LeoG

Sounds like something from the clothing industry.

Anyone use this antenna? 5dBd gain. Thinking about replacing my antenna because of water issues in my coax. Want something with an N fitting, current antenna has a SO239.

Well looking at a set of mating N connectors it looks like the mating surfaces are the flat area of the female and the rubber base of the male. If you put a small coating of dielectric grease on the female flat mating surface it looks like the internal portion of the connector has an excellent seal from anything penetrating it. The only ingress would be from the rear of the connector using capillary action into the fittings. Water getting in through the threads should have no chance of getting inside the fitting if it has been tightened properly.

Sounds like it's back to Vaseline. That STUF product doesn't seem to exist anymore. Found it on ebay but it's 20 tubes not for individual sale.

That had proper weatherproofing on it. As best I could do. It was mostly done on the ground and then the antenna attached to the mast was inserted into the lower section of mast that was existing. Don't know how to do a better job without encapsulating the entire thing is rubber. But yes, if I have to go up there to strip it down new coax and antenna will be on the list. This was only up there since about June. Could also be infiltration at the lightning arrestor. But that is an N fitting on both sides. Still wrapped to death.

RG8-X LOL No no no. LMR400 by Times MIcrowave. Had to see the wife off to NY so I was able to do another check. 2pm 34ºF SWR was 1.25. I still think the water is frozen in the cable though. They say to get rid of the water in the cable to use a vacuum with a heated source. A modern wood Kiln would be perfect. I was thinking of pulling a vacuum on the outdoor end while heating up the first 3-4 feet of coax to try to rid it of water. But I'll probably just by 24' of hardline to replace the coax at the house and make it easy on myself. It doesn't need it. But it's better suited for outdoors.

Oh ya, I know. I'll wait until I have access to the bucket truck. The antenna isn't actually easily accessible. This is an earlier picture. The mast holding hardware has been greatly increased.

And how does this help me ? Kidding, kidding. You kids go out and have fun...

I'm getting a much better SWR with cold temps right now. Still looking at it as I only have one day of information I'm looking at.

Ya, no VNA here. So I'm stuck with the SWR/Power meter to do my investigating. The other problem is the Holyoke repeater is also having issues currently. So it's hard to tell if it's me, or them, or both at times. I have two other repeaters, one nearby (7 miles) and the other farther (17 miles) while the Holyoke is 21 miles. The other two are always good for contact. I can hit the Holyoke repeater with my HT and during those periods of me not being able to hit the repeater with my base unit, I can also not hit it with the HT. So I've always assumed it's atmospheric. For the entire summer it was full quieting. Winter came along and now it's a crapshoot. The whole thing is just frustrating.

You can use twigs and stones if you guy wire it properly . Myself I've been using 1.5" EMT conduit for masts. You can use 1.25" copper pipe to join sections together, they fit snug. I use a 2' section of copper and then 3 self tapping screws on the upper and lower sections to secure them together.

Well I've been having an issue contacting this one repeater I frequent. I don't have enough evidence gathered yet to say the SWR and the bad reception are a 1 to 1 correlation. But I plan on leaving the meter inline for a week or so to see if there is a temperature correlation. Also have issues contacting the repeater at my shop. Again, just starting up with the investigation into this now that I know my SWR is moving around way more than I think it should. I understand if it's raining or inclement weather the SWR can move. But it's been pretty clear. We had a 1 minute rain event the other day, but the problem has been around way longer than that short rain burst.

OK, brought the SWR meter home last night and it was a bit less than 2.1. Not good at all. It was cold enough that I would figure any water in the line was frozen if it was there. It shouldn't be, the whole system was wrapped with the stretchy tape and then covered with electrical tape. 32º happened at 8pm and I went to bed about midnight and it was still 2.09 This morning it was back to 1.19 and it was pretty cold, 21ºF and colder overnight. This is my house, not the repeater. I haven't done any testing on the repeater.

The Midland, like the Retevis is only about 5-6 watts out. It has a 10 watt transmitter before the duplexer. Duplexer loss is about 45%. If you have line of sight then the Retevis or the Midland will work well. Put the antenna up as high as possible

On an N connector I would likely just fill the internal cup with the dielectric and not the outer diameter where it would be in contact with the threads. On second thought... That would keep the water from penetrating in the 1st place.

Stuff I used was put inside the fitting to fill it up so what couldn't get in.

This looks appropriate.

Vaseline eh? I'm sure I can find that. Is there anything that is rated for this use? The stuff I used came in a tube and I doubt it was as simple as that. Ya, I know what I did (hangs head). It's SO239/PL239 for antenna and cable. The repeater has an N fitting that I had to get an adapter for. This was only a temp setup that is running long because of my failure when raising my tall mast. Decided to wait for warm weather to continue, plus work is very busy for me and I don't have time to "play".

And I'm pretty sure that it's water in my coax/fittings. We've been going through a cold spell and the repeater at my shop has been giving full quieting at my house. Something it's never done since I put it up in the summer. And the cold spell broke and next thing I know I can barely hear my wife when she tries to contact me. After a while I noticed a pattern that on above freezing days the signal was bad but when it was below freezing (for hours at least) the signal improved considerably. So I'm assuming I have water penetration in one of my systems. I figure it's the shop repeater because I didn't wrap the fitting on the antenna. It's up there and the only protection was the aluminum tube sleeve that came with the antenna. Originally thought that would be protection enough but now I'm questioning my (lack of) wisdom. The house antenna system was wrapped at the antenna and the lightning arrestor. The shop coax is continuous from the antenna to the repeater. How can I check to see which of the two is the culprit. SWR? Check it when frozen and then check it when thawed? Any other way to check it besides running new coax to see if the issue disappears? Also, is there a grease (for lack of a better word) that I can fill the fitting with before I make the connection to keep water out? When I was doing cableless TV installations we had something that I'd put in the fitting to ward off water penetration. No idea if there is something like that for UHF. Although it looks like WUTF in Mass is at 500MHz at 970,000 watts which would be UHF and pretty close to 462Mhz that we use. Thanks

I set 154.57125 in channel 53 in GMRS mode and for some reason it seems to transmit. Not sure if it actually does. But the red light comes on and there is no tone from the speaker like I usually hear when it tells you that the frequency is out of range. It's the channel WalMart uses in my area.

Usually when you have a 141.3Hz tone that means it's usually designated for travelers and an open repeater.

Just don't set the TX to any frequency.

I did this for myself. Used the BTECH 50w, 50' LMR400 with a 7.2dBi gain antenna about 40' up. I have it at my shop so I can contact my wife at home with an HT. My house is near the river, AKA in a hole. I have my antenna on the house about 40' up and it has LOS without not counting the trees in the way. The duplexer didn't exactly fail on the 1st one but they replaced it because of my complaints and the reception of the new duplexer is substantially better than the original. The BTECH seems to be operating well. I don't care for the way it reacts on digital tones, on analog ones it's perfect. They haven't got the morse code setting the way you would think it should work, every 15 minutes while the repeater is busy and quiet otherwise. Best thing about having the repeater at the shop (your home) is you get to have free range with an HT in the house or yard/neighborhood. I travel about a 5 mile circle and can still hit my shop. But I live in an area that is very hilly so unless the antenna is up 150'+ some areas will always be a challenge. If you are up high and contacting your family in a valley then it should work much better.

Probably because you aren't on GMRS mode.

Just upgraded to v250110 and still no joy on ch55 transmit