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Welcome to the exciting and dynamic world of GMRS! ... One word of warning: Be wary of the trolls here on the forum that tell you that you're doing everything wrong and "if your radio cant transmit 200 miles you should throw it into the trash can" ... He's just a rheet-hard, and other than him everyone here is pretty cool.

I worked at Radio Shack when I was in high school back in the TRS-80 Model 1/3 and CoCo days. I wrote a spreadsheet with VisiCalc (long before Excel or even Lotus) to track golf handicaps for a local golf course and we must have sold at least 50 Model III's to almost every golf course in So Cal just for that spreadsheet. About the coolest thing I can remember was the radio tech that tuned my 148GTL-DX when they first came out (early-mid 80's). He had a Commodore Vic 20 with a Kantronics interface connected to a HF rig decoding RTTY and CW on the fly. I just thought that was so cool - to hear/see radio Cuba (and it's propaganda) RTTY news on a CRT/TV without a teletype in real time made a impression in my early years that last until today.

Many HF antennas were made with twin lead wire from Radio Shack. And I still have a great set of Radio Shack Realistic speakers that still sound great after 40+ years. I have to agree with @SteveShannon, I would rather use a good quality 75 ohm coax over some cheap craptastic 50 ohm coax. I don't even like using the cheap Amazon or eBay coax for short jumpers even though loss is not a factor with such short lengths. The biggest issue I have is the lack of shielding in the cheap stuff.

Last trip to RS I needed some buss fuses. The girl didn't even know what a fuse was. She only sold phones. The electronic parts area was a mere shadow of what it once was and in disarray.

And if you had a Siltronix you really had bragging rights.

SWR was all we cared about and bragged about

Yep, who cared about coax quality for CB just as long as the SWR was good.

Back in the Radio Shack Days, i don't think there was to many people concerned with Coax quality.. Most of us use it for 10-11 meter stuff and it worked great.. RG58 was the norm for auto installs. The good ole' days

It was definitely a great place to hang out and get to play with all the goodies. Those were the good old days.

i started out with a Commodore 64, then a TRS 80, then an Apple and been with Apple since 1986. Although i do have a Windows 11 machine but seldom go to it.

Thanks for the compliment! And all this time I thought I was old and decrapitated. I agree, I think Tandy ruined Radio Shack. It was a downward spiral for decades. I always liked the catalogs back then. There's a site that has PDFs of every year they printed. From what I remember during my CB days back in the 70s, Radio Shack's RG8 was only offered with foam core and the braided shield was horrible. For CB we didn't care. I don't think any of us today would buy their cable since we have so many great options.

Someone mentioned intentionally using a former address.

I dont recall anyone talking about giving a false address? Dont exactly feel like reading back thru the entire thread to look either.... are you referring to those of us who choose to use (or are forced to use by landlords like myself, whose landlord refused to allow mail delivery to my apartment complex, because the local post office will "give you a free box") My legal mailing address is my po box, and it wouldnt matter what address is listed for my "station" since 99.9% of the time i am transmitting either mobile from my vehicle, or at work on a handheld, as i live right on the edge of the reach for the local repeater....

Hi all, I would like someone to talk to and show me the ropes.

I had the TRS 80 along with the huge 40 MB hard drive. I had to format it by hand by swapping out two 5 1/4" floppies. Took forever and I didn't think it would ever end. Also played with a computer in school that we programmed with punch cards. And after that played with the 8080 computer chip.

Dancing Demon changed the computer world forever...

I used RS as a place to by electronic components for the most part. Hung out there for a few years as the manager like the company. We were practically employees at one point. Don't actually remember where I got my 1st base station antenna and coax.

Man... I remember when I first bought the TRASH80. So many people talk crap about it, but man did I have fun with that thing. I learned how to write shells and programs using that thing. Backup and restore to a cassette tape was too funny, too. Radio Shack was a great store for two-way radios all the way up to when computers, cell phones and satellite TV became mainstream. I literally bought components to do repairs if I had a customer waiting on a job and I ran out of resistors, capacitors and standard 3-leg transistors... occasionally ordering bulk ICs, and PAs for radios I was commonly repairing or upgrading. The good old days of peaking, opening up modulation, adding channels. Good times.

You’re just a young guy! Before Tandy Radio Shack there was Allied Radio Shack and before Allied Radio Shack there was Allied Radio and Radio Shack, two separate companies. Allied Radio was a well respected competitor of Lafayette. Not everything sold by Radio Shack has been poor quality. They even sold some reasonable quality coax but they also sold some crappy coax as well. Personally I prefer to stay away from inexpensive coax. I would rather use quad shielded RG6 for UHF, even at 75 ohms, than some of the lossy 50 ohm cable.

As kids we hung around the local RS before the TRS80 computer was even thought of. Their parent company, Tandy, used to sell leather and leather crafting tools back then. Their coax sucked and I didn't even know what good coax was. We used it for CB because we didn't know any better. Actually Lafayette was a much better and highly respected company.

I give up, what's the LEARN system?

Should have said thanks Steve for posting info from Gil.

well there sonny,,, There was a time when Radio Shack was the deal... Unless your an old timer, you have no clue...

Hi Gil, Thanks for the information. I will take another look using your information. Dave

One of the main differences between cheap coax and more expensive quality coax is the amount of shield braid used and also the materialist is made from. You will only see about 50-60 percent of the dielectric being covered by the shield braid on cheap coax where you will see 70 to 100 percent coverage in the more expensive coax. The amount of shield braid makes a difference in how it protects against RFI and will also act as a better counterpoise when the coax is used as such. It is common to use the coax as a counterpoise when using end fed half wave antennas for HF versus running a separate counterpoise wire.