WRYZ926

That's actually not a bad price. Messi and Paoloni coax is some of the best.

Yes they are common. I either use ABR Industries coax with 5 ferrite beads on one end or I will use a separate choke in line. You want to place the choke at the antenna feed point when using a 1/4 wave vertical or dipole antenna. Chokes made using clamp on ferrite beads and ugly chokes will handle what ever power the coax is rated for. The same goes for wrapping coax through a toroid. I know ABR Ind. coax is not the cheapest. ABR's quality is good and their cables are well made. Sometimes it's better to spend a little more on good coax.

Try moving the EFHW around in different directions to see if that helps. You will have a null off the end of the antenna inline with the wire.

Now here is a high noise floor! That was on January 3 2026. I had a high noise floor on every band but 20 was the worse.

Different types of antennas will pick up different levels of nearby RF noise.

The solar panels are most likely the cause of your RF noise. It is not noticeable on VHF and UHF but it is definitely noticeable on HF. Chasing down RF noise can drive you crazy. You could try to do something to make sure you solar system is RF quite but that could get expensive. I would try to talk to the manufacturer or installer of your system to see what they have to say.

If the ferrite beads didn't work and a CMC doesn't make a difference then the RF noise is something close to you and there won't be much you can do about it. There are plenty of people that have a high noise floor at their home so they mostly work portable to get away from the RF noise sources. You can get or make a hand held yagi or loop antenna for a VHF HT to try and chase down any outside sources of RF noise. I have had to do that to chase down noisy transformers. Once I identified the bad transformers I contacted the utility company and they fixed them fairly quickly. Now if it's a neighbor's LED lights, solar panels, etc then you will have to try and work with them to fix things.

Meshtastic is pretty useless in my area outside of the three big cities (populations of 15,000) in my area. Most of the area is very rural with small towns spaced put between 7-12 miles apart. The three big cities are about 15-20 miles from each other. I've done some modeling and actual testing with Meshtastic and I can only get a range of about 6 miles and only if I use a node at least 30 feet above ground with a directional yagi antenna. Meshcore might have batter chance of good coverage but only if good repeaters are set up in every town in the area. Otherwise it will suffer from a lack of coverage too. You can forget about any kind of good range with Meshtastic or Meshcore without any type of repeaters or a lot of nodes close enough to pass traffic.

Here is the formula for figuring out the length of an EFHW counterpoise. The counterpoise length should be 5% of a full wave length of the lowest band that the EFHW is tuned for. Examples: 10M x 0.05 = .5 meters/ 1.6 feet 20m x 0.05 = 1 meters/ 3.3 feet 40m x 0.05 = 2 meters/ 6.6 feet The lengths don't have to be exact as long as they are close to the lengths above. Or if you want to still use the coax as the counterpoise then place 5 - 7 clamp on ferrite beads at the lengths above. Measure from the unun when placing ferrite beads on the coax. So for a 10m EFHW you place the ferrite beads .5 meters/ 1.6 feet from the unun. Five clamp on ferrite beads works well as a common mode choke for the higher HF bands. You do want to use seven ferrite beads for the lower HF bands. Using a CMC - common mode choke is a must when using an EFHW antenna to keep RF out of your radio. And it doesn't matter if you are running 5 watts, 100 watts, or 500 watts. Using a CMC also works well for any type of HF antenna. You want to keep all HF from traveling down the coax and into the radio. I use a CMC with all of antennas. If you decide to use a separate counterpoise then place the CMC at the unun. A CMC and counterpoise might not help with the noise floor depending on your location. Some locations are just RF noisy and there isn't much you can do about it.

The noise floor will vary depending on your location and what is around you. A lot of things produce RF noise, from the electric lines to LED lights, to everyone's phone chargers. There is no way to get away from it short of going out to the middle of nowhere without any electrical lines or electrical devices. Plus we have just had a bunch of solar flairs which will also cause RF noise. This is part of how the HF bands are.

I definitely would not mess with the antenna if the SWR is 1.3 and 1.5. I have a Comet CA-712EFC and the SWR is 1.7 and I will not bother trying to mess with it as long as it is under 2:1

I know and it's all good.

I know capacitance hats work. I'm curious if the cheap one from Amazon makes much of a difference.

That's like when I have too much blood in the caffeine system and make posts. The Icom V86 is a mono band 2m only radio. Even though I am not a fan of Yaesu, I would recommend the FT65 over the Icom V86 or Icom IC-T10. In fact, I can't recommend the IC-T10 at all, it isn't any better than the UV/GT 5R radios. The Explorer QRZ-1/TYT UV88 radios are pretty decent. And Wouxun HT's are good to go too. One that surprised me is the Quansheng UV-K5 (8)/UV-K6. My uncle sent me one to play with and they are pretty decent radios right out of the box. The Baofeng GT-5R is locked to the amateur bands only. The UV-5R from places like B-Tech and Radioddity are also locked to amateur bands.

10 meters usually dies once the sun goes down. But 10m will be open after dark more than you think. You will be surprised when it is actually open past dark.

Let us know how those amazon capacitance hats work.

Most of your SOTA and general QRP operators use CW since it doesn't take much power to make long distance contacts. The US military did away with CW only to figure out they needed it when digital radios failed in Afghanistan and in the Pacific Ocean. CW is not dead. Some curmudgeons have made comments that the CW portion of the license tests should be brought back. I don't agree with that as that will definitely keep the hobby from growing. CW is not for everyone. But it is also far from useless. Technicians can use CW on the 2m, 10m, 15m, 40m, and 80m bands. Yes some people still use CW on the 2m band.

@TNFrank you got this and I'm sure you will do just fine on the actual test. I want to learn CW but I need to figure out what's going on with my ears and hearing first. CW is useful and it is the original weak signal mode. You can make contacts on 5 watts using CW that you would not be able to make using voice modes. The weak spot with Meshtastic is the hardware. And as mentioned, it really only woks well in densely populated areas. My club is looking into setting up Meshtastic and I had to tell them it won't work very well in our area when there are only two towns with populations over 10,000 people. Most towns have a population between 1,000 and 3,000. Plus every town is at a minimum of 7-10 miles apart. We would have to setup Meshtastic nodes or repeaters in every town to even attempt to get a good coverage area.

You should tune into 7.200 MHz on the 40m band. You would swear that you were listening the CB channel 19 by the way those knuckle draggers talk on 7.200. There is a frequency on the 20m band they like to hang out at but I forget what it is.

The main thing to look out for when installing an antenna in your attic is electrical wires and metal duct work. Both can affect the antenna and tuning. This will effect HF antennas more but still a concern with VHF and UHF antennas. All of the duct work and a bunch of electrical wires are in my attic so putting any type of antenna there is out for me.

@Lscott You can add a dirty FM radio station antennas to that list. There is a local FM station near me that will flat out mess with every brand of 2m mobile radio when you drive by the station. One time I heard the broadcast on my Icom IC-2730 for a few seconds when I was within 1/8 mile from the station. Normally it is just a bunch of static.

I used MARS stations a few times to call back home when deployed overseas. It was always funny as my parents would forget to say "over" after each transmission.

The Baofeng radios aren't my first choice and they are far from the best hand held radios I own. But if I need something small to stick into a pocket or I am doing something where I might damage or lose a radio then I grab one of my Baofeng radios.

The last radios I bought were a pair of Baofeng UV-5R Minis for $37 during the Black Friday sales. They actually work pretty good.

A lot of guys in my local club like to brag about how they saved money by purchasing Baofeng hand held radios. I have one guy that likes to call cheap chines radios "Hop Sing Specials' I always give him trouble when he makes a comment on how well my radios work/sound by telling him that I'm using a Hop Sing Special.