WRYZ926

Thanks for posting your results. Your results are close to what my two 2x4SR antennas showed when tested on the 1.25m band. I have not hooked up my KG-XS20H to either antenna to test yet as there is not any 1.25m activity in my area.

@nokones that is hilarious. I would have done the same thing and messed with the guy. That is better than my friend driving through neighborhoods and scrambling everyone's TV's with his CB and linear amp when we were in high school. Since statute of limitations has passed. While at Ft Devens, we would have to test the airborne electronic warfare equipment and we would occasionally have some fun messing with the locals.

Man I could have some fun when passing people with third brake light mounts if that was actually true.

That is just how it works with duplexers. You will always have a lower power output after the duplexer than what going in. How much loss will depend on the quality of parts used and how well tuned the duplexers are. I did an unscientific test to see if 50 watts had more reach than 20 watt. There is a GMRS repeater about 50-55 miles away and while I can get in at 20 watts, others had a hard time hearing me. My signal was loud and clear. The extra power did not get me anymore range but it did punch through foliage and other obstacles better than

All of the Part 95 certified Wouxun GMRS radios that I have messed with are locked down and can't be opened up for amateur bands. I haven't tried with the 805G. Now all of the Wouxun amateur band radios I have played with are easily unlocked.

You will be better off tuning a non ground plane antenna with those third brake light mounts as you will only be getting a good ground plane in front of the antenna. My 2010 F150 is all steel but it is pretty thin. The mag mount will hold the Comet 2x4SR at highway speeds but even a small tree branch will knock it off. I will definitely look into adding reenforcement of some type when I finally decide to drill for a permanent NMO mount.

And you can usually do the MARS Mod to these types of radios which will open up MURS, GMRS and CB bands. Not that I would condone using a non Part 95 certified radio on GMRS or a radio that puts out way more than 4 watts on 11m/CB or more than 2 watts on MURS

There's nothing wrong with staying at technician either. I know some that never upgraded from the old Novice license as they never use HF at all. I threw out the options with General incase you are interested. It never hurts to have more communication tools in the tool box.

I have a couple of Comet 2x4SR antennas. They work well for 2m, MURS, 70cm, and GMRS. SWR is below 2.0 on the 1.25m/220 MHz band too. Though I have not tried using the 2x4SR on 1.25m yet. It is also a popular antenna for EMS and public safety volunteers as it works well for them.

There are other uses for HF than just talking to anonymous men across the country. You can use VHF and HF with Winlink to send emails. And Winlink is commonly used by emergency management agencies during natural disasters. We had a couple of club members here passing messages to people in North Carolina during Hurricane Helena recovery efforts.

I can see one of two things happening when @marcspaz does that. Either he will jam everyone's TV's and radios in a two block radius or his hair will all be standing on end. Or possible both The old spark gap transmitters were known for being very RF noisy.

Either his reply got deleted or maybe he was banned. I don't see his reply. Destro, congratulations on getting your technician license. Now you know it won't be long before you start studying for the general which will open up the HF bands to you.

The TYT TH-9800 seems to have more issues that other TYT radios. I have a couple of TYT TH-7800 dual band radios that have not had any issues. I agree that you should contact the seller about your issues. There is an issue with your radio. Now while RG58 is working for you, RG8 and LMR400 (or equivalent) will work better. If your coax run is 60 feet then your ERP -effective radiating power is going to be around 48 watts. Here is the line loss per 100 feet of coax and ERP for 60 feet of coax for the 2m band RG58 - 70% 48 watts RG8 - 44% 70 watts LMR400 - 32% 79 watts Same numbers but for the 70cm band RG58 - 90% 25 watts RG8 - 66% 52 watts LMR400 - 48% 67 watts Same numbers for GMRS repeater frequencies RG58 - 91% 27 watts RG8 - 67% 50 watts LMR400 - 49% 66 watts I used the https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/ to get those numbers. I used an SWR of 1.7 and antenna gain of 3 dBd. A higher gain antenna will have a higher ERP. You really are doing yourself a disfavor by using RG58. Stay away from the cheap junk coax from Amazon and eBay. Buy the best quality coax that you can afford.

@amaff and @OffRoaderX, All I can go by is what the other club told us when we asked about the Kraken system. They did have all of theirs mounted on towers with a bunch of other radio and cell services. I don't know if that had any effect or not. It is quite possible that they did not have everything setup 100% correctly. We were considering getting the Kraken system for a couple of our repeater sites and knew the other club had them already. SO we reached out to the other club to get their experiences with Kraken.

I don't blame the repeater owners for shutting things down in that instance. I would probably do the same thing, at least temporarily.