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I can confirm that during hurricanes, the same thing happens.

been working fine since yesterday afternoon..

its been working fine since yesterday afternoon

i defiantly would rather have a radio that i can program for many frequencies versus a cell phone. I remember the big earthquake we had her in 2019 and our cell service brought to its knees. Radio comms were working great and pretty busy.

True, if your definition of "SHTF" is only "massive, region or nation wide calamity or collapse." There's a whole lot of gray area between that and "normal", even more localized disasters (weather events, wildfires out in the sticks or on the edge of town, extended power outages) where they're totally appropriate for a situation where the shit has totally hit the fan, just maybe not to the point to where the zombies are chewing on the door knobs. Which is a long way of saying, they're useful in a whole lot of real world situations that might not reach the level of a massive, metro-wide (or worse) problem, but which someone is a lot more likely to encounter in reality than those larger scale problems.

Can't you just go to map and zoom in on your area to see the repeaters that are there?

Depends on where you are. Around here it might not be so bad. In LA it's already worthless without an emergency situation.

I guess I should at least respond to the subject title. The radios are not good for the SHTF situations. Who in the hell are you going to talk to in those situations. You'll be lucky to talk to your next door neighbor given all the channel congestion occurring.

And they may have been blondes and blue eyed!

“That idiot’s talking to a brick!!!” is less of a chick magnet than a good belt clip handheld.

They probably didn't know what he was doing at the time.

With a wrist lanyard strap!

There are also those that are offline or stale. One needs to click the settings gear in the upper-left corner of the map to turn on the switches. That doesn't change the "type", just drops the filter.

Maybe try it with a Baofeng?

When the first brick sized Cellphones came out, a buddy got one for work. He'd call us when he was down at the lake and ask us to call back in 5 minutes. He would walk by the sunbathing girls on the beach and take that call trying to impress them. Didn't really work...

Band pass filters are like anything else, buy the best /highest quality you can afford. Again stay away from the cheap ones found on Amazon and eBay. The Morgan high performance band pass filters are not cheap at $140 each. I will be purchasing some for my shack since there are four other active amateur radio operators within 500 yards of my house. I plan on buying one or two at a time since they are expensive. The proper use of common mode chokes, toroids and clamp on ferrite beads along with proper setup will help eliminate RFI issues. I have also found that using a line conditioner or UPS with EMI/RFI filters also helps cut down on noise. This includes computer cables near HF radios too. I had to swap out all of my old non shielded network cable with shielded CAt6 cables and shielded RJ45 connectors. Chasing down RF noise/interference can drive a person crazy. Take the time to eliminate as much as you can during initial setup of your radios.

I emailed them just now with a picture of the TD-H3 hooked up to a Surecom meter. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks!

Speaking of that "anomaly" (...blowing the nozzle off the back is a hell of an anomaly, but anyway...), it looks like I accidentally captured at least part of it going sideways. Not the very big, not rocket-exhaust shaped flame in this shot: Vs 'nominal' a few seconds prior: It was SO worth the trip. If you get the chance, do it. Just, you know, bring plenty of water and be prepared for delays.

I have wanted to go to Promontory to watch some of these tests for years. I’m envious. Good for you taking your kids!!! It’s never too early to get them interested in science.

Hey hey hey, it only failed, like, a little bit! It ran fine for 100 seconds out of a 120 second burn. 83%'s still a passing grade in my book! I know, not ideal, but it kinda made it more memorable for us watching. Definitely for the group of kids we had with us.

I think the radios in a metal rack is helping and @Lscott said it's likely helping more than I think. Metal shields will be harder to work with on a portable setup. Having your radios in a metal box would work but you then have to worry about heat too. I know some of the fancy commercially available go boxes have fans in them to help with heat.

I wonder if being in a metal rack is helping with shielding. Unfortunately that isn't something I can try in the field. At one point, I did run a 3 foot grounding rod and made sure the case of the radio was well grounded, but that didn't do any good either.

They released a press statement saying their engine failure was due to a stray radio transmission.

This is true. Guys were having issues with the HF radios causing issues with the VHF/UHF radios in the trailer last year. Come to find out even some of the more experienced guys never thought to use common mode chokes at the antenna feed points and there aren't any toroids or clamp on ferrite beads on anything inside the trailer. I've been working on correcting all of that along with rerouting the different coax cables for some separation from each other and from all of the other cables. Poor coax shielding is why I will always suggest to buy the best quality coax that one can afford. The cheap coax will have very thin coverage on the braided shield which causes issues. I've stripped the outer sheath off of cheap Amazon coax and higher quality coax to show people the differences.

A friend of the family works for Northrop, and invited us and a few others to go out and watch the SLS booster test at their test range north of SLC yesterday. Of course, being out in the middle of nowhere means spotty cell service, which means "I packed a bunch of radios to hand out to the drivers in our group when we rendezvoused in town" a ways before the launch site. And as always, they did exactly what we needed them to, to coordinate as we went through the huge amount of traffic and people who were out there for the test.