SvenMarbles

I'm really trying to figure out how to articulate this in a way so as not to come across as a jackass. Let me preface this by saying that I appreciate what the custodians of some of these high mounted and well maintained repeaters do. I'm fortunate to live in an area that is well covered by such repeaters. But,.. It's getting a bit tired when I tune into 3 different repeater frequencies and am hearing the same conversation being had by a handful of guys in metro Indy. Nothing against them. They sound like swell guys. I'm personally not super interested in "making contacts" on ham radio, and to extrapolate that sentiment, I'm especially not interested in "making contacts" over VOIP. It's already a bit of a concession from my sort of "radio hobby mission statement" that I'm using a local repeater to begin with. But,.. They're there and they boom the signal out nicely across the Chicago metro area. But that's KINDA where I wish it would end. If we're going as far as to route radio voice comms through the internet, my GMRS radio just became a cordless phone handset. To me that's just sort of antithetical to the entire thing that interests me in this realm. Having a resilient mode of comms that's peer to peer, achieved by my equipment to yours, with radio,.. Now I already know that some will be quick to point out that the repeater in and of itself is already a 3rd party backbone that I can't have control over. I recognize the slight degree of hypocrisy. But it's a tolerable concession to make knowing that these systems are often on managed towers with backup power and often times set along side public safety radio systems and would likely enjoy the same resilience and backup measures that are likely in place to keep those systems online on a bad day. I think like, perhaps there could be chunks of hours during the day that these links go active? But then the remaining time we're working within standalone repeater range only...? I dunno.. Where do you guys stand with this? I just kind of think it only serves to "clog up" the repeaters.

It’s for sale now.. https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/alo-dj-g46t Honestly, I don’t see anything super special about it. A pretty plain 5w handheld. No mention of superhet circuitry or anything.

The more succinct answer is that repeater antennas are up high. If your friend with his handheld was dangling from the same tower, he'd hear you fine on his Baofeng too. It's about line of sight. But at that same distance if he were standing down on the ground, probably not.. So yes, they increase YOUR capability of reaching them because they're up high and listening with relatively clear line of sight.. It's why we all try to put our VHF/UHF antennas up as high as we can. When you get up on your roof, how far can you see on a clear day? And how far can you see from the sidewalk? It's basically that simple.

How about 10Mhz wide? SNR is outstanding. I’m properly antenna’d outdoors . Not listening to my refrigerator indoors with a ducky…

Noise floor? not on my SDR. The biggest curse are the pagers. I get a low ambient noise floor here in a major city. 2 watt murs here gets out.

I came to this idea because I really didnt want to screw anything into my house. Didn't want to compromise my newly done roof or siding despite all of the reports of it being "fine to do". Just needed a stout structure to bolt onto that I didn't care much about, and a 4x4 from the big box home improvement store concrete set into the ground seemed like the perfect stout base to use. As I said, this has been up for years now in the further southwest suburbs of Chicago. We get severe storms in the warmer months. a bit of sway but it's very stout. no guy lines. I actually have a second version of this a bit moved back on my property to support the high side of an HF sloper. That one is with an all PVC mast. Again, all good. I'm actually considering adding another section of mast pole, because this amount has been so problem free. I could probably peek up another 10 feet. The only thing holding me back is that I'll need to sort of finesse all of the coax feed line to accommodate it.

This is what I erected several years back and it's been rock solid for me. -10ft 4x4 wood fence post, $10 -A sack of quick set concrete $8 -Some RCA TV antenna mounting hardware, $13 -4 sections of RCA mast, $56 ------ $87 (add more or less sections of mast to your liking at $13 each, but 4 or less need no guying) There are 2 $40ish antennas on this mast. A widebanded discone that does just about everything acceptably well, and an Amazon yagi for GMRS that really blasts out directionally, but good only for 467 transmit. Add about $15 for some PVC to replicate the little manual rotation contraption I've made. I use this setup with a Tidradio TD-H8 GMRS (That I've turned up to 11 watts VHF 8.5 watts UHF) and it get in full quieting to all of my repeaters, some being 30+ miles away.

Here’s what I’ve set up at home. Discone atop about 21ft, and a yagi directional beneath.

I’ll show you some pictures of my low cost “tower” if you’re interested.

Absolutely. Get a high gain antenna, mount it as high as you’re capable. It’ll result in vastly improved simplex range between that station and HTs around. Repeaters are great, but they’re not yours. How they function or whether they function is ultimately out of your hands. I like best to control all of my own radio capabilities. Just remember height is might. Make use of your highest structure, and then put another 30 ft of mast on top of that . You’ll be surprised what it’ll do even with a 5 watt radio connected.

VHF is such a great slice of spectrum. I can’t understand why it wouldn’t be used more fervently.

That's essentially all that I am trying to sort out. I have both this discone as well as a yagi with a perfect 1.0 dip RIGHT at 467.55. I use a repeater about 20 miles out and I can hit it with both types of antenna. The discone comes in a bit fuzzy and the occasional drop out. The yagi hits the repeater full quieting. It's just that I have to physically go out to my mast to rotate the yagi in the various directions that I'm aiming to target. I have a repeater that's actually excellent in my area that I'm fortunate enough to be 2 miles away from, which is where I stick around on mostly and for that my discone hits that rock solid and full quiet.. Additionally, the discone sits atop my mast about 21ft high, and the yagi is further down the same pole only about 12 feet up, and it still gets out 30+ miles fully quiet with about 7.5 watts. I'm just doing some anecdotal testing of the antennas I have access to. Seeing first hand how antenna design, decibel rating, and lobe patterns really do translate into empirical results. I didn't know much about this end of radio stuff beyond a year ago despite having been involved with it since a young age. Just sort of going down a rabbit hold of antenna gain and the capabilities that can be achieved on the antenna side of things even with low power by paying attention to how things radiate. I think a lot of people get hung up on sheer wattage power, when your radiation efficiency is a far bigger factor.

It matters a good bit on VHF and UHF but you desire a more shallow angle. Every bit of RF that is radiated into a wasted direction is inefficiency towards your "fars capability". Good 9db gain omni verticals will squash the radiation donut into a thinner pattern in vertical diameter. My suspicion is that the radiation pattern from this discone is apple-shaped. For HF, that's fine to shoot your RF up at a high angle for ionospheric reflection. But as we know, UHF is just going out never to return.

Yes, the antanna can take the RF input and has perfectly adequate SWR, but my question is what that radiation pattern is like.. If the radiation take off angle is such that an equal about of it is radiating at 1 o'clock upwards as it is 3 o'clock, that's not very good. my question is if that's the case? Unity gain?

The simple answer is yes, but with all use cases in radio YMMV. Depending on your unique terrain and challenges. In a sterile "laboratory sandbox environment" where you're in open space, there actually is no difference. Unless you want to get into lightyear distances with redshifting because of the radiation spectrum difference and blah blah. VHF has properties that can more "contour" to terrain rather than just beaming into a hillside and getting absorbed like UHF tends to. But at a general rule they're both line-of-sight. But a slight nod to VHF (murs) if you had equal wattage for it's terrain managing characteristics. Conversely, it's also said that UHF has an advantage of being able to more robustly punch through obstacles. Not elevations in terrain itself, but mad made structures, trees, and such. So there's something to be said for both bands, and depending on your environment, you might make an educated preference for one versus the other.

Well before I got a GMRS license I was a radio hobbiest in a more general sense, and my sort of "workhorse" antenna for VHF and UHF is a Taurus D-1000 discone antenna which lives atop a 21ft mast from ground level. It's marketed as a "scanner antennas" but does state that it's capable of transmitting up to 200 watts as well. I've connected it to a NanoVNA analyzer, and sure enough it has some nice dips at VHF and UHF. About 1.3 at 467ish. Ive gone online to try to find any spec literature on this antenna but come up empty. So,.. since this is sort of a widebanded antenna with transmitting being secondary in importance marketing wise, should I assume that while you CAN transmit on this antenna, it's unity gain? Also, what's the radioation pattern/take off angle like? Am I just shooting a sphere with tons of RF going up to space?

What is a good and not very expensive power supply that can handle the amp draw of a 40-50 watt GMRS mobile to be used as a base station? Turns out the power supply that I have (4 amp, 7 peak) doesn’t even cut if for a 20 watt radio that I have. I'm shopping new radios and as long as I’m doing so I may opt for a 40-50 watt model. It seems that I need a new power supply as well regardless.. So what is a typical amp draw on a keyed up 40-50 watt radio?

So with that being said, what would be the advantage of a yagi with 7Dbi that is directional vs an omnidirectional vertical that is 7Dbi?

So I recently set up a yagi for GMRS that is rated for 7Dbi gain. Compared to a vertical omni directional that might have the same gain rating, am I correct in assuming that there is additional range benefit from the radiation pattern lobe being concentrated into a single direction? Dbi ratings being equal omni vs directional, the directional is concentrating the same power in the same way that you might put your thumb on a garden hose, correct? Or,.. is that rating done with the idea that the furthest point of the radiation lobe achieved a (non-symmetrically) distance representative of 7Dbi?

Most people don’t understand how wattage plays with exponential gain antennas. People will say things like “the difference between 5 and 10 watts doesn’t matter”. That’s true if you’re using an HT in HT form. But if you’re using a 6 db gain antenna on a mobile install for example, that 5 watts is 20 watts ERP. A 10 watt radio would be 40 watts ERP (not accounting for the trivial line loss in a short mobile installation run). If you run your HT in this fashion, in a car, or even wired to an outdoor antenna at home,.. Yes, you might care about the difference between the 5 watts or 8-10 your handheld makes. It DOES matter when you get compounding ERP gains every 3 decibels on a high gain antenna..

I was getting on here to report the same thing.. Ive tried doing the 462 receive and 467 tx, and same thing. It saves, but then when I check back both are at 462.. Ok,… so maybe you have to use offset shift settings or something to achieve the shift.. Tried that, and it ACTS like it works. Keys up and shifts up to 467, with tone set.. Repeater never opens.. Ive abandoned the app/bluetooth programming. Wiped the radio with reset, plugged it into Chirp (what I use for everything else anyway), and everything works perfectly. I’ve seen people on YT go through it and seem to act like everything works fine for them. I wonder if they’re ACTUALLY trying to program to completion and actually use the radio, and not just “demonstrate” how it’s supposed to work. Because it’s been my experience that it does not work,.. And I’m not new to radio programming stuff.. Another odd quirk. Has anyone been able to face-program the radio for repeater shift? My options menu gets to the shift and offset options but won’t allow anything to toggle..

Sometimes I buy radios on the DL without running it by the spousal unit.. I do the purchase in PayPal “pay in 4” so the charges don’t stand out as large on the statement and I’m a ninja about grabbing that package off the porch on my way in and having the item in my pocket by the time the back door opens . Is there a help group for me?

The Tidradio H8 has been demonstrated on YouTube as 10 watts on the meter…

Some models are capable of doing between 6-11 watts, never more than that though..