marcspaz

And humble, too!

A great example of the loss you are talking about with bending... for those who have longer steel whip antennas on their vehicle, if you are outside the edge of 100% coverage of a repeater (or a friend you are talking simplex to) listen to how broken and scratchy the receive sounds, and then pullover an see just how much the signal improves. Some of it is because varying obstacles between the radios is no longer occurring, but most of it is because the antenna is no longer moving around in the wind.

Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad it helped. Im considering doing two dedicated videos for repeaters and tones. For the time being, feel free to search the existing threads and ask questions. There are many knowledgeable people who loved to help.

I think one thing to be aware of is, the fold down feature is for parking in garags and under covers, not driving. You cannot drive the vehicle with the antenna folded over. The antenna wasn't designed to be used/stored in that condition. Eventually it's will break. The spring will eventually stop pulling the antenna into the socket. The connection and coax will start to fill with water. There will be all kinds of issues. And that is assuming you found a way to stop it from spinning and flopping around, because it free-spins when its laying down. If you don't want it up when not in use, you have to remove it and put a weather tight cap on the mount to keep it clean and dry. Next, the bigger antennas are just a bunch of small antennas stacked on top of each other and phased, to create a specific radiation pattern. Typically, elongated out to the horizon, deadening elevation above a certain degree above the horizon... usually 30⁰ or less. They also tend to be somewhat directional, depending on where they are physically installed. They are great in places with no significant elevation changes, but in hilly and mountainous areas, they are not a good choice. So, if it has benefits or is detrimental will be based on where you are using it and where the person you are trying to communicate with is located.

Awesome, thank you for the kind words! Everyone is welcome to use the PowerPoint show and the video. If it's helpful, please feel free to share them.

No doubt. Especially when the receiver has a good processor in it, it won't take much.

HF is definitely odd. Sometimes I will increase my power from 100w to 750w-800w before signal reports improve. Then again, depending on who I am talking to, everyone is a 5 9 anyway. LOL

Sure... that makes sense. The propagation was already working in your favor. Increasing your transmit power should help. Just keep in mind that you need to increase your power 4x (6 dB gain) to get a noticeable improvement at the receiver.

Well, no and yes. It depends on the situation. I think I may not be as clear as I could be. More power does not help, in and of itself. Other conditions must be in place in order for the addition of power to improve ground range beyond the RF horizon. If there are no refraction anomalies in the atmosphere, objects causing scatter, or objects that cause diffraction, there is no amount of extra power to help reach beyond the RF LOS. That is why I said transmit power does not fundamentally change the propagation mechanics of UHF waves. If the special propagation conditions don't exist between the stations trying to communicate, you are going to be restricted to LOS regardless of if you are using 5w or 5,000w. If you increase your transmitter power while the frequency remains the same, the number of photons emitted per second increases proportionally. If anomalies are present and a very small number of photons are being refracted, scattered, or diffracted beyond the radio horizon, increasing power increases the total number of photons being refracted, scattered, or diffracted, improving the photon density (part per million) which gives the receiver more information to work with. So, again, if the signal is being refracted, scattered, or diffracted due to anomalies, increasing power helps. In the absence of those anomalies, no amount of power will improve or extend your radio horizon.

Increasing the transmit power of a UHF radio signal does not directly affect its ability to refract, diffract or scatter beyond the horizon. Though, it increases the PPM of photons that are refracted, diffracted or scattered, increasing the ability for receivers to pull the signal. Again, transmit power does not fundamentally change the propagation mechanics of UHF waves, but it can improve the reception of signals that are already being refracted, scattered, or diffracted.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Dual-boot is a blast, for sure. I used to run a Windows / Ubuntu dual boot, which was helpful for doing design work for endpoint software and scripts. With an OS-based hypervisor, you can run as many simultaneous virtual machines as your available resources allow, with whatever OS you want, without ever having to shutdown the host OS. Also, as long as resources are managed correctly, none of the other VM's should ever impact performance or availability of the host OS nor any of the other VM's. The only constraint is, if you shutdown or reboot your host OS (the main operating system instance on the computer), all of the guest virtual machines will also be restarted and/or shutdown. With automatic dynamic resource allocation, I can run 7 to 10 guest virtual machines on my PC and not miss a beat. The biggest benefit to the typical home user is complete isolation from the internet. So there is no risk of virus or malware attacks, data loss or theft, or privacy violations (when combined with VPN service, anti-virus software and some common sense about what not to put on the VM.) It is definitely a bit advanced for the average home user, but there are a ton of resources online that can provide step-by-step instructions. And I know that since you are able to figure out a dual-boot system, which is much harder to accomplish IMHO, you should have no problem getting an OS-based Hypervisor setup.

I'm referencing a virtual machine, not Vertical Network. You can create a virtual computer in a local hypervisor on your PC or MAC, sharing your storage, RAM and CPU. Here is a screen grab from my PC with the VM shown.

Here is a little trick I use when I am surfing the internet for anything and any reason... regardless of if you have a MAC or PC, you can create a virtual machine (VM) that cost $0 dollars to run. I build/built a VM, put my anti-virus and firewall software on it and make it so the network interface can ONLY see the internet. It can't see my private network at all. Then, I make a backup (aka snapshot). From there, I do 100% of my internet browsing from there. When I am done, I shut the VM down and my system automatically restores my VM to its backup state. I never, ever have to worry about viruses or malware. If I have a file that I download and want to use, after I scan the file and confirm there are no viruses, I mount an isolated volume and turn off the VM. One the VM is off (an restored) I mount the isolated volume on my main PC and transfer it to my permanently mounted secondary volume. I know it sounds like a lot of work and a PITA, but once the initial setup is done, the hard work is over and you get pretty fast at the file transfer after you ave done it a few times. If you want to get fancy, you can save all your favorite site's cookies and login information on the VM, write a script to do the rest of the work, making it take seconds.

No idea about local shops, but as mentioned above, local amateur radio clubs should have someone with the right tools and experience. Just my opinion based on experience, using the cheap Nano VNA's that you get off of Amazon are not good enough to tune a duplexer well. You don't have to spend a fortune. I only paid about $130 for the one I use for 2m/VHF Pass/Reject duplexers with 0.600 MHz splits. I am getting -100dB notches that are only 25KHz wide. I would also recommend asking whoever tunes it for you, if they would be willing to teach you how to do it. A good portion of amateurs I know actually like helping people learn.

The level of effort required to clone the ID of an authorized radio far outweighs the knowledge and stamina of the average jammer. LoL

I have talked to 2 people on the ISS and used the ISS repeater several times. It was surprisingly easy and only required a few watts. I didn't use any fancy hardware or software, just a zero-gain dual-band vertical antenna and a dual-band radio. I adjusted the frequency for Doppler manually, fairly easily, too. It's a lot of fun, but I got bored waiting for comms windows, and gave up on it after awhile.

FRS radios on channels 8 through 14 are limited to 0.5 Watts, and all other channels are limited to 2.0 Watts. There are some higher powered GMRS handheld radios, but even GMRS radios are restricted to 0.5w on 8 through 14.

Happy Thanksgiving!

You need to understand the history of GMRS to answer this question. The original 'distress' frequency was 462.675, aka channel 20. While there is no longer a formal calling/distress channel, there are plenty of sites that have old articles about common distress frequencies in different bands, and the history of GMRS. Then there are guys like me who have been using GMRS since the '80s, who just remember. Also, the legacy distress/calling channel gets conflated with ORI. There were two groups, Popular Wireless and Personal Radio Association, that came up with the idea of an Open Repeater Initiative (ORI). It was designed to get repeater owners to open up and share resources instead of locking down systems. The idea was to make it easier for GMRS users to find and access repeaters. The group established the 141.3 CTCSS/PL as a “travel tone”. Originally, the repeater pair 462/467.675 was the ORI frequency (675 known today as the travel channel) due to 675 historically being the distress/emergency channel. However, ORI eventually morphed into any repeater pair using 141.3 for PL access and did not require prior permission. ORI and the founding groups are long gone, but many repeater owners still honor the spirit of ORI on their repeaters. In the absence of ORI, there has been debate in the community over what should be put into place, if anything. If we stick to the historic components of the FCC and groups like ORI, the calling frequency would continue to be 462.675, and the open repeaters would be on 467.675/462.675 with tone 141.3. However, the radio services is so small, the number of users has dramatically increased over the past few years, and with modern technology, just about any channel can fit the bill for "calling". A vast majority of us are scanning all the channels if we're not actively in a conversation.

I really don't want to see you leave. I think you're a nice guy and you contribute a lot here. I think you're just taking my comments and the comments of others entirely too serious. Steve and I disagreed on something. We had a conversation about it. Nobody got offended because the other guy had a different opinion. That's just normally how adults do it.

I don't understand why you're taking it so seriously. Some shares an opinion you don't like, so you melt down and hide instead of saying "thanks, but I disagree". That is something I expect from my 6 yo granddaughter. Not an adult.

If that was the case, we wouldn't be on page 4 of the 30th time this was discussed... I think, anyway. I mean, I am open to other opinions, but it would help if the rules weren't written by lawyers and kept up with modern technology.

Mostly for the sake of conversation and boredom. I thought I was pretty clear on that. There are a ton of things we discuss here that haven't come to consensus in a decade... I doubt it will change; especially with the overwhelming lack of enforcement and lack of 'official' guidance or clarification from the FCC (with the exception of recent Linking debates). The entire internet is a giant black hole. Has been since about 1994. I do enjoy the technical stuff, learning and helping others. So there is that.

I'll tell you want i think. In the end, no one gives a damn what the rules say, they do what they want or think they can get away with. Even the people who don't publicly admit it due to work, or position in the community, etc., fall into this category. I think the entire conversation is theater, boredom or both. Carry on.