marcspaz

Welcome! There is a lot of great information here, and some very talented operators that are here that are field techs and engineers for their career. If I may... if you want to talk about the pros and cons of each service as it relates to offroading in this thread, I would be happy to give you some input. I'm sure others will too. I go wheeling out in the mountains of WV, VA and PA pretty regularly, and have some pretty capable setups. I understand about the conversations heard on the CB. I was on it today and its not kid friendly if you are anywhere near a major highway. LOL

That Tram is a monster antenna. That should do the trick. The ground plane kit is going to be a huge improvement on your side too. Good luck. Looking forward to hearing back with the results.

Wow... what a hot mess that thread turned into. Through my life, I have always heard and believed that purpose of Amateur Radio and what has become the Public Radio Service is to promote goodwill and forward the science. Those folks don't seem to be interested in anything of the sort.

I go straight to the battery because I have an insane amount of voltage drop on transmit when I use the factory common ground and B+ bus bar. Like... 14.6v in standby dropping to 12.4v (sometimes less) on transmit. Going direct to the battery, even with my 200w amp, I never see more than a 0.3v drop.

Where you been man? Haven't even seen you much on FB. Hope all is well. Depends on the wire gauge. What size it is?

It's very common in expensive and/or high power Ham radio gear (100w+) to protect the vehicle. Most radio manufacturers fuse the B+ side at the battery so if the B+ power lead gets shorted to ground, your vehicle doesn't burn down. Some also fuse the ground wire to prevent fires. This is mostly a risk for vehicles with a separate frame and body. In a vehicle, the body is typically the ground for most electronics in the vehicle. If the body has a poor ground or the chassis ground is broken all together and the radio ground lead gets shorted to the body somewhere, all of the electronics grounded to the body will then try to use that ground wire as the primary ground. Obviously the positive fuses for all the other circuits won't blow because the current on the B+ side is whats expected. The ground wire is sized for the radio and not all of your onboard electronics. So, to stop the negative lead from burning the car down, it gets fused at the battery side for the same reason as the positive lead.

Ah... got you. I thought you had a Midland radio, for some reason. I have zero experience with those. The Midland antennas are not great, unfortunately.

He brings up a good point. The Gen 1 MXT400's were problematic. My Gen 1 broke the first day I had it. It was deaf and power was weak. It dropped off 100% after a few minutes of use. most people reported all kinds of issues with the gen 1's drifting and not being able to get proper audio into repeaters. I had three Gen 2 MXT400's. All of them worked great. I get 5+ miles mobile to mobile (depending on terrain), I am full quiet into a repeater that is 22 miles from my house. Do your mics have loops for hanging or button style to go on a 2 prong hook?

Kenwood and Moto are good... but Vertex Standard? On their own, under Moto or Yaesu, I was never a fan. I still have one of their tuners and its better at creating RFI than a proper LC network. LOL He is using a Midland mobile mag mount antenna in the house. Regardless of the radio in use, I am fairly confident the lack of a proper antenna is an issue.

The X50a is pre-tuned. There is nothing to adjust. For me it just worked well for GMRS as well as 2m and 440. The CR8900's are mobile... which I did tune manually. I would avoid trying to use them at home, though.

I have no idea how, but I have talked to a couple of people using the Midland 6db gain antennas on the mag mount, stuck to cookie sheets and they sound great. I have never gotten that to work with any service. I am using Comet and Diamond antennas for most of my mobiles. I only have one Midland antenna left, and its going bye-bye very soon. While the midland antenna seems to work okay for me RF performance wise, after less than a year, 2 of the 3 I have broke mechanically. One, the bottom section snapped off, requiring the antenna to be re-soldered and glued back together (ended up in the trash later anyway). A second one, the center loading coil broke in half and the top section of the antenna disappeared while cruising down the highway. The last one I have left has only seen about 2,000 miles in the wind and it looks like a boomerang. The metal whip sections are not standing up to highway speed winds. So, yea... they are junk.

Grounding rods are typically 6 feet deep and copper. For proper protection, you would want to ground the mast and the cable at the mast side, and as close to the radio as possible, with the ground wire being as short as possible. Use clamps for everything; don't solder. Lightning will melt solder joints. During times of the year when lightning occurs in any given operating area, most people disconnect the cables when the radio is not in service. Proper grounding still doesn't fully arrest direct or near-direct strikes. As far as antennas go, if you are looking at 2m/70cm/GMRS specifically, I have a Diamond X50a on my house. It has a 1.8:1 SWR on 462 MHz and a 1.6:1 SWR in 467 MHz. Those are your baseline frequencies for GMRS simplex and repeaters (respectively). Those are about $100 each. There is another Diamond that could work... but I have zero experience with it and I don't know anyone who has used one. Keep in mind, multipurpose tools like an all-bander antenna will work, but there will be a compromise on performance compared to dedicated antennas. That said, there is a Diamond Super Discone (like the D130J) that are somewhat of an all-bander antenna, for about $100 each. For the D130J, specifically, on VHF and UHF its rated for 200 watts. Below 144MHz, its only rated for 20 watts on FM and 50 watts on SSB. You would want to either buy or borrow and antenna analyzer to dial it in. Also, order some quality coax cable.

Ah... I see what you are saying. Hmmm. So that distance shouldn't be too bad with a shade more height on his end. If mom is willing to have the antenna higher than the rooflines, then you should be good. On the SWR side, there are some antennas that might be close. While high SWR means loss of radiated power... if you stay below 3:1, in theory nothing should break. I had run 180 watts pep on a setup that was 2.4:1 for 2 years, before I fixed the HF antenna. If you are going to throw the dice, try to find something that will be 2:1 or better. Companies like Diamond offer antennas that are mostly fixed, with a small adjustable whip section. You can buy a base antenna and two adjustable whips. Cut one to GMRS and the other to Ham 440 band. Then you can just swap the inexpensive whip around depending on the service you want to use. I haven't tried it at home, but I use that MO on my CR8900 on the Jeep. It works pretty well.

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.