marcspaz

Licensed by rule is the same as CB, correct? No physical license issued, cost or application? Just assumed by use?

G... most modern radios are pretty good at protection circuits. However, nothing is bullet proof and everything can potentially catch on fire. I have been involved in radios professionally and as a hobby for over 40 years. I lost count of the total number of radios and amps have literally caught on fire due to protective circuits failing when other stuff goes wrong. And it didn't matter if the equipment cost $50 or $100,000. Believe me, it can all burn.

QFT!

No, I actually needed it for a trip over the past weekend. I just shipped it out today. However, based on feedback from Midland as well as others, I expect it returned by 02/18. I will share the results as soon as I get the radio back.

If the antenna is higher than the roof line and at least a few feet away laterally, the roof should not have any impact. I will say that you may be getting a bit of a shadowing in the garage, reducing the amount of RF noise you are exposing the antenna too and mimicking filtering. I do this all the time in amateur radio on purpose. I will use a 7MHz antenna to listen to 3.8MHz signals, because there is much less noise due to not being at the resonant frequency I want to hear. Also, a higher gain antenna at a hire elevation is going to here more of everything, including noise. It is going to be almost impossible to diagnose over the internet, but I would confirm your VSWR is good and then start looking at filtering the signal with a band-pass filter.

I care about the losses with a meter on a 200w system. Especially with this 300' feed line running up my tower. Losing ~52w per dB of loss is a really big deal. I mean, who cares about only losing ~13w per dB on a 50w system. Especially when their mobile antenna cable is only 6 feet long. 52w per dB is way worse. See how silly that sounds? Just my own opinion... either you are going to be picky about losses and say " I want every last drop of power" or you're not. And dB loss from meter insertion is dB loss, not some arbitrary fixed wattage. I took a few minutes to measure the insertion loss from my meters. Its about 0.04dB per meter. On the 50w side, it totals 0.4w and on the 200w side it totals 1.6w. I kinda feel like 0.4w isn't a "make it or break it" amount of power loss on a 50w system.

So, one of the reasons I leave a meter inline actually came true yesterday, on my Ham gear. I was using my VHF radio with a 200w amp. I have a Watt/VSWR meter between the radio and the amp and another between the amp and the antenna. With no warning and with zero indication other than the meter, my output power on my amplifier shot up to well over 300w, running about 70% more power than designed. What likely happened is, there may be a cold/broken solder joint on a ground circuit for the final stage power regulator. Instead of nuking my amp and possibly having a fire at my desk by continuing to use the amp (because without the meters I wouldn't have known), the meters helped me catch the problem immediately. So now, instead of an $800 loss for the amp and potential untold damage to my home... I most likely will fix my amp for free. Sometime we are prioritizing the wrong potential losses.

Hey Phil! I didn't do any significant technical testing on the MXT500 beyond the peak power. I can grab a signal generator and test it when it gets back from Midland.

Same here. And the reality is if I really want to talk to someone and don't hear anyone, with only 8 high power channels, I can call for a contact on every channel in 2 minutes, and that's allowing 10 seconds or more per channel for someone to reply to me before I spin the dial. Like I said, I'm not against the users agreeing to standardize among themselves... but I'm not holding my breath. Especially since ORI died off, and the was the closest to "coordination" I have seen on this service.

It was... it was intended to establish the repeater travel channel and tone. But don't confuse people still somewhat honoring the ORI principles with "simplex" over the road use. Two distinctly different conversations.

Subbed

@WROZ250 I had to spend some time thinking about a response. Please don't take offense by my last post or this one. While I quoted you, it was really intended for both you and gortex, replying to the combined ideas. It was a little friendly ribbing with some significant truths.

I have to 100% disagree with almost all of this. LoL There is no rule, exception or most. There is only science and fact. The fact of the science is, this is a UHF line of sight service of which range is strictly limited to line of sight and RF interference or lack Thereof. When someone speaks in absolutes with words like "always" or "never", and someone provides and examples of how their statement is incorrect, it's somewhat disingenuous to move the goalpost by throwing the "exception" flag. What is the exception for someone who lives in the city is the norm for someone who lives in the mountains.

Same here. I was on Skyline Drive using a 5w HT and talked 82+ miles to a repeater in Woodbridge VA.

I read your other post about getting hundreds of HT's out to the communities, the 5 area repeaters and the great action/communications plan. That is a winning combo. I wish more communities would follow your lead. Fantastic.

Wonderful find!!! Yes, that looks like what I remember!

I disconnect my cable and toss it on the ground outside when there is lightning around because I'm lazy and a cheapskate who doesn't want to do it right... but it's not the best recommendation. LoL

I commend them for the effort, but don't they realize that using privacy code (PL tone squelch) reduces your ability to successfully make contact?

I will still only have 35 watts. LOL

I am in the Astron Camp, too. I have an SS-30M good for 30 amps cont, 40 peak. It's super quiet with the fans being off a vast majority of the time, and when they are on, they are high volume, low speed, so noise is reduced. I run a 100w HF radio, a 50w VHF/UHF radio, a 40w GMRS radio, and a 225w VHF amplifier with it, and I use it to keep my 100 ah battery charged.

@Hunter399... that's cool! Glad they sent it over to you. I haven't sent mine back yet because I need it for an offroad event on the 30th. Hopefully they take care of us. Looking forward to seeing what they do for you. For what its worth... my MXT400 has more measured output power than my MXT500. I would like to have that corrected, for sure. I miss the old days when we just had to spin a POT and make it happen. Now the FPP alignments lock us out.

< 2:1 just means that if you have a 2:1 or better SWR, don't bother them. LoL

Red lighting mean you owe the FCC money. That can stop your application process. You will probably have to call them.

I can't test mine against the chart above anytime soon. I am disabled and can't get on the roof. I have to hire a climber. During my original test, when I measured the 1.5 or 1.6 (don't recall exactly), it was on a tripod with a 3 foot patch cable. The feed line should not be an issue in that case. If we calculate for the masking of 100 feet of the LMR400 I am testing on now, with the 1.17:1 I am measuring, that would still only be 1.4:1 unmasked VSWR, which is still good and agrees (close enough) to what I measured while it was on the ground. Not sure what to say. My x200 is in the garage and close in performance. While its not the same antenna, it may shed some light for me. I may test it today or tomorrow while on the tripod.

@WROZ250... I appreciate the detailed response. No arguments here. I have to be honest, this is my first x300 and I don't know if this is normal/typical performance. I assumed it was since it's a stacked array with induction coils and a capacitance hat inside the tube to give e it flexibility and hight gain. I do find it odd that it's both wide in range and high gain. Normally I've seen a sacrifice in bandwidth as gain increased. I use to use an x50. It was fine for portable ops (which is what I used it for) but wasn't great. I went with an x200 for portable and an x300 for the house... mostly because I an switching the x300 between 3 different radios and seemed to have the best performance where I expected to use it.