WRQG411

The repeater group in our area has been doing this while conducting Simplex excursuses the plotting who can hear who and rough signal strength. I suppose in-case SHTF, we would know who's locally available to contact. The map is pretty interesting.

Everyone keeps forgetting about the ICOM IC-2730A w/MARS mod. Great 50W mobile. One caveat is accessories are extra.

I have the all black version of that BB4502nr and ordered it from Antenna Farm, they are good people. It seems like a good antenna, never had any issues with it. The base of the coil has a rubber seal for weatherproofing onto the NMO mount and the rubber "spring" is exactly what it is, and offers some flex. Ran it for a while until I changed out my radio for a dual bander and switch over to a Comet antenna. https://theantennafarm.com/shop-by-categories/antennas-mounts/mobile-antennas/300-512-mhz-uhf/no-ground-plane-antennas/6536-laird-connectivity-bb4502nr-detail

My Comet model is the SS-680SBNMO, and it does ok at 1.5 on GMRS frequencies. It's 27" long, and is about 1/2" too tall for my garage door, but is so extremely flexible that I don't even worry about it rubbing when entering or exiting the garage.

If you're talking through a repeater, it's all about the distance from you to the repeater, and not at all about how far you are from who you're talking to. What repeater in Post Falls? Is it the one on .600?

I run a Comet dual-bander on the driver's side back edge of my hood on a Midland NMO mount. My radio is a Kenwood TM-V71A. This setup works very well for me.

Here's my setup, works well. I have a 25-ft piece of LMR400 and run it on my trailer batteries.

I use a CA-712EFC on a 15-ft pole down on the St Joe river at near water-level with mountains all around the valley. This is connected to my Retevis RT97s portable repeater. With a HT standing directly under the antenna, I have no trouble getting keyed up. With the 20w mobile in my SxS running a 1/4-wave mag mount, I have been around 15 miles away in a draw a full mountain range away and had no trouble getting into the repeater. I know this can all vary from trail to trail. I was initially worried about the gain of the Comet and through I wanted a different antenna with less gain, but so far it's been working well for our camping and trail riding comms. IMG_0722.MP4

We do this setup at the river in north Idaho where we have no cell service. Most of us have side-by-sides and carry handhelds if there isn't a mobile is installed in the machine. The RT97s works well for this scenario. My antenna is a 10-ft comet on an aluminum pole that's about 15-ft' long and strapped to the tongue of the trailer. I used a cig plug connected to the batter and the power cord from the repeater kit. There are mountains all around us, but we've been able to get 10 to 15 miles out from the repeater and still get in with mobiles on most of our rides. The HT's are ok out to about 6 miles. The trailer stays there all summer so I never take the antenna down, and only kill power to the repeater when we aren't there. I know that doesn't help with your wanting to stow for transport. If I was going to change anything, I'd buy another hitch mount for my rear bumper and a collapsible 25' flag pole and a different antenna with slightly less gain to help with the terrain we're in.

I don't think "ninety" works... more line 9-hundred, but you could say "Nine-eleven"...

You also can't have two different repeaters programmed in that use the same frequency pair. You would have to change tones to go back and forth. There are no memory slots to program additional items into.

Shouldn't that be WRYK###?

I'll be watching for that write-up....

One thing I like about the Midland mount/cables is that the PL259 connector unscrews from the cable and is much smaller, allowing a smaller hole for bringing the cable into the cab of the vehicle. The 400 is popular as I understand that there is CPS available to program it, while the 275 and 575 are programmed from the hand mic.

Because my eye sight makes it relatively difficult for me to read a printed booklet (aka ARRL Study Guide), I also purchased an audio book on Audible called "Fast Track to your Technician License" by Michael Burnett. He breaks everything down and explains it so you can understand it, resulting in choosing the right answer all the time because now you are able to apply it. I had been doing practice test on one website, about every other day, and oddly, results were "getting worse?" Not failing, but dropping from high 80's to high 70's. While researching testing locations locally, and remote testing, I found HamStudy.org, and took four test, one each day, and scored 94% or better on every one of them. That meant it was time. It was already too late for the local testing location, and next testing was 30 days out, so I chose to do a remote test. I signed up with PARC and tested the next day/evening. This was conducted in a Zoom meeting and was very professional. There were 4 proctors during my session. I had Zoom running on my PC, and also on my phone which was placed off to my right side so they could observe my hands and my screen (which was also shared). Results were instantaneous, and my email arrived the next day from the FCC asking for my license payment. Note: The design of the practice test in HamStudy.org is identical to the online test proctored the remote VEs.