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I am not the least bit surprised that DARA has cancelled the 2020 Hamvention. Consider that last year attendance was officially 32k+, and that over half of those came from outside the United States... Japan, Taiwan, S Korea, and other countries in the Far East, S America, Africa, Israel, England, and - well - every country in Europe were represented! It is entirely possible that the travel ban will not be lifted by then, which would result in well over half the vendors to be no-shows, and even the attendance of US citizens would be diminished. All things considered, DARA would take a bath and not even come close to breaking even, much less making any profit. On a personal note, I had made advanced reservations at a motel in Xenia, OH just a quick drive from the Greene County Fairgrounds. Unfortunately the reservations are not refundable, so I'm out $527 and change. While that sucks for me, at least my loss may help the motel's owners to remain viable for next year! I completed my restocking of frozen food and canned goods a few days ago, so I'm well prepared to hunker down in my home for the next few months at least. Be smart and be safe my friends!

On reflection, I should have bought the aluminum tripod base and six aluminum poles instead of the very expensive MFJ tripods. It would have been far more portable, weighed a LOT less, and been a heck of a lot cheaper! Ah well, hindsight is only depressing...

The fiberglass and aluminum poles are 1.75" O.D. so the I.D. of 1.8" for the tripod makes sense...

My major concern with the idea of using a bulkhead connector on the outside is it would be nearly impossible to weatherproof adequately.

The North Shore Emergency Association (founded 1952) provides communications at the Evanston 4th of July Parade as well as the fireworks on the lakeshore in the evening. We also provide communications for bike rides, marathon events, and similar throughout the year. It's a lot of fun as well as being a useful community service.

I have two of the fiberglass tent pole 32' sets that I use to support a G5RV Jr (52' long) dipole here at my home antenna farm. Two of them split on the female end so I had to cut them just above the splits and I added some stainless steel radiator hose clamps to prevent the other poles from splitting. For field use, I have two fiberglass pushup masts (48') with lever action compression locks, and two of the giant (6') MFJ tripods. I hang a full-sized G5RV between the masts with three sets of guys on each of them. Marc, you ain't kidding that it can get expensive real fast! The field equipment set me back nearly $700...

I'll keep that in mind...

I was gifted with the remainder of a 1000m spool of genuine Andrews 1/2" Superflex FSJ4-50B heliax left over from an Illinois State tower upgrade. There were quite a few leftovers of various sizes including some 1.5" Andrews. In any case I now have a LOT of 1/2" heliax taking up room in my garage. A GMRS group I belong to was planning to put yet another repeater up and needed at least 200'. Well, I wound up with far more than actually needed... The cable is marked every meter with the length to that point. The loose end is marked 1219m and the tail end is marked 1414m. The difference is at least 195 meters, or in feet ~640'... Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with the 400' remaining after I donate 200+ feet to my group!

Yay! Persistent application of cognitive energy pays off finally!

Well Shaine, since you are licensed what is the problem with NWI GMRS?

I've bought several dozen programming cables from "bluemax49ers" and had no problems with any of them. More to the point I buy cables that use FTDI instead of Prolific whenever available.

Good luck for whenever you take the test for tech licenses.

Throw a lot of salt in it. Make radio waves great again!

I can recommend bluemax49ers programming cable. It works with both the TK-840(N) and the TK880-H 1

I really need to set aside the few minutes to add the Schererville repeater to my CS800 radios. That way I could chat with you via the Madison repeater!

Oh, not to forget the heating taking place on one's cross-band radio from the 'extended keyup times'...

When I first entered the DMR portion of ham radio, I got a good deal on a really well cared for XPR7550 (UHF). I had a custom leather holster made for it, along with the D-Ring for my belt. While it looks nice it is quite heavy, at least compared with my current favorite the AT-878 which weighs just over half as much, is about half the size, and has three times the features as the XPR7550. The first time I carried to Dayton for the Hamvention, I found to my dismay that while I had packed a half-dozen HTs along on the trip (why I have no idea!), I had forgotten the charger for the XPR7550! Fortunately, one of my DMR friends had an Impress charger and hand mic at his booth, so I bought both and all was well again. Now I find myself not even having turned on the XPR7550 for nearly two years. I have the software and programming cable, two chargers, two batteries, the leather holster and speaker mic and need to find a good home for this package. I do keep the batteries rotated and freshly charged though. Now I've found that the battery on my GD-77 has gone bad. It won't hold a charge at all. Thirty seconds fresh off the charger and the radio loses power. I'm not sure about replacing the battery. I may just toss the radio in the trash. I need to sell my MD-2017 and Ailunce HD-1 if possible. I just don't need that many HTs cluttering up the house. It's too bad the AT-578 doesn't have a separation kit, as I'd really like that in my mobile. Running it in 220/440 DMR crossband would be nice. At least then I'd get some use out of my 220 HT that otherwise just sits around feeling lonely. I'm blessed with having a very wide-area 220 repeater here in NW Indiana, but no one else either uses it or has a radio...

Three out of five GMRS repeaters in my area use split tones. This is done mainly to keep unlicensed folks off of them.

I keep my TM-V71A here in my shack, with it's old papa the TM-V7A sitting on top of it. I have the separation kits for both radios, but they aren't needed here on my desk.

I had some appointments at the VA Hospital in Chicago last Friday. When done for the day I drove up to the top deck of the parking garage (8 stories!) and had a ball in 20m phone for about an hour on my FT-857. I tried 10m for a bit but no one was on the air and no one answered any CQ's...

I've tried many times to participate in nets via cross-band and found it most unsatisfactory. Why one may reasonably ask? Simple, if the hang time on the remote repeater is long, it's difficult to get an word in edgewise! For some reason a lot of people won't wait for the repeater to drop before keying up, especially during a round of check ins.. Go figure!

Oh! Good to know. I don't have or use a 'smart phone' at all anyway, so... ...I'd only get to use the PC App. Since my TK-880H 1 radio is on a shelf by my right knee, that would just be silly.

Ideally one would hope that eventually Anytone will add the necessary parts to multiplex at the chassis end and demultiplex at the control head end, and ditch the ribbon cable entirely, replacing it with a bog-standard CAT5 or CAT6 cable. This is how my TYT7800, CS800D, and FT-857 radio's remote system works.

Since I don't use Zello, I was not aware that after the first 30 days one has to pay for the use of Zello. Fortunately I have no need for Zello being blessed with two wide-area repeaters in NW Indiana.

Since when did they remove the screen from the GD-77? I just looked at mine and the screen is still there... I'll agree that the GD-77 is a complete piece of sub-standard parts, as is the TYT MD-2017 with its stupid trackball. My HD-1 is my second favorite HT at the moment, with the AT-878 currently in the #1 spot. While I do love my XPR-7550 (not e model), I haven't actually carried it in over a year.