WRQG411
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Posts posted by WRQG411
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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13 hours ago, RoadRanger said:
Looks to be stoopid easy to get an Arduino to do this - There's already morse code software available for it. It can't do regular audio I/O but can output a tone. I think I'll go ahead and do it and publish a "how to" for everybody
I'll be watching for that write-up....
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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.
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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.
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21 hours ago, AdmiralCochrane said:
On a nice high angle pass I have no trouble hearing the ISS with a regular HT. I do compensate for doppler and I do try to keep antenna polarization in mind. I encourage everyone to give it a try.
Are you listening on 145.8 +/- for doppler effect, or on the cross-band repeater 437.800 +/- for DE?
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I have an ICOM IC-F4021T that works fine with the repeaters in my area.
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Much more common around these parts of the PNW is the licensee using the call sign while the spouse adding "Alpha" suffix.
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I found a document for the RT97S that shows pin-out for the serial port and a couple examples (RT97S to ID-O-MATIC IV, and RT97S to RIM-Lite). Might give someone some ideas on other ways to use the port.
- Sshannon and MaverickNH
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I have 3 of the 82's and they all work just fine. We use them on CH22 simplex on trail rides out in the woods, and from my living room, I can hit a repeater that is 6 miles away as the crow files.
I'll bet the PTT isn't working. Do you have a hand mic that you can plug in? Or set VOX to on and try that?
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Based on it's design, that's what I was leaning to as well, 5/8 over 5/8. Not sure how I missed the ground plane in the antenna farm specs, guess is was looking for GP or NGP. My oversight. Thanks for the assist!
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I have this antenna, specs don't tell me if it's 1/2 or 5/8 wave and if it requires a ground plane or not. It's the one I run when I'm not going in and out of my garage at home. It screws on to a Midland lip mount NMO that's installed on the corner of the hood just in front of the driver's side A pillar. When I am running back and forth to work and using my garage, I replace it with a Midland "phantom" that they claim has 3db gain. I've been able to hit a repeater 60 miles away with the Laid over some fairly flat with a few hills between terrain. I have a MXT575 running straight from the battery through a Kenwood choke.
Map of all Minnesota GMRS Users
in General Discussion
Posted
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.