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We don't have to agree, but the discussion was beneficial for those that choose to just sit back and read. If it got people to think about other points then it served it's purpose. 8-)

You will need an SWR meter for the VHF/UHF bands (135 MHz - 470/512 MHZ) to set the antenna for optimal performance. The Surecom 102 is digital and used by many. It's less expensive than many ham meters and the analog pointer is usually more difficult to read when you are close to resonance. The table you posted shows typical values for a receiver. The 25 uV fgure is typically used and the 12 dB SINAD is a decent ratio of signal to noise. You want the adjacent channel and rejection numbers to be higher as in larger absolute values but those come with higher cost radios. And yes, the antenna along with height are the key pieces. As you start putting the pieces/parts of your system together you'll need to calculate your actual power being radiated. You will need to figure the amount of loss in the coax and subtract that from the gain of your antenna. You also need to convert the dB gain numbers from dBi to dBd by subtracting 2.15 from the antenna figures. Now you can subtract the cable loss from the antenna gain to get the correct number (or just read the power from the meter to see what is getting to the antenna). As to the need to adjust the SWR when changing devices, you probably will need to. You should at least check and be certain things have not changed significantly as the feed from the handheld and the mobile may have slightly different impedance values (50 ohms is something strived for but not always met). I would set the SWR using the Base/Mobile and let the HH run with it as it isn't as important.

so..bad news up front: anything you add beyond the 30 it's preprogrammed with will be RX only (I found out the hard way). you can still add custom receive channels, and run it dual watch with the REPTXX channel you'd need to transmit on. what part are you getting stuck on? If it's the setup within the software: Chirp's site has a "beginner's guide" here: https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Beginners_Guide the one i found most helpful is the descriptions of the columns: https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/MemoryEditorColumns miklor.com has some good guides to Chirp as well: https://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_CHIRP.php#guides if it's more an install issue with the computer, as Michael mentioned, more information on your system will help. if it's setup, give us a litlte more about what's giving you problems and maybe we can better guide you.

what are the details of the repeater: freq, tone etc what type computer: Windows, Mac, etc model of radio and where did you get the USB cable? one of the experts on the 50x1 may have to help you out. I don’t have any experience with that model

You can hear the 650 repeater clearly, but your transmissions are just received as static. In addition to all of these concerns, you should consider a BTECH 40 watt amplifier to give you the boost to be able to make it into that repeater (and maybe more?). Or put the DB-20G in your truck and buy a 50 watt rig for your house?!

Since I don't really need the radios for critical communications I can afford to wait for a good deal. That's part of the fun collecting them, finding a good deal. The second part is trying to discover where the radio came from originally. I managed to find this out on just a few. The best one came from "Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station" out east. I think another poster knew about it and commented they replaced all their analog radios with digital. Nice confirmation of what I figured out from the names in the memory tag fields and frequencies programmed in to the radio.

I hope these new rules "take effect" better than the new rules on lower GMRS license fees did.......

The glass in the building may also limit RF signals as some glass has filters to limit radiation.

Yes. Seal up the antenna connections.

The antenna gain will limit the frequency response across the full range of channels available as it will maintain a low SWR for 5 MHz on either side of the tuned frequency. As far as a unit to use for the base, I'd go with one that is rated at 50W on the UHF frequencies. Brand isn't as important as are the specs for receiver sensitivity, the higher the value of the number the better. -115 is better than -110 or lower absolute value. The bandwidth affects transmit primarily as SWR has little to no effect on receiving.

Yeah, simplex around here is sort of dead too. I very infrequently hear any CQ calls on 146.52, even when mobile, my primary operations. I try to respond to the 52 calls when mobile due to the low activity I observe. I have radios for D-Star, DMR, P25 and NXDN so far. I'm was wondering what to use for simplex operations. Seems like just about everyone uses repeaters since they are typically linked. I wanted to include some simplex channels in the various radios I have to supplement the repeater channels. That leads back to the thread's topic, pros and cons. Talk groups and networks. I know on DMR that TG-99 is the talk group used for simplex operation, but what about the other modes? This gets into the area where I've found separate networks, even for the same digital modes, where the talk groups are not entirely the same, however there has been progress in that area. Then there are the bridging issues. This all seems to be a very unnecessary complication. Here are some examples. https://brandmeister.network/ https://dmr-marc.net/ https://w8cmn.net/mi5-sites-talkgroups/ http://www.nxdninfo.com/ https://w8cmn.net/p25/ Then the last point is usually you get just one digital mode per radio model or manufacture. I did hear about a couple of people that hacked the MD380 hardware where there is the possibility of getting a multi-mode digital radio without the astronomical cost from manufactures like Kenwood and their NX-5000 series multi mode radios along with the licensing crap that goes with it. I read somewhere the programming software for them is a POS. That's another problem area. Some manufactures CPS, customer programming software, is rather easy to use and or well organized with a good help system. One of the very popular Chinese DMR radios their CPS sucks. It's buggy and the built in help is almost worthless since there is basically "maybe" a line or two describing a feature. The other choice is looking at a bunch of YouTube videos hoping the area one has an interest in gets covered. Other's like Kenwood keep their training materials locked up behind a "dealer" login portal. I suppose that's done to support their dealer network, they want to discourage customers from programming their own radios. and funnel business to the dealers. A personal observation it seems most digital voice modes are mostly used on UHF. I'm assuming it's because you can find good commercial gear for UHF far easier, and cheaper, that on VHF. Second there is just simply more spectrum where people can spread out. I've been looking for some select Kenwood VHF analog/digital radios for a while. The few I see on the major auction site usually are much more expensive than the UHF model, if you can find one at all. I'm looking at an NX-200-K2 at the moment if I can win the auction without paying a fortune for the radio to add to my "collection." Around the Detroit area, where I'm at, there is little P25 activity and there is only one NXDN repeater listed for the whole state, and I don't think it's even linked into a network either.

Certainly not the only option, but a good one: https://www.theantennafarm.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=342_343_347_993_1410 Thesa are made wtih LMR-400UF (Ultra Flexible) so easy to work with and come with N connectors.

Check out amateurradiosupplies.com for coax as well. They have Davis DRF400. Same specs as LMR, 20% cheaper. They'll put the ends on it for you as well.

I have to correct myself, when I said 10 times reduction for RG58U I was thinking of 100 ft length of the cable. Still, 50 ft is nothing to sneeze about. Use LMR-400 if possible. It's a 3/8-inch cable, fairly rigid, and depending on how you're going to pull it, it could be a good thing. So, what everybody said, and the calculator provided by JeepCrawler98 is very useful tool. I totally agree. You're putting up Yagi, means you want to put all power you have in a small sector, so makes sense to not waste this power to heat the cable and surroundings. I, myself, never use RG58U. For car installs, where the cable run is shorter than 10' and I need a thin cable, I tend to use LMR-240. Or RG8X if space is very tight, because it's more robust than LMR type. For home base I'd pull thicker LMR-400. It is a popular cable, available everywhere (I usually buy from DX Engineering, they have 400MAX which is an LMR-400 knock-off with a similar characteristics), connectors for it are no problem, and you can buy correct length with connectors already attached. And if you're a newbie, you should seriously consider getting cable with connectors. Go to reputable vendor (Antenna Farm, DX Engineering, people will share their favorite places), order pre-made assembly with N connectors if the antenna has N connector on it. You can use N-to-PL259 adapter inside home and keep much better weather-proof N connector outside on the antenna.

For those that would like to know how to calculate the wavelength, a simple way find it is to divide 300 by the frequency (in MHz) being used. The result is the wavelength in meters. For example, what is commonly called the "2 meter" ham band can be determined by dividing 300 by 146 (the middle of the band), with the result of 2.05 meters, which is pretty close to 2 meters, hence the name. Another example is for the "70 cm" ham band, 300 divided by 430 (MHz) is .697, which rounds nicely to .7 meters, or 70 cm. A quarter wavelength at this frequency would be 70 cm / 4, which equals 17.5 cm, or approximately 7 inches. At the GMRS frequency of ~465 MHz. (roughly the mid-point of the band when accounting for repeater use) the wavelength is .645 meters. A quarter wavelength at this frequency would be just over 16 cm, or about 6 3/8 inches. If you know the wavelength, you can also calculate the frequency in a similar manner. Simply divide 300 by the wavelength (in meters) to find the approximate frequency. For example, for the 20 meter ham band this would be 300 / 20, or approximately 15 MHz. The actual band is in the 14 MHz range, but this formula will get you close. The other way to think about it is that the frequency in MHz, multiplied by the wavelength in meters, should equal something close to 300.