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They released a press statement saying their engine failure was due to a stray radio transmission.

When the first brick sized Cellphones came out, a buddy got one for work. He'd call us when he was down at the lake and ask us to call back in 5 minutes. He would walk by the sunbathing girls on the beach and take that call trying to impress them. Didn't really work...

A couple of years we got snowed in and then the power went out for a week. Cell service was down as well. We used GMRS radios to check on a couple of neighbors and to contact family members who lived at a lower elevation. My well neighbor and I were helping other folks in our area dig out and I used my radios to stay in touch with my wife while I was away from our property. I'm trying to get others in our area to get a radio and learn how to use it so we can check on each other when local crap happens. Sometimes all you need to do is talk to a neighbor.

I can confirm that during hurricanes, the same thing happens.

i defiantly would rather have a radio that i can program for many frequencies versus a cell phone. I remember the big earthquake we had her in 2019 and our cell service brought to its knees. Radio comms were working great and pretty busy.

Maybe try it with a Baofeng?

A friend of the family works for Northrop, and invited us and a few others to go out and watch the SLS booster test at their test range north of SLC yesterday. Of course, being out in the middle of nowhere means spotty cell service, which means "I packed a bunch of radios to hand out to the drivers in our group when we rendezvoused in town" a ways before the launch site. And as always, they did exactly what we needed them to, to coordinate as we went through the huge amount of traffic and people who were out there for the test.

True, if your definition of "SHTF" is only "massive, region or nation wide calamity or collapse." There's a whole lot of gray area between that and "normal", even more localized disasters (weather events, wildfires out in the sticks or on the edge of town, extended power outages) where they're totally appropriate for a situation where the shit has totally hit the fan, just maybe not to the point to where the zombies are chewing on the door knobs. Which is a long way of saying, they're useful in a whole lot of real world situations that might not reach the level of a massive, metro-wide (or worse) problem, but which someone is a lot more likely to encounter in reality than those larger scale problems.

Can't you just go to map and zoom in on your area to see the repeaters that are there?

With a wrist lanyard strap!

There are also those that are offline or stale. One needs to click the settings gear in the upper-left corner of the map to turn on the switches. That doesn't change the "type", just drops the filter.

I emailed them just now with a picture of the TD-H3 hooked up to a Surecom meter. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks!

This is true. Guys were having issues with the HF radios causing issues with the VHF/UHF radios in the trailer last year. Come to find out even some of the more experienced guys never thought to use common mode chokes at the antenna feed points and there aren't any toroids or clamp on ferrite beads on anything inside the trailer. I've been working on correcting all of that along with rerouting the different coax cables for some separation from each other and from all of the other cables. Poor coax shielding is why I will always suggest to buy the best quality coax that one can afford. The cheap coax will have very thin coverage on the braided shield which causes issues. I've stripped the outer sheath off of cheap Amazon coax and higher quality coax to show people the differences.

been working fine since yesterday afternoon..

I guess I should at least respond to the subject title. The radios are not good for the SHTF situations. Who in the hell are you going to talk to in those situations. You'll be lucky to talk to your next door neighbor given all the channel congestion occurring.

Speaking of that "anomaly" (...blowing the nozzle off the back is a hell of an anomaly, but anyway...), it looks like I accidentally captured at least part of it going sideways. Not the very big, not rocket-exhaust shaped flame in this shot: Vs 'nominal' a few seconds prior: It was SO worth the trip. If you get the chance, do it. Just, you know, bring plenty of water and be prepared for delays.

I have wanted to go to Promontory to watch some of these tests for years. I’m envious. Good for you taking your kids!!! It’s never too early to get them interested in science.

Hey hey hey, it only failed, like, a little bit! It ran fine for 100 seconds out of a 120 second burn. 83%'s still a passing grade in my book! I know, not ideal, but it kinda made it more memorable for us watching. Definitely for the group of kids we had with us.

While this is for repeaters the same consideration applies to radios in close proximity. Crappy coax with high RF leakage can cause issues too. https://www.repeater-builder.com/antenna/double-shielded-coax.html

That's likely helping more than you think. You can test that by taking the radios and just air spacing them.

Congrats on passing the General This weekend is the Field Day contest - very easy exchanges (check ARRL rules) If you can get on HF I think you can have some fun working several stations all over the country.

That's true of most electronics you buy today. Mostly gone were the old days where the radio/TV etc came in a metal box. Now all you get is a cheap plastic one and people wonder why they get garbage pickup from their LED lights and other crap. There is a section on an Anytone D878 site where there are instructions on how to spray a nickle coating inside the case to improve the shielding. You might try this with the IC-7300. AT-D868_D878_Info_and_mods_20240607.pdf

Those are likely Amazon Marketplace listings (look for "Sold by" on the product listing). There are good marketplace sellers and not-so-good ones. I don't know which exact listing you were looking at, so I can't check. A 15" antenna is not going to fit in the standard Baofeng box without folding it, which will damage most antennas except for the "tacticool" tape-measure ones. So the seller would need to provide Amazon with either an oversized box with the radio box inside, along with the antenna, or securely tape the antenna to the Baofeng box and put a "Sold as a set - do not split" label over it. Both are going to drive up the seller's costs (for increased per-unit warehouse space at Amazon in the first case, or for a non-robotic handling surcharge for the second case). You may need to do an "item not as described" return through Amazon. They will likely ask you to work with the seller to resolve the issue, and the seller may try to drag things out, so start the process ASAP so you don't time-out on the Amazon 30-day return window.

Alright, I passed my general, so now I can talk to anonymous men across the country instead of just anonymous men in my area. Since I don't have an HF rig yet, I hopped on someone's public KiwiSDR and started poking through the 40m/80m bands and heard... old dudes talking about soup. I can't get away from it. Apparently radios are meant for soup chat.

They must all be using voice modifiers on the repeaters around here

Make sure he sells you periods and not decimal points.

I sell punctuation cheap. Contact me for pricing.

I need to get back to studying for AE. Same as last years study course, life got busy and I'm behind again.