axorlov

For 5' mast the TV mast section can be used. Can be found in Home Depot or Lowes in electrical section next to TV coax. They are 3/4" and quite robust.

Hell NO! I need me some nice good wideband.

TK-880 datasheet: https://criticalradio.com/Kenwood%20Spec%20Sheets/Data%20Sheets/TK780h_880h_ver2_k.pdf "H" means high power and bigger heat sink on the back, refer to the datasheet for the dimensions. There is some difference between v2.0 version and earlier (non-versioned, that is often called V1.0), but I can't weigh on that, since I do not own one. The "-1", "-2" and "-3" are not versions of the hardware, they are versions of alignment, refer to the datasheet.

You probably hear repeater traffic because signal reflects from the hills around you. 4W HT may not have enough power for reflected signal to open repeater. Mobile radio might have enough power. It's impossible to know in advance. Directional antenna may help too.

The girl down the page, with the yellow mini, she is hot!

I have Fong's antenna and mine does not have choke. Neither ferrites nor any coils or anything. Just a short piece of RG-174 to the connector. J-pole antennas, by nature, need RF choke of some sort. On UHF frequencies they are usually ferrite beads put over the coax. In my case, antenna was installed on the 10' steel mast, and it was very clear, that the coax couples with the mast. I had SWR swings from 9:1 when coax is dropped along the mast, to 3:1 when coax is pulled away from the mast. Since ferrite beads would cost me around $25, and I already had commercial BR-6140, I just put it up. I lost 2m capability, but I do not really care. Btw, BR-6140 still available at newegg for $35.

Not sure about RF performance, but social distance features are clearly lacking. However, augmented by the death stare. The photographer probably get burns on her hands from her phone.

Nice install! Too close to chimney and to each other for my taste, but I understand your HOA limitation. As mentioned before, Ed Fong's antenna requires RF choke. Your install looks like there is no metal mast or anything near the coax to couple with, and this is probably why your setup worked better than mine.

Another data point: I have antenna approx 25' off the ground (10 feet mast on top of single-story house). In flat suburbia reliable communication range between base (TK-880H) and HT is around 5 miles. Anything in excess of 5 miles drops to nothing very quickly. Same base station can talk to mobile (also TK-880H), with antenna on a flat roof of SUV, to 8 miles reliably. And I can't check distance longer than 8 miles because I'm in the valley. Get some altitude and 20 miles between HT and base becomes easy (Mt Diablo to Livermore, for locals).

In the rocky canyons of California, I had a reliable communications many times with over-the-hill and around-the-hill propagation path. 65cm waves (GMRS) reflect quite good from granite surfaces. Locally at home, I keep failing with using TV antenna on Mt Allison and power transmission lines over Sunol grade as passive reflectors. But I haven't tried yagi yet. Experiment!

Ed Fong's antenna is a J-pole. J-poles will produce common mode current on your coax, this is inherent in their design. Depending on how do you mount your antenna (steel mast, wooden mast, no mast, metal roof, shindles, etc...) you may need a more or less efficient common mode current choke. Some people can get away without using any, some people may need very efficient choke (coax coupling with steel mast is probably the worst case). The loop and the ferrites below the antenna do their work to suppress the common mode current and the associated noise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-mode_signal, https://www.murata.com/~/media/webrenewal/products/emc/emifil/knowhow/26to30.ashx and uncountable other sources.

Internets say you would need KPG-135D software for this radio. I can't say more, because I do not own one.

Cool, thanks! I did not know that.

2 miles do not sound like too damn far. My next steps would be: 1. put one operator at home and another operator in car or on foot, and start walking away, find places when 100% availability becomes 75%, 50% and none; 2. borrow HT with better selectivity from your ham friends and see if reception improves at places you identified in step 1. Wide open front end on Baofengs cause de-sense in places with a lot of RF, like downtowns, offices, next to computers, etc. Squelch control on my Baofeng UV-B5 is a joke, program one of the buttons to disable squelch and use it during your experiments. You should use it anyway - to monitor the frequency before transmitting.

I have SureCom SW-33 and I have Diamond SX600. While they mostly in agreement when measuring power and SWR on 2m, they wildly disagree on 70cm and GMRS. I decided to trust Diamond. Surecom measurements are inconsistent even with dummy load. Another thing to consider is that measuring SWR with HT and HT antenna is a tough proposition. HT antennas are designed to work when you hold HT in hand and your body is capacitively coupled with it. Surecom "stick" is comparable to 1/8 wavelength on GMRS and it will change antenna characteristics when inserted between HT and antenna. Same with using pigtails. I do not bother measuring SWR on HT antennas because of that. Measurement equipment introduces a systematic error that is big enough that you can't trust the measurement, Surecom or not. Measuring SWR of Fong antenna or mag mount antenna is a different exercise. In case you're measuring at antenna base, you will get correct SWR of the antenna. In case you're measuring at transmitter, the loss in the cable will lower SWR, the bigger the loss the closer your SWR to 1:1. Do not obsess with SWR, better measure the power at antenna base. SWR does not directly affect efficiency of the antenna, it is indirect metric of the loss in your transmission line and (very) indirect hint at if transmitter will reduce power or burn out.

Report Causes Concern and Confusion in California’s Amateur Radio Ranks "http://www.arrl.org/news/report-causes-concern-and-confusion-in-california-s-amateur-radio-ranks"

Congratulations! Thanks for sharing. You may find ham is more interesting than GMRS with it's many faucets, like HF, satellite, microwave, meteor and aircraft scattering, SOTA, fox hunting, etc... Or you may not. Btw, Fong's antenna did not really work for me. There is a thread here somewhere.

Yes, just ignore the warning about out of range, radio will work. I do not have sophisticated equipment, just a simple power meter, and I do not see any difference in power between ham band and GMRS band. Listening to the signal on another radio also do not show anything unusual. Talk Around - I do not use it, I just programmed simplex frequencies with different PL/DPL codes. Pretty much all of my use is on simplex, anyway.

The tiny triangle on top of "7" means that the channel is added to scan. I put all the channels in the same zone and educated family to not to use ham channels (except the daughter, she is licensed ham). Because, to switch between zones you'd need another pair of buttons, and we do not have that many. My assignment: Selector = CH UP/Down. AUX (Orange) = popular local ham repeater (going to reassign it to OST or to circle zones) S1 = squelch off S2 = low power S = scan Start/stop A = scan Add/delete B = Bring the Boys Back home: GMRS home channel (with DPL, where we expect to handle all family communication, unless interference happens) C = DTMF Code select I also have mobile TK-880 (few of them), where I can try to have assignment somewhat similar, to have less confusion for everybody: A = scan add/delete B = home GMRS channel C and D = zone select SCN = scan start/stop MON = squelch off Up and Down (left) = volume Up and Down (right) = channel select

I have TK-3170-K and is works in ham band, no problem. No hardware modifications needed.

Radio probably would not lose Part 95 acceptance if one simply programs ham frequencies to it, without doing any hardware modifications. As was stated, many Part 95 and Part 90 radios allow programming of 70cm frequencies.

Anything Part 95a can legally be operated on ham band. But not vise-versa. For example, Kenwood TK-880 and TK-3170 that I have work fine on ham 70cm band. If you are looking into Part 95a 2m/70cm, I don't think these exist. But there is plenty of dual band Part 90 equipment.

Congrats!

What antenna is that?

I understand that you can't flash v2 firmware into v1 radio. Same KPG-49D should work for both v1 and v2 radios. v1 may have an advantage of not requiring hardware mod (removal of resistor) to enable front panel programming, everything is done via the software. Although, I can't confirm, I do not have v1. Usually, virtualized USB is a bag of hurt, but all these radios actually have a serial interface, and the USB cables are, in fact, USB to serial adapters, so the speeds and latencies we are dealing with are fine for VMs.