LeoG

You have a 5 watt HT connected to it's antenna and you can hit the repeater from your driveway. But when you use an adapter to connect your HT to the antenna system on the car you are introducing a good deal of loss through the adapter and the thin RG-58A/U that comes with the UT72. The antenna itself says it's 3.5dBi which is 1.35dBd, which isn't very much. Loss of 13' of cable is .85dB which leaves you with a .5dB gain. Not enough to make up for cable losses.

Yep, I already contacted him and got the new tone and my ID#, 461 if you ever want to try to call out. But for the most part I hang out on Holyoke and my own repeater.

Another slight anomaly. Now when it freezes instead of the SWR being 1.13-1.15 it's 1.07-1.08. It seems that me heating that area did something. Not much, but noticeable.

They changed the incoming tone because someone gave it out and the repeater was taken over by people in Hartford who only spoke Spanish. They overwhelmed the repeater and the owner decided the only way to have it stop was to change the input tone. If you go to the repeater facebook page and private message him he should respond and you can get the tone once again. He is also implementing an ID # to users like the Holyoke 575 has. So when you get the tone code you will also get an ID #.

Sorry to hear about your issue with water. Sucks. That's the plan for me. But replace the antenna and the cable from the lightning arrester up to the antenna.

We have a guy who comes to our nets on the Holyoke 575 and in order for him to reach he gets up in his cupola in his barn. Richmond Vt to Holyoke Ma

Slight anomaly. Usually when it's above freezing my SWR is 2.08, it's pretty consistent. Now it's 1.99-2.00. Not much of a difference but noteworthy because I have been taking notes.

I did all the work on the ground. Not sure where the water could have gotten in. It's wrapped with 3M 2155 Rubber Splice Tape and then electrical tape. It's covered with that aluminum tube on top of that. No idea how water could have penetrated. Other possibility is the antenna itself.

Well I did my experiment. It was about 28º out and the SWR was sitting at about 1.13. I took my wife's blow dryer and zip tied it to a stick and went on my shed dormer and heated up the lightning arrester and surrounding areas for a while and had my wife test the SWR and no change. Did this several times heating the arrestor for a few minutes before keying up again. More than certain it got way above freezing and no change. So that leaves the antenna or connection. Either way that means I have to wait for the weather to warm up before I can borrow the bucket truck to get up there. Not even going to do any testing. Replacing the antenna and the cable. Since it's just 25' I'll put 1/2" hardline there and make sure the new antenna is an N connector instead of thr SO239 UHF connector. Nice warm weather coming up so that means poor radio response til I get this all taken care of.

2 hours at best for battery. Some have smaller generators but fuel is the limiting factor. Maybe get a day.

I would consider a 25% loss of towers in a hurricane pretty reliable. Definitely depends if you are in that cell area that went down or not though. I have a pole type tower near me and they were adding more antennas during a very windy period. I've never seen it sway so much. Felt bad for the guy up there working. It was probably 20ish winds with bigger gusts. I was surprised it was moving that much. I thought that movement would be at about 40mph.

Kinda surprised one needs a multiband transceiver on a bicycle in the first place. I was thinking an HT on a backpack with a handheld mic or vox setup.

https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/2A4FBTD831 1ST Line shows BQIBL80NZ7zIyx9L0Xv7hw== 350.0-470.0MHz 2023-12-05 Approved

Well, if you are afraid the eff sea sea is going to come pounding on your door because you have a non compliant radio that you are operating properly then by all means go ahead. Myself I'm not worrying about it at all. Not sure if their IDs are different between the radios. The one on the left is the GMRS version and the one on the right is the Ham version. They don't differentiate between the two.

Yes. All of mine but 2 are Ham versions switched to GMRS. The main difference between the 2 is the antenna they send you. While in GMRS mode you can only transmit on true GMRS channels

It's there somewhere. I believe it has 4 modes. I think they call it THEME

Since we've heard nothing about someone getting fined for using a base station when a fixed station should have been used or vice versa I doubt anyone at the eff sea sea is going to be coming knocking on any of our doors to check compliance. It's probably something of a holdover that they copied in for some sort of larger station. I'm not worrying about it.

Well, it's absolutely water, because when it freezes the issue goes away. I would figure if the part was damaged by water expansion the problem would occur during the freeze when it pushed things apart. I'm leaning towards water in a connector that has some minerals or something in it that is conductive enough to short out enough to bring signal levels down enough to hamper incoming and outgoing signals. Once I get above that 2.0 SWR reception gets bad and transmission won't reach my farthest repeater. I know for a 100% fact that I have a problem at the house. I'm not sure if I have an issue at my repeater. But that was a wham bam thank you ma'am install without any connector wrapping. It's only the one antenna connection as there is no lighting arrester inline, the feed goes straight from the antenna to the repeater. There is a 90º connector at the back of the repeater but since I take my measurements after that connector and power levels seem fine I think it's OK.

Looks like it went into one of the several screen modes. Maybe you changed it.

Well I finally saw it. I thought the lowering temperature sublimed the SWR but it was just a rapid decrease. I only saw one reading in between but that was enough to tell me it decreases not switches. Came home to find the SWR at 2.04 and the temp was just under freezing. At about 24.5º I checked and it was at 1.83, half hour later it was at its low of 1.15 again. At 1.83 most of the function of the radio returns. At 2.04 I couldn't hit the Holyoke repeater. I did a long key and some signal must have reached because I was able to hit it. No response from anyone so I assume no audio was transmitted from the repeater. Plus the received signal was very weak. At 1.83 I have access to the repeater and a good received signal. Same with my own repeater. Gotta find some time to heat up that lightning arrester to see if it kills my signal.

What I've seen of it the lawyers went nutz in their regulation description. Calling the same transmitter several different names depending on what they are communicating with.

OK, so what's the difference between a "fixed" station and a "base" station?

Last four 100w panels I bought new were 60¢ per watt.

It's far from free.

Well, they made them, I bought them and I'll use them when necessary. I have a bit over 5KW of batteries so I'll be set for a while. I am lacking on enough solar to keep that charged well though. Currently only have about 600 watts of panels. Worse than that is I don't have a charge controller that can handle the power from those panels.