WRYZ926

A round pizza pan would be more aerodynamic

You can listen to the air band with a UV-5R but it won't sound very good since the radio doesn't have an AM receiver. And FM transmitters won't transmit on AM. Get a scanner if you really want to listen to air band frequencies. The stall speed for planes is around 100-115 MPH. Smaller/lighter planes have a lower stall speed compared to commercial jets. I wonder what speeds a magnet mount will hold up to. They hold fine up to 80 MPH on most vehicles. Plus the fact that most aircraft bodies are made from aluminum or other light weight materials so a magnet mount won't work.

That's standard procedure for the military. We would always have at least one ground based forward air controller per brigade and usually had one per brigade combat team. And they used the low VHF band, 30 - 70 (88) MHz. IN the big Army units, the FAC's were always Air Force personnel. They always complained about living in the mud and muck with us ground pounders.

Range will be very good in an aircraft. We have a guy that flies a lot and we can talk to him for a long ways on 2m and 70cm. The range of 70cm will be pretty much the same as GMRS. We really get good range on the repeater while he is flying. The repeater antennas are at 900-950 feet on a 1000 foot tower. We are blessed to have access to the local radio station's backup tower.

Glad I could help. POTA is fun. Even when band conditions are bad, it's still fun just to get outside and enjoy yourself. Another nice thing about POTA is that it is not a contest and you can work at your own pace. Some want to make as many contacts as possible while others take the time to talk to each person that answers their CQ.

Yes that is correct. The reason for that is you need at least 10 contacts to activate a park. Plus there is a bonus point for each park to park contact. Here is the official POTA website and rules for POTA activations. https://docs.pota.app

I use the HAMRS app for logging my POTA contacts. HAMRS will automatically upload my POTA logs to the POTA website and to my QRZ logbook. I log into the POTA website to spot myself along with see sign who else is working POTA. I try to work park to park as much as possible. And I will answer POTA stations when at home to help them active the parks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Wouxun KG-Q10H came with two antennas. I hardly ever use the 1.25m/6m bands as I am lazy and don't want to swap antennas constantly.

My Wouxun KG-935H came with the single tri band antenna and it is 14 inches long.

I've tested a few Nagoya and Abbree antennas. I found that it really depends on the brand of radio. I've tried dual band and GMRS antennas. Here are my result with my limited testing of the Nagoya/Abbree 771 dual band or GMRS Baofeng GT-5R and UV-5r GMRS - 771 did better than the stock antennas. Icom IC-T10 - no difference between the 771 and stock antennas Explorer QRZ-1 (TYT UV-88) - 771 just slightly better than stock Several Wouxun radios - stock antennas di better than any of the 771 antennas. I made sure to use the GMRS only 771G with the GMRS radios and the dual band 771 with my dual band radios. I know this is a small sample. As you can see it really depends on the individual radio. You can chase this rabbit all over and spend lots of money and you may or may not see much of an improvement.

LEDs are known to cause interference. The cheaper ones are worse. I have some Amazon 4 foot LEDs along with some cheap screw in LEDs from Walmart in my garage. all of them cause a lot of interference on my dual band and GMRS radios when the lights are on and I have radios on inside the garage.