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The comscope antennas are wonderful commercial antennas. Note, however, they are designed as repeater site antennas. They are designed to be mounted 100+ feet high and have a downward radiation pattern. The DB-420 has 11db of gain, but down. It is documented at 7 degrees of vertical bandwidth. I just wanted to warn people this is not an ideal antenna for a base station without considerable modification, and it should not be taken lightly.

ACE is the place ... if you need to buy one locally.

Yes, that is a super common plug used on many computer and related accessories. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072BYGKZZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_15B035PV8EMTR1R8KZDQ?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

You got the acronym correct, but not the actual use. VFO mode allows one to set a frequency from the keyboard, and use the Menu function to set a PL tone, etc. For a real example, last Saturday morning our District 1 ARES team was called upon to assist in locating a 12 year old autistic boy who'd wandered away from the hotel where he and his parents were staying while visiting relatives in the area. Since the search area was so large, we chose to use an extremely wide-area 2m repeater, and I do mean WIDE area! It covers six counties in NW Indiana and a very large part of the Chicagoland area via two additional linked repeaters in Illinois. As I did not have the N9IAA repeater programmed into my AT-D868UV portable, it took less than 2 minutes for me to tap in the frequency, and set the PL tone needed. After a quick radio check, I was prepared for the search. I was assigned to one of the 12 person teams to provide communications between the team leader and the incident command center. Sadly, we did not manage to locate the boy, and they are continuing the search now along the Little Calumet River thinking he may have fallen in and drowned.

For the first point, there's a setting in your preferences where you can choose to jump to the latest unread message in a thread. I enabled it for myself since long threads could be a problem, you just want to see what's new. For the second point, unfortunately that's just an issue with the forum software we use. There's no control over that behavior that I have aside from modifying the core code, which isn't practical. Maybe there's an option for hiding that notification at the bottom so we only see them at the bell icon up top, that's something I'd be willing to check out.

I have run a 890 (actually 690, 790 and 890) in my old truck when I was in NY for SAR work. They were great radios. All of mine were remote head. Rock solid. I probably would still use them but we switched to MDC identifiers for SAR and didn't want to cobble encoders in them. At one point my 690/890 was dual deck single head.

She is alive, She is alive! I hooked up the car battery and the radio is Good 2 Go! I guess I blow that fuse you folks mention. Thank you all!

This very thing happened to me. I have a radio with a cigarette lighter power cord, in-line fuse very visible and easily accessible. But it also had another fuse I did not know about, which was inside the black plastic case that is the actual plug that plugs into the power source. Once when I thought my radio was dead (thought maybe lightning had hit it), it was actually that first hidden fuse had blown (the second visible fuse was still good). Luckily, I didn’t trash my radio. Found the hidden fuse using a VOM, replaced it, and radio worked fine. One more note on replacing power source fuses. Pay attention to the fuse ratings. Replace with exactly same rated fuses only, no more, no less. On the radio I cited above, I first replaced the fuse with a lower rated fuse. Radio worked fine on low power (99% of the time), but then blew days later the few times I used a channel programmed for medium or high power. Again, thought the radio was bad, but finally figured out the fuse I was putting in had a too low rating for the radio to operate at med or high power, so it would blow every time (went through 4-5 fuses trying to figure it out). But also and more importantly, don’t ever put in a higher rated fuse than what came with the radio, or what the manual calls for. Better to blow a few 25 cent fuses than a $150+ radio with a now voided warranty. I hope my lesson(s) learned can help someone else. Thomas ... EDIT: Corrected voltage ratings mentioned (thanks Lscott for pointing that out).

A completely ‘black’ radio is most commonly an indicator of no power to the radio electronics. This could mean power at the source, a blown fuse somewhere in the circuit between power source and the radio, a blown fuse inside the radio or perhaps even a physically open connection within the radio. Be aware if you are using a cigarette lighter plug, there may be a fuse hidden inside the plug that you do not see. If you have a volt meter I would recommend you confirm the presence of power at source and at the radio itself. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Browning BR-6140 is very short, does not require radials or ground plane, may reach repeater from the inside of the house.

A basic GMRS antenna can easily be disguised as something other than an antenna. If you use an antenna without ground plane radials it will be nothing more than stick. Imagine an outdoor planter with an antenna in it and surrounded by real or artificial plant material. Or imagine a bird feeder pole with bird feeder and an non-ground plane antenna on top painted the same color as the bird-feeder pole. An Ed Fong rollup antenna or one of his versions that goes in PVC pipe are options also. Both easy to disguise. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

As height is king, have you thought of an attic install? A yagi would probably work, but if it's on your patio (and I'm assuming you have a house) you could also do a roof mount with an antenna inside a piece of PVC pipe secured to a vent pipe. You might also get by with a deck mounted vertical inside PVC again near te side of the house with the pipe matching your siding color.