tweiss3

Recommendation was based on cost. His DBJ-UHF is $10 more and is still 4' in length. The dual band could also be reused for other things later. I retired mine from attic operation to field operation for field day or any other quick trip.

You are correct, a GMRS only would be about 19 inches, but the EdFong is a dual band, and is about 5' long when placed in PVC pipe, including the 12 lead area for clamping. Even at 5' it's very manageable inside and reasonable at $34+ shipping. You can always use fishing line to hang it in a window and it should work well.

For an antenna, either get a quarter wave whip (6" approx) and mount it on a ground plane ad identified above, of get an EdFong Jpole antenna (5' long) which requires no ground plane. Both are easy to move around inside and are pretty inexpensive.

Congrats! What bands is the 72' version good for? I don't have an HOA, but I have a My antennas 8010p, and it's hung between two trees at about 27'. My wife never knew it was there until I showed her this weekend. She laughed cause it's been about a month. She also hasn't noticed my silver 6m dipole either though. Edit, I did use DX400MAX to everything though.

A quick search on FCC EAS database, I saw zero matches for the UHF band that had H1D, J1D, J3E or H3E emissions. Quick Google didn't pull anything up at all.

Unless your plan was to get an IC7100 as and all band all mode, I don't see any reason to play on 2m or 70cm SSB, other than nobody else would pick up on your conversation (security through obscurity). While it's an interesting proposal to do SSB on GMRS, good luck finding a rig that will do that portion of UHF SSB, let alone being cost effective and having part 95 certification.

Contact the HAM repeater owner and discuss it. They can give you insight and you can also coordinate if it will work for both of you. You don't want to cause issues for him since he is already there.

Yea, I'm more than well aware, that place has sucked plenty of cash from my pocket over the years, way before I got into radio. Somehow I pick expensive hobbies, luckily the wife doesn't care all that much.

Also, don't take my DX Engineering links as the only place to get stuff, but they are 15 minutes from my house and I can do drive up pick up, so I'm familiar with their website. If you have another local radio shop nearby, by all means use them if you want.

I would recommend the equipment in you shack be grounded to your house ground. Your antenna ground rod and house ground rod/system should be bonded by 6GA ground wire per NEC. Inside grounds inside. Outside grounds outside All grounding systems should be connected and bonded.

Get a real lightening polyphaser: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/ppr-is-50ux-c0 or similar ($7 isn't going to provide adequate protection) Mount it to a grounded utility enclosure: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dxe-ue-2p (can be mounted high on the house near the entry) Use something like 2GA grounding wire from the box to your ground rod IMMEDIATELY underneath the box: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/gcl-5021-tin-025 (keep it straight as possible, any bends shall be very gradual

So is there a new certification or did they just make their product non compliant with part 95?

It's the OPs risk to take, but I have seen house hit that are less than 50' from trees towering 50' above their roof line. I would not be opposed to using metal to support the mast, but there is a bit more involved than buying 40' of fence post. 1) Evaluate your homes electrical system and current grounding situation. 2) Meet NEC at a minimum. 3) Look at finding a used tower for real structural support. 4) Review your insurance. I have my computer and every item in my shack insured. I don't want to be out those thousands of dollars when lightening hits. 5) Don't forget, you could fry everything electronic in your house with one good hit. How much in dollars are you TVs, computers and gaming consoles? That being said, my HF antennas have the coax buried for 30', and I have a 70cm/2m antenna attached directly to my roof peak eave, but is grounded per NEC. Do I expect no issues? No, but I can hope to have no issues, and I can atleast say to an insurance adjuster that it met code if anything were to happen. Can you say the same?

At a minimum, you need to meet NEc for grounding, including ground the mast/tower and ground the coax entry.

For LMR400, I use the DX Engineering crimp tool, prep tool and their crimp connectors.Connectors DXE-PL259CS8U-# (quantity) Crimp tool DXE-UT-CRIMP2 Prep DXE-UT-405C-P2

Maybe add a time out timer? 5 & 20 minutes is pretty serious. A 120s TOT would at least make it more difficult to persist.

It's a screw terminal on the back, so you just stick the stripped ends of your radio power cord in and tighten the screw.

Also note that they can woods don't actually show the channel it's looking at when it scans unless it hears a signal.

The nice thing about a Jpole is you don't have to worry about a ground plane. That being said, if you are familiar with other HAM bands, it's not much different from 70cm. Both a quarter wave whip 6" and the Jpole will work well. In both instances, you will likely spend more on grounding than for the antenna. I have an EDfong in my attic right now that is full quiet into a VHF repeater 17.5 miles away from the house at 7w, and has no issues into a UHF repeater 11 miles away at 5W (I had a PS failure and am stuck with my HT to the antenna until Wednesday). Height is king, get to the top of your roof with either option and good feed line, and you should be ok.

I was looking at that. I can't find that software offered by Midland anywhere. I wouldn't download it from someone's Dropbox that I didn't know.

It's just background noise from just about anything. I had a similar issue with only select channels on my 8150 and the issue was eliminated when set to 5 or higher.

You need to adjust the squelch mode. In the software it is: Edit -> Optional Settings -> Conventional tab -> Squelch Level to 4 or higher, 1 will cause you problems.

Actually, NEC requires you to bond all grounding together, antenna, house main, everything.

Actually, NEC requires you to bond all grounding together, antenna, house main, everything.

You need to look at the National Electric Code (NEC) and meet those requirements at a minimum.