marcspaz

Wait a minute... you don't have a Jeep? How the heck did that happen? LOL

That is a great price. I have to say, out of the 2 dozen plus antennas I tested on my Jeep, the MXTA26 and the Tram 1/4 wave are the only 2 I kept. That Midland antenna has more measurable gain than another antenna I tried that advertised 9dB gain.

I am not a lawyer nor a law enforce officer,, but I spent a long time studying constitutional law and criminal justice. Almost a decade. I have a high degree of confidence in stating that if something is not explicitly prohibited, it's assumed legal. There are very, very limited exceptions where guilt is assumed until proven otherwise. In those cases (statutes) it is very clearly defined as a prima facie prohibited act until determined otherwise allowed. I am unaware of any law that has actual assumptions.

There are very few antennas that don't require a proper ground. Many lip mount systems come with aluminum plates to prevent damage to the lip, but unless you are using a half-wave antenna, you need to scrape a bunch of paint off or ditch the aluminum clamp plates and let the screws puncture the paint into the metal of the lip. One of my lip mounts actually required me to add a ground strap. Thus is an example of the clamp plates.. This is one of the mounts with a ground strap...

Perfectly legal for business use. No need to test boundaries. You will be inside them. § 95.2703 Definitions, MURS. MURS. A two-way, short distance voice or data communication service for facilitating personal or business activities of the general public.

100% agree.

I actually carry 2 antennas to use. Depending on where I am, I swap them around. I use the 6dB gain antenna when I am relatively flat areas, but if I am driving through the mountains (like when I go offroading) I use the 1/4 wave antenna.

@axorlov / @WRKC935 I'm kind of confused. Are you saying that antenna height doesn't help with propagation as much as additional power in cities because of buildings. Or are you saying height doesn't help when you are actually in a building? Or neither of those? I think I am missing something?

My post really focuses on base stations. May e I should mention it specifically, but I assume telling people to put their antenna 30 or 40 feet higher was an indication. If the antenna is higher than the trees, then you don't have to worry about them. LoL

@Lscott, good deal. I have a 10w 40db attenuator that should do the trick. I'll check out the HP. Looks like it may have a bunch of features, besides fir being a generator. I read up on it tonight.

My signal generator died today. I still have a TinySA that has a generator built into it, but I can tell you with certainty that the generator does not drop to -139dBm, as it claims on the screen. Regardless of what I set it to, it looks like the lowest it goes is -98dBm So, it's not very good for testing receive sensitivity. I found a cheap Rankomu on Amazon for $130. It's rated for 0.5MHz to 470MHz, between ‑70dBm to ‑132dBm which is fine for what I am doing. Before I buy a questionable product, does anyone have a recommendation (based on experience) for a RF signal generator with about the same coverage and features, at a decent price? I don't want to spend $1,000 or even $500. This will mostly be a toy and an occasional review or alignment tool for me. It would be fine if it only drops to 0.1uV, but 0.05uV or better is preferred. TIA, Spaz

I have heard this as well. It might be fun to actually test this. I'll have to see, but I may hook up a spectrum analyzer to an antenna and then use a telescoping mast to see what the dB reading are on the analyzer side. It may be a bit more than a week, as I am traveling through Monday and have to work, but I am penciling that in.

Thank you! My pleasure, truly. I'm no expert, but I try to be as accurate as possible and deliver it in a way that everyone can understand, regardless of the reader's experience level. My goal is to help as many people as possible, because if it wasn't for the community, I would have been lost.

This is not accurate. You can use any modulation type (including digital) on any HF band except 60m. Also, there is extremely limited bandwidth restrictions on all HF bands (depends on modulation type) except on 60m, which is heavily restricted.

Fortunately the owners around me do well with coordinating. However, I can see getting kind of PO'ed if after 10-15 years of smooth operation, someone puts up a new repeater and starts causing harmful interference.

Great question! If you have walls of a canyon that are high in iron and other conductive material, there can be some tunneling or directional impact, but its rare for it to be in high enough concentration to work. Most natural barriers, such as the trees and hills/mountains absorb UHF signals... however, UHF penetrates man-made structures, like buildings, much better. More power would be more beneficial in urban areas than in other types of areas. More power is going to be a benefit in rough terrain for other reasons, though. RF shadowing is like shadows from the Sun. There is never complete darkness behind a rock or mountain. Same with radio waves. Refraction and scatter places the radio waves behind stuff... the sharper the angle, the less scatter. So, the more power you have, the less you are going to be impacted by shadowing, but only to a limited degree. HF signals will bounce off of stuff pretty well, and goes through trees and foliage with no issues.

Hey folks. I have been helping someone here with questions about getting more power out of their radio and into the antenna. I thought the discussion could help many new people, so I am sharing some of that conversation here. This is a really long post. Sorry about that, but I think it's worth it. If you have any questions, just ask. I am sure myself or one of the other experienced operators or engineers can help. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I think, to help make sense of power vs performance in GMRS, I'll explain how the signal strength is impacted by output wattage. UHF (where GMRS lives) is a Line of Sight service. This means exactly what it sounds like. If it's in the RF line of sight, you can talk to it. When we talk to radios on the surface of the earth, you can only talk to the visual horizon, plus about 15% (aka the Radio Horizon). The higher both antennas get, the further the horizon and the further you can talk. From the roof of a 15 story building, I can use 0.5w from my handheld to talk on a repeater over 50 miles away. I talk to satellites in orbit, 240+ miles above Earth, with only 0.25 watts because there is nothing but empty space between us. There is some very minor benefit to more power. One of the reasons why the GMRS radio waves can be heard past the visual horizon on earth is because some of the signal gets bent / refracted, as well as scattered in all directions while it travels, creating the referenced RF horizon. Some of this signal scatters back to earth while the rest travels out into space. It's a very small percentage and it varies depending on the atmospheric conditions. That said, if you have 100w out and only 1% of your signal gets scattered back to earth (example only), someone can hear that 1 watt and you may be able to talk if the other person's signal scatters about the same, coming back to you. Scatter is extremely unreliable, however. I'll explain why getting the antenna as high as possible is for the best, compared to adding more power. In the radio world we use a quality scale to define how well your signal is being heard. This is called the RST System. RST stands for Readability (how intelligible your words or information is), Signal Strength (how strong your signal is heard by the receiving station), and Tone (mostly used in Morse Code communications). For the voice side of things, we typically only use the RS portion. R is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being aware that someone is transmitting voice, but can't make out anything. An R5 means, regardless of signal strength, your words are 100% intelligible. For the S, we use an S-meter and provide the total number of S-units read on the meter. This indicates how strong your signal is. This is a picture of an analog S-meter scale. The letter S on the left represents one (1) S-unit. The largest S-unit reading on s-meters is the 9 or S-9. I'll explain the +10, +30, +60 in a moment, So, just referencing the RST system and the meter above, the best signal report would be a 5/9 (pronounced five nine) or 59. This means your voice is completely understandable and your signal is strong enough that the needle moves to 9 s-units, the maximum value on the number scale (normally there is zero static or noise heard at this level). The commonly accepted minimum signal report that is considered "usable" is a 2/1, 2 for voice quality and 1 S-unit. However, that is absolute worst case, if it was an emergency and you can repeat information over and over to get the communications out. There is a tremendous amount of noise and your voice is barely being understood when it is heard. Conversational minimal signal reports are going to be about a 3/2, but that is still aggravating and most people give up quickly due to the static and missing every other word or every third word. It's mostly "call me on the phone" or "almost there" kind of stuff. And then there is what most people tolerate for chit-chat, and that is a 4/3. Meaning, I can hear everything you say. There is much less static, and the signal is strong enough that you have established reliable communications. So, to understand what an S-unit is and how it impacts the quality of communication, I have to explain what the meter is actually measuring. One s-unit is equal to 0.2 microvolts detected at the receiver antenna input. Regardless of how much power the transmitter is and regardless of how far that station is, if 0.2 microvolts makes it to your radio, that radio is hearing 1 s-unit of signal. Lets say you have 10w going into the transmit antenna and the receiving station is fairly far from your radio, only receiving 1 s-unit. 10w We really want to get to 3 s-units for reliable communications. Well, in order for the received voltage to climb 1 s-unit, you need to multiply your power by 4. That means to move 1 s-unit on the receiver, you need to increase your transmit power to 40 watts. 40w However, we already know that 2 s-units isn't really usable. To get to 3 s-units, you need to multiply your power 4 times, again. That's 160w into the antenna to go from "I know you're there" to "I can actually talk to you" (assuming your audio is good). 160w Lets assume you wanted to try to get the s-meter to swing to 9 s-units. Well, that will take 655,360 watts. 655,360w Now, the + scale is even more fun You need to double your power for every 3dB increase in measured power. You need go up 4 times the power to increase by 6dB. Those + readings are for strength in dB over the s-9 signal strength. Since in our specific example we know you need 655,360w to go from s-1 to s-9, to get to +30dB over s-9 you need to increase your transmit power to 655,360,000w. That's 655 million. Not a type-o. 655,360,000w So now, lets go back to the original limit of GMRS being a Line of Sight service. That 160w you needed to get to 3 s-units, basically netted you zero distance compared to the 10w, because the horizon didn't change. All you did was make it so that those who could hear you, now understand what you are saying... maybe. To make things even more bleak, if you are communicating due to scatter and 1% or less of your signal is being heard, the amount your transmit power would need to increase is unfathomable. And did I mention that all that transmit power did absolutely nothing for your receive capability? So, you can see why it's not practical to chase power output. If you get your antenna 30 or 40 feet higher, you would actually improve your communications range and quality of reception much more than if you can increased your power from 10w to legal limit.

And.... now we know. LOL

Fine, I'll do it. I'm just saying, you aren't living until you used an amateur cross-band repeater to connect a MURS handheld to a GMRS repeater.... allegedly.... Now we see who has a sense of humor. LoL

I think he picked up on this...

So, is it a good location? Sure, but up high on the lift gate will work better.

Everyone loves a good MURS repeater. Oh.... wait.... never mind.

There is zero chance my team and I are doing all the different site surveys, designing a system, creating all of those plot maps, and proof of concept for $500. At $3,000, we were losing money and finally stopped doing them completely. Now I only assist with Ham club and ARES stuff as part of the hobby.

I ran mine at a 50% duty cycle for close to half an hour. Tried to stress it on purpose. Good point. Hopefully he'll see this and let us know. I have a 300w dummy load that is good from DC to 500MHz.

Mine is an M20RM. 438MHz to 482MHz. Testing on a dummy load on 460MHz. We can always make them run cooler. The question (I think) is if its broken or normal.