SteveShannon

Those are very good pictures. Based on those sweeps, if I wanted one antenna to cover the greatest range (albeit not the lowest SWR on all bands) VHF amateur and MURS and UHF Amateur and GMRS, the Comet would be a good choice. That’s very helpful. Thanks!

The screenshots from NanoVNA Saver are usually pretty good and while the NanoVNA isn’t labrotory grade as long as it’s calibrated for each band beforehand the results are very usable. Sure, I’d like to have a RigExpert Zoom 1500, and maybe I will get a RigExpert Zoom 650, but the NanoVNA isn’t total garbage.

So one more level of organization than DMR? So, when you add selections to zones are you including the entire Personal group of individual channels or do you assign channels to zones individually?

I would be interested in seeing the graphs.

How and where are you power testing? What does it say at the back of the radio and at the other end of the feedline? What are you using for feedline?

He’s just been super busy?: ??

You might also see this post which describes the Comet 2x4. That’s an antenna designed to cover a wide range of frequencies for emergency services. The advertised range covers 2meter, MURS, 70 cm, and part of GMRS:

Exactly. "WROM258 looking for a radio check. Does anyone copy?"

There can be only one... Welcome! You’ll fit right in.

Yes, every word matters with rules, laws, lawyers and official forms. The letter never said a license was canceled. It specifically said an application was dismissed. But (understandably) the OP read it as “license was canceled” and used that as the title of the thread.

Not that I have found, but I haven’t looked hard.

There are ways to minimize the number of antennas. I think you could get by with a couple of antennas but you’ll be compromising performance. But if you figure out where you want to concentrate your attention (which bands are most important) you can manage. An end fed half wave can work well for the HF bands without looking like a n NSA station. It’s just a wire strung up and blends into the background, but it stops at 10 meters. Or, if you’re willing to compromise performance a little more the Diamond BB7V handles HF and 6 m. There are many decent multi band antennas. I would look for one for 2 meters, 1.25 meters and 70 cm, like the Comet cx333, but @marcspaz has had good success covering GMRS with a Diamond antenna. Otherwise you’ll need another dual band antenna for MURS and GMRS.

Usually just a few days. Welcome!

What frequency are you trying to transmit on?

Ham radio operators often get thousands of miles using only a few watts at lower frequencies. Radio is funny. Sometimes more power isn’t the solution, but the smart bet always goes to a good antenna system. I got on a 2 meter simplex net last night and I used my 20 watt mobile instead of my 5 watt handheld. I was able to very reliably talk with the net control who was maybe 16 miles away parked on an overpass, but a very strong signal coming from six miles away and above me on a hill came in very broken blasts, signal strength meter pegging “spurts” that were uncopyable until I turned off the mobile radio and picked up my handheld with its rubber duck antenna. Then I could hear the nearby station very clearly. Sometimes a signal needs attenuation. The best thing is to try different things to see what works.

That’s true, but while a grandfathered license limits them to a specific frequency it doesn’t grant them exclusive use of the frequency now. I don’t know if it did in the 90’s when the incident occurred.

Look, buying a Bird 43 is entirely your choice but it’s really not the easiest tool to use. All it does is tell you how much RF power is passing through a single point in the system. You’ll need the right element and after transmitting in one direction to read the forward power you rotate the element 180° and transmit again to read the reflected power. It’s almost certainly more absolutely accurate than the SW102, but absolute accuracy really isn’t what you need. You’re getting relative readings from your power meter that tell you everything a power meter can tell you. An antenna analyzer doesn’t rely on transmitting, in fact you disconnect your transceiver and the analyzer provides all the signals necessary at low power levels to determine the characteristics of your feed line and antenna, separately and together. Here’s how I would do it: 1. Remove the antenna and put a dummy load on the antenna end of the coax. It should show a length of coax that is about right and an impedance of 50 ohms and an SWR of 1:1 or very close. 2. Then reconnect the antenna and sweep it for SWR from about 460 MHz to 470 MHz. If you use a NanoVNA there are a limited number of data points so I would find the dip and then recalibrate and bracket it. That will tell you where the antenna is closest to resonance. It will also tell you how low of SWR your installation can achieve. 3. Then try doing one thing at a time to affect the ground plane size to see if it makes a difference. As long as you’re not changing the range of frequencies you’re sweeping you don’t need to recalibrate the NanoVNA. I can’t emphasize enough that you want to examine one thing at a time until you eliminate everything but those one or two things that are affecting your installation

You probably were in the right. I doubt there are very many state constables who know anything about FCC regulations.

I actually used his FRN and did an Application Search for it. I could have probably looked it up in an application search using the “File No.”

That’s what happened. Somehow you had two separate applications and of course you only paid one. The other was dismissed:

Is it possible you somehow submitted two applications (or one application twice) and one was granted and the other was canceled due to lack of payments? The letter doesn’t list your call sign, but your call sign (as everyone else has pointed out) is still active.

I think you’re right.

Welcome, Jeff.

And clowns. They’re terrifying.

That 100 feet of real good wire” that was in the house when you moved in could be the culprit as well. Things can happen to coax that remain unseen but drag the performance way down. A decent antenna analyzer could tell you whether that cable is actually good and what the losses are. And it may be that most of the cable is excellent, but a little bit of the end at the connector has gotten moisture in it. I would want to put an analyzer on your antennas anyway just to see what things look like. I’d want to know cable losses, SWR, and coax length. At GMRS frequencies even 100 feet of LMR400 consumes half of the power before it reaches the antenna. Check out this video by @marcspaz