axorlov

It could be the bah-offengd bought from amazon or ebay with "channels" preprogrammed into it. Original poster did not identify the location or the frequency.

Fixed stations are only allowed to talk only to other fixed stations. Base station, which is different from fixed station, can talk to repeaters. I'm not going to dig up the 95.<paragraph>, because we had been though this before many times.

If I was you, I'd start cheap, experimenting on the way. I had a years of good performance of Browning BR-6140 on 20' mast over single-story house (about 30' height over the ground). My setup also included 40' of LMR-400 and 40W radio, Kenwood TK-880H. I live in a center of a mostly flat valley circled by the mountains, and this setup allowed me to talk reliably to another mobile TK-880H in the car, and less reliably (local dip, buildings, etc) to handheld. The max distance on a flat area was 8 miles or so. Of course, when you start to climb up on the valley rim, you'd have crystal clear communication with handheld as well. BR-6140 is a unity gain, not 6dB. I now have Diamond X50-NA (at 27' over the ground), which is a ham antenna, and have worse SWR than BR-6140 on GMRS frequencies. It works about the same, though. Diamond X50 is a unity gain too. The repeaters is always a good option, because you would not need to invest on base station, antenna, etc. However, repeater it is somebody else's radio, not controlled by you.

10 miles is not really far, but can be easy or difficult, depending on terrain. That was already pointed out by others. You very likely will need an elevated antenna on one side. In your house with your family, likely. The higher antenna is, the better.

I'm curious, if there is a single mirror in the house of this youtube princess. Not that I need to know...

That's too bad, I did not know. RIP BARN R1.

Where are you in Bay Area? I did not use this repeater for some time (years?), but it indeed used to have a good coverage. It used to identify itself with voice every 30 minutes, do you hear anything? I can't open it from where I live in Livermore, and my current commute car does not have mobile installed, so I can't check it right now. But we can try to schedule a contact in coming days. We can do it over simplex or over BARN R1, I work near the Dumbarton bridge, on Fremont side.

I wouldn't say it failed. Some ORI repeaters are around me that are not listed here, and there are also a plenty of ORI repeaters listed here. YMMV, as usual, depending on the area.

N - normal, I - inverted. Try N first. More than you ever wanted to know about DCS: http://www.onfreq.com/syntorx/dcs.html

Do you run the negative lead all the way to the battery or just to closest available point on a car body? If to the battery, the good automotive practice would be to have fuses on both wires. Why do you need the fuse on negative lead is explained above.

It actually makes some strange sense, although I would not wire my radio like this. If you wire the radio (or sound) equipment directly to the battery, it makes sense to have fuses on both leads, as close to the battery terminals as practically possible. For the situation when the main ground connection from your battery to the body of the car deteriorated (rust or sloppy repair job), and now the connection between car body and the battery goes via your radio. It is now a connection for ALL consumers of electricity in your car, combined. The circuit would look like this: the mounting hardware/bolts - body of your radio - this thin negative wire. Or maybe via NMO mount - shield of the coax - body of the radio - thin negative wire. You will have this wire melted in the result. Coax will be fine, though, shield should be good for 20A or more, if it is RG58 or RG8X. However, your finals are not in the circuit. If it is a base install, then nothing to worry about, your radio is not powered, nothing is going to happen at all. Wouxun saved $0.0002 by omitting the fuse in the positive wire, shame on them. But the fuse only on the negative lead is better than the fuse only on the positive lead, if we are talking about car install where body of the radio connected to the body of the car by mounting hardware.

Here is the service manual for the TK-880 V2.0 http://www.repeater-builder.com/kenwood/pdfs/tk-880-svc-man-rev-e.pdf The firmware programming is described on page 17, Firmware Programming Mode. The fpro.exe is a part of your KPG-49D installation.

Ok, will send you when I'm back home in the evening.

Why would you even need the underwear. I wouldn't bother. "Power grows from the barrel of the gun" - Mao Zedong.

Indeed, all the time. My company does (not radio, some computer components). TK-880 has it's controlling chip on the front panel PCB. I would not be surprised if the radio components between v1.0 and v2.0 are identical, with the differences is only on this front panel PCB and the firmware. But, I would not assume, that swapping front panel is a good idea, since there are some presets stored in the non-volatile memory of the controller chip. So, your problem is a PassPort firmware on your TK-880 v2.0. This is exactly the problem discussed in this thread. Do you have zip-file with the latest Kenwood firmware? If not, send me your email address via PM, I'll send you the firmware.

When you are talking about swapping the display, are you swapping only the display or the whole front panel? The brains of the TK880 is on this panel. All the settings, calibration, firmware, etc.. The stuff in the big box is mostly the actual radio components, as opposed to electronics/microcontroller components.

It's not a nonsense. It is a modification of the existing dipole in an attempt to improve it. By attaching counterpoise you change the currents in the whole antenna, changing many things: pattern, efficiency, SWR, etc. The rationalization of the length (19") comes from the desire to have a center fed dipole (on 2m). Sometimes it helps, often it does not. Here a link with the proper HT antenna testing method explained, and also experiments with counterpoise that show that they are not always good thing to have: https://www.hamradio.me/antennas/ht-antenna-comparisons.html

We talk about Motorolas, mag mounts, Line A, channelnineteen, Baofengs all the time. Nothing wrong with a good discussion. This is how we get good info and new ideas. Only a certain youtube darling was born knowing everything, just like Saint Alia of the Knife. Normal people learn from conversations and exchange of ideas, me and you included.

HT antenna is not a quarter wave with ground plane. There is no ground plane. HT antenna is off center fed dipole. Inserting SWR meter into one leg of the dipole changes antenna. You would be measuring different antenna, not the one that HT resents by itself + the thing everybody calls "antenna". Also consider that if there is any matching components in the HT, they are now behind your measuring device and not taken into account. Maybe this is somewhat "closer" to when you attach the "antenna" to HT directly. And there is still no ground plane to be found, only the other leg of the dipole. But how close nobody knows, and there is no way to tell. And matching schematics is left in the HT.

Ahh, but you can't measure SWR of HT antenna. The radiating element is not 771G, it is 771G + body of the HT. The results acquired by breaking real antenna in two parts and sticking SWR meter in between mean nothing, really.

I never saw a radio certified for 20K0F3E for Part 90. It does not mean they do not exist, I just never stumbled upon any of such things. The radios I'm aware off are 16K0 for wide band and 11K0 or 10K0 for narrow band. And there are Baofengs that are certified for 5K0, laughable. Narrow-narrow band.

Ok, it is clear now. What you've done is changed the two 5/8 radiating elements for one 1/4 radiating element. This is what I found: https://www.mobilemarkantennas.com/a1845 Apparently, there are five versions of this antenna tuned to different frequencies. Any chance of finding which version do you have? Looks like not the -50. Finding that would help with choosing length of the elements (trimming or extending).

Not clear to me. You say you unscrewed antenna and stick brazing rod into the center connector of the mount, as a vertical element? How you would do that? NMO mounts do not have a hole to insert a rod.

Base-loaded antennas may have a DC connection between the center conductor and the shield. I would not discard mobile antenna for that. Most interesting part is about you trying out brazing rods. Can you elaborate? I presume that was for the ground plane. How the rods were attached? How many of them? How long are they? What about the regular metal car roof, did you try to mount the antenna on it? SWR 1.7:1 is fine, and my question is: how different the mount between SWR 3.5:1 and SWR 1.7:1?

Major FAIL. No spitting at hams, no direct stare into camera, no 30 minutes of stroking your own feeble ego, the word "dork" not even uttered once (!), no bullshit (!!), no caressing of Baofengs, too many numbers who knows whado they mean. No fun. If I wanted a lecture, I'd go to some boring university or somethun