RickW

I have mentioned it before, but it still surprised me when my wife and I did some testing a few years ago. I have a GP-9 on a 40 ft tower at our ridge farm which is 1240 ASL and I drove my vehicle way down to the nearby Sidie Hollow, which is less than 900 ASL. These are deeply notched valleys (called coulees) in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. Distance back to the farm was around 3 miles. With a cheap dual band 2 mtr/440 ham antenna retuned for GMRS, we could barely communicate. Switching to the tiny Midland mag mount 6 inch quarter wave, the signals became quite readable and one bar on the Midland MXT400's which we had on each end, running low power. Switching to the Midland mag mount with the "3 db" gain Midland 5/8 wave antenna increased it to another bar. Switching to the "6 db" gain Midland 5/8 over 5/8 wave increased it to another bar. I think we compared power levels from the lowest power setting to medium and that helped as well. I really did not expect to see that much of a difference. Especially when you consider that the gain antennas tend to put more signal closer to the horizon. It may be that the RF was bouncing around the hills and sort of filling in from different directions. I have no way of measuring the difference in db's for each bar. It would be helpful to have a ballpark number.

Perhaps this is a bit off subject, but over the years I tried various ways of getting some height with various home made supports. I wanted something that I could handle by myself. One of my current supports is a treated 4 x 4 post at least 3 feet in the ground (or more) and back filled in with gravel.It is out of the ground around 6 + feet, but low enough so that I could reach the top when standing firmly on the ground. About a foot from the top of the post I attached two 10 foot ~ 2+ inch pvc pipes with a long bolt through one pvc, then the post and then the other pvc to make a hinge. Another long bolt close to the top of the post to firmly attach the pvc pipes to the post. By pulling one of the bolts, I can lower the pvc pipes to the ground. Then I used a fiberglass tube, a bit more than 10 feet long and attached it with two bolts to the top of the two pvc pipes which are now much closer together than where they are attached to the post down below. This gives me well over 20 feet. Because I experimented with many ham antennas on many different (mostly) HF frequencies over the decades I found that this support works as well as, or actually, better than, the typical expensive commercial vertical such as the Butternut HF-XV series. I can run parallel wires for different bands and top the fiberglass part with a CB whip which just made it to 33 feet at the tip. That gives me 40 meters. Then shorter wires for other bands, such as 20, and 30. Because this is effectively a vertical HF antenna, it needs radials, so I put down a bit over 30 radials with some at 30 and some up to 100 feet long. The antenna is around 150 south of the house and I put it that far out because of the radiation pattern impinging on the house and the clearance for the radials. I have swapped out the home made antenna with a Butternut, and after a number of years, put the home made support back. With the Butternut, which is much shorter, I had to use some guys as the antennas is not robustly made. I do not use guys with the home made support although being on the ridge here in the driftless area of Wisconsin we get a lot of wind and the support does tend to lean away from the SW. Using pvc for both the bottom and top sections I found to be too flimsy, thus the fiberglass tube. You could also use EMT or aluminum tubing. For GMRS use, you would want to have the post much closer to the house to keep feedline loss to a minimum. Since the GMRS antennas are so lightweight, they would not be too much of a load, even a gain vertical. I might mention that what I use for GMRS antenna support is 30 feet of Rohn 25G plus another 10 foot pipe. This has a house bracket at 12 feet on the end of the garage. No guys.

TYT is a brand. The term CCR is an acronym for Cheap Chinese Radios and is used as a criticism for the lower cost products coming from Asia. A number of the folks here do not consider them to be of adequate quality. I have Midland MXT400's and use one for base and one for my vehicle. I also have two MXT115's in several other vehicles. For HT's, I have two BTech GMRS V1's and two Wouxun KG-805G's. Each radio has trade offs, but they all seem to work fairly well. I have compared them to my ham equipment, (such as the ICOM IC-7000) and the receive sensitivity seems comparable. The BTechs had some quality control problems and the replacement also has a defect but I am just going to live with it since it does not seem to degrade the GMRS function. (It is just that the FM radio function will not work and I actually find this useful). The big issue with the Midlands, and something that I completely overlooked when I bought them, is that they can only transmit and receive the same set of CTCSS (PL) tones or the same DTSS tones. You can not have one analog PL tone for TX and a digital DTSS tone for RX. What ever tone you set, it is always on for both TX and RX. Of course, if you are primarily using the equipment for simplex, then this is not really a problem. Midland sells some decent HT's but they do not seem to work at all with repeaters so the company is a bit behind the times in supporting GMRS.

We have two of the B-Tech GMRS V1 units and 2 MXT400's and 2 MXT 115's. The main concern some have is that the Midland units are narrow band only, but this has been OK for personal use. Most GMRS repeaters appear to be wide bandwidth, One time I tried using the Midland "compander" and that helped the receiving station with my modulation, but then their modulation to me was more distorted. The B-Tech units can work with wide or narrow. I have ordered a couple of Wouxun 805G HT's as I wanted to try them out. If they had been available earlier I would not have purchased the B-Techs because of the quality control issues with B-Tech, the fact you can not talk to anyone on the phone, and the fact that back up batter packs are AAA. The Wouxun are repurposed KG-UVD1P's and locked down to meet Part 95E rules and use AA batteries. They are also 4 watts while the B-Techs, which used to be 4 or 5 watts, have been reduced to 2 watts. The difference in power can be useful in some situations, but antennas and line of sight is the most important. There are some helpful youtube videos, although one has to be careful because of a fair amount of misinformation. I tend to make comments on those videos and in a nice way, try and make appropriate corrections or explanations. GMRS can be iffy for a contact since there are not many who monitor for calls for help. I am probably an exception in my area but I have a reasonably high gain antenna and high location on our farm and being retired helps. I can talk to folks using FRS HTs for many miles away (10 or so in some cases if they are close to the ridge). When I have rarely tried a repeater, I have chatted a few times when I actually did not expect anyone to be there.

I came across a short (under 4 min) professionally made video showing how citizens in fire prone areas took action to have some kind of communication network. This came about because of the horrific fires in rural areas and loss of telephone and cellphones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uhOwng_j38 The solution was to purchase GMRS radios and apparently quite a few where sold in just one rural area. They had some help from what looks like a ham or two (but did not identify them as such), and even set up a modest repeater to get across one ridge area. The equipment shown were Midland MXT series radios. And for this application, I think this is a good choice for plug and play.

Perhpas it is a minor point, but the FCC changed the Subpart from A to E when they did the 2017 rewrite of the rules. Thus, Part 95E refers to GMRS.

Berkinet had mentioned that: "GMRS power output limits are specified as power output from the radio (I.e. at the antenna connector) rather than ERP." Based upon 95.1767 GMRS transmitting power limits, here is how I understand the rules and hopefully explains my earlier comments: On the eight main/repeater 462/467 channels 15-22, GMRS stations are allowed to operate up to 50 watts output. On the seven 462 interstitial channels 1-7, GMRS mobile, hand-held portable and base stations must not exceed 5 watts ERP. On the 467 interstitial channels 8-14, only hand-held portable GMRS units may be used and they must not exceed 0.5 watts ERP. That is why channels 8-14 would not be found on legal GMRS mobile and base rigs since that type of equipment are not allowed on those channels. The hand-held units are allowed to operate on those channels under GMRS rules. Even on the seven 462 interstitial channels 1-7, many of us may be exceeding the ERP levels since we may use higher gain antennas with low loss feedlines and I suspect most transmitters are typically preset for 5 watts output. I wish the FCC had allowed GMRS stations to always use output power. Imagine how difficult this is to understand for the casual GMRS operator. This is why we tend to operate on the main channels when using GMRS equipment.

I might mention that though GMRS and FRS can interoperate, not all types of GMRS equipment can do this on all of the 22 channels. If you have a base or mobile unit on GMRS, you will likely find that the equipment does not have the 467 MHz interstitial channels 8-14. The rules specify that those channels can only be used by handheld portable units. And it makes sense because those channels are limited to 500 milliwatts ERP. We stay on one of the 8 main 462 MHz channels when operating simplex since we can transmit up to 50 watts output. Even on the 462 MHz interstitial channels 1 - 7, we are probably exceeding power levels at times since even GMRS radios are only allowed 5 watts ERP. With a modest gain antenna it would be possible to exceed 5 watts ERP if your output was 5 watts. On the 8 main channels you do not have an ERP limit for GMRS. Of course, FRS always has an ERP maximum allowable power level, but that is easy to do considering the fixed built-in antenna. My thinking is that if I had FRS equipment, and I wanted to limit the distance the signals can travel, the use of the 500 mw channels might offer better security. This could be useful for close-in groups or especially for preppers.

There have been some very good comments on GMRS/FRS. I have probably mentioned this before, but if you want to have backup communications, especially for families, GMRS is one of the best ways that I have seen. Because GMRS and FRS and pretty much interoperable, that does create some downsides if you have someone running higher power GMRS equipment, especially with the allowance of external/gain antennas and they are not licensed, you can not easily determine this. For rural families that may not have the best cellphone coverage, GMRS can be useful. Even though retired, we continue to live on our small farm, but if we were large enough to need other workers, it would be possible to use a GMRS license for the family members and HT's for non-family. This would allow a good base station to mobile/portables. This could also work for any small family business that may have a few workers who are not part of the family. While there is not much activity on GMRS, there are commercial users of FRS. This past year I kept hearing stations talking back and forth and it sounded like they were loading something. Comments went on like "OK, Joe, a little further, oops too far, back off, OK that is good right there." And this would go on for long periods. I finally found out that these were fiber optic installers who were working along my ridge. My base antenna is a gain GP-9 at 40 feet so gets good distance. I have talked to hunters over 10 miles away if there were close to the ridge. If I monitor MURS frequencies I can pick up some of the Walmart channel five users at times. They must have to be in certain locations to make that work over the 7+ miles distance. For a lot of off road folks, it seems like MURS would be pretty good if you did not want to get any license. And now we are finally seeing some legal MURS radios that are reasonably priced. In a really serious emergency, without any planning ahead of time, I suspect CB will be useful because so many folks have them. I wish they would have SSB, as we do, but that is not common. There are SSB CB nets in my area, but most of the stations are very weak except one ham about 20 miles away. He is net control for one night a week so I check in there from time to time. Or talk to him on 2 meter FM. Realistically, most people just do not want to study for an amateur radio license. At one time my daughter had her Technician Class (she accidentally let it expire) and my wife and I still keep our Amateur Extra Class licenses, but rarely use them anymore. No one else in our family has the slightest interest in ham radio.

Had an embarrassing thing happen last year. I had installed a GP-9 antenna (three sections) only 2 or 3 years ago and one day I looked up and saw the top section wire just hanging loose in the wind. The top fiberglass radome had fallen to the ground. At first I thought it was all over for that antenna, but I took it down and except for a slight bit of chipping on one of the molded plastic inserts that helps the wire maintain its complicated folded positions, it seemed to be reasonably intact. It did not snap the wire, but if I had let it swing around for much longer it likely would have. I put it back together and screwed the top back on.This time I wound several turns of good quality electrical tape (Scotch 88 I think) over the joint of the top and middle section after securely screwing them together. Same with the still intact lower to mid section joint. I would not again install such an antenna without using some kind of tape or heat shrink to insure it can not come undone. There is a gasket to seal the sections, so I was not worried about any water ingress. Antenna seems to work about as well as before. I use if for GMRS, even though it is not ideal because the SWR approaches 2:1 on the 467 MHz channels.

I tried making the aforementioned resetting to no avail. It is getting more difficult to recommend these units as I had hoped they would have better QC.

I have had a couple of BTech GMRS V1 HT's for a year and they seemed OK and work well with our Midland MXT 115's and MXT 400's. Just before the warranty ran out I noticed that one of the units had a dead battery, even though the power switch had been off. I charged it back up and noticed that over a three day period it drained the battery with the switch off. Thinking the battery was defective, I put in a warranty RMS and was just about to send it back when I got to thinking that maybe it wasn't the battery, but maybe it was somehow drawing current when off. So I set up a current flow test between the batter and rig and sure enough there was a continuous 15 ma. discharge. So I got another RMS and sent both the unit and the battery to BTech. They replaced both in short order. Then I discovered that the replacement unit did not have the FM radio receive function. I actually find this useful as another use for the radio. Upon contacting BTech, they indicated that I needed to enable the function with CHIRP. I ordered the cable and it turns out that the FM function is enabled, so something else is defective. I wrote to them several times but they are not very good about responding but finally asked me to request another RMA. I tried that but by then the warranty period had run out and the system would not let me request an RMA due to being out of warranty. So I again asked them about this and they said to "edit the date on the RMA." It costs around $7 or so to mail these units to BTech and I am considering just living with the disabled FM function. Hopefully no other problems exist that I have not noticed, but it has been disappointing. I am thinking that it is possible that this replacement unit may have a physical issue with the button not engaging the internal switch that switches the FM function but I am hesitant to disassemble it. Has anyone else had a problem like this? And/or has anyone tried taking one of these units apart? Thanks for any help. Rick

Some time back I had posted my experience with four different antennas from an intentionally marginal location which was several miles from the home base and hundreds of feet lower in elevation, using Midland MXT400's at each end (running at mid power setting) and and with a GP-9 2m/440 ham antenna at 40 feet on our ridge top farm base location. The GP-9 is not optimum for GMRS due to being quite a bit off the design frequency and has nearly 2:1 SWR on the 467 channels but reasonable SWR on the 462 channels helped by the coax loss of course. Results surprised me somewhat: - 2m/440 ham antenna retuned for GMRS generally showed one bar on transmit and receive - 6" Midland stock mag mount quarter wave showed two bars and much better signal copy - so called 3 dB Midland NMO antenna showed three bars - so called 6 dB Midland NMO antenna showed four bars I read that at least one person had problems with the 6 dB antenna melting the center coil, but so far we have not had that happen with only limited transmission time when mobile. We use Midland magnetic NMO mounts on our vehicles. My wife has the MXT115 with the 3 dB antenna on top of her Equinox SUV and I have the MXT400 with the 6 dB antenna on my Malibu rear trunk lid so that we can clear the garage door. Range between vehicles is several miles and not that much different than when we used simplex on 2 meters when we use ham equipment.

I have been wondering how users tuned up the cavities, say 40 to 50 years ago when some of us OT's started using repeaters? Most ham repeaters had some procedures to do this without multi thousand dollar service monitors. I recall some local hams making cavities from large diameter copper tubing and maybe was even silver plated internally. I see some info on repeater builders, but have any forum members done cavity tuning without a service monitor/spectrum analyzer? If a person made or bought a repeater for GMRS, and then added a commercial duplexer, particularly the very low cost "portable" duplexers, and needed to change channels or to tweak the duplexer, how practical is it to tune it yourself and what is the absolute minimum equipment you would need?

Some manufacturers use the theoretical isotropic antenna as a baseline and then compare their antenna to the isotropic. If they are honest they will specify their antenna gain in dBi. A dipole antenna has a gain of 2.15 dB above the isotropic and some manufacturers use the dipole as the baseline and specify their antenna gain in dBd. You can subtract 2.15 dB from dBi gain to match up with the dBd gain. Another consideration with gain is that it depends upon the angle of radiation. Some antennas may radiate with rather high angles, such as using a quarter wave vertical on the third harmonic which can give you a fairly close match. A good example being a 2 meter ham antenna being also used as a 440 MHz antenna. Even though the match might be reasonable, this type of antenna will have a higher angle of radiation on the odd harmonic and may not be as useful for VHF and higher frequencies, especially on flat land. The manufacturer could claim this level of gain without being specific as to the angle and makes the antenna appear to have higher gain than you might expect. There are cases where a higher angle might work better, such as if you were in a deep valley and wanted to communicate with a station at a higher elevation. But, most of the time we want the antenna to radiate toward the horizon for maximum communications distance.

Hi Fred, I have not used chirp with our V1's because we don't have a lot of need for programming many tones. I would normally use CHIRP for programming receive only frequencies that one might want to monitor such as NOAA weather, protective services, etc. The V1 has the tone burst for transmitting and is used in Europe because some repeaters require the 1750 Hz tone burst. Most users in the U.S. would choose either CTCSS or DCS. Coming from a long time ham radio background, I tend to use CTCSS tones, but you could use DCS as an alternative. Perhaps someone else can point out whether they have experienced better results with one selective calling system over the other. BTech has a good video that may help if you have not seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrG0El1KkIM It walks you through the menu options.

As I mentioned in my OP, I am only asking about LEGAL use of Part 90 equipment. I have several of the B-Tech GMRS V1 transceivers and they seem surprisingly well made. I don't have a service monitor to fully test them but just listening to the transmissions on our ICOM IC-7000's and the MXT400's, the audio quality seems about the same as any other FM transceivers that I have tested. In fact, both wide and narrow FM seem reasonable to my ears. Consider that back in the 1990's I think that we spent $330 EACH for Kenwood TH27A 2 meter only ham transceivers. I shudder to think how much that would be in inflation adjusted dollars but you sure get a lot more for your money these days. It helped to have a wife who is also a ham and needed an HT for being an active bicyclist who frequently was on the local state trails. More than one accident/emergency situation occurred over the years before cell phones. There does seem to be somewhat conflicting statements about the use of Part 90 equipment for Part 95, but it does appear that the FCC says this is a violation of the rules at this time. It sure would have been great if the rules allowed MURS and FRS to be on the same licensed by rule equipment. I am sure that if this was possible, BTech would have done this rather than have two separate radios based off the UV-82 series. I wonder if the BTech GMRS V1 and MURS V1 radios are improved from earlier ones? They did drop the power level to only 2 watts on the GMRS model so perhaps they no longer exhibit loss of frequency stability? As far as audio quality though, the ones I have seem quite good. At least so far.

A number of forum members have mentioned that they use Part 90 certified equipment for Part 95. Is my understanding correct that the Baofeng UV-82C is Part 90 certified? If that is the case, what is the view of programming this radio for legal Part 95E GMRS operation? Do those of you who program Part 90 equipment for use on Part 95, also use the same equipment for Part 97 and any other Part 95 frequencies, such as Part 95J MURS? The only recent radio for both GMRS and MURS seems to be the TERA 505, but is it legal to have both programmed at the same time?

Marcspaz wrote: "A "base station" or "fixed station" is defined by its lack of portability/mobility. Regardless of what hardware you use, you will need to adhere to "base station" rules for a "fixed station". Only repeater's are exempt from the 15 watt power restrictions." - - - - - This would not be correct under current rules. Based upon the comments in the Report and Order adopted 18 May 2017, the FCC defined different stations by stating: " Repeater stations are fixed stations with antennas in favorable locations that greatly extend the communications range of mobile and hand-held portable units by receiving their signals on one channel and simultaneously retransmitting these signals on another channel. Control stations are fixed stations that communicate with mobile stations (and other control stations) through repeater stations in a similar fashion. Base stations are fixed stations that communicate directly with mobile stations and with other base stations. But ... under 95.303 Definitions the rule says: Fixed station. A station at a fixed location that directly communicates with other fixed stations only. It appears that the the definitions are not being kept consistent which then makes it confusing. Maybe they consider a fixed station different than fixed stations (plural)? But ... 95.1767 GMRS transmitting power limits for the main 462/467 MHz channels: (a)(1) The transmitter output power of mobile, repeater and base stations must not exceed 50 Watts. (2) The transmitter output power of fixed stations must not exceed 15 Watts. The fixed stations seem to be from an earlier rule and grandfathered? I doubt that many (any?) of us are operating such a station. We operate mobile, repeater, portable hand-helds and base stations. Note that the term control station is not mentioned under transmitting power limits. But it is mentioned under GMRS channels. When the FCC uses the term base stations, they mean stations are directly communicating with mobiles and other base stations. The same station is then called a control station when it uses a repeater. That is why only mobile, hand-held portable, control and fixed stations can transmit on the eight main 467 MHz channels (repeater channels). What the FCC calls a base station can not use repeaters. What we call a base station, whether for simplex or duplex use, the FCC uses the different terms of base or control. To me this is absurd and much more confusing that it needs. I expect that most typical non technical users of GMRS would be hard pressed to understand these nuances.

From time to time I check out YouTube videos that cover the use of GMRS, and services licensed by rule (CB, MURS, FRS) and also ham radio which often comes up as a comparison. I notice that it is common to have errors in the presentation, sometimes fairly serious errors. And the comments by others, which may even be rude and arrogant, can actually have even more errors in what they present. So I will make comments, hopefully in a respectful manner and point out some of the pros and cons of Part 95 and Part 97 services. Of course I want to be accurate and there are a few things that I would like to clarify: 1. Mobile, hand-held portable, repeater, base and fixed station can transmit on the main 462 MHz channels up to 50 watts output. And mobile, hand-held portable and base stations can transmit at a maximum of 5 watts ERP on the 462 interstitials. But, if you have a station running 5 watts with a gain antenna, (mobile or base) and not enough loss in the coax, then do you avoid using the 462 interstitials? 2.Only mobile, hand-held portables, control, and fixed stations can transmit on the 467 main channels. Does this really mean that I can not access a repeater from my home base station? There are times that we can access a repeater at some distance out and make it possible to communicate from mobile to base via the repeater. 3. When I contacted B-Tech prior to buying a couple of their GMRS-V1 HT's, I questioned why the power output levels were reduced to only 2 watts instead of an earlier version that I had read were 5 watts. They indicated that they had to drop the power to 2 watts to be legal. The only reason that I could think of was that they only had two power levels in these modified Baofeng radios, and one had to be 0.5 watts for the 467 MHz interstitials, so perhaps the earlier models had too high an output for those frequencies?

Because the NOAA weather transmissions are so ubiquitous, you would likely be able to copy at least one station from most locations with a modest receiver. Far better than with a potential GMRS repeater since there seem to be quite few weather stations, even here in rural SW WI. I can pick up six of the 7 NOAA frequencies, some of them quite a few miles away, but that is with a base antenna. If you have a Part 90 transceiver, that you use for Part 95, perhaps you could program in one or more of the NOAA frequencies? Or would that be too far out of band since NOAA weather is VHF? It likely would not have the alert feature that some of the newer 2 way radios have built-in. For example, our Midland MXT 115's have a built-in NOAA weather alert as well as ability to tune to any of the frequencies, however, not true of our MXT400's. Although not GMRS,even our Uniden Bearcat 980SSB has this alert built-in as well.

Shaine had a good explanation of listening on the receive frequency for either a direct simplex, or simultganeously receiving via a repeater on that frequency. We have 2 MXT 400's, 2 MXT 115's, and 2 B-Tech GMRS-V1's. The MXT's do have the limitation that when you set a PL or DPL tone, it has to be for both TX and RX. Jones above, seems to suggest that the squelch can not be opened on these units, but of course they can by pressing and holding the monitor button. Because of this "capability" we could use a repeater in our area on Channel 17 that has a particular input tone, which is known, but has a different output tone. One could leave the squelch open on channel 17, but you would have to leave it there. I don't think that you can scan with the squelch open. The Midlands units do not appear to allow even changing channels when the squelch is bypassed with the monitor button. Sort of like 50 years ago before we had repeaters and some of us, with very little money, were lucky to have a Heathkit Twoer for 2 meter simplex AM, but it did not come with squelch, so you had the background rushing sound present if you wanted to monitor.

Unless a transceiver has FCC certification for compliance for GMRS (Part 95E), it would be illegal to use such a radio for transmitting, unless perhaps it is certified for Part 90. Amateur radio, Part 97, is a completely separate service and has no bearing on the licensing or use of radios on GMRS, other than the fact that holders of a ham license might not want to do anything that could jeopardize their license by illegal operation in another FCC service.

Although there is no ID requirement for beginning transmissions for either amateur radio or GMRS, most of us need to do this so others will know who is on the frequency when we first key up. (It is almost a trick question which we have had for decades on the amateur radio exams). The repeater needs to ID via voice or morse ID except: 95.1751 © Any GMRS repeater station is not required to transmit station identification if: (1) It retransmits only communications from GMRS stations operating under authority of the individual license under which it operates; and, (2) The GMRS stations whose communications are retransmitted are properly identified in accordance with this section. Which could be interpreted that unless the repeater is exclusively used by the individual or family group (who ID's accordingly), it would need to ID via voice or Morse. But it could it be interpreted differently, if you broaden "operating under authority" to mean anyone who gets permission from the owner? In my area of SW Wisconsin, there are several GMRS repeaters that do not ID at any time. We have one on Channel 21 (700) that is very strong and I was able to track down by a former license holder who I have heard re-purposed an antenna and feedline at a grain storage elevator with a decent antenna height. The other repeater on Channel 17 (600) appears to use different PL tones for input and output. I have never heard anyone else on either repeater.

I use the Yaesu YS-500. I just looked it up and apparently it was discontinued. It was just over $100 a few years ago. I have heard that even if low cost meters are not extremely accurate across their entire range, they are fairly decent when you are close to 1:1 SWR. Perhaps the MFJ 873 at around $80 might be a low cost unit that would work well enough?