Gallery

Wow, that's impressive.  

We had one we used where I worked doing some SCADA radio work, it was Old but accurate you got a deal congratulations.

These are the SWR scans for the Comet CA-2x4MB dual band antenna I had on my old Jeep. I have a photo posted of the antenna on the Jeep. The antenna is a non-ground plane type so the luggage rack mount works just fine. So far this is the ONLY dual band antenna I've tested that works with an SWR under 2:1 on both the Ham VHF / UHF bands and the MURS / GMRS bands too. The scans were done using a RigExpert AA-1000 antenna analyzer. I wished Comet still made this model but it's been long discon

When I lived in an apartment there wasn't much for options. VHF/UHF was about it with operation through local repeaters.

Mobile antenna installation idea and examples. Yes this is real, but not mine.

Antennas for UHF are fairly simple to build. You don't need much if the antenna will be used indoors. The square loop is built for 432 MHz for the Ham 70cm band and sideband. It uses a simple hairpin type match. This was built, using some 12 Gage copper wire,  to test some simulation results. It came out reasonably close. The hairpin matching section is sort of touchy. The antenna on the right was built using a cheap BNC panel connector and some buss wire. It's a 1/4 wave ground plane

This is a TK-3170. A number of people like these for GMRS. They're small, light weight and use Lithium Ion battery packs. This radio model is my typical carry radio for GMRS and UHF Ham use. It is Part 95 certified by the way. https://pdfs.kenwoodproducts.com/9/TK-2170&3170Brochure.pdf I recommended one of these for a buddy at work for GMRS who was hooked on Baofengs. Now that he has this one I don't think he bothers with the cheap Chinese radio anymore.  These radios use the

This is the broken flat flex cable in the TK-2170. The break is in the red box. The fat trace is the power connection between the main radio's PCB and the On/Off volume control. The end of the cable for the power trace is soldered on the edge of the PCB making the repair a PIA. The cable has to sit at 90 degrees to the PCB making the job very tricky not to get solder on the surface mount parts close to the edge. You can see the solder point. It's the large solder blob at the 90 degree corner on

I have a few Motorola radios. The XPR6550 is a good choice. You can buy them for reasonable prices. They also use a standard SMA type antenna connector. The XPR7550 is a better radio, but they are expensive used and have a funky stud type antenna port. So, if you need to use an external antenna you want the XPR6550. The XPR6580, with instructions found on the Internet, can be hacked to get it operational on the Ham 33cm band. No hardware modifications are necessary. Radio specification

One of my TK-5320 UHF P25 radios. Uses the same case style as the NX-200/300 NXDN radios. Makes them hard to tell apart without looking at the model tags on the back side. I also have the VHF version too. The 450 MHz to 520 MHz band split models have Part 95 certification so they can be used on GMRS FM mode only. Detailed spec's: https://comms.kenwood.com/common/pdf/download/TK-5220_5320_Specsheet.pdf