marcspaz

I should call it high sped escort? LOL About to speedily escort? haha I'm lost.

It does a lot that I need. The light controller makes it so I don't have to cut-up and mount stuff on a new vehicle, plus I get to retune for tires, gears, etc once I get the lift kit on. There are some other nice things, like disabling the auto start/stop (which drives me crazy) enabling lockers in 2-wheel drive, etc. The price is high, but in scope for a tuner. Since I don't need to flash the ECM and never will, I figured I was good. Thanks! Lindsay is a motor-head, a Ham, and into most of the hobbies I am. So that helps a lot! LOL

All of the mobiles are gone. I have two Ham Radio handhelds that seem to work OK. So, my son and I use them when we go 4-wheeling while out of the trucks. If one of us mistakenly drops an HT in the mud or on some rocks, better dropping a $35 is better than dropping a $300+ high-quality HT.

This is a demo of some custom and built-in emergency light patterns in the Tazer JL Mini, as installed on a Jeep Gladiator. There are 15 different combinations, depending on if the engine is on, the headlights are on, or if the engine and headlights are off. I am an amateur radio operator and I am a volunteer emergency staffer with Amateur Radio Emergency services, serving Prince William County Government, and other government agencies. Current Virginia law allows amateur radio operators to have and use safety strobes on their vehicles while both stopped on public roads, as well as in motion, depending on the service being provided. Regardless of if you are in Virginia or another state, consult an attorney and your served agencies, to be sure you adhere to the laws in your state and rules of your served agency. This information is for demonstration purposes only and should not be misconstrued as legal advice. Strictly use at your own risk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzFgfHXkLIA

Roger, Roger! LOL

Nice review! I would stay away from VHF while using it. 3:1 is almost guaranteed damage to your radio and that is pretty close.

hahahaha!!! Remote SETI team!

LOL They are mad that my 1984 pickup is in the circle. Plus, within minutes of putting it up, I was asked by one of my neighbors how long the eyesore (portable) was going to be in my driveway for. I can imagine how they would respond to a nice parabolic or steep take-off beam on a single axle trailer out in the middle of the circle. hahaha

Oh yea... not surprising. I lose downlink connections if it rains or cloud cover gets really heavy. Got tired of fighting it and decided to stick to local comms (except for the ISS on rare occasions).

Unless you have an antenna that doesn't require an external ground plane, you have no choice. Generally speaking, foliage will always absorb some RF energy. However unless you are trying to communicate through dense vegetation, it should still work fine. One of my antennas are in the woods behind my house, below the tree line, and I get great performance out of it.

It's slim pickins for new, Part 95 hardware. There is a bunch of grandfathered hardware out there, though.

Wow. That's a serious enthusiast, right there.

The easiest way to ID a gen 1, without calling Midland, is the mic. If it seems like an odd gloss black with a loop instead of a button, and it was new in a sealed box, it's a gen 1. For some reason they used poor quality plastic for the gen 1 microphone. When they did the gen 2 updates, they used better materials for the case of the mic and switched to a button hanger instead of the loop.

Kaz... the Baofeng 9500 is not an MXT400. It is a cheap cosmetic knock-off UHF amateur radio. Outside of looking similar, they are unrelated.

I'll PM a link to you.

I'm glad the info helps, but what do you mean by a 20m fan dipole? I ask, because normally a fan dipole is setup for multiple bands, with several sets of radiating elements that are fanned out from each other. I would think a half wave folded dipole would work well for you, space wise. It would be about 16.4'. They tend to be a bit more directional, however.

Normally I would think so too, but they are so thin that you can't see them until you're a few feet away. The Diamonds are fiberglass and painted white, so they are a little more visible. You can see those once you're in the driveway.

Okay... here are the X50a readings. They are pretty good considering the antenna was designed as an amateur radio repeater antenna. In the 462 range. http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/HAM-GMRS/x50a_on_GMRS/x50a_GMRS_Simplex_SWR.jpg In the 467 range. http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/HAM-GMRS/x50a_on_GMRS/x50a_GMRS_Repeater_SWR.jpg

You may indeed have a bad mic. I would have to hear it... but the radio did have decent audio quality when I used it.

I have an x50a on the roof. I'll put the analyzer on it and let you know.

The gen one MXT400 stinks. The gen two works fine...but no split tons support. Most repeaters have a tail...yes.

I know I personally made a comment about sharing channels with kids... but the was me just being a smart aleck. I actually think it would be a great idea. I'm a dad and a grandfather, so i understand wanting to keep the kids engaged and having fun. It's a family friendly radio service by design. That said... with young people being among our most vulnerable, i would keep an ear open. My amateur radio club did something similar, hosting a Kids Night net every week, on Saturday. We have our kids and grandchildren get on the radio and talk to each other. They have a great time. Some of them like it so much that they are studying to get their license.

Wow... this is perfect! I couldn't agree more, with all of this. I can't understand for the life of me, why the FCC would have two distinctively different services, sharing frequencies. They didn't even bother setting a primary and secondary service.

An "I think", I don't know that this would be easy to confirm. We could probably get sales data from manufacturers for 2 or 3 decades of sales, assume x% are no longer working and x% exported. It would still be a guess, but may be close. This brings three questions to mind for me. Who will do the leg-work? Will the manufacturers be willing to play ball? Would polling the user community have any value? I think the same as above. We would have to poll manufacturing data... though that should be a bit easier since the performance data is public information. Anecdotally, no Midland radios I have owned have WB. All of my BTechs did both. I believe this is a commercially driven, supply side debate, more of a 'what if'. If the demand is there and manufactures are willing to invest in the market, then that would swing policy more so than the individual users, such as family units. That said, obviously, you can't completely rule out the Legislature and/or the FCC following the natural flow in a direction of all NB. Agreed. They also did it with Citizens Band, deregulating that (for the most part) and getting rid of license requirements.

He is not saying the repeater output frequencies... He is saying repeater output.