WRDU469

Adding more power to my antenna in the attic is what solved this problem for me. The handheld alone can xmit to the repeater with good quality from inside my house, but my reception from the repeater was horrible. When I applied the HT to the attic antenna, my receive quality improved but the repeater was receiving a much lower quality and broken/staticky signal. This is due to a longer cable run to the antenna and loss of power that resulted. Now that I have a base station setup, the repeater is getting a great signal from me and I am hearing the repeater well. Problem solved.

To close the loop on this thread. I can confirm through testing that I was likely loosing to much power via my HT through the cable run as mentioned by marcspaz. In testing the same setup with a higher power mobile radio, there was a night and day difference in the repeater clearly hearing my communications. The repeater owner verified I had a very good signal. I even learned my HT performed better to this repeater when not plugged in to the attic antenna. This just confirms more power is what I need to get through the attic space. Now to figure out which mobile station to setup...

Good to know! More power would compensate for this loss. I think I need to borrow a mobile radio with power >20 watts and see what happens. I know where I can find one too

Thanks for the information. I have been thinking about a KG-1000G as a base station setup. When testing my SWR, I was getting in excess of 5 watts on the meter. I guess that doesn't mean what is at the antenna, but with LMR 400 on a 40ft run, probably not suffering from a lot of loss. Logically thinking about this, I was leaning toward more power to help get through the wood construction. I might be able to borrow a mobile radio for testing which could be a good first step.

I am currently using a KG-935G Plus HT for GMRS comms. It's plugged in to a J-Pole Antenna in my attic via LMR400 with a 1.4 SWR. The feedback I am getting to a repeater about 7 miles away is communications is broken and a bit noisy. Would using a mobile/base station radio with more power help in this case? Unfortunately I am unable to put this antenna externally on the house. This is what I have to work with.

I appreciate all the input here. I do believe my biggest hurdle here is not having a good ground plane. I will probably just stick with this for now unless I decide to go with a magnetic NMO ground plane. I was hoping to have a clean installation with this but understand the trade off with a small hood mount like I have.

I installed a Midland MXTA26 MicroMobile 6DB Gain Whip Antenna using a MXTA24 low-profile 19ft antenna cable with NMO connector. Based off reviews and other user experience, I was expecting a low SWR, but getting between 1.43-1.5. I am using a Wouxun KG-935G Plus handheld in my truck with this antenna setup. Is there anyway to improve the SWR? In testing, my power output is pretty good above 6 watts when I tested on ch 15. I am not sure if this antenna is tunable either? I probably should mention it is on this hood mount https://www.rightchannelradios.com/products/chevy-gmc-cb-antenna-hood-mount-2010 which may be a problem, not sure...