WRYZ926

Yes that is a BNC connector. I used a digital microscope to see everything. And the toroids were not fun to wrap with arthritic hands. It's tough growing young at times. I figured that I would show you that antenna toggle you ideas for light portable antennas you can make to use with the G90 if you decide to go portable with it.

The G90 has one of the best tuners I have used. It does better than my LDG auto tuner. The G90 is definitely a nice little radio. I have built a 80m end fed half wave antenna but still need to get it installed and do final tuning. It tested good when I had it up temporarily on a 40 ft telescoping mast. My last antenna project that I built was an ultra light weight EFHW antenna for Parks On The Air. The unun (without antenna wire) weighs 0.6 ounces and is rated for 25 watts digital and 40 watts AM//SSB modes. It will be a perfect little antenna to go with the G90. Here are photos of it when I finished putting everything together.

My first HF antenna as a new tech was a home made 10m dipole. I hung it as an inverted v and have worked stations all over the world with it. I still have that antenna up. It works well for 10m and 11mm/CB. Mine also has good/useable SWR for most of the 2m band. Too bad I don't have a 2m radio with SSB capabilities. I mostly use my Icom IC-7300 for HF but I do find it fun to use my 20 watt Xiegu G90 on occasion. The farthest I have worked using the G90 and 10m dipole on SSB has been Ireland. It was hard getting through the pile up with only 20 watts but rewarding when I did make the contact.

Nice job @amaff It's always nice to see what people come up with using 3D printers. And who cares what Negative Nancy thinks.

Lscott is correct. Yes RG58 has high losses on UHF. But most vehicle installations will only use an average of 12 feet of coax. You can easily make up for any loss with a good well tuned antenna with some gain. I did the calculations for 12 feet of RG58 and antenna with 2 dBd of gain and an SWR of 1.8. You will be pretty much break even on power output. I used both 20 watt and 50 watt output for the calculations. 12 feet of RG58 with a 2 dBd gain antenna with SWR of 1.8 output power is ERP (effective radiating power) 50 watt radio = 53.7 watts ERP 20 watt radio = 21.5 watts ERP As you can see, as long as your antenna has an SWR of 1.8 or less and at least 2 dBd of gain then you will be fine using 12 feet of RG58. I used 12 feet since most magnet mounts come with 12 feet of coax. Most manufacturers list the gain in dBi and most loss calculators use dBd. Subtract 2.14 from the dBi value to get the dBd value. https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/

How old is your vehicle? Newer vehicles will shut the accessory port off after a few minutes. That is only one possibility. Also newer vehicles with the battery monitoring system will actually shut off circuits if it detects a low voltage from the battery. I don't remember off hand what the voltage cutoff is. So yet another possibility. For newer vehicles it is best practice to wire the radio positive wire directly to the battery and the ground wire directly to a chassis ground due to the battery monitor system and all of the computer modules onboard.

It will also depend on the brand of radio and the stock antenna it comes with. I have found in my testing that the Nagoya and Abbree 771G did make an improvement with my Baofeng UV-5R GMRS radios. My Wouxun KG-935G Plus does better with the stock antenna that comes with the radio. The Signal Sticks are popular and work well for 2m and 70cm. I would want to see what the SWR actually is on 467 MHz and 462 MHz. Not all dual band antennas will work well on GMRS frequencies.

As BoxCar has mentioned, different licensing pool. You still run across some KA call signs for GMRS. The KA call signs haven't been issued in about 30 years though. The standard for Radio and TV stations is still the same. All stations east of the Mississippi start with W and all stations west of the Mississippi start with K. There are a few exceptions to this. If I remember correctly there is one station in PA that starts with a K and one in TX that starts with a W. They had their call signs before things were standardized.

That will definitely make a difference, especially if it is a low ceiling and the metal garage door frame and tracks can and will have an effect.

Yes it should work using a straight through CAT cable.

4.61 amps while transmitting on high power is not bad at all. And a 10 AH LIPO4 battery should last quite a while considering you are going to be receiving the majority of the time. Now I wouldn't get into long rag chew sessions while running on battery power. And I would have no issues using the accessory port/cigarette lighter in vehicles since those are rated at 10 amps.

Another good alternative is the DX Engineering 400MAX coax cable. Another alternative is the JET brand coax from R&L Electronics. I've used plenty of the JET brand for jumpers and short runs 20 feet or less. I mostly order from ABR when I need a custom length and I don't feel like making my own cables. Otherwise I go with DX Engineering 400MAX for standard lengths and JET for my jumpers. Now let's see what Negative Nancy has to say about DX Engineering or JET coax cables.

ABR Industries coax cables are good to go. All of my coax cables that I use for Parks On The Air are from ABR.

You just can't help yourself can you. No one cares what you think and we definitely do NOT care for your Negative Nancy attitudes towards everything. You seem to have a mental issue and you really should go seek professional help for it.

To each their own. I do not trust anything attached to the headrest to stay put in an accident. And I too have seen my fair share of accidents and weird things do happen in an accident. I personally won't take the chance if I don't have to. Plus I don't want any type of speakers right next to my head while driving. I want to be able to hear everything that's going on.

I beginning to think that he got kicked off of the short bus and possibly banned from ever riding it again.

Some people are just such tightwads that they can turn coal into diamonds when they walk. $25 is not a bad price for software that you know is going to work with your radio. RT Systems is working on more Mac versions of their software for different radios. Or at least that's what they stated in the email I received from them. The only time I have had an issue with RT Systems software was when trying to use a cheap programming cable with a Prolific chip on my Mac. I'm sure the Amazon cable was a pirated Prolific chip on top of that. I tried that cable with RT Systems software on a Windows 10 and a Windows 11 computer and it worked. Though 11 did give me a little trouble. The same cable absolutely will not work on a Mac. I tried that cable with my 2018 Mac mini and my M4 Mac mini. Edit: The cheap cables from Amazon with the Prolific chips do not work with MacOS. There is a thread on the QRZ forum on this and it seems the pirated Prolific chips found in the cheap Amazon cables are the main culprit.

The Comet SBB1 NMO is a good antenna for how short it is. Mine does well for 2m, 70cm and definitely usable on GMRS too. I have mine in the center of the roof on my Ford Escape.

I'll race you. Though I think I won as far as posting memes go!

We have a total of 6 repeaters. Our 2m repeater sees the most traffic and somedays it is really busy and other days you might go hours in-between hearing anyone. Then we have our GMRS repeater and it is the same way as our 2m repeater.We also have our main 70cm repeater at the same location that hardly gets used anymore. We also have two other 70cm repeaters that are located at opposite ends of our area. All three 70cm repeaters are currently setup for analog and DMR. No one uses DMR or any other digital FM modes. So we are in the process of getting rid of DMR and will then have all three linked together with the ability to to also link the three to our 2m repeater. Our 2m repeater has around an 80 mile radius of coverage so we get a bit of traffic from people traveling through mid Missouri. As Steve has mentioned, there is definitely more to amateur radio than talking on FM repeaters. a lot of guys use Single Side Band on the HF bands and even on the 2m band. And there are all of the different digital modes being used along with CW. Just because you don't hear anyone on the 2m/70cm repeaters in your area doesn't mean that amateur radio is dead.

I have owned my 2023 Ford Escape for a year now and I have not gotten the courage to drill the roof for NMO mounts. Part of that is I hate messing with the headliner since there are airbags there.

That is one of the reasons we used to get our club to put in the GMRS repeater. And we have had a couple of GMRS users decide to get their amateur license afterwards.

That is what I do with my aluminum 2m j pole along with the 2m and 70cm Fara-j antennas. The Fara-j antennas are nice in that they roll up in a nice small package.

They do work and are great for those with height restrictions. They aren't high gain like the 38" or taller antennas but they do beat the Nagoya UT-72G. As you mentioned, they are more discreet too.