SteveShannon

I have two of the db20g radios. They’re nice for a GMRS radio that can be opened up to work on 2 meters and 70 cm but they’re FM only and they won’t do anything on the lower end of the vhf scale like 6 meters. That’s not the kiss of death as long as you understand the limitations. If all you want to do is talk on VHF and UHF FM, it’s a nice little radio.

If you truly want one radio that will transmit on the greatest number of technician available bands and in all of the technician modes, either the IC7100, the FT991A, the IC705, or the FT1X cover the most bases. None of them are inexpensive, but all of them will do SSB, FM, AM, CW, RTTY, and the various digital modes like FT8, etc. They all support CAT control and all can be used as mobile radios. The IC705 and the FT1X Field are QRP rigs, but the FT1X Optima package includes an amplifier that makes 100 watts on the HF bands. These four radios also do SSB on the VHF and UHF bands, which is pretty uncommon, but nice.

For me, raising my EFHW made a huge difference in noise as well as coverage.

First, I am not a lawyer. My opinion is worth exactly what I spent on law school, $000. With that said, in my opinion, a person connecting to a networked repeater has nothing to fear. I don’t think the FCC would pursue the incidental users. Especially since they haven’t done much (anything?) about the actual owners of the linked repeaters.

You’re correct. The FCC announced that linked repeaters were prohibited under their interpretation of the regulations. Some of the linked repeater networks did unlink, including the large one that this site supported, but some did not. Some people, including myself, disagree with the interpretation that the FCC announced. I’m not going to repeat the arguments. They’re available in older forum threads.

He did. You just quoted it.

Google agrees with you. Apparently my understanding is not only inadequate, but wrong.

Look up “Ugly choke” on YouTube. They’re very easy to make using a length of coax (doesn’t have to be LMR400 for HF) and a large diameter pvc pipe. There are several different videos. Here’s one. He mistakenly says 35 inches when I think he meant to say 3.5 inches:

My probably inadequate understanding is that most sources of man made noise are horizontally constructed and thus are horizontally polarized. Vertical antennas have less noise usually than horizontal. An inverted v is somewhat similar to a vertical antenna in that it’s not horizontal. Try a good high gain vertical antenna and see how you do. You might even choose to do something like this:

It’s probably worth the price.

I’m not certain such a thing exists. It’s too high of a frequency to reliably NVIS. 80 and 40 meters are the frequencies where you can eliminate the gap between local and distant communications.

Try them and see if the performance of the antenna improves. Performance is measured in signal reports and range, not SWR. But there’s practically nothing to be gained with a lower SWR than what you have.

I wish the Yaesu 8900 was still available. I know there are some knockoffs available but they aren’t the same quality.

The bandpass filter on my radios are capable of being adjusted for width as well as having the center shifted lower or higher in frequency. That can really help push adjacent signals down relative to the signal you’re trying to listen to.

No, the FCC doesn’t police stuff like this. It’s completely up to us to report interference to them and interference on the amateur frequencies is just about as low priority as can be. Does your radio have user configurable band pass filtering to remove adjacent signals?

So people can read the post that says it’s dead…

Keep in mind also that channels 8-14 are only 500 milliwatts for both FRS and GMRS.

I wasn’t arguing, just offering an interesting example.

I’d be very curious if you see how much difference in simplex range exists between 2 watts and 5 watts. The conventional wisdom is that the thing that absolutely limits range for UHF is line of sight, not RF output power. I’ve had a friend turn the power way down on his 2 meter radio and still be able to hit our repeater at 80 miles.

Here’s an example of a large capacitance hat in place outside of Forsyth MT. At first I thought it must be a huge dipole, but then I realized there were two parallel horizontal wires, which form the capacitance hat, being fed by wires rising from the shack in the middle. I have passed this many times my life but had no idea what it was until a few years ago, after finally applying myself to learn about antennas and my curiosity finally drove me to google it. It’s called the Forsyth NDB and it’s an ancient but still operational air navigation aid. Here’s what Wikipedia says about this kind of structure: “NDB radiators are vertically polarised. NDB antennas are usually too short for resonance at the frequency they operate – typically perhaps 20 metres length compared to a wavelength around 1000 m. Therefore, they require a suitable matching network that may consist of an inductor and a capacitor to "tune" the antenna. Vertical NDB antennas may also have a T-antenna, nicknamed a top hat, which is an umbrella-like structure designed to add loading at the end and improve its radiating efficiency. Usually a ground plane or counterpoise is connected underneath the antenna.” IMG_3210.mov

The PDFs of the band plans are here for printing: https://www.arrl.org/graphical-frequency-allocations I laminated mine and leave it on my desk. First I ordered one of the “laminated 11 x 17” versions from ARRL and was not satisfied. It might be plastic coated, but it arrived folded and it’s not nearly as durable as the ones I roll through my hot laminating machine.

Exactly. I do that with my base stations even when I’m on a net.

No.

It is true, but it had nothing to do with the young person’s question or my response, so I wondered what led you to it.

I don’t understand what you’re talking about.