kidphc

Unfortunately ³/4 wave on 70cm. My testing showed.. meh. Going to buy another to mount as 1/4 vhf, cut down to fit a ⁵/8 gmrs coil. I need the flexibility. Plus a lot cheaper then 2x sti flexi. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

If you can run a 1/2, 5/8 over 5/8. You can get both bands nicely. 31" sounds like a lot but if it is a flexible type then it won't matter. Can't tell you how much abuse my larsen 2/70b took when it was on the roof of my suburban. Most parking garaged by me are 6' to max 7' clearances. Now try to add gmrs into the antenna mix. Slim pickings and most are incredibly stiff to get the coverage from 2m-70cm-gmrs. They end up being chunky inflexible antennas with barely acceptable performance. Nowadays I try to avoid tri-band antennas. They sacrifice too much, especially in performance. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Should mention 18-20" 2m antenna is going to be 1/4 wave and 3/4 on 70cm. They will almost always require a groundplane. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Really kinda tough like Marc says. Mainly because 1/2 wave 2m ⁵/8 over ⁵/8 uhf is going to be about 31". Really, any 1/4 wave 2m , 3/4 70cm antenna will work. ³/4 wave is just terrible from my real world testing but mostly on the transmit side, it received well. So any of the company's that build it will work equally (about) as well. Tram browning larsen etc. They are all going to about 18-20 inches. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Yes lscott. Those are additional benefits. Another one is most large retailers have cheap frs radios on the shelf. Alot of the are gmrs capable. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Covid. Combination of people stuck at home and lowering of gmrs license cost. Are big factors. Some migrated from cb, which really is a shit storm 80-90% of the time now adays. I know of 6-7 people whom left cb and went gmrs. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

We actually are doing that here because of multiple repeaters on the same frequency with different tones. Lots of cross repeater chat going on now. Just gotta let the repeaters all drop before next person keys. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Could be why i was told to disable it. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Impressive aren't they? Warming popcorn for your install of the ftm500. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

True not true. The bnc relieves the stress created by installing and uninstalling a cable. The type of cable, how it is comming out of the connector and the angle of said cable all apply stress. Those Abree 48" long tactical antennas put a lot of stress on the sma. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Make sure the keypad isn't locked before you try to reset the radio. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Outside of some of additional (small) loses from connectors, it might not look as clean as a base install. I can not think of anything but potential damage to the sma connector on a handheld from either connects and disconnects or strain from a heavy coax on the connector. I can not think of many downsides. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

You will need the accesory cable and connector use the remote on wire and tap into a 12v switchable powered source (car am/fm radio wire/fuse is the favorite). Then go into cps and configure the ignition sense under radio information/accessory configuration/ignition sense type. Then, when ever the ignition energizes the wire (in example above car radio). It will auto turn the radio on. Turn off the car and it should go off. Unless the remote wire is connected to a power delay accessory. Then it will turn off when the wire is not powered, usually at driver door open or some pre-configured time out. EDITIED to clarify things because I suck at explaining things the first time around. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Same could kinda be said for any degree/certification. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

I know you are messing/joking with him. [emoji14] We should just be as informative as politely possible and encouraging as we can be. Especially, when someone is asking for help. Could turn them off, more so if they take it the wrong way. /rant Overall impression, I get from non-amateur radio people is that we can be condescending, know it alls that bitch too much about everything. Some of it true, especially since we do most of the self policing. Can't tell you how much of the public safety/lmr groups think we amateurs are a joke and don't want to invite us out for events. With our relay forms and other politics and attitudes. Then those same guys praise people like Marc, can't tell you how many times I hear " I trust Marc and his small group". Because why? They do everything possible to get the objective done, then cross the tees and dot the I's later, with minimum fuss or bs. We should aspire to be the best spoke person for the hobby /rant Still love your comment [emoji14] but I get it. Not everyone will. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Think he is referring to the gmrs radios capable of data burst, they can not have removable antennas. My reasoning is that the fcc didn't allow it to limit range. Can you imagine somebody strapping an 11 element yagi. They want that type of shanigns on the amateur service. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

If you can take the practice 3x and pass each time with about 85%. Your are way over ready to take the test. Remember, you just need to pass. No one will ever know the score. Study for the general and technician at the same time. They crossover informatuon for both the test is like 75%. If you pass the technician, they will let you test for general on the same day. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Yes, mobile installs are all comprimises. You want about 1/2 wave length of the longest minimal separation, if you can. But that is not always possible. I have about 8 feet from my 2m/70cm antenna and gmrs/70cm antenna. I noted the other night even when transmitting at 5watts on the 2m/70cm antenna (I was using 70cm fusion at the time). It was tripping out the xtl5k (gmrs/70cm) really badly. Like opening squelch on a frequency, i was scanning gmrs repeaters on the xtl5k. From my calculations, it was about 30MHz difference. The physical radios are some 6 feet apart. One in the glove box. The other on the third row molle panel. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

One of my fireman buddies has about 4 nmos in the camper top on his super duty. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Good to know. A lot of stuff just barely works for gmrs and the other frequencies. I will have to check again. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

I tested (in the amateur section of the forum) it optimized for 70cm/ gmrs. Wasn't messing with the vhf side. It worked but for gmrs/70cm it's a 3/4 wave design, so it was just a shade above 1/4 as far as transmission and reception. I would NOT recommend it for gmrs if that is the primary service. Might be good for vhf, as well almost look like a factory antenna. My recommendations doe antennas. 1/4 gmrs/uhf for repeaters. 5/8 over 5/8 for fringe repeater and simplex. B4505 series. 5/8 b4503 series for mixed simplex/repeaters for those with clearance issues. Slim jim roll up ( toss it as high up a tree as you can) for base camping simplex/repeater work. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

A diplexer will not work real well, 70cm and gmrs are too close. With the right diplexer (most stop at 450MHz, the ones that go up to 500MHz can get expensive and sometimes difficult to find). You could use a bcn4503 (5/8th) or similar tune it to 450mhz, get most of 70cm band and all of gmrs on one antenna. Then install a separate vhf antenna. Generally, for dual service 70cm/gmrs the 1/4 waves work really well. They are for the most part, pretty wide banded. Watch out for some of the ghost types, because of the matching network they might not be widebanded enough. Any particular reason you are keep going with 1/2 vhf antennas? Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

You didn't mention if the vhf/uhf bands were for amateur or lmr services. So I will assume for this post you are talking about amateur vhf/uhf. To be honest not really many options and you have one of them. Gmrs is skewed to lmr/commercial frequencies. Amateur bands are just far enough from those bands, as you saw you end up with more comprimises. Part of the comprimises on he 2x4sr (not a terrible antenna) are it doesn't get the best swr for gmrs. It's a thick not forgiving antenna, this is to try and stretch the bandwidth. I had one mounted, where you plan on mounting. Mine was mounted to a ditch mount. The weight of the antenna shook the mount violently over any bump. So much so I went back to the 2/70b. Both the 2/70b and 2xsr, where better on the roof, on the fender mount expect about 65%-75% on the fringes of what you had on the roof. With some skewing of signals due to a pillar. Marc had mentioned the diamond version did better with the swr. We have a thread in the amateur section. Btw, current setup is a 5/8 wave on the back of the roof and the 2/70b on the fender. I am currently tossing up the idea (cheaper route) of putting up a vhf/uhf/7-800 antenna or a triplexer ($200+ for triplexer alone) with each band tuned. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Least amount of loss, aircore hard line. Like heliax. Usually, used on repeaters. Avg $2-7 a foot. Most commonly used for 100ft. Probably lmr400. Acceptable cost and acceptable losses. Avg $1-4 a foot. You could also look at lmr600, but it gets to aircore levels of stiffness, which can make routing difficult. Keep in mind the connectors also come into play. Really high quality "n" connectors can average $25 each. So it's best to set the budget. Your expectations and meet in the middle or what you are comfortable with. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Our numbers have been dwindling. Mostly to our Elmer's no longer being with us. We we were always a small number what is it 1% of the global population. But there are certainly a lot of new hams. Always 2-3 new technicians on one local weekly club net. Food for thought. This snapshot was 40m. For those unaware, each vertical line is a transmission. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk