SteveShannon

Just string them up on an inconel wire during the fireball.

It might be your radio, but it might also be the radio transmitting on 462.700. Perhaps it’s slightly off frequency or transmitting wider than it should. I don’t know if setting your radio to narrow on 462.675 would help but I would be curious.

On dual watch your radio might be scanning quickly between A and B. If 462.675 is quiet when the radio goes to the other side and there’s a strong signal on 462.700 at the time your tuner could capture the strong signal. There’s very little spacing between them. Try turning off dual watch, especially when both are on the same center frequency.

Do you have a typo in bullet point #4 where it says “had both on the same channel 20 (462.700)?”

Put a voltmeter on the battery to see if it’s still capable of accepting a charge. What’s the voltage? If it’s up around or above 7.7 volts it’s likely that either the battery isn’t being installed correctly or the contacts are bad or the radio has failed.

Good job! What kind of cable are you using?

Welcome! Gil (WSUU653) gave you some great tips.

Welcome! I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your questions. Your initial problem, the inability to transmit from one radio to another a foot away could have been explained as simply as desense, but it could also have been different tones or even different channels or some combination of the three. Or configuration issues. Such as when your transmit light didn’t come on when depressing PTT. That might have been on a frequency where transmissions were inhibited. Anyway, good job figuring things out; that’s the spirit that will truly teach you the most. Again, welcome!

An SWR of 3.0:1 isn’t as bad as you might think unless you’re using lossy cable. I would go by performance rather than SWR. If your antenna has a low SWR at a lower frequency and higher SWR at a higher frequency, shortening it is the correct adjustment. There’s really no other way to reduce the actual SWR of the antenna. Just don’t shorten it too much. Or consult the instructions for the antenna.

I’m tempted to give you a different answer here than I did the other thread you started. Go see it please. Welcome to the forum!

I briefly heard a very angry ham on 40 meters a few nights ago. Angry, threatening great violence, and very obscene. No ID so of course he’s not totally stupid. An equally idiotic person was baiting him by making kissing and cooing noises. He was almost funny to hear as the other guy got increasingly more angry. Perhaps they both had substance abuse issues. So, I changed frequency and heard nicer hams. Tried another frequency and heard more nice ones. I heard several nice ones and just the two acting out. They do exist, just as in every demographic; it’s up to us all to act better.

For simplex it’s 16 for off-roading and 19 or 20 for general calling. For repeaters I don’t know if there is one.

Cycle through the menu choices. See Basic Use below:

Menu + 10 chooses the language.

From weather.gov: (3) The most common inversion is the radiational inversion. The earth is cooled at night by longwave radiation emission to space. This is maximized on clear nights with light wind and dry air. Air in the lower PBL will cool much more rapidly than air at the top of the PBL at night. This will cause an inversion that at times can be quite impressive. These inversions generally erode rapidly once daytime heating warms the lower PBL.

Is there an adjustment on the antenna to shorten the element?

https://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html

It might, but it might not. It’s possible that it could because of the temperature inversion. There’s a website that predicts the possibility. I’ll try to find a link.

Tropospheric ducting.

Try it, but I have no idea how a stationary permanent magnet could affect a radio.

Welcome!

I would agree that it’s probably the cable or connector. I assume you’ve unplugged and replugged the connector several times. Sometimes a bit of lint or dirt can really mung things up. If you have a friend with the same radio try their microphone to see if it helps. You might be able to determine whether it’s the microphone or the radio. Good luck!

It’s not a regulatory limitation. NVIS would work at CB frequencies as well. But, the range of bands available to us hams certainly makes it easier to experiment with things like this. If you try it, Terry, let me know how it goes.

The thing is it takes a lot of transmitted power difference to result in a very audible reception difference. This video really demonstrates that point. The presenter demonstrates the difference in received signals at different power levels starting very low (5 watts) and goes all the way up to 600 watts where the signal is received with full quieting. This is for SSB rather than FM and the distance is heard over a 600 mile distance:

I’m surprised it’s that high. Does there seem to be a clear difference between which are unlockable? For example I would expect purpose designed GMRS radios like Midland, Garmin, and Wouxun to be unable to easily be unlocked. I would also have guessed that the Baofeng radios are nearly all easily unlocked.