WRYZ926

Oh boy, I must really be messed up and beyond any help since I have my Amateur and GMRS licenses. I can't speak for other repeater owners. I do try to answer any and all requests in a timely manner. PS: I'm not crazy, I am perfectly insane, verified even.

I have bulkheads through the wall to bring the coax in. I also have a metal plate on each side of the wall with a piece of 1/4" 20 all thread through the wall that I use for my ground point. I have a ground rod right below the bulkheads and the all thread, plates, and lightning arrestors are all connected to that ground. That ground rod along with my masts and roof mounted antennas are all bonded to my service ground. I disconnect the coax from the bulkheads inside the house and put caps on them. I know the caps won't be much protection but hopefully they keep any charge coming down the coax and just shooting into the room. Nothing will protect from a direct lightning strike. All we can do is minimize the damage from near strikes.

I use to run a CB antenna on a metal toolbox that was mounted to a homemade wooden flatbed. The tool box was definitely not big enough for a proper ground plane for CB/11m but it still worked. A few guys run a Yaesu ATAS antenna or other types of screw driver antennas on the bed rails of their trucks and Gladiators without issue. HF definitely needs a bigger ground plane than VHF or UHF.

That's great if it works for him. All antennas, even the no ground plane antennas, will benefit from a ground plane. That being said. Plenty of ground plane antennas still work with a less than optimal ground plane underneath.

Definitely don't overcomplicate things. Either use the existing fuses where they are at or move them closer to the battery. I have yet to burn up any wires or blow fuses even when talking for a long time with any of my 50 watt dual band and GMRS radios. And I run them on high power all of the time.

A mount on the spare tire is popular. You will want to use an antenna that does not require a ground plane with the spare mount for best performance. All antennas are a compromise, the trick is to decide which compromise you can live with and still get the performance you want.

We run separate duplexers with all of our repeaters. The repeaters and duplexers are all mounted in a server rack so no coax going between the repeaters and duplexers are not longer than 2 feet, most are closer to 12-18 inches in length. If the cables are going to longer than 3 feet then definitely go with coax that has less loss since you are going to always lose some power after the duplexers.

Even small coax like RG8X, RG316, and RG58 will work just fine for short cables. RG316 is popular to connect repeaters to duplexers. They are generally 3 foot or shorter so loss is not an issue.

It's no different than using a chimney mount or a satellite dish mount on your roof. You run the proper sized ground wire from the antenna/mount to ground. Look at a properly installed satellite dish antenna. There will be a ground wire running with the coax. And that ground wire should be bonded to your service ground before the coax enters the structure. The same goes for cable TV, there will be a ground wire coming off the feed to your home and it to will be grounded to the service ground when installed correctly.

Unless I misread the NEC and other sources, the tower should have its own ground and be bonded to the service ground. This is correct. Steve did a good job of expelling things

Band pass filters are like anything else, buy the best /highest quality you can afford. Again stay away from the cheap ones found on Amazon and eBay. The Morgan high performance band pass filters are not cheap at $140 each. I will be purchasing some for my shack since there are four other active amateur radio operators within 500 yards of my house. I plan on buying one or two at a time since they are expensive. The proper use of common mode chokes, toroids and clamp on ferrite beads along with proper setup will help eliminate RFI issues. I have also found that using a line conditioner or UPS with EMI/RFI filters also helps cut down on noise. This includes computer cables near HF radios too. I had to swap out all of my old non shielded network cable with shielded CAt6 cables and shielded RJ45 connectors. Chasing down RF noise/interference can drive a person crazy. Take the time to eliminate as much as you can during initial setup of your radios.

I think the radios in a metal rack is helping and @Lscott said it's likely helping more than I think. Metal shields will be harder to work with on a portable setup. Having your radios in a metal box would work but you then have to worry about heat too. I know some of the fancy commercially available go boxes have fans in them to help with heat.

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).