WRTC928

I tried to group the results into something that would make sense to me for practical applications. Excellent, good, not bad, tolerable, and nope. It's easier to work with than splitting hairs about 0.01 vs 0.02. I often say that "good enough" is a valid concept.

Exactly my observations. I also group them by 100s to make them easier to remember, but I wish it had banks.

I went wild and did some field testing today. I don't have sophisticated equipment to test antennas, but I set out to answer two "practical use" questions: (1) Which one talks the most farz? (2) How likely is it to damage my radio? The test radio was a TYT TH-9800 in my car operating on simplex and the receiving/responding radio was a Baofeng AR-5RM with an HYS 701 antenna used by my buddy at my house. The answer to the first question was both easy and surprising. I tested all of them in a number of locations in about a 10 mile radius from my house and they all did about equally well, making 6 miles pretty easily, a bit more in some locations, and fading after that. Some of them lost signal pretty quickly on MURS and GMRS, but they weren't designed for that, so I don't hold it against them. The Comet SBB-1 and Nagoya NMO-72 tended to have a little less background noise, but with all of them, the signal became unintelligible at about the same locations. Antennas matter, but terrain matters more. For the second question, I tested SWRs on each antenna on the 2 meter, 70 centimeter, GMRS, and MURS bands. (Don't start. I know the rules. I'm a grown-ass man. I'll take my chances.) I tested each band on each end and in the middle and on a few random frequencies. I assigned a value to the SWR ranges: 4 = nearly perfect SWR 1.00-1.02, 3=pretty good SWR 1.03-1.49, 2=good enough SWR 1.50-2.00, 1=prefer not to use it but probably wouldn't do any harm SWR 2.01-2.50, 0=too high for my comfort SWR 2.51 or higher. The antenna got the score that was highest of the SWRs in that band. Comet SBB-1 2m-1 70cm-4 GMRS-3 MURS-3 Comet SBB-2 2m-2 70cm-3 GMRS-3 MURS-3 HYS 144/430 2m-2 70cm-3 GMRS-3 MURS-1 Comet SB-15 2m-4 70cm-4 GMRS-0 MURS-3 Nagoya NMO-72 2m-3 70cm-4 GMRS-2 MURS-3 Compactenna 2m-3 70cm-4 GMRS-2 MURS-1 Surprise! The lowly Nagoya NMO-72 is perfectly usable across all four bands. The Comet SB-15 is perfect on 2m and 70cm, pretty good on MURS and unusable on GMRS. However, it's a quad-band 10m/6m/2m/70cm antenna. It already has a lot to do. I was a bit disappointed in the Comet SBB-1's 2m performance, since it's allegedly a 2m/70cm dual-band antenna. It was pretty good on 70cm, GMRS, and MURS, but I bought it for 2m/70cm. I probably won't be using it again. The SBB-2 was about as versatile as the Nagoya, but like the SBB-1, I expected a better showing on 2m. The Compactenna did very well on 2m and 70cm, not well on GMRS or MURS, which is to be expected, since it's marketed as a 2m/70cm antenna. Just because I had them lying around, I tested two GMRS-specific antennas as well, the Midland Ghost and the Nagoya UT-72G. Ghost 2m-0 70cm-0 GMRS-2 MURS-0 Nagoya UT-72G 2m-0 70cm-2 GMRS-3 MURS-0 Because the Ghost is a single-purpose antenna, I expected a bit better score in the GMRS band, but it got a 2 because one of the SWRs was between 1.6 and 2.0. Most of them were better. I know from having used it for several months that it punches above its weight in terms of performance in real-world applications. The UT-72G is also a single-purpose GMRS antenna, but the 70cm band is apparently close enough that it could be used in that band. Either of them should work just fine for regular GMRS use. Conclusions: (1) You can do all the fancy antenna testing you want, but in the real world, there's not much difference in farz from one antenna to another. (2) There apparently really is such a thing as a "do-it-all" antenna if that interests you. (3) You might think the manufacturers of a single-purpose antenna would have them finely tuned to that band, but you'd be wrong, at least part of the time.

The night before last, Ada Oklahoma got hammered badly by storms. They have an active amateur radio club with a repeater that I can hear and sometimes even use on a good day. It was very interesting to hear them reporting the action in real time, routing volunteers to areas that had just been hit, doing "damage triage" to help decide who needed help most urgently, etc. Radio is greatly superior to other forms of communication for that purpose because the word gets out to hundreds or potentially even thousands of people all at once. Obviously, there's always the potential for some bonehead to screw stuff up by getting on the repeater with extraneous traffic, but I didn't hear any of that. The local club has obviously practiced this; they ran very smoothly. I was impressed.

The National Guard of several states has Civil Support Teams whose role is to provide highly technical assistance to civil emergency and law enforcement agencies. For example, they have hazmat teams with the cutting-edge technology to detect pretty much any chemical, biological, or radiological hazard. They're a strange hybrid because they're funded and get their equipment from Regular Army and they're full-time active duty soldiers and airmen, but they belong to the National Guard because the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the regular Army and Air Force from acting in a civilian role except in very specific circumstances. One of their assets is a big van with the capability to provide all the emergency communication routing and interface for an entire city. That's pretty impressive!

I'm going to second what @OffRoaderX said about the Midland Ghost antenna. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. It's not a cheap antenna, but it isn't prohibitively expensive either. The only reason I quit using it is that I got an amateur radio license and wanted a true dual-band antenna. There are some with the same form factor as the Ghost, but so far, I haven't found one that anyone will recommend. I've ordered a Compactenna which is taller (9") and more expensive (~$139) but has numerous favorable reviews/reports. Hopefully I can install it and stop looking.

With regard to radios and disaster preparedness, there are two major elements to consider. You'll need to be in contact with people in your immediate area and you'll need to be able to get a message to the world outside your immediate area. For the first, simplex is obviously the answer, ideally with a base station and a tall antenna (assuming the storm leaves it standing). For the second, repeaters are pretty much a necessity, with the same caveat that they need to be still functional. Yes, traffic will be heavy, but it's better than the nothing you'd have without it. Many years ago, I was in a remote village in the interior of Alaska when an earthquake took out all the communication for all the villages in a sizeable chunk of the state. Within hours, military aircraft with God's own comm systems were running laps around the state talking to anything that could send a signal -- marine, CB, GMRS, Ham. Unfortunately, that isn't going to be the case in the wake of most disasters. Just knowing that someone out there is hearing you improves your confidence immensely.

In my experience, individual radios have preferences, so it's not possible to predict which of a group of good antennas will work best with your radio. I have two identical Baofeng AR-5RMs and one of them likes a Nagoya 771 best while the other does a little better with an HYS. However, any of the antennas you have listed will almost certainly be a significant improvement over the stock antenna. My advice is to not overthink it. Pick one and see how it works.

Yes, the Arcshell AR-5s come out of the box with a mishmash of ham/business frequencies, some with codes, some without. Fortunately, they're dead-easy to program in Chirp. I have several which I bought and programmed with FRS frequencies for the U. S. Cavalry Association to use during events. They're surprisingly effective radios for the price. Selling them as "no license required" is a bit deceptive, though.

That makes a lot of sense. Likely I'd do the same in similar circumstances.

That should work. The fact that the repeater is only 5 watts shouldn't be a significant limitation. Radio waves travel in a straight line. if there's nothing between the two radios, you don't need much power. I can use a repeater 20 miles from my house with a 1 watt radio, but both the repeater and my house are on high points. Essentially everything between us is lower. The higher you can get the antenna, and the more gain the antenna has, the more successful your communications will be. Height is might and elevation is propagation. If you can get the antenna above the peak of your roof, that's ideal. Barring that, get it as high as possible. You might look into a telescoping flagpole to mount the antenna on. They're not prohibitively expensive and some of them will withstand 100 mph winds. If the antenna is elevated above intervening structures, you and your friends should be able to get a good 5-10 km with your handheld radios; possibly much more, depending upon the circumstances. Edited to add: Don't cheap out on the coaxial cable and keep the run as short as possible. You can lose up to half of your signal in 100' of coax and you don't have a lot of power to begin with. You can compensate for that with a high-gain antenna, but you still don't want to lose more than you have to.

I picked up that habit in the military. I was told that plugging or unplugging accessories while the unit is powered could be harmful. TBH, I just took it as gospel and never did any research of my own. It takes literally a second, so I don't see any need to change my habit.

Following with interest. I haven't experienced this problem, but I have two 5RMs that have never been unboxed, so it could happen. I'll be interested to see if anyone has figured out a fix.

"Let him who has never made a silly, bonehead mistake cast the first stone" or whatever it was Jesus said to those guys.

A lot of hams grumble about the perception that GMRS is "ham lite", but in some ways it is. You can gain comfort with using and programming a radio, basics of radio science, experience with repeaters, and more. Were it not for GMRS, I probably would never have been interested enough to go for an amateur license.

Height might and elevation is propagation.

That's a fair criticism.

I picked up a few of those a while back, and they had a variety of frequencies in them, but I didn't try them. I immediately wiped the radios and installed the higher-power FRS channels. I did confirm with my farz-o-meter that high power is 2 watts and low is 0.5, but I didn't try to enter any of the 8-14 channels, so I don't know if it would let me. Now I'm curious, so I'll probably give it a try. Edited to add: I just now tried it and was able to program in 3 of the low-power FRS channels and they Rx and Tx just fine. I don't know why yours won't. I think calling them "junky" is a bit unfair, though. I think they're now $10 each. Considering the price, I've been pretty impressed. I was able to easily communicate over a repeater 20 miles from my house and the signal report was "almost full quieting". I have very favorable topography, but still, that's not bad for 10 bucks. I don't know how much of a beating they will take before they fail, but I've handed them out at three horse events and none of them have quit yet. I put a drop of Gorilla Glue on all the antennas, so functionally they're the same as an FRS radio, albeit not type-accepted. I'm not really concerned that the FCC is going to raid a horse show and take me away in handcuffs, but if you give radios to non-radio people, it's probably best to minimize the number of things that can go wrong -- losing an antenna, for example. I programmed them with the 15 higher-power channels and the local weather frequency, since the weather is kind of important to event planners. TBH, I couldn't be happier with them.

I'd settle for just as good as a 771. What brand do you have?

I like the idea of a 15" antenna that can be folded up and carried in a pocket or in a small radio bag behind the seat of the truck, but would it really give me any improvement over the 8" 701-type antenna? I can definitely get a bit better performance from a 771 over a 701 in some circumstances, but the "tactical" antennas seem a bit gimmicky to me. If it's no better than an 8" antenna, there's no point. Does anyone have any personal experience they can share about these?

I do it. You have to be sure to check SWR all the way up and down the bands because some antennas aren't tuned well enough to the 462-467 MHz range. I've had good results with the Comet SBB-1 and SBB-2 and the Nagoya UT-72 and NMO-72 antennas. In terms of getting good SWRs all the way up to 467, the UT-72 gave me the best results. Some folks say the Nagoya 72s are trash, but I've gotten good performance from them. I'm not trying to reach ridiculous distances, so YMMV.

Okay, but that's pretty minimal and you don't even have to do that if you don't want to.

If you want to go the easier but more expensive route, BTech has a plug-and-play repeater system. It's not cheap, but it's literally all you need except the antenna and coax. It has all 8 repeater pairs and includes an auto-ID module. Put up your antenna, plug it in, and you're up and running.

Hi-Point is the Baofeng of the firearm world (although less ubiquitous). Cheap, fugly, not respected, but it puts bullets downrange and if that's all you need to do, you'll be happy with it. Baofeng is cheap and not respected (not necessarily unattractive, though), but if all you need to do is put signals downrange, it will do the job. There's a lot of talk on the ham forums about how lousy their signals are, blah, blah, but every single time I've requested a signal report on mine, I've been told it's strong and clear. I don't know anything about Midland, but if it puts out a strong, clear signal and has all the features you need, it's a good radio. For someone else, it might be a lousy radio. Okay, actually I do know one thing about Midland. Their Ghost antenna works far better than I expected it to. I wish they'd make one for 140/440.

Serious question -- Is 16 the agreed-upon channel by off-roaders across the country, or are you using "official" in an ironic way?