kidphc

It's a 02 Suburban. The whip was the first choice. There are alot of trees lining the roads so I was thinking left side was better due to it being in the center of the road. I figured a 1/4 wave was better. How much degradation in signal is there with going with a trucker style antenna. What can I expect with a bumper mount vs rear fender mount? Thanks for responding.

Marc had mentioned he believes the current commercially available antennas are too small. So that had brought up some questions. I had planned on getting a CB radio for the interstate road trips. More comms, more situation awareness, or at least I hope. Currently, FTM400 CAP/MARS being installed with a Larson 2/70SH dead center in the roof. Probably will switch it out for a 2/70B in the center. Maybe a second 2/70B installed 20" inches aft for a ID 5100a. Stock AM/FM antenna is mounted to passenger side fender by the windshield. Yes, parking garages are a big want, so I will need a reasonably flexible or lashable antenna. It was going to be a small cheap 5 watt cb radio with one of the following: -108 whip and breedlove ball mount on the rear driver fender. --- This one is tough since the previous owner had damaged the rear fender and the gas fill port is on that side. -108 whip on the rear bumper ---This one is tough since the whip will contact the body when it is lashed down. -5" firestick or trucker whip with top loaded coil on the driver front fender. --- Passenger fender has the am/fm radio I know none of the mounting points even come close to a terrible ground plane. Any suggestions on radio, antennas, placement any thing else? Things you guys found on previous installs.

Welcome.

Good to know. Thanks Marc for taking the time to explain why you started down that path.

Settled pulling the 12 gauge run for the 4 gauge. What in the signal report gave you an idea that there was a problem? Lower readings then expected? I appreciate any information. Since I am still learning. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

Yes about the atas 120. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

Curious what your long term opinion is. Everything I have read has not much nice to say about. Could just be everyone comparing it to its predecessor which a lot seemed to like. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

Marc how did you figure you had a powerloss? Swr? Also, an ATAS 120 on a Camry... that should be a sight to see rolling down the road. Now I am thinking I should pull the 12 gauge out put the 4 gauge to the secondary battery power and ground. Run that to the dual 4 gauge distribution blocks. To run everything. What are the chances of getting RFI that way? Especially, if i run multiple batteries and usb hubs off of that as power and ground? Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

Some good info. I was going to run a 4 gauge wire to 12 gauge inside of my truck to power a Ftm 400. Running through a relay to a blade fuse to have key on power. But switched to a straight 12 gauge wire run and just going to run the apo. Using the inline glass fuse. Guess I will be hunting for a 12 gauge inline ato fuse setup noq. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

I love the power pole buss personally. Used them extensively on high voltage rc heli applications. Learned to start making them into T's after I popped a BEC (Battery Eliminator Circuit) by simply trying to color code them. Well that was a very expensive lesson.

Yes. should of have elaborated a bit. For true emergency coms a satellite phone and a gps unit are hard to beat, well minus the cost.

Just remember to contact the repeater owner to ask permission out of politeness. I try to do so even if it is marked as public. I like to let the owner know who is using it, that it is in use and thank them for the time they took to set it up and maintain them.

Not sure what is going on with your antenna. Maybe a short in the coax or bad nmo. What does your SWR look like, only reason I ask is because the antenna is supposably rated for 120w. Could just be a cheap chinese antenna, knowing Midland probably is. As far as the DBI goes I wouldn't strain to much on that. You probably wouldn't even notice the difference between the 6dbi and 5.5 dbi. What power level are you running at?

Personally, I just assigned unit #'s for the radios. Although my family just adopted which radio they were on as their personal unit number. For instance, wife gets referred to as unit 2, oldest child unit 3. So a call out over the radio (simplex or repeater) is "XXXXX(CALLSIGN) UNIT2 this is XXXXX Unit 3. Works for me and my wife, since she doesn't want names out over the airwaves for the kids.

Just went to O.C. this week end. Got nada from the inlet. Didn't get any repeater tail or anything. With a chinese ht with NA771 GMRS-V1 with NA 701c

Thanks.. More of a sweat fest because of the mentatility going in. Took longer to get test session setup them me actually taking the test.

Pretty much how I look at it. Wife has been preaching to me for years about change yourself, you can't change anyone but that. Side story: In the D.C. area it is pretty much dead for simplex/repeaters on 2m and 70cm bands also with GMRS and CB, well at least up by Rockville. Spoke to a ham in my neighborhood for about an hour. Asked him if ham was really dead. He turned on a radio onto 70cm and started scanning simplex, turned on another radio and started scanning all the memory repeaters. 45 minutes of scanning and nada while we talked. Before I left he turned on a DStar radio it was just constant talking. His words were basically, it's not that we aren't out there. A lot of us are on different modes. Adjust your frame of thought a bit. The hobby is still alive and kicking just FM in our area is pretty quiet. I should add the Technician test is pretty easy. I personally, think I could of taken the test with about 3 days of study. Unfortunately, couldn't match any test times. Which resulted in a 3 week study time.

Thanks.

Looked at offroading there. Unfortunately, with a young family. Some hobbies are not in the plan. We do have land out in West Virginia so we get our kicks heading up to the mountains. George Washington National park (fire roads), our personal mountain range (well a portion of it) out on New Creek Mountain, as well as several runs out to Assateague's beach. I do hope to do a Flag Pole Knob run and camp in a couple of years. Think I might have the burb ready for some light rock crawling and SOTA at the camp site by then. First gotta pass the Tech on Saturday.

Speaking of that, when I was in high school we use to run down to the power lines. There is a substation not to far from the house. We use to grab fluorescent tube lights and walk under the power line to light them up. Until, we thought about how if there was enough stray electricity floating in the air to light the bulbs up, it probably wasn't a good idea to be walking around there for any amount of time. Google map of lines, the long open green path.

Our neighborhood has most of the electrical underground. Except, for the transformer pedestal 50 feet from my front door. Not much in the way with interference on GMRS, 2m and 70cm bands. Although, I mostly just listen. So I couldn't tell you how it affects transmit purity. One of my neighbors a couple of blocks over has his long wire slung in the trees. He doesn't have any complaints on any of the bands. Well I take it back, he was complaining about all the vegetation interfering with his satellite play time. http://k3rrr.com/ Now the plethora of Plasma screen T.V.s in my neighborhood make trying to listen to HF with the SDR is another story. Should mention I have neighbors up real close to all sides of my house. Close enough my kids watch his living room T.V. from our living room.

Flew RC Heli for many years, I found the dean connectors a pita to solder. Often depending on the angle and length of wire there was excessive strain on the solder joints for the deans. They were a real pain to disconnect if you were even a bit sweaty. I switched to the Anderson Power poles when my setups for the helis started venturing into high voltage systems. I found that wicking the lead, then crimping then running a bit of solder worked the best. Plus you can slide them together to form a "T", use roll pins to lock them side by side or buy a plastic connector to lock the ends together. I've actually hot glued some to parts to secure them. The only real negative I found was the length of the connectors when connected.

Always learning something new. Now I need to do some more reading. **** update Figured it out, I was just fat finger the columns in CHIRP.and missing the column on every click. It was just an ID10T error.

If you are trying to do split tones the Btech radios don't seem to be able to do it. While requesting access to repeaters, I have only come across two that have had split tones, so not common at all. One of them, didn't have a tone on the input, it did have a tone on output, which I thought was weird. Not really sure what the site owner was thinking about, or is trying to hide actual tone input. As far as making the off the shelf radios useless it isn't entirely true. If you have a dual monitor capable radio (Btech GMRS-v1, you could set the input with the tone to channel A and set Channel B to the output using carrier squelch.