WRYZ926

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.

Like I said in an early post, the fact that both 7300s are in a mini rack along with the Morgan High Performance band pass filters works well for us inside our trailer. I do need to double check to make sure that the common mode chokes get put in place on both HF antennas before everyone starts transmitting for field day tomorrow.

Having the radios sitting on solid shelves helps, at least in our case. The mini rack shelves are solid without any holes in them.

We are using the Morgan High Performance band pass filters with great success. And the two IC-7300s are sitting one on top of the other in a mini rack in our e-com trailer. I'm not trying to argue or say you are right or wrong. I'm only stating my club's experiences.

Band pass filters are a must when operating multiple HF radios in close proximity to each other. We use them in our trailer for field day with good results. A few of us even use them on POTA if there are 2 or more people close to each other.

I still go outside during sever weather so I can make accurate reports to the Sky Warn Net. But I sure am not going to go chasing any storms. And I will head for cover if I see a tornado heading my way.

My local club is blessed that the local radio station has allowed us to put our repeaters at their tower sight. The reasons they are doing this is the fact that we are a non profit organization so its a tax write off for the radio station. The other is the owner supports amateur radio. We still have to have a licensed and bonded person to climb the tower to do any maintenance and we have to pay for our portion of the electric bill each month. We also had to put our own building up (shed) to hold all of our equipment. We are also responsible for any and all maintenance of our equipment to include antennas, coax, etc. Again we are very fortunate that the radio station allows us to use their tower free of charge. There is a real good chance that we will have to move all of our stuff if the radio station ever sells. As mentioned, finding an abandoned tower is not going to happen. They all belong to someone. Finding a tower owner that will let you use a tower for free is not very likely to happen either. Then there is the cost of antennas, coax, repeaters, other associated parts and supplies that will be needed. I sure would not bother installing a Midland or Retevis repeater on a commercial tower. Coax is another story. If the tower has any height then you are looking at more than 100 feet of coax which means you are going to want to use 7/8" or larger Heliax cable. And don't bother trying to install consumer grade antennas on a tower. As good as Comet and other brands are for consumer use at home, they will never hold up installed up high on a commercial tower. You will be paying someone to climb the tower to replace the antennas every few years. Commercial repeater antennas are not cheap.

Didn't you know that watching tornadoes is an outdoors spectator sport here in the midwest?

Trees are one of your worst enemy when it comes to UHF, especially cedar and pine trees. And it's not always possible to get an antenna above the local trees either. We look forward to updates.

As much as my wife likes to talk, I still can't get her to talk on the radio.

I kept my land line phone for a while since my youngest son was always misplacing his cell phone. He would use the land line to find his cell phone.

It looks like it depends on what state you live in. Most online vendors do collect Missouri sales tax but so far Giga Parts has not done so.

Here is a simple to understand description of IP ratings: https://www.iec.ch/ip-ratings The first numeral refers to the protection against solid objects and is rated on a scale from 0 (no protection) to 6 (no ingress of dust). The second numeral rates the enclosure’s protection against liquids and uses a scale from 0 (no protection) to 9 (high-pressure hot water from different angles).

@marcspaz thank you for the detailed information on tuning the duplexer. We are lucky in that one of our members retired from Sound Solutions and he still has access to all of their equipment. He has tuned all of our duplexers.

Nothing wrong with that plan at all.

The Wouxun KG-935G is a nice radio with plenty of bells and whistles. The Wouxun KG-805G and KG-905G are simpler without any buttons to mess with on the radio. And the Wouxun programming software, available from Buy Two Way Radios, is easy to use.

You are going to have tax and shipping pretty much anywhere you order from now days. Giga Parts is one of the few radio related venders that doesn't charge sales tax. And most places will wave shipping fees if your order is over a certain amount.

A magnet mount mobile antenna on a 9x13 baking sheet or a large pizza pan works well for a temporary setup. Another idea for mounting a base antenna is using a satellite dish mount also commonly called a j mount. I use a few j mounts for my different antennas. They have held up to 50-70 MPH winds just fine. The Antenna Farm has the Comet CA-712EFC for $124 and the Comet CA-GMRS for $80. The CA-712EFC is rated at 9 dBi and the CA-GMRS is rated at 5.5 dBi. There are other brands of antennas available too. I personally would go a little cheaper on the radio and spend my money on LRM400 or equivalent and a good antenna. Just try to avoid the cheap coax from Amazon and eBay.

I have to agree that a VR-N76 is not the radio for someone new to GMRS. I will suggest staying with an actual Part 95 certified GMRS only radio. There are plenty of options depending on how many bells and whistles you want. The Baofeng GMRS radios are cheap and they work. A step up will be one of the Wouxun radios. Some will state that you should not waste your money on cheap Chinese radios and they will suggest business band radios. Again I will suggest sticking with a Part 95 certified GMRS only radio. You can always get something different once you get comfortable with radios.

Outstanding! We look forward to your test results. As mentioned by many of us, a duplexer tuned for all of the GMRS repeater channels will not work as well as one tuned for just one channel.

This is a very useful calculator. You can try different types of coax along with different antennas. One thing to remember is that antenna manufacturers list gain in dBi while that calculator uses dBd. Subtract 2.15 from the dBi to get dBd. RG8 will have 67% loss per 100 feet and LMR400 has 48% loss per 100 feet. I know LMR 400 and equivalent coax is more expensive but it is worth the extra cost over RG8 for UHF/GMRS use.

Yes all APRS radios will send location data when operating in APRS mode.

Looking at the map on mygmrs, the only repeater I see that has coverage in your area is the Mesa Tumbleweed repeater. But you will have to either request permission and the PL tones or try to scan for them. And you might not even pick that one up depending on your exact location.

We have a longer hand time set on our 2m Motorola Quantar 125 for this reason. The Quantar 125 has a pretty high spike in amp draw when it firsts starts transmitting. The spike is fast/short enough that amp meters can't get a good reading. This caused us some issues with our Renogy inverter. The repeater would cause the inverter to throw a ground fault error and shut down. Our fix was to have the Quantar plugged into a line conditioner and the line conditioner is plugged into the inverter.

From what I remember there were different sizes of battery boxes that could be used with the PRC-77. They were heavy (for the size) even with just a single battery attached. And then you had the weight of any spare batteries you carried on your ruck sack.