TNFrank

I tried the beads on the coax and it didn't help. Hopefully the HF Choke will do the trick.

I found an EM-25 choke for a decent price on Amazon and I'm going to try the bead trick on the EFHE coax. Thanks.

I'm going to see about adding a counter poise. I'll have to figure out how long to make it and I'll use a fishing weight to keep it pulled down straight from the balun. The noise floor moves around depending on where I'm at on the Band. Some areas get really noisy then it drops out as you move away from that area then ramps back up as you approach another section of the Band. I'll make up a counter poise tomorrow and see how it works out.

I set it at 5 to 15 depending on the static I hear. I stopped running it in the "off" position. Here it is all the way off. VID_20260203_170655.mp4

So, how would someone get rid of all this static or is it just normal with an EFHW. VID_20260203_164946.mp4

My Inverted V is a lot more quite than my EFHW is.

To be fair I hooked up my 10M EFHW and heard them as well but with more static. I wonder why the EFHW has so much static and the Inverted V doesn't? I've added a Ferrite Bead to the RG8x cable and to the power and ground that goes to the radio but I still have a lot of static.

Just when I thought the Inverted V at 3 feet wasn't working I got a POTA about 3 miles away here in AZ.

Tested the Inverted V at 3 feet and still can't hear California. I wish I could find a solution to Short Range 10M HF.

So far I have 12 Countries logged on QRZ. Of course 2 of those are Alaska and Hawaii but still, this little QT80 Mobile is working great as a Base Station. I set my Inverted V up about 3 feet above the ground and tuned it to 1.4:1 SWR to see if I could get it to work as a NVIS for closer contacts. There's a lot of POTA Stations that are too close to hit with the EFHW so hopefully this will do the trick.

The IC-7300 seems to be the Standard radio a log of folks are using. Pair it with a decent antenna and you should get some pretty good range out of it.

I wish I could get closer in sometimes. I see a log of POTA activations too close to hear. Maybe when I get to use 20M or 40M I can get some of the closer contacts.

Later in the afternoon I managed to get a DX into Australia. I came in at a 4/1 and they were a 5/3-6. Band conditions were up and down but we exchanged call signs so it was official. Hard to believe a little 80w QT80 and an EFHW wire antenna could reach halfway around the World.

I'm not sure. I do have the bandwidth set to 2k instead of the 4k it was out of the box and I'm running my gain control at a 5 instead of off so it cuts down on a little bit of the background noise. I also have my RX Noise Reduction set to 4 to also help cut down on static.

I had a POTA station on 380 but couldn't hardly hear them because of the bleed over. I thought the FCCs was supposed to police stuff like this. Not trying to be a "Sad Ham" but dang, this is just crazy.

This is just ridiculous. If I wanted to hear all this CB stuff I'd listen to 11M. A big problem is they also bleed over to other frequencies causing a lot of interference. VID_20260202_094043.mp4

If you're going to keep the radio out for use you can cut the corner off of a plastic sandwich bag so the antenna has someplace to poke through and slip it over the radio to keep dust off of the radio. For long term storage I pull the battery off of the radio and put it with the radio back in the box and store it in my gun safe which is EMP proof so if we ever do take an EMP the radio would be protected and still work.

The day started out kind of slow. I'm running an EFHW set up for 20M(33'~ 18 gauge wire) that I tuned to less than 1.3:1 using my SWR meter. I ended up moving it to a different orientation and gave the 10M Band time to come around and ended up getting some QSO's including my last one in Hawaii that was a 5/6 here and I was a 5/5 there. All in all it was a pretty good day.

I hadn't thought about that mainly because most POTA Activactions are over once the sun starts to sit.

I'm trying to get LESS Fars. 10M skips right over a lot of the States close to Arizona including here too. I hear that 20M and 40M will allow you to make contacts CLOSER to your home base.

I'm not expecting a lot from 5w. My hopes are to get some closer POTA contacts on 20M and 40M once I get my General license. Other than that I'll stick with the QT80 for the long range stuff on 10,12 and 15M

I use HamStudy.org for free on the broswer on my phone for free.

Got the antenna, set it up and tuned the SWR and made zero contacts. I could hear some people but couldn't hear others that I know my inverted V or EFHW would easily pick up. Maybe there's just too much noise or something in a suburban area for this antenna to work well. I need to try it out and away from all these houses to see if it'll work better. On a side note it is easy to set up and I was able to tune it just find using my SWR/Power meter. Guess I need to do more testing with it.

The simplest, easiest HT to use would be something like the Retevis RB17V MURS radio. 5 channels at 2w, add a better antenna and you can talk license free for a mile or so depending on terrain.

For me GMRS was a good entry point into radio. As many have said, there's no test, family is covered and if you have Repeaters in your area you can access you can have pretty good range for communications. A lot of us move from GMRS to HAM because we want/need more options. There are way more 2M/70cm Repeaters in my area I can use. With my current Technician Class License I can cover a Very Large area on the limited amount of 10M I'm permitted to use and once I get my General Class License I'll have even more HF to play on. For many GMRS is the "Gateway Drug" into radio and for others it's as far as they go. It all depends on your needs/wants. Personally, I really love HF so HAM is where it's at for me but I also have my GMRS so if my family needs to use a radio that works better than the little FRS radios they're covered under my license.