WRWS304

Point taken ? I guess I learn by doing. I was mostly prepping for the ‘cheap Chinese radio’ and ‘get a REAL radio’ comments. I’ll spend less on both setups than a lot of HAMs spend on one radio. I am mostly concerned with a) monitoring and b) having the capability to TX with family/etc. in an emergency situation. I’ve been licensed for a while now and still have never felt the need, or desire, to join into conversations I’ve overheard. DS

Understood. As a new operator, I believe I qualify, however improving rapidly ? DS

Good afternoon! Thanks again folks for all the answers! It has been awesome to have a community willing to help fill in knowledge gaps for those of us new to the hobby. Figured I would share for posterity's sake what I ended up with for my SUV and for my home stations. If the blog is still open for comment on I'll report back with how it all works. Mobil TYT TH-9800D Plus, Quad-Band, Cross-Band, 50W Mobile Transceiver Browning BR-137 Tri-Band High Gain 22 inch Antenna (VHF 136-174 UHF 380-520 & 698-960 MHz) (Mostly for MURS, Marine and GMRS) President Electronics New Virginia Antenna (CB / 10m) Diamond Original CR320BNMO Triband Antenna (2m, 1.25m, 70cm) Anteenna TW-103 3 Position Coaxial Switch HF/VHF/UHF Bolton Technical LMR 600 Equivalent Ultra Low-Loss Coax Homebase TYT TH-9800D Plus, Quad-Band, Cross-Band, 50W Mobile Transceiver BTECH RPS-30M 30 Amp Regulated Universal Compact Bench Power Supply Yaesu SMB-201 Base Cooling Fan Assembly Solarcon IMAX-2000 Base Station Vertical Antenna (CB / 10m) CX-333 CX333 Original Comet Tri-Band Base Antenna (2m/1.25m/70cm) Nagoya NMO-200C 38.5" Antenna NMO Mount Dual Band (VHF 155, UHF 460MHz) (GMRS, MURS) TRAM 1465 Land Mobile Base Ground Plane Kit Bolton Technical LMR 600 Equivalent Ultra Low-Loss Coax (Yes, I'm on a budge, and yes I am confident I will upgrade my radios, antennas, etc. in the future) THANKS!

Thanks WRCI350! I am beginning to get a better lay of the land. Sounds like I will need to run 3 antntenas min. with mobile and base, and maybe even end up dropping the 6 and 1.25 meter bands to make the mobile project work. As for LID, I was told it meant 'Licensed Idiot'...and as a newbie I am relatively ignorant on the topic...and now licensed! LOL I have used radio comms in the military for two decades now, however it's always been spoon fed to myself/the team by the techs; 'here's your radio, here's your beacon, the a/b freqs and here's a Sat phone', kind of thing. DS

Marc, thank you for sharing your experience of trial and error. It seems like I’m going to need to have 3 antennas on the vehicle and 3 on my home base station. If I can get reasonable use out of the bands I mentioned with that set up, I will be happy DS

Thanks for the recommendations Alex! It sounds like using your plan I could have 3 antennas on the vehicles, and 3 on the homebase and covered most bands that I mentioned. DS

KAF6045 - what a wealth of information. Thank you for taking the time to share. The idea would never be to use more than one frequency at a time on the road or at home base; rather the different bands would be about keeping my options open to scan and transmit. Thank you for the recommendation. I’ll check them out! DS

Thank you Steve! Great info. I have seen a few of the antennas of which you speak, however was scared off by the reviews.

Good afternoon all, As a recently coordinated tech ham/gmrs LID, I had a couple of nagging questions that I wanted to ask help with before I spent too much time and money going in the wrong direction. I will also say I generally understand the concept of tuning an antenna for SWR, and the general rule that the more finally tuned an antenna is to a specific frequency, the more efficiency/performance one would receive on that frequency. What I am attempting to do is have a home base station and mobile station that has the ability to cover (TX/RX) the following bands with only reasonable performance: 6m, 10m, 11m (CB), 2m (including MURS), 1.25m, 70m (including GMRS frequencies). With that said, I’m trying to figure out what the antenna situation would end up looking like if I am able to achieve this. I have a little-to-no interest in having my log cabin cluttered with unsightly antennas, or my vehicle looking like some Ham-Clampett wagon going down the road. I would like point out here that I understand that having any quality access to this many bands may end up requiring me to install what I consider to be an unreasonable amount of antennas. I digress. As I was doing research on the topic, I came back across the concept of using an antenna tuner to ‘tune’ your antenna to the frequency using. This reminded me of the stories of Elmers using an antenna tuner to tune a lawn chair for TX/RX on the 6m band. Wouldn’t that ability to tune an antenna mean that I could get 1, 2 to 3 quality antennas mounted for my home base station and then with a combination of antenna switch and an antenna tuner, tune the antennas to whatever band I was using at the time? As for my mobile station, I am assuming I’m going to need 3 antennas to reasonably access and utilize the bands I mentioned, however, I was wondering if the same concept of 3 antennas + antenna switch + antenna tuner would apply for mobile stations that say they have ‘automatic antenna tuning’? Please forgive the long question post. Any clarification you could give would be outstanding. Thank you. Respectfully, DS