SteveShannon

For the most part ham nets are operated by local ham clubs and the net controller is a volunteer. Are you a member of a local GMRS club? You might be able to suggest that the local club have a net for emergencies. Be prepared to volunteer. ?

The USB 2.0 spec limits current draw to 500mA (100mA per port and up to 5 ports). However, USB chargers can supply up to 1.8 amp. At 5 volts that’s about 9 watts. Cigarette lighters on the other hand can attempt to draw much more than that, depending on the wiring and fuse. Using a USB to cigarette lighter female port should only be used for very low current items. I wouldn’t try to power a five watt transceiver that way.

I ordered a set of 5. What the hell. ? Thanks for the heads up. We now return to the regularly scheduled topic…

Those look similar to the very fine connectors from M&P: https://www.gigaparts.com/connector-for-airborne-5-cable.html?utm_term=sku-zmp-co-uhf-5m-s&gclid=CjwKCAjwvsqZBhAlEiwAqAHElRQb2BuWzLP0UCdEV-6XgcxxI5MnVyIGXMVlD5kMmFClbrEsMXvgDBoCFpgQAvD_BwE

That’s what a net is until it’s needed. Depending on the net controller it might have a little more personality, but it’s really just an exercise of the systems.

I promise I won’t laugh, except to commiserate. I’ve chased similar things before, many of them my own doing! I’ve felt pretty humble when I’ve figured them out also. I consider troubleshooting the relentless application of logic. It’s one of my favorite things to do, but it can seem so illogical sometimes. i haven’t seen those connectors. Do you have a link?

Exactly. This can be caused (I know you already know, Marc) by too sharp of a bend in the coax or too tight of a cable tie which squeezes the coax too tight, causing the inner conductor to migrate through the insulation (especially foam core) and contact the shield. This is the kind of issue I thought he could self diagnose when I suggested changing out every element one at a time to logically troubleshoot the issue: radio, coax, antenna. Of course it’s possible that a person replaces the coax and makes the same installation mistakes as before, causing the same problem. It’s also possible to take a piece of coax and move it somewhere else and have the condition reverse itself, resulting in the inner conductor no longer touching the shield, at least temporarily, but personally I would discard or at least cut out the bad spot and repurpose a failed coax cable.

Transmitting to a repeater is done at a special range of frequencies. Those channels are sometimes referred to as 15rp, 16rp, … up to 22rp. While the repeater is receiving on those channels it’s transmitting whatever it receives on the regular channels 15-22, which are each exactly 5 MHz lower than the corresponding RP channels.

Swap the base station radio with one of the radios that works. If the problem follows the radio you know it is something with the radio. If the house continues to have poor reception then it’s not the radio. By logically eliminating things you can rule them out. In the end perhaps it’s just something in the house that’s causing poor reception.

I reported it to Rich. He’s the one who can help you.

Think of RX DCS as a filter. When it’s in place everything with a DCS different than it is filtered out. Leaving RX DCS off does no filtering, so you hear everything. If you hear nothing from the repeater when you turn on RX DCS, you have got something configured wrong.

Your coax calculator doesn’t have RG8/u or LM400?

I don’t think he meant it that way. He wouldn’t scan it because he already has a pdf, which he then provided to all of us.

Thanks for providing the PDF so nobody has to scan it. Can you tell us what has changed to make it so much larger?

I’m impressed with the quality of the Alpha Delta items that I have. I don’t have an antenna switch yet but I have several other items including their excellent lightning arrester. Having a second arc-plug in their switch adds another incremental amount of protection for the most common issues.

Tail setting won’t help. Deleting the Rx tone opens up your receiver so it will pass anything it receives regardless of the tone.

You would need to contact the Philippine National Telecommunications Commission to find out the process for requesting that. https://ntc.gov.ph/philippine-table-of-frequency-allocations/?doing_wp_cron=1663945203.0378279685974121093750 It appears that the entire range between 415 and 472 MHz is already used for Maritime Mobile. Edited to add (possibly correct): this web page indicates that 400-470 is available to radio amateurs: https://n2rac.com/pinoy-preppers-radio-faq-a36673619567 Good luck!

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Look at page 3 in this document. They show the simplest solution for your situation: https://reeve.com/Documents/Articles Papers/Reeve_AntennaSystemGroundingRequirements.pdf It simply depicts a lightning arrester inserted into the feed line right where it enters the house and then connects the lightning arrester to your grounding bus. It’s a direct connection from the shield to building ground and a gas discharge tube to connect the inner conductor to ground to protect against static.

That’s what I thought he meant also.

I agree with your comment about range. I think the use of the phrase “short range” was simply intended to reflect that the useful range would be limited in practice because of the line of sight nature of UHF and because output power is relatively low. Saying that it’s a short range service doesn’t mean that it must only be used for short range communications; if it did the rules would need to define what is meant by “short range”.

Don’t satellite communications depend on earth side infrastructure which might be at risk in a large scale emergency?

Better to do 7-11. More power and it’s convenient! ? Plus you can find them everywhere.

https://vibroplex.com/contents/en-us/p3529.html The fiberglass Spiderpole linked above is what I got, and I like it, but the last segment is flexible enough that I would only use it for supporting a wire antenna. They make larger poles (I also bought the 41 foot one) which could be used to support a yagi as long as it was small and only if you clamped it to the third from top segment, which brings it down to about 30 feet. They’re both great for temporary use, field exercises using wire antennas, but if you want something permanent, spend the money and get something that’s built for the purpose. Solid Signal seems to have the best price (not including shipping ) on some of the telescoping permanent Rohn masts. These are steel masts that start at two inches diameter at the base and end at one and a quarter at the top (for the 30 foot mast). They’re built to be either bracketed or guyed and if you go very high at all you’ll need guys.

It was a joke.