LeoG

There is no load on the radio. Is there any chance for damage? A high SWR produces power that backfeeds into the radio and that's what hurts the output stage. If there is no antenna there is there the possibility of a backfeed even occurring?

For the most part height is might. A telescoping antenna pole and a way to keep it upright. You could go as simple as a 6" quarter wave mobile antenna or a higher gain base station antenna. Usually 5 ft tall or so with a gain of more than 6dB. The better coax you can use the more signal to the antenna you can get which would give you more range. Placement of the antenna is the most important aspect of the range you'll get.

Thanks. Above my pay grade. Is there more of an instruction manual than an explanation of how all this came to be?

Of course I realize all of that. Just trying to get a sense of what others using the app might be putting in there for the other numbers besides their own equipment. Myself I'm surrounded by trees on 3 sides. North of me is treeless in the immediate vicinity and it shows in my real world experience. Now the leaves are falling and the signal is opening up. So it's possible the app might register more accurately than it has been. There is a check box on the app that says use land cover. Checking this box decreases the signal quite a bit. Also would like to know what the "Use 2 Rays" option is since it's checked by default. Also the Strong signal Margin. I've bounced between 14 and 20dB for the most part and the reliability seems to be more accurate the closer you get to 100%. I tried 100% once and the program won't run. So I keep things above 98% most of the time. Just curious. And there's pretty much no way an averaging program could get things spot on. But getting it close would be nice.

One reason to have a repeater is so you can talk using an HT in an area instead of being strapped to a stationary base setup. I have this at my shop. I can keep an HT on me so my wife can get a hold of me whether I'm in the machine area or the finishing area or talking with some of the other businesses in the building area. Sort of wish I could have a double setup so I could have the same setup for my wife where she could go out in the back yard and hit the shop repeater. But I need a 40' antenna setup to make the connection unfortunately. Of course I use it so I can go out in my truck around town and still be in contact with the little woman.

So I've been playing with this for some time now and have difficulties in making it match real world conditions. Using GMRS and my current setup I have some very specific spots that I know how they react reception-wise. My house is a dead spot more or less. I have a friends house that I get a good signal at and my Dads house that is extremely weak. By the time I get my house to the weakness it is all the other spots drop off the map and turn white meaning zero reception which is far from reality. Was wondering what parameters some of you are using to get your realistic power/reception levels. It's probably the line of trees I have between my house and my repeater antenna, but I'm still curious as to your parameter setup. Here's my inputs for me talking through the repeater with my truck mobile setup.

I do 21 miles to a repeater. It's about 1000' higher than me. We have nothing in the state higher than 2450 ft. I was playing with Radio Mobile and put a 50 watt repeater on top (Mt Frissel) with a 100' tower and because of all the other mountains in the general vicinity it had very poor performance for distance. Too many peaks that were close to the same height.

I have areas in my town where my 50w can't get 2 miles.

Another flat lander.

I'm able to contact the LI repeater tonight. Was walking around and I heard it's half hour blerb about what it is, where it is and how to join by going to their website. I was able to hit it with my 5watt talkie along with my 25watt base. No one answered my radio checks from the talkie and I didn't do a radio check from the base.

I have talked with people by tropospheric ducting. Windsor Locks to LI NY. Only issue is that I have a 700+ foot mountain directly in the way between us. There should be no possibility of me talking with them. There was one night I was able to use my 5 watt TD-H3 talkie to have a full quieting conversation with them.

Difficult is a relative term. 1st of all the repeater I was talking about where you quoted me was an existing repeater on top of a mountain. But I do have my own and it started out in my shop with an RT97S 5watt repeater by Retevis. I bought their kit that came with some cable and an antenna. I used the antenna but not the cable. I got some LMR400 to connect things up. Antenna is up about 40ft off the ground and 140 ft above sea level. It's surrounded by trees which turned out to be a big issue. Now that the leaves are falling the signal is increasing but I've also swapped out the 5watt for a 50watt repeater. The big issue is the tree leaves. Just kills the signal. So that's where things get more involved. I'm starting to get setup to put up a 72' mast with another 10' pole and a Comet CA 712EFC antenna. That's turning into a project. I'm building a lot of the stuff. Made a mast out of Red Grandis which is a weather resistant wood and hard like hard maple. Making a hinge so it can be maintained or dropped during hurricanes of high winds. It'll have a battery winch to do that. I have the mast built in sections right now.. waiting for some metal plates to come in so I can get them water jetted and then welded. So call it a challenge, call it fun, call it what you will.

Here is the H3 programming software ( windows install file) H3_GMRS_setup240104.exe

I feel your pain. I live in a valley. North and south are open for about 20-25 miles but east and west are mountains on either side about 5 miles away. Been playing with Radio Online Mobile Calculator and I have put the virtual antenna up to 5000 feet and there are still lots and lots of areas I can't reach theoretically.

Small dipole 5' tall 7.2dBi gain, fiberglass so you can paint it camouflage brown and green. Deer won't be spooked other than when you were installing it. Theft... can't help you there.

I love the dual receive. I'd actually like to have a 4 band receive. I know they exist, but I have enough radios. Did I say that out loud?

Works fine. I do it all the time. The only thing is you need to have the Tx AND Rx CTCSS set for the reverse frequencies to work with another radio. At least mine does.

One option for the height is might scenario for your Dad would be to put an antenna up on his hut as high as you could get it and it may extend your range more.

I didn't find that the Smiley Rubber Duck antenna equaled the Nagoya 771G. It was better than the OEM antenna on my TD-H3 but the 771G went 1/3-1/2 mile farther than the Smiley when I was testing my RT97S

People tend to think of repeaters in a commercial way. On a mountaintop with a 40-200 mile range. There are tons of smaller repeaters around that do neighborhoods and towns. With ranges of 5-15 miles, mostly due to antenna height limitations.

I'm using Win7 also. Chrome doesn't like that.

Same way I think about it. "Some people" are in ideal conditions and don't understand the rough terrain others are in. Even with my repeater, because I can't elevate my antenna to 200' or more I still have a lot of areas that can't be reached. I live in a valley and just want to be able to connect to family 10 miles away.

Ya, I have my browser locked down pretty hard and the site still gets through. It's from a political site, but the article isn't political. And I know some browsers make it hard to get to those sites. I also have a naked browser. In my case it's Chrome. I have nothing added to it. No blockers no anti script nothing added so when I find one of those types of sites I can still get there by switching over to that browser. If I can't get in on that browser I don't need to see the site.

So big commercial towers 200' tall pointing at each other.

Understandable.