SteveShannon

I honestly don’t know the effect on SWR of freezing water trapped in coax. It may be something else entirely that’s causing the rise in SWR. But an SWR of 2.1:1 isn’t really the end of the world. I’ve operated my ham radio at an SWR exceeding 4:1 before by turning down the power to 30 watts. I still was very successful at making contacts hundreds of miles away.

An N connector is sealed. Filling the recess completely with grease could create hydraulic pressure when screwing the connector halves together and that hydraulic pressure could prevent the connector from screwing together fully making the seal even worse. The video you posted of the “STUF” specifically mentions not to fill an N connector with it, but to use less to avoid this hydraulic pressure.

I don’t think it exists anymore. Here’s the announcement Rich placed on the main page:

There is a good reason not to use full legal power on a repeater, especially given the situation described above. The repeater already has the advantage of antenna height and gain. Having a high power transmitter in your repeater simply makes it so the repeater can transmit much further than the radios in the field can transmit with their lower elevation and lower gain antennas.

https://www.szanysecu.com/h-col-106.html?m487pageno=3

There was another guy who literally changed his GMRS license several times (at a cost of $35 each time) because he kept getting called out for things. He’d start all over again. I know I can be an insufferable jerk sometimes but I can’t imagine going to that extreme.

He’s gone. But I think he meant that if only the number is used, N is implied and that if it’s inverted, I must appear. They aren’t formal rules but convention. But he drug up. He had his account deleted or hidden so his old login name appears as Guest now. He was SoCalGMRS and before that wrkp381 (or something like that.)

That’s how I apply the Vaseline as well. On a sealed N connector I would not fill it because the sealed fitting might be prevented from fully closing, but for UHF connectors I fill them full and screw them together.

The power of the repeater isn’t nearly as important as the installation of the repeater. Installed at a location that’s within range of the different handheld radios, with good cable and a high antenna it can greatly improve your communications reliability.

While there is no official national emergency channel for GMRS, some areas have announced that they monitor a particular GMRS channel. An example is the state of Wyoming. The state has this webpage instructing people to use channel 3 with privacy code 7. The state has the area code 307. https://hls.wyo.gov/307 So, before you travel, do some research to see if there’s a local effort to monitor a channel. But if you really need reliable emergency communications, consider one of the emergency satellite communications devices.

Welcome!

Possibly non-compliant with regulations, but not “illegal”. But no part of our government has ever been able to prevent the importation of illicit substances and radios which fail to comply are pretty low on their list of priorities. Look inside the radio for the tag that says that it’s certified and then look up the certification document. You’ll almost certainly find that the manufacturer performed the testing and represented to the FCC that they complied. Unless people complain there’s no follow up. Or maybe, although the manual settings for power only include a minimum of one watt, the firmware has the ability to hold the output on those channels to regulations.

I’m sorry that happened. If it’s one of those aluminum tubes at the bottom of a comet antenna I would have thought the same thing. As far as grease, some people simply use Vaseline. Fill the connectors and screw them together. UHF connectors (plug = PL259, socket = SO239) are not waterproof at all. Water gets in and ruins the coax. Depending how long it has been you might have to cut several feet off the end or replace the entire run. N connectors are sealed much better but should still be sealed in one of several ways. It sounds like you know exactly what to do, but for anyone reading this who’s wondering, DX Engineering has kits https://www.dxengineering.com/search/part-type/weatherproofing-kits?SortBy=BestKeywordMatch&SortOrder=Ascending&keyword=Coax+Waterproofing+

Perfectly stated!

Windows 11 killed the ability to use some cables that were made using counterfeit chips. Maybe that’s what happened.

I have no idea if the UV5R cable might work, but it would still need a driver.

You must load the driver software. It is specific to the cable and creates a virtual serial port that the programming software can use. Look on the software download page for the right cable driver. You can see some listed in the center of the screenshot below:

Just build it. Dr. Fong documented building his j-pole antennas in QST magazine articles.

I think it’s just a typo. The bandwidth is greater than that.

If you’re referring to the OPs original question about using channels 15-22 for simplex, channels 15-22 are the 462 MHz Main channels not the 467 MHz Main channels. 462 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, repeater, base and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5500, 462.5750, 462.6000, 462.6250, 462.6500, 462.6750, 462.7000, and 462.7250 MHz.

A bidirectional antenna in the center might be a better choice than the omnidirectional antenna. It has both forward and reverse gain without wasting power to the sides.

Is it necessary for the receiver to use an Omni antenna or could it use a Yagi as well. That might help if interference is an issue. The other thing is that I think rg58 is more porous to the effects of interference. Again, a better cable could help with that.

You’re correct. Fldigi is the virtual modem software for various digital modes in ham radio and flrig is the CAT control layer that interfaces between Fldigi and the radio.

So if the transmitter puts out 50 mw that’s 19 mw that reaches the Yagi. The Yagi has a pretty high gain. You don’t say what the spec is but it certainly is at least 6 db and probably more, which more than makes up for the -5 db earlier loss. At 500 feet I wouldn’t expect problems unless there are other issues, such as RF interference. Is it being reliably received or is this just the design phase and you’re being conservative with the -5 db?

-5 db is a loss of 68% of the signal. Almost any cable is better than RG-58 at 900 MHz. You could do better with CATV RG6, even with the impedance mismatch. RG-6 has 6.1 db loss per 100 feet at 900 MHz compared to 21.5 db for RG-58. But the real question is, given the 5 db loss you quoted, is the remaining 31% of the transmitted signal sufficient for the situation?