axorlov

Leave the hat at home.. Awwww.... That hurts!

You mean the "gnawing worry"? You free-flying rebels are funny. Keep up your free-spirited, but useless and harmless experiments. Don't forget to keep us all posted, we will enjoy your fruitless hunt. I ROFLed here. Up to 50 watts, with Baofeng! Crazy stuff, Imma telling ya

Why don't we have a dislike button here, anybody knows? Or better, "stomp into cow manure" button.

Nobody asks you to be. It's a free country.

Hey, share your findings. It will be interesting to know if Baofeng (Btech) follows the existing spec for location data, and if it is compatible with APRS network.

It is not clear if Baofeng follows APRS spec. They may very well do not. To determine, you probably need to set up a receiver with APRS decoder (APRSDrois will do) to see what exactly Btech Pro sends. It may not be compatible with bona fide APRS.

APRSDroid will gladly eat your GMRS callsign and will allow sending and receiving packets from air. Of course, no injection of data will be allowed into the APRS database over the internet. For this you must have ham callsign. I'm regular APRS user, but always on 144.390 and never on GMRS.

Ok, got it. As pointed by others, USB port is not going to provide enough power. I would use something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Yantu-Cigarette-Lighter-Adapter-Splitter/dp/B07CM7PJQB/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1PG8W3KZE8W61&keywords=lighter+splitter&qid=1664330596&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0Ljg2IiwicXNhIjoiNC4zNyIsInFzcCI6IjMuODkifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=lighter+splitter%2Caps%2C700&sr=8-4 Or better, solder/splice short wires with Anderson Power Poles or T-connector to existing cigarette lighter socket and use the same Power Poles or T-connector on your battery eliminator.

Not sure I understand the use case. You've got battery eliminator already, so you can use it in car. Do you want to use this battery eliminator at home? And power it from USB power adapter? This will not work for two reasons: USB provides 5V, while you'd need 12V (maybe 9V, depending on a construction of battery eliminator); and small USB power bricks for phones provide "dirty" power, i.e. the voltage is not filtered from ripple noise. You would need something that puts out at least 12V (again, maybe 9V will be enough) and something that provides "clean" power, like MFJ-4103, for example. But that's going to be expensive.

You don't even need a calculator for these two. Your second link shows loss at 450MHz (2.7dB), and little googling brings this page: https://abrind.com/coax-guide-2/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhor86fWt-gIVpT2tBh1P-gcyEAAYASAAEgLy4_D_BwE where loss for 25400 at 450MHz is 3.3dB. So, Wireman is better, but LLC-25400F is a direct burial.

Hey, Marc You are loosing it, man. Your granddaughter's reflection diary starts with https://schoolloop.com/...

Channel spacing on GMRS is 25 kHz. 462.550, 462.575, 462.600 and so on. And indeed, channel spacing for low power and FRS-only channels is 12.5 kHz. Channel bandwidth is something entirely different, related to how much information could possibly be pushed through the specific channel. Term is not really applicable to what we are talking about. What chinese manufacturers can't properly translate is an occupied spectrum. For most of the radios I'm familiar with, it is 16 kHz for wide band, and 11 kHz for narrow band.

Sorry to hear about that misadventure with the NMO. I always remove interior lights and use inspection mirror and tiny flashlight to have a good visual of the roof crossbeams to avoid this exact scenario.

Not exactly the answer to the question you asked, however: In my experience 11" BR-178 (which is 5/8) picket fences about the same as 31" BR-170 (which is 5/8 over 1/2). I do not see a difference in picket fencing, I do see a difference when stationary. 31" is tiny bit better.

Welcome to the forum! Congrats on the perfect first post. Look everybody, another trooper from the NotaSingleclue Brigade.

If I read you correctly, in both cases the top of your mast was below the yellow/brass metal part of the antenna? Good then. What's likely happened is a bad contact/connector got better with the handling of the antenna. At any rate, use the configuration that works better. Antenna tuning is considered a black art by many. It is not, of course, but as long as a setup works for you it's good. You can always debug it later.

No, no need to align. Use the mounting brackets that should be supplied in the package with the 6140. Radiating element of this antenna is inside the white plastic tube, so make sure your mast does not block any part of it. In other words, mount 6140 on the top of the mast. As long as mast does not block the actual antenna (white plastic tube) it does not matter if it is aligned with the mast or offset.

What a fantastic fairy idiot! Look everybody, magic outside of Hogwarts.

Hypothetically speaking, if you find a strong transmitter nearby, and you can lower your antenna to shield it from said transmitter with your roof/house, it may improve reception of signals you are interesting in. That's strictly hypothetically speaking. Maybe there is no strong signal, and maybe it's on the same side of the house. That's just an example. Another hypothetical example is to use 3-element yagi, instead of 12-element, and mounted it with low/null toward the strong interference. It may give you enough of an angle to receive all interesting repeaters, but will block the interference, while being stationary. Just another example.

Try both. For receive, they should be the same. For transmit, I guess 6140 will outperform Nagoya for a reason that your ground plane (4 radials) needs to be tuned for the 462MHz. It is not a UHF groundplane in it's stock form. 6140 is as fool-proof as it gets, while tuning Nagoya+groundplane may give you better results eventually. Or may not.

UHF signal is not affected by sun. UHF signals are sometimes (rarely) susceptible to reflections in atmosphere between the layer of colder and hotter air. If you noticed correlation of you signal changes with fog or low cloud cover, that may hint to this type of propagation. Another, and more probable reason of change over the course of the day is that you have a business transmitter/repeater in the UHF band nearby. If you notice worse reception in the work hours, that may be it. This transmitter may make your radio go deaf. There is also a remote possibility that something in your house creating an interference. Remote because we are talking about UHF, but still a possibility. If you're inclined, do some research. Get RTL-SDR dongle for the PC and see what's going on in the spectrum around you, at the times when reception is good and when it's bad. Good dongles (Nooelec and rtl-sdr.com) are below $40 these days. And they used to be below $20, I've got mine in ole goode times before covid. Yagi will help for sure, but rotator is a pain, and maybe there is a easier solution.

I checked UV5G in FCC database, certification says narrow band is 9K84 and 9K78. So, not as bad as some Baofengs. No wide bad certification there, so who knows what real deviation on wide band might be.

What is likely in play here is deviation. Baofengs often are certified with 5K0 deviation for narrow band, while better radios are usually 11K0 or 10K0 for narrow band. Baofeng has 6dB disadvantage vs Wouxun. Retevis likely too is a narrow-narrow band radio. Now if you switch your radios to wide band, you will gain another 3dB advantage.

By common scientific understanding, lightning rods do not attract lightning bolts. They do provide a short path to the ground for direct or nearby hit, so Instead of you getting a coolest scar on your face and back (looks best when in coffin), you just see the fire show. There is also a short story by Mark Twain, Political Economy, hilarious as usual, but spreading misconception. But I can forgive Twain.

Oh, the 30 seconds delay... ? LOL, way to overthink a simplest thing.