WSHH887

Is there any advantage of a ground plane antenna over a non ground plane antenna. Does either one perform better in an urban or rural area?

Do we allow commercial ads for services? Considering the Facebook page mistakes and image it's either an offshore scam or AI generated (pretty much a scam either way you look at it. Anyone needing program help only needs to ask for it here. We have a pretty deep experience pool to draw from.

From my experience you'll have neighbors who will jump on board immediately after a motivating event. Others take more than one event but will come around. And some who won't ever get involved, but certainly take advantage of your connected group. It's hard to keep everyone involved active as the motivating event fades from memory. Sadly, so far, we've had enough events that folks have stayed involved. From the initial home invasion to somewhat frequent medical emergencies.

Check your com settings. Mine defaulted to com 1 but needed com 5. There's a target on or near the top left that say "set" or "settings". It let's you change the com port.

Clear your history.

One fellow regularly hits 200 miles. Then again he is a legend in his own mind.

Pretty new here as well. If you are looking for a lot of good information, and not a little entertainment go here. https://www.youtube.com/@TheNotaRubicon

There was a pretty big pass hack recently Perhaps the site owner or service provider instituted a required password change.

You have to start somewhere. We have a neighborhood group that currently is all simplex. Our biggest issues are earthquake and tsunami. Though after the Palisades fire, my area is similar geographically to that area, fire has popped up on our radar. It began after a neighbor had a home invasion and the LAPD showed up two hours later (she was hiding in her home on the phone with 911 as it happened). So now some of us have a secondary means for summoning help. Help that will be much quicker and probably better armed. A secondary use is we just check in with those more limited in mobility.

In Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam our military had the plans and will to accomplish complete victory. It is, and always has been the civilian leadership, more concerned with reelection than victory, that has snatched victory from us. Many of our leaders have lacked the Warrior Spirit. The last G W Bush seemed to have forgotten what it took to defeat an enemy that had vowed to destroy America.

Curious. Do any ham radios have gos and save/transmit location data?

Appreciate the info. From what I've read I intend to look into Wouxun and Baofengs to start.

So I'm ready to move up on my handhelds. But lately I've seen posts about one brand not communicating with some others. So this seems to throw another dimension into radio selection. Are there models that are less prone to such things? Also, I should mention, at this point in my journey I am not concerned about "unlocking" the radios. When I get to the point of wanting to deal with Ham frequencies I will just get a license and buy appropriate radios.

Thanks. I'm still learning. I think I'll avoid compander unless issues arise. And in that case it may or may not do any good.

Only that you simply open the forum in your browser. Why bloat an app when phones already have a browser?

I will grant you that my time in the USAF was fifty years ago. But, it wasn't unusual to put folks on alert and shift assets during times of international upheaval. It's possibly a preplanned response to existing conditions. in olden days the USAF had a concept called "Prime Beef" or cannon fodder as we called it. The idea was a group of folks equipped and trained to respond quickly (relatively speaking) to events around the globe. We were supposed to set up what today are called FOP's to rearm, refuel and provide light maintenance of aircraft. In my case it would be tactical assets like Phantoms and Wild Weasels. I can't count the number of times between ORI's (operational readiness inspections) and actual crises we were alerted. The Cold War tended to warm up from time to time. Mostly without the general public having a clue. I'm pretty sure those orders were transmitted with the highest encryption of the time.

So if I understand correctly, compander is used to reduce noise on weak signals. Why would you not want compander programmed on all of your radios channels?

I tend to be skeptical when folks make assumptions without and evidence at all. I've made more than a few SWAG's in my day. But they always had some evidence and science behind them.

On the Silverado. I have a Tacoma and mounted a MTXA26 on a mount that attaches to tailgate area using existing bolts. I happen to have a steel bed cover from Peragon. This works very well. There as several repeaters some distance from me that I can hit. I have an NMO mount on the bracket. Being tailgate level it is easy to remove the antenna before going to the car wash.

In the early 70's the USAF fire department used Motorolas, MX330's (?). They were bulky and heavy but we had stubby antennas. One thing we found is they didn't like heat and water was death to them.

Keep talking guys. I am learning a lot.

My military radio usage was over 50 years ago, so things likely have changed a bit.

that was the idea when using the AN/PRC-90. I just missed the AN/PRC-103 that was a pretty good improvement. There was a movie about a downed flyer. There radio discipline was pretty terrible and had they used the radio as much as they did in the movie it would have died or the flyer would have. The north Vietnamese knew what frequency to monitor.

Radios today are basically computers that transmit radio signals. If it has GPS it could store info without the user knowing. And as I posited a radio could include GPS and data storage the owner never knows about. And if so, it may not be possible to disable the GPS. And it would be quite possible to have it on even when the radio is "turned off". At least until the battery died.

Curious. Don't some radios now have GPS? Would these retain data? Do some radios possibly have GPS unbeknownst to the purchasers that logs data?