Borage257

My At-779UV does the red blinking light thing too. I just jiggle the mic cord and it resolves. Haven't had the audio issue described.

Check this site out Tropospheric Ducting Forecast for VHF & UHF Radio & TV

Aside from copper wire, I’ve used tape measures and rings from a trashed baby gate. If you use scrap, metal keep in mind, if it is coated in a white or light colored paint, your calculated measurements will be about 10%-15% bigger than what you need. This is because white paint has titanium dioxide in it. Titanium dioxide attenuates RF signal.

Go to the website or GitHub to get the older releases

Check out ANDFLMSG too

To be fair that only happens in one region of the world regardless of the SWR...

There’s a bunch of great content on YouTube. Some jeep channel has some stuff, ham radio crash course, ham radio 2.0 etc. all have gmrs content and some antenna stuff. You can get really in the weeds with some of the technical stuff. if you want training on how to use radios in different situations, you can search you tube for terms like “Pace plan” “soi” etc. TechPrepper has some good stuff on that, but you might look for some in person training since it’s hard to do that kind of thing by your self. GMRS is more based around bring your contacts than making new contacts with strange men.

Man y’all need to get on Radio Mobile Online

For what it’s worth, your numbers seem reasonable given the vegetation and topography. 42’ agl would yield an ideal radio horizon of about 8-12 miles. Now if you could get the antenna 42’ agl at the top of the hill….

You can get 5ft antenna pole segments at Lowe’s/Home Depot that can be attached where the antenna is now. Get the antenna above the dish and get good coax The segments have a swaged end, so if the dish is mounted on a pole, you can simply set the segment into the dish mount.

If you are using your satellite dish coax, you have an impedance mismatch. You are losing a TON of signal by using the wrong stuff. Screaming into a pillow in the garage expecting your friend a room or two over to hear you. Get some 50ohm coax, LMR400 or KMR400

Randy has spoken

You’re welcome! Pair it with a good LiFePo4 battery (20ah or more) and charger for emergency comms too!

Ed fong gmrs collinear, any of the tram/comet etc collinear ground plane antenna.

Another option would be to make a moxon antenna or yagi centered on 152.15 MHz or so