jec6613

https://fccid.io/MMAMXT400 Only certified for narrowband. The Btech is certified only for 16 kHz https://fccid.io/2AGND50X1G, fairly oddball for GMRS.

Ugh, fiberglass or steel, it's still a lightning rod with a grounded conductor at the top. Steel will just last much longer and is less prone to catastrophic failure, but fiberglass is easier to work with and lighter. http://www.arrl.org/lightning-protection

Yeah, I've had bad luck with all of the CCRs - Baofeng, Wouxun, and Anytone. The Wouxun GMRS handsets are probably the best GMRS HTs available right now, but the margin is slim on them. Effectively, they're spitting distance from a good lower powered model, such as the DeWalts or some of the Talkabouts. It's not that they don't crank out the power (though Baofeng notoriously cranks out the power literally everywhere, dumping half your power somewhere you didn't mean to send it), it's that the frontend selectivity is very poor, even on superheterodyne models. With DMR it's helped out some, but using the same antenna and power into co-located repeaters, I'm on the ragged edge with DMR or FM reception on both Anytone and Wouxun, but achieve full quieting maxed out signal meter on a Yaesu on FM. Both require similar power to reach the repeater with full quieting, so transmit itself seems OK. The biggest advantage to me of CCR GMRS rigs is that the antenna is replaceable, so I can make up for the radio's shortcomings with much more gain.

This is *exactly* why I have GMRS. There's no way my XYL will get her ham ticket, so I needed something in between to communicate with her. In fact, I have an HT programmed for her to have with her during inclement weather. Three times this year, we've lost cell service at either home or her work (I WFH), and we've had major road closures and other problems - it starts listening to a small section of the upper 440 band, with a few, "Channels", and transmits on GMRS. Why? Because as a ham, I can put up a much more larger antenna and use a lot more than 50W of power to reach her and receive her signal.

"Cheap" is relative, the only true 2W (and not 1.2 or so) that I've found are the DeWalt ones, and they cost as much as a Wouxun GMRS setup - though they're much better built.

Just FYI, TMS recommends crimp-on connectors over soldered for UHF, as they provide higher consistency than a soldered joint and better waterproofing. Then again, their connectors are $15-$20, and the tooling to put them on is similarly expensive. On UHF with PL-259, especially low power like GMRS, it tends to be more sensitive than VHF or HF. (Also one big reason I use N connectors when possible).

TMS is right up the road from me - the competitors are good, but consistency and availability on LMR400 and LMR600 is second to none. I also get the pricier DB stuff for anything outdoors, which doesn't help the situation. Funny fact, the fact that TMS can no longer sell to Huawei the largest single factor slowing their rollouts - nobody else makes coax suitable for 5G installations, so they buy tens of thousands of feet to throw out 95% of it for the installations they can get going.

A loop is generally better for DF because it has a very even radiation pattern, slowly rolling off from peak in a predictable way, and is deaf only end-on - gain is slightly better than a simple dipole. A rhombic has insane gain, but is extremely directional and basically deaf outside of its narrow forward lobe, and the secondary lobes off at 90 degrees to either side. That of course makes it excellent for fixed installations, and its ability to fold up very small for UHF and upper VHF is another large benefit. Rhombics fell out of favor mostly because of how large they need to be when set up - four sides of 1.5-2 wavelengths is pretty beefy even on the 2M band, and ideally half a wavelength above ground. Not a problem for UHF, but big trouble once you start getting towards lower VHF, such as 6m, where each leg is 30 feet long at minimum, and about 10 feet off the ground, and for 160m HF you need 700 foot long sides and it to be about 270 feet in the air ... not ideal. Once the transoceanic cables opened to replace the HF radio links, they've mostly been a forgotten technology - Yagis are slightly less gain, but you can turn them on a rotator, even for HF bands, and height above the ground is much less important. Some amateur operators with enough space and finances still do use them though, since they can get around the world on the 20, 40, and 80 meter bands even when they're closed like they are now.

If you're looking at enough space to stick up a JPole, then I'd go for something like a Diamond X50C2. The lack of needing a ground plane is pretty meh for a permanent install, though your point about an N connector is actually a fairly big deal on UHF - I use N over UHF whenever possible. Also, yeah, LMR400 will cost way more ... heck, decent terminations for it are $15 each, and I think I spend about $1.50/foot for bulk from TMS.

Usually a minimum of 14 dBd better. A loop antenna is basically a dipole with its ends curved around - for df work though the pattern of a loop lends it to be compact and it has slightly more gain directly broadside than a pure dipole and a more even falloff as you move side to side, so you can locate better. About the only thing with more directional gain than a rhombic is a curtain array, where an array of dipoles and reflectors an beam a shortwave signal from Alaska to cover all of the Americas, or a caged dipole array - Duga (the Russian woodpecker) is a caged dipole, for instance.

Rhombics also travel more easily than yagis generally. A yagi is limited by needing to have a dipole in the middle and ridgid support, while a rhombic is basically a random wire. The half wavelength above ground for that 5 degree upwards angle is tricky for, say, the 11m CB band, let alone something like 160m or 80m amateur bands where the antennas can be multi-acre in size, but for 1.75m Murs and 63cm GMRS it's no problem. The only tricky part is getting the angle correct, and the 16:1 balun to run a 800-900 Ohm antenna. They're also REALLY wideband, so make perfect TV antennas if you want OTA HDTV.

As a quick follow-up, a Rhombic for GMRS packs stupidly small, as small as those tacticool folding antennas. You just need about 4 yards of wire, an 800 Ohm resistor, 4 one foot long sticks, a bit of feed line, and the hard part: a 16:1 balun, and you have 16+ dBd gain, or over 18 dbi gain. Radiotelegraph and telephone services used to use them on HF for AM voice and CW, they provided a reliable link from LA to Shanghai, and London to Johannesburg, among other pairs.

You can still usually get out in an emergency, relying on a repeater as your only way out is usually a bad idea, anyway. Interference aside, what about power outages or maintenance, both of which are much more common? Put yourself on another channel, and use a bit of equipment to be prepared to try simplex on the traveler channel, or have somebody listening for you. GMRS actually has significant power available to it, 50W on UHF can do crazy things put through the correct antenna. Most, "Jammers," are using either CCR's or something like a Motorola Talkabout. Protip: the cheap radios that aren't Part 95 certified are generally dumping half of their power out to harmonics, and they will spill over to adjacent channels, so watch for that and open your squelch to check for it. First, set up a protocol to check back with someone back at civilization ... either you check in with them a few times/day and if not they send someone, or ask them to listen for your transmissions a few times/day, like the ham wilderness protocol. And if you're counting on GMRS to get out in the event of an emergency, I highly recommend getting a GMRS tuned HT antenna at bare minimum. I have yet to come across one that comes with a decent antenna, most of them might as well be dummy loads. Nagoya 701G/777G at minimum, and just throw the rubber duck in your bag as a, "Just in case," antenna. If you're using a HT the same as usual with a long GMRS tuned whip on it, you can expect a bit over 6 dB of gain (that's 4x the power pointed at the horizon) over your stock HT antenna ... if you use a speaker/mic and get the HT dead vertical and away from your face, about 8-9 dB if you use your body as a giant reflector. And of course, with portable Yagis and collapsible Rhombics fed from 50W, you can go crazy and sling GMRS upwards of 100 miles.

So ... for maximum reception and range, you'd want a Yagi or Reflector type on a 20' mast and a rotator, then you can point and shoot with it, or to build and tune it yourself to your exact specifications. Assuming you want a more normal COTS omni vertical antenna, then I'm going to be pretty simple about this: grounding/radials/the second half of the dipole and getting the height above the antenna's ground plane, as well as accounting for any obstacles (including rain gutters and guy wires) to be correct is more important than the nominal dBi gain of the antenna itself. Something like that J-Pole above (they also exist tuned for GMRS) or with radials will do pretty well in this situation, as well as folded or vertical dipoles, or some other good designs. But 50W into a cheap radio just simply isn't much power or selectivity to work with, be stuffing into one of these no matter what you do, and you're going to hit tropospheric propagation limits or receiver selectivity limits at maximum legal antenna height well before you run out of antenna gain. To put it simply: with the current quality of GMRS radios and antenna height restrictions, any decent commercial vertical omni for the 460-470 MHz range, installed correctly, is going to perform about the same. Choose based on what is going to work for your location rather that what has the theoretically best dBi or dBd, and read the manufacturer information (and maybe the ARRL Antenna book). If you really want high performance, you'll build the antenna yourself.