AdmiralCochrane

Its a good ham board

Are you on the gun board that has a ham section in their outdoors section?

People also generally don't know that most transmitters take a second to engage and "heat up" to full power even without sending a MDC tone. Key the mic and make sure you pushed the button all the way down. Then begin speaking, not as you are keying the mic

You are saying truckers passing thru didn't use 19?

My jump box puts out 13.8 when fully charged and 12+ for quite a while. 13.8v is for the rated fullpower output, its not a rule.

Nobody likes me anymore

FAA (and I think EPA as well) restrictions come in at 200 feet. Lots of 199 foot antennas in the ham world.

Just ask what pizza place is best. That usually brings hams out of the bushes on 2m.

Skywarn is effective in my area.

WOW! That should be labeled "The BIG Motorola manual"

Clarification: I wasn't refering to operation, but SWR measurement.

Would this be enhanced/corrected by using a real ground such as a "tiger tail"?

Does the truck have a built in 120v output inverter? That's another possiblity

In central MD I think I hit 2 at once using the same tone.

After speaking to the expert, she pointed out that, semantically and technically, these are NOT typos, but layout errors

I recall seeing those things as well. My wife does print layout for a living, mistakes like that drive her crazy

Congrats

Congrats! I read both the ARRL and Gordon West general books but couldn't make headway on the tests until I studied on hamstudy.org. Both books are good references to learn from and look back to while operating. My recommedation is to buy the books, read them, then go back to the online test prep

Yes, length is the surcharge even if its not real heavy. I think it starts at 80 inches

GMRS is more closely related to ham UHF. It actually is in the UHF frequency range, just not in the assigned band.

I was surprised at the number of grandfathered licenses in my area

I have a 333 at about 35 feet. My nanoNVA says its tuned slightly better for 65cm than 2m. As a simple matter of convience I am not using it on 1.25 right now, but the nanonva shows its tuned very well there as well. If I recall, the readings were 1.27 on 2m, 1.1 on 1.25 and very close to 1.19 across the parts of 70cm and 65cm that I use

Companders are speech processors, nothing else. They improve signal strength by slightly increasing weaker microphone modulation, but mostly change the person's voice to ranges that the listener's ear hears clearer. I run compander ON on most of my radios, but if adjustable at the lowest setting. Right now my voice drives any decent mic as well as a professional quality mic, I get a lot of compliments and questions about what equipment I use, but its mostly good luck coming out of my mouth; hardware provided from above ? .

My experience with 2 meter vs 65&70cm is that UHF can work better where knife edge refraction and reflection help UHF propagation and the terrain otherwise inhibits VHF, outside of that exception, VHF is generally superior. My greatest distance using 2m simplex has been approximately 11 miles in the lumpy hills valleys dips and ridges of central Maryland. I echo MichaelLAX that there is no reason to think same would not have happened on UHF.