cable in my "junk box" of radio stuff and all is working perfectly now.

Make sure the meter is on and on the 200w scale. (Yes, it has an off button) Also be very sure you did not mix up the antenna connection and Transmit connection. If you get them backwards, the meter doesn't move. As mentioned above, make sure it's set to AVG and not PEP. If the meter is set correctly, the next thing I would question is the coax between the radio and meter having a short.

couple years ago someone did a full write-up on that SWR/PWR meter here. Do a search see if you can find... And even though i have Socalgmrs blocked he message squeaked through,, perhaps because I'm on my Windows Box. Just block the idiot and don't pay any attention to Negative Nancy.. That's what we call him

@Socalgmrs why are you still here?

Update: This is on every Thursday at 1900 hrs. 700 is the strongest local repeater -- good for ~35 miles.

Woxoun kg-1000,Daiwa CN-901V…… You forgot to name drop your coax…. Or give a model number to the diamond antenna glad I don’t worry about swr. I just buy good antennas and run it. I’ve got better things to do then spend time watching my swr meter. But any one that spends $400 on a radio and another $250 on an swr meter and who knows what on an antenna has issues anyway. I’d bet cheap coax and junky antenna has something to do with it. for $650 a can set up 3 50w base stations that radiate over 550w with 200mile range. And all with no swr meter or silly questions to a stranger group of man-queen worshipers.

the Daiwa is kind of a funky meter, Don't use the P.E.P. and try.

My wife was super impressed. She might be ready for an amateur license some day. We had an interesting announcement about the state patrol. I thanked some people way ahead of me, but there was no way for me to exceed the limit. I did tell me to look at a mountain range off to the left and the view was amazing. Nice people along the way.

Hmm, I didn't know that those anonymous people types do that in basements. We don't have basements in Cactusland. That must be what they do in Tornado Land.

Are you sure the jumper cable to the meter isgood? Can you use a double female SO-239 in place of the meter to see if things return to normal. If they do, then something is wrong with the meter. If not, then possibly a bad jumper cable.

I have a Wouxun KG1000G+ with power supply that I am using as a GMRS base station with a Comet vertical on the roof of my house. Transceiver connected direct to the antenna works perfectly. I just put a Daiwa CN-901V SWR/PWR meter in line and the meter is not showing any output power and it seems to be attenuating both the receive and transmit signal significantly. The meter is brand new, out of the box. I checked the obvious, radio to meter input, meter output to antenna, and 13.8VDC applied to the meter. But with the radio set to 50 watts output the Daiwa CN-901V shows nothing. What could be wrong aside from a defective brand-new meter?

I think that the nursing home took the hint and changed to a different channel, I haven't heard them on channel 17 for about a week now. I decided to talk to another guy on channel 17 one day and we are both using 50 watt radios. I'm sure we were blasting their FRS radios.

We have been happy with the RC-210 that is currently controlling our 2m repeater. One of the two controllers will be getting a temperature sensor so we get warnings when the shed gets too hot or too cold. We found out that the Motorola Quantar repeaters do not like the heat. The current controller also monitors our battery backup system and announces when everything is running on battery backup.

Think of all the fun that could be had if someone handed out some cheap FRS radios to the patients at the nursing home…

Exactly the way I'ding is suppose to be. BTW,, the RC-210 is a nice versatile controller. I saw a 3D case on Makers World for this board.