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I don't doubt that you made the 300+ mile contact, but it wasn't NVIS. If the MUF reached UHF, the radiation would fry us all! Probably tropo ducting.

NVIS usually maxes out below 10 MHz and pretty much never reaches into low VHF and never reaches into UHF. If this were not so, satellite communications would be impossible. NVIS occurs at and below the frequency that a radio signal directed straight up is reflected back to earth instead of penetrating the ionosphere.

It seems to me the key difference here (between The Midland and Kenwood products) is a case of consumer grade vs. professional grade. For many users a consumer grade product is actually superior. While they may lack some features, they tend to be easy to use (largely because many features and options have been locked out or removed). On the other hand, professional grade products tend to be more reliable and have fewer operational problems... once they are set up. Setting aside the issues of split PL and lack of wide-band support on the Midland radios, which may not affect most users anyway, it really comes down to a question of how much radio you need vs. how much time and money you are willing to invest. Personally, I prefer Motorola equipment. But, if someone finds Kenwood products difficult to set up and maintain, Motorola is beyond their reach.

The fact that the MXT400 is narrowband only would put it out of the running for me even if everything else were the same. Even if that were not the case and there was no price difference, the TK880 is so much better than the MXT400 that it really defies comparison. To begin with, the MXT400 has 23 channels according to the advertising I have seen. So what do you do if your travels take you within range of three different 462.600 repeaters? With the TK-880 you could program all of the simplex frequencies all with one PL tone (or a different one for each) and set up the monitor button to bypass the tone when desired. Then program the 8 repeater pairs 29 times, each with a different access tone. Bypass those tones as needed too, and set up one of the buttons as talkaround to get simplex on those frequencies. Basically you can set it up to work with every single repeater you would ever encounter, and have it scan all of them continuously. And that's just one feature it has over the Midland. Oh and BTW, each of those channels can be set up as wide or narrow, so if one of the repeaters you run across is narrowband (never seen one, but it's possible) you can optimize it for that too. There's much more, but those features make it geometrically better than the Midland in my opinion.

Have you seen this? http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo_eur.html I think you're in Florida, right? If so you might want to try shooting along the coast. ETA: with your directional antenna, that is.

Wow! That's awesome! I'm still trying to learn this stuff. I know book smart often doesn't match reality, which is why I am glad I have folks like you to talk to. That tests sounds like a brilliant idea. I'll have to keep an eye on the geomagnetic weather and see if I can run that test. With any luck, I learn something in the process. LoL I appreciate the convo with all of you. I'm going to take my General exam on November 8. Hopefully I'll pass and get some new gear. Oh, I almost forgot... do you guys (or gals, if you're out there) know how to repeat tropo ducting? I read that fog and cloud cover helps... but should I be mindful of takeoff angles, etc.? Any advice would be much appreciated.

It has. In fact when I studied for my Extra exam, we still had Morse code requirement. Also when I was using NVIS propagation on 160 Meters with a buried antenna. In fact, that is a good test: dig a post hole and put a directional UHF antenna (a Yagi for example)in it, pointed straight up. If you can't still get at least 100 miles out of it, it ain't NVIS. In fact, try it on 27 MHz too and report back. Or just take a road trip to the nearest canyon and try 27 MHz there. I can definitely talk out of a canyon on 75 Meters, using NVIS. 10/11 Meters, not so much.

Well, I'm not sure when @RCM last studied for a ham exam, but, I'd be pretty sure the laws of physics haven't changed in the meantime. According to the Wikipedia

That seems a bit harsh. Why do you have that opinion? Serious question. Not trying to be argumentative. As far as I can tell, the 880 has a few nice features over the MXT400 that have very little value (if any) in the GMRS world. Don't get me wrong. It's hard to argue that the price is higher with the Midlands. Also, I have owned several Kenwood radios and they are nice radios, but I also currently own three MXT400's that have been running great for some time now. If you have someone who is non-technical, would like a warranty and a plug-and-play setup with a compliant radio, I would say the MXT400's are the best option. Not 1/10th the value. Just my opinion.

Yep. A tenth of the radio (if even that), at easily 3 times the price of a nice TK880.

Any desense is too much. I've run plenty of 4 cavity duplexers in the scenario you describe (adding a bandpass cavity to the receive side) with absolutely no measured desense at 50 watts. If you can hear desense, you're probably seeing at least 2dB of loss in the receive path. 2 dB doesn't sound like much, until you realize that 3dB better of receive sensitivity would double the coverage area of your system's portable talk in. I guess it's human nature, but people will always pick the 4 watt portable over the 2 watt, yet how many of them will spend the time & money to improve the receive side of their repeater to gain 3dB? The net effect is the same. Getting 3dB of receive improvement will make your 4 watt portable seem like it's suddenly putting out 8 watts.

I was able to hit my clubs's repeater from 92 miles away: I was on a peak at 7500' with my TK-380 at 4 watts and stock antenna. The repeater sits at 3800'. I had a clear line of sight and had no issue making contacts, full quieting. Atop a mountain here in town I routinely make simplex contacts on GMRS ~20 miles away.

I'm not enamored with Baofeng quality control, but the GMRS-V1 is pretty well a plug-and-play solution. If you aren't inclined to try your hand at programming old Part 90/95 commercial/public safety HTs but want a repeater-capable unit, it's hard to do much better.

I went ahead and bought several used 3180s. I’ll update if I like them once I get a chance to use them.