WRYZ926

Resonant antennas are always going to be more efficient and work better. The G90 can easily tune all kinds of metal objects such as shopping carts, metal bleachers, chainlink fence, etc. But I would rather not have to even use the tuner if I don't have to. Using resonant and efficient antennas are more important when running QRP at 5 to 10 watts and is a big help even when running 20 watts. I have worked stations with my G90 and a resonant antenna where others using 100 watts and an external tuner could not.

Stop with the negativity. We all know that you are just a hateful rude person with no friends. You really need to pull your head out of your forth point of contact and then see a doctor so that your headspace and timing can be reset. And to answer why someone would want to listen to the NOAA channels, the internet might go out during a bad storm or the person might be somewhere that there is no internet or cell service.

Yes I am aware of that. I've seen clubs setup in Walmart parking lots during summer field day for the public exposure too.

Yes is it only a joke, most of the time. I will mess with friends on occasion that work at Walmart.

About the only time I use MURS is when I want to be ornery and mess with the Walmart workers by sending them on wild goose chases for spills in different isles.

Well I can tell you that not all have switched over to digital modes. The Montgomery County Missouri Sheriff department and Mexico, Missouri Public Safety (fire and police) most definitely are still using analog. And again a lot of the rural/small town volunteer fire departments around me are still using analog. Now the MCSD is currently in the process of switching over the state wide trunked P25 system. But they are still currently using analog at this time. And even the Mo Highway Patrol still have analog radios in their vehicles so that they can still communicate with agencies such as the MCSD that are still using analog. We were listening to a car chase on Interstate 70 in Montgomery County just yesterday afternoon. MCSD and MoHP were using analog radios the entire time. MCSD is on 158.730 analog and Mexico Mo PS is on 155.925 analog.

Here is the main website for Parks On The Air: https://parksontheair.com POTA can be fun and it's good practice for just in case situations where you might have to go mobile/portable in real life emergencies. Some guys will use 100 watt HF radios for POTA while others will use 20 watt radios and some will only use QRP radios (10 watts or less). I use a Xiegu G90 20 watt radio and do have the Xiegu 100 watt amp that I can use if I want or need to. My brother likes hauling his Icom IC-7300 with him. Other guys in our club use QRP radios only. And I have also seen guys use 400 + watt amps for POTA. But the bigger the amp the bigger the batteries you need to run everything. Portable quarter wave antennas with telescoping whips and wire end fed half wave antennas are probably the most popular antennas for POTA. You will see some use a telescoping mast for their EFHW antennas while others just throw one end up into a tree. Different parks have different rules on that. Then there is also SOTA - Summits On The Air and IOTA - Islands On The Air. The SOTA guys pretty much all use QRP radios.

Yes most are using P25 and trunked systems. But some are still using analog and have not made the switch to P25. I know of at least 2 law enforcement agencies in my local area that are still using analog. And some of the small town volunteer fire departments are still using analog also. Missouri is a very rural state once you get outside of the 4 big metro areas of Columbia, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield. Even the state capital is not that big.

The 1.25m/220 MHz band might be dead in some areas but it is alive and well in other areas. No one uses the band around me and there is only one 220 repeater in the entire state (that's listed) and it is linked full time to a 2m repeater. And yes UPS did get a small portion of the band that they have never used. There is a company trying to get a portion of the 900 MHz band for GPS right now which will be on the same frequencies that the LORA/Meshtastic devices use. I don't want to see any loss of frequencies on any of the amateur and GMRS bands. And I don't see GMRS being expanded since there are a lot of business and government use frequencies near the GMRS frequencies. And I sure don't want to have family businesses using open GMRS repeaters based on prior experiences with commercial farms in my area.

Cheap Amazon touch lamps are some of the worse when it comes to being interfered with from radios. And cheap LED light bulbs are noisy and will cause interference. I have seen where public safety frequencies have had issues with spurious emissions from cheap amateur band radios. But that too is pretty rare. And the amateur radio would have to have SE's that are almost as strong as their primary frequency.

I definitely can't use all leather inside the waste band holsters during the summer. They will soak up my sweat and cause any pistol that is not stainless steel to rust. So yes I can see how bridging the contacts on a hand held radio can shock some people. I have small skinny hands so I have not had that problem. I've never been shocked by my KG-935G, KG-Q10H or any other hand held radio.

There is always a chance of an issue but it is a very very slim chance of a radio interfering with pace makers now days. And since microwaves were mentioned. I remember when people were warned to never stand too close to a running microwave if they had a pace maker. And it's not just the spurious emissions as you mentioned. the 40m and 80 bands are very noisy. Though 40m seems to be worse. I had to install clamps ferrite beads on some appliances and electronics in my house along with on all of my computer cables and radio coax cables to keep them from picking up interference when transmitting on 40m with 50 to 100 watts.

This is correct. I always had to wear gloves when machining aluminum investment cast molds. My sweat would turn the aluminum and my hands black.

We were running under our call sign of W0CSR. We mostly worked 20m, 40m, and 80m. 10m and 15m was pretty dead. Most of our contacts were on 20m and 40m. And KOR is definitely a valid call sign. KOR has a New Florence address but is actually located south of there closer to Big Springs. He has an old 100 foot cell phone tower setup and runs a 1500 watt amp all of the time. He actually lives in another state and remotely operates his station most of the time. He does come to Missouri for special events and such. His station is in a remote part of the county in the river hills and the road to get there is more of a goat path. We could have used a 1x1 call sign but we have always just used the club's call sign.

I have seen spurious emissions cause cheap appliances and lights turn on and off. That can be fun if it happens to be your neighbor's stuff that is affected. Baby monitors can be annoying at times from the interference they can cause. And it's always fun to mess with neighbors that have scanners that they leave on all of the time that are set to scan all frequencies. Running digital modes on the HF bands makes some obnoxious noses on scanners.

I broke down and participated in the Missouri QSO party this weekend. Four of us got together and ran under the club call sign. We kept everything casual and didn't try too hard. It was pretty fun getting to rag chew with the others while one guy was at the radio.

Hand held radios are like potato chips, you can't have just one (or three).

Or you can learn how to tell someone that they are an ID10T with a serious case of the dumb butt very tactfully to where they will smile and thank you. It is an acquired skill. I learned in the Army how to tell a General where to go tactfully without getting into trouble. Otherwise just ignore the ate up individuals with their negative waves. His headspace and timing is definitely off.

I have a group 24 deep cycle lead acid battery along with a group 24 LiPo4 battery. The LiPo4 battery is half the weight of the deep cycle lead acid battery. The Lipo4 battery weighs 24 pounds while the lead acid weighs 48 pounds. I was using the lead acid battery to run the 45 ln thrust trolling motor on my 10ft Bass Pro Pond Hopper. I have switched to the group 24 LiPo4 batter for the weight saving. I still get the same performance and run time out of the trolling motor when using the LiPo4.

Open up Device Manager and then click on Ports. FTDI chips will say Silicon Labs since that is who created the drivers for the FTDI chips

Line of sight does make more of a difference when using VHF and UHF. I'm glad to hear that you are getting into all of the repeaters now. A j pole antenna has zero gain when measured in dBd, which is the same as a dipole antenna. Using the kv5r loss calculator and your specs, you will have an ERP of 21.8 watts. As you see that will still work even though you are losing about half your power output. Switching to 50 feet of LMR400 will only gain you 6.9 more watts on ERP. I would not bother switching out the RG-213 to LMR400 for that little power gain. What will make a difference is going with an antenna with higher gain. But no need to change anything if it is working well for your needs.

Each manufacturer is going to have different instructions when it comes to using their batteries. I use Redodo brand batteries and they do not have any warnings on their website that I could fine. How to Connect Batteries in Series and Parallel? As always, consult the manual that comes with your batteries or consult the manufacturer directly. Make sure that what ever charger you use is designed for lipo4 batteries. I use a Bioenno 5 amp charger for my 10 AH batteries and a Redodo 10 amp charger for the 50 ah batteries.

You can safely connect LiPo4 batteries in series or parallel or both. LiPo4 batteries do have a BMS (battery control module) that protects them. Always use the exact same size and capacity batteries when connecting multiple LiPo4 batteries together. It is also advisable to make sure they are the same age. IE you don't want to connect a brand new inline with an old battery I run 4 10AH LiPo4 batteries hooked in parallel in my small battery box and two 50 AH LiPo4 batteries connected in parallel in my big go box. I also have an Apache case with two 10 AH LiPo4 batteries and a spot for my Xiegu G90. I can run those two batteries separately or in parallel if I want.

A lot will depend on the gain of the antenna. According to the https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/; you will get an ERP of 1.9 watts when using a radio with 5 watts output, 100 ft of RG-213, and an antenna with 1 dBd of gain. As you can see the calculated ERP is 1.9 watts Now the ERP will go up as the antenna gain goes up. So if the antenna gain is 2 dBd then the ERP will be 2.4 watts. And if you jump up to a gain of 5 dBd then the ERP will be 4.7 watts One thing to keep in mind is that most antenna manufacturers list the gain in dBi while most loss calculators use dBd. Subtract 2.14 from the dBi value to get the dBd value. The kv5r coax loss calculator is not exact but it is close enough to see what the loss difference is between different types of coax and at different lengths.