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I went and did this. And it's quite easy; no problem finding it and downloading it to print. . And yes, the Official Copy I printed today does not have any mention of Line A that the one I printed in '20 did.

You will not see any loss or gain on 2m using 25 feet of RG8X. You will see a loss of 1-2 watts ERP (output at the antenna) using 25 feet of RG58. You would be okay with either coax as long as you stay at 35 feet or less. This was figured using an antenna with only 1 dB of gain. The more gain the antenna has the higher the ERP will be. The https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/ is an excellent source to figure out line loss with the different types of coax. Using any type of portable J pole or similar antenna up high will help extend your range when using a hand held radio. I have built a 2m j pole using faraday cloth and getting it up at 20-25 feet above the ground made a vast improvement. I can get into the local 2m repeater that's 22.5 miles away with a 5 watt HT but there is some noise on my transmission. I was told that I sounded like I was on my base radio when using the same HT connected to the faraday j pole.

As someone whose end goal is to RV full time in retirement, I feel like this might be my focus when I enter the world of HAM. I appreciate the insight.

All of the above. POTA allow one to enjoy the outdoors while being on the air at the same time. One benefit is that those living in noisy RF environments can get away from all the noise by going to a park. Some will take a 100 watt radio and some will even take amplifiers. Others like using QRP radios (10 watts or less) to see how far away they can be heard and make contacts. I like using my 20 watt Xiegu G90 and keeping my antennas light and simple. Mostly it is a way to get out of the house and have fun.

I don't have a POTA rig, but there seems to be two purposes: 1. You get to operate your mobile radio away from a permanent location so if you're into emergency or off-the-grid communication, this is gamified practice. 2. Playing with radios outside is more fun than playing with radios inside.* *weather permitting

Straight forward and/or simple to understand along with the federal government in the same sentence makes as much sense as military and intelligence used in the same sentence. This topic comes up regularly and the answers are always the same each time. I know my original official copy of my GMRS license issued in October 2023 had the line A restriction on it while a newer copy downloaded a few months ago does not have the line a restriction. I have driven myself batty trying to read, understand, and explain NFA and GCA regulations to people. I will let other members here explain the FCC regulations. PS: NFA and GCA makes as much sense as FCC regs do.

This ^^^ I would add also that a lot of people assume Amazon will be the cheapest but many things like radios, cable, antennas, and other things you’ll find are less from places like DX Engineering, Ham Radio Outlet, Gigaparts… it’s definitely worth shopping around and comparing from reputable places. Make sure you factor shipping cost though but sometimes you’ll find what you want is cheaper at one place over two or three others for whatever reason and it doesn’t always seem to be the same place that’s cheaper… just my two cents, that I saved lol.

I am interested in attending

It came today! Now I just got to find some one to go up on my tower.

Oh, yea. Whoops.

As I have mentioned previously, I have used Parallels in my Mac to run Windows as far back as Windows XP for programming my non-Chirp radios. It is not well known that you don’t actually have to activate Windows for it to operate properly. To rephrase without double negatives, Windows operates properly without having to pay for it (authorize it).

Pretty much any and all federal regulations were written by lawyers for lawyers. None are easy for the average person to understand. And as we see with FCC regulations and NFA/GCA regulations, some portions can and do conflict with each other. I don't blame you for wanting clarification if the line A issue might affect you or not. I also would not take what is posted on any forum as 100% correct without first verifying the information. I dealt with enough conflicting and/or confusing regulations back when I had my FFL. And it has not gotten any easier when dealing with the NFA and GCA.

Awesome link, thanks. Looks like LMR-400 would work well. At 220MHz and 20ft@10W I'd only get a 26% power loss so I'd still be putting out over 7W of power.

Somehow posted the PPOTA reply twice.

The best is still John Kruk of Yaesu's PPOTA. Porta Potties OTA. He has cups and T-Shirts etc. that he hands out to in person visitors at Ham Fests.

Personally I wouldn’t use either one of those. I would buy a better known brand such as ABR, M&P, DX Engineering, Times-Microwave, Belden, etc. The way to make certain you’re getting a quality product is to buy from a vendor you trust to provide quality products. If you buy an unknown cable from an unknown vendor on Amazon you’re completely responsible for assessing the quality.

Losses through any coax go up as the frequency goes up. RG-58 is terrible for UHF. RG8x is better than RG58 but still poor compared to something like LMR400. Each person must calculate what the actual losses will be and decide whether they can afford that amount of losses. What’s worse, the losses are expressed in decibels which can be confusing until you become familiar. A loss of 3 decibels means you lost 50%. A loss of 6 decibels means you lost 75%. Every coax company has charts that show us how much loss they have at a particular frequency, usually for 100 feet or 100 meters. Be careful not to compare the two. A meter is more than three feet. Losses increase with length as well but that’s a linear relationship: twice as long equals twice the losses if the frequency is the same. Most of us find a calculator online to calculate the losses at the exact frequency and length of the type of cable you’re looking at. Just google “coax loss calculator“ and you’ll find one. This is the most common one: https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/

I am happy with the Nagoya 320A I have. Works well on all three bands

I, unfortunately or otherwise, do not have a castle atop a golden hillside. It's a split level in a depression, surrounded by foothills. I can hit their repeater to get over the hills but within the bowl, my friends and I are trying to put something up to link us all without having to simplex around the bowl, relaying messages. We wouldn't and couldn't compete with this other local group. Our thought is, though, if we can take our traffic off the mountaintop and keep it in the bowl, it's a win-win for everyone. We don't have to pay and they have more bandwidth to talk about smoking meat, going to Wally World, eating at Sonics, and talking about the good old days of CB and sending postcards. Or whatever it is they talk about. But your point is well made about the rent/lease of a repeater. I had no idea it could be that expensive. Dues, at that point, make sense. Like I said before, go easy on me. I'm new.

You should teach them a lesson by putting up your own repeater and letting everyone use it.

Got to be more careful Randy. There's no telling what you might bring back home from anonymous men.

But now we're back to operating in violation of FCC regulations. You may as well buy a $15 UV-5r.

About the only time I use MURS is when I want to be ornery and mess with the Walmart workers by sending them on wild goose chases for spills in different isles.