marcspaz

Sorry... I misspoke. I do realize that you have stated what your objectives are. I guess I didn't understand why you are trying to get a multi-service beam or vertical. After re-reading, if you are trying to get the most value per dollar, that makes sense. Unfortunately, however, it doesn't work to our benefit very often. Most multi-function devices accommodate convenience at the detriment of performance. The map you shared is showing about 70 miles from point to point. That is the very edge for 50 watts on a vertical. Hopefully setting the antennas higher will do the trick. Good luck with the Amateur radio test. It opens up a whole new real of possibilities.

Sorry to hear that. I'm not sure what your goals are, but I have been a Ham for close to 18 years and GMRS is a fantastic service that I use regularly. The thing about radio service is to use the proper service for the comms you are trying to have.

Omni's fall into a similar issue. While there are some dual-band 2m/70cm vertical antennas that cover from 440-470 MHz, the gain is very low. As gain increases, the bandwidth narrows and so does the takeoff angle, impacting sensitivity between stations with elevation difference. So, if you have the expendable income, you can test it. However, don't be surprised if the lower gain of a broad band antenna doesn't help much. I have to agree with RCM on getting two service-dedicated Larsen welded Yagis. That's going to be your best bet, relating to both performance and price.

Most UHF beams only have 15MHz to 20MHz of bandwidth they are usable for. You are not likely to find one that is going to cover 50MHz unless all of the elements and spacing are tunable (which I have never seen). That's more than double the typical bandwidth coverage.

Everyone in your immediate family would all use the same call sign. You all have to ID with the call sign every 15 minutes of conversation and at the end of the conversation, regardless of the duration. You can add additional identifiers if you would like. An example would be, everyone in my family would use ABCD123, but I may ID my station as ABCD123-ALPHA. My wife would ID as ABCD123-OMEGA. My son could be ABCD123-BETA. Again, the add-on ID is optional... but legal. For what it's worth, no one in my family uses add-ons. We all just use ABCD123 and call each other by name.

The city water supply runs behind my house, actually on my property. I can't even pour a shovel of dirt without risking a massive fine. :-( Fortunately, I can trim the trees all I want, as long as they stay alive and continue to hold soil in place. On the up-side, the dipole works great over the water. I assume the loop will too.

It never dries out. The back half of my property is wetlands. Sure... its gets "less saturated" (if that's a thing?). Enough that the ground firms up to safely walk on it, but the ground never supports heavy load from vehicles or heavy equipment unless it freezes. Otherwise, everything gets stuck back there and trashes the lawn leading up to the tree line.

Not yet. I need to have the trees trimmed. There can't be any branches touching the antenna or I won't be able to tune it. We are getting massive amounts of rain and the ground is saturated. I can't get any heavy equipment in the woods behind the house. I am holding out for the ground to freeze in February, hoping we can get back there.

Things are good. Very busy... but good. I hope all is well for you and yours. You ever get that range issue worked on on your VHF gear?

Anyone involved in Winter Field Day this weekend? Daytime comms have been great on 80m through 20m. I made contacts from California to the Mediterranean on 100w and a 80m dipole. I thought the D layer was going to beat me up, but I'm pretty happy with the performance today. I'm not in it for the points or competition... I just love making long distance contacts. Was wondering if anyone else has been involved today.

Outstanding! I'll share the links with friends.

Change it from TSQL to Tone and retest.

Yes... a repeater to a repeater is usually not a good time. Plus, there is delays in key up times, leading to a word or 3 missing from the start of your transmission.

'Tone' transmits the tone to open the repeater receiver, but your radio doesn't require the tone to be transmitted back in order to open your squelch. 'Tone Squelch' will open the receiver of the repeater and require the tone to be embedded in signals you receive in order to open your squelch. Normally, I don't use tone squelch so I can hear everyone, instead of just repeater traffic... assuming the repeater passes or transmits a tone to begin with.

Looks like 10m is doing well tonight. I made multiple contacts around 500+ miles with 5/9+ on both ends.

I do something similar to RCM. I like 445.000 through 447.000, which is coordinated for auxiliary and control links, repeaters and simplex.

G, here is a good link you can use. It will help you understand how a horizontal quad loop works, why its omnidirectional, and why there is such good natural noise reduction in the design. I am building this to scale for 80 meters, but you can easily build a VHF version. My friend has his fed with ladder line in the corner closest to his house and its 35 feet off the ground, due to the frequency its being used on. You cut the ladder line to length for tuning the SWR, as the ladder line is part of the antenna design. http://www.caarc.ca/articles/horizontal-quad-antenna

G, what dictates polarization is size in wavelength and physical orientation. A full wave is omnidirectional.

Some makes/models VNA have digital volt meters built into them and some have directions on how to use an external digital volt meter while the VNA sweeps. You would have to look at the directions for the VNA. The ones that use an external meter should have a clearly marked port.

Hey, G... Do you have a meter that can read 0.XX μV scale? I thought you told me you have an analyzer and the voltage was low. Is that correct? If so, what is the voltage reading going into the radio from the antenna transmission line, without the preamp? The filters help eliminate noise if you have poor selectivity, but the preamp is to help poor receive sensitivity or high line loss. Most good receivers will have a receive sensitivity of 12 dB SINAD on a signal that is 0.25 μV. Some are 12 dB at 0.20 μV or better. If the voltage on the antenna line (at the radio input) already meets or exceeds the radio requirements, the preamp won't do anything good. They are typically for signal loss due to high loss lines or signals filtered/trapped excessively. You may be better off with a 5/8 wave. Do some research on the antenna takeoff angles of specific antennas you are interested in. In the same way that high gain antennas are more narrow with regard to their usable frequency, some antennas tend to radiate up and out instead of down and out. Also, have you considered a vertical dipole? Or a loop? They are very easy and cheap to make... so you can experiment. Full wave loop antennas are true omnidirectional and fantastic with regard to receive sensitivity. I am about to build one for 80 meters after seeing a friend of mine a few miles away from me have full-quiet conversations with people I almost could hear at all.

If @WQEJ577 can move this to Private Discussion we can discuss actual locations and possible POC's, etc.

There is always topic drift in any forum thread. Nature of the beast, I'm afraid. And this thread has been derailed since post #2. Ian ask if anyone had experience with a RT76 and no one answered that question. Instead, responses drifted all over. For what its worth, I have no experience with the RT76. I am tired of cheap radios and don't want to roll the dice anymore. I can't provide any feedback beyond that.

True... I misspoke. Regulations are still rules published in the Federal Register by the FCC (and other federal agencies) for the purpose of enforcing statutory code. It is the legal guideline used to establish precedent. A good example is, the Bump Stock ban from the BATFE. The statutory code defines what a machine gun is. However, the regulations published by the BATFE redefined what a machine gun is. The bump stocks are now included in the definition of a machine gun via regulation, thus, now a federal firearms felony to own a bump stock. The regulations still carry the weight of law.

I'm not disagreeing with you there. That seems to be normal behavior in the real world. There are dozens of repeaters near me that are open for public use and only 2 of them self-ID (both in 20wpm CW). The issue is, legally, the statute regulation is very plain language. If its my repeater, me and my immediate family use the repeater... no need for the repeater to ID. If another licensee uses my repeater, than the repeater must ID with my station identification. The only legal exception I can think of would be a grandfathered GMRS station license. If a Trust holds a license and the Trust bi-laws states that anyone who uses the repeater is formally a beneficiary of the trust while using the repeater, than there would be no ID requirement. (All purely hypothetical, BTW... just thinking about a legal exemption.) Just a little understanding of why I am saying what I am saying. I studied Constitutional Law for 7 year (2 in college and 5 years of independent study) and I have spent years helping both write pro-2a Bills and fight anti-2a legislation. I am looking at it purely from a statutory prospective based on my training and experience. That said, the FCC has the discretion to prosecute or not. If laws are widely broken or those infractions are largely ignored by law enforcement, that doesn't make it legal, from a statutory standpoint. A great example would be CB radio. Maximum legal power on AM is the mean carrier power must not exceed 4 watts and its strictly prohibited to use any external amplifier of any kind. That is the statute. In reality, I don't know a single person who owns a CB that is running less than 30 watts without an amp and less than 200 watts with an amp. Most CB operators I know have amps that are well over 2,000 watts. Thousands of people are talking DX for 1,500 - 2,500 miles, every single day on CB. Yet there is no known FCC enforcement that I am aware of, on any of these people who violate the law, and its all the same people for decades. That doesn't mean its legal. It just means the FCC is ignoring it, for the most part.

The way the law is written, if the owner of the repeater and family members covered under the license are using the repeater to talk to each other, then there is no need to have the repeater transmit a station ID. Of course that assumes everyone using the repeater is ID'ing correctly. When the repeater is used to retransmit comms from other operators (not the owner), then the repeater needs to self ID with the owner's station identification using voice or CW.