Feel like a little kid again! First hit on repeaters

[WSKY567]

Not that many would care and most likely not a big deal to most here but I got a 64" fiberglass antenna with the little 3 pole ground plane on it and stuck it outside on a 10' video light stand.  Voila!!!   Pinging two repeaters and even got a radio check through one of them.  Sure beats my little 18" whip sitting on a shelf, lol.  Will be nice when summer comes around and I can put the thing on a flag pole.  It was a chilling experiment.  Strung the coax out a sliding glass door and its about 19°F out there right now.  

[Davichko5650]

56 minutes ago, WSKY567 said:

  It was a chilling experiment.  Strung the coax out a sliding glass door and its about 19°F out there right now.  

Don't forget that it's a well-known fact that antenna work in colder temps results in at least a 6 dB gain! You should also now see better results on Simplex as well.

[marcspaz]

Glad it's working out for you!  I love experimenting with different options and its always fun when it works!

 

[LeoG]

Pretty soon you'll have 3 antennas up on the house and 15 HTs on a shelf along with the mobile unit hooked up to a power supply....

[RoadApple]

Hey, great to hear that you connected to those repeaters!  They can, and likely will, open up a whole new world.

[WSKY567]

Wow, a lot more responses than I anticipated, appreciated!

I'm already workin my way down the rabbit hole.  4HT's, and one mobile on a power supply.  Nothing boutique for sure.  All real inexpensive (or cheep if you prefer) Chinese radios.  Hard to resist at the cost of a few folks going to McDonalds.  Excited about warmer weather.  I do videography projects to include paranormal investigations when I visit my daughter in Kansas MO.  These little HT's are just the ticket to coordinating those activities.  

Pretty neat day today with firsts.  Also a new great grand daughter today  10lbs and 22 inches, big girl!  Excited about meeting her in June in the land of OZ.  

[WRZK526]

3 hours ago, LeoG said:

Pretty soon you'll have 3 antennas up on the house and 15 HTs on a shelf along with the mobile unit hooked up to a power supply....

Not there yet but working on it. Three mobiles one hooked up to an antennae on my house two in vehicles and two sets of HT's. Oh yeah and a handheld Yeasu I almost forgot about. 

[LeoG]

Technically I have 3 antennas up there.  The GMRS, a cell phone booster and a UHF TV antenna.  But that's in the attic and not on the roof.  I have 3 mobile transceivers, one in my truck, one in the house hooked up to a power supply and another on standby just in case.  I think I have 10 HTs.  Along with that I have 2 repeaters, one at my shop with it's own antenna (of course) and a portable repeater in case SHTF.

 

Beware, this can be you ....

[WSKY396]

I bought some midland GMRS radios from Bass Pro and didn’t realize that they were not repeater capable or even know about repeaters. About 2 weeks later I’m in the cheap Chinese radio gang with a mobile mag antenna on a baking sheet talking to one of my son’s over some mountains. Down the rabbit hole .

[WRTC928]

Nice! Yeah, it's pretty surprising the first time you use a "real" antenna. The difference is night and day. Just wait until you put that antenna on a 30' mast. 

[WSKY567]

Just a bit of a follow up.  Drilled a hole to the outside and made up a 30' cable with RG8X cable and solder on connectors.  Worst solder joints I've ever made.  Just don't have a hot enough iron for those connectors but they don't appear to be cold joints.  Test fine with a multimeter.  Getting a full 22.2W out of the DB20-G with an SWR of 1:1.01.  Can't tell if I'm hitting any repeaters today, really don't know how to tell.  

[WRUE951]

Experimenting with different antennas will defiantly give different results.  The fun really begins when you start building your own.. Start with a simple J-Pole,, I promise, you won't stop building..  have fun..  

[WSKY567]

31 minutes ago, WRUE951 said:

The fun really begins when you start building your own

That does sound really good.  I feel as if I need a lot of study on antenna theory before actually starting a build.  I have a degree in electronics but that did not extend into antenna theory and the education is over 50 years old now.  It blows me away that you can inject a signal into a DC dead short with HF and produce a 50Ω RF load as with a J-Pole.  I have watched videos on the process of building one but they were nuts and bolts e.g. place your wire here.  I need to understand how to compute those measurements along the elements of the antenna.  I'm still struggling with the 6 foot antenna I'm using.  A full wave is about 25 inches.  The antenna I'm using is about 2.5 wavelengths.  In my mind that should decrease SWR, propagation, and reception.  In sound propagation in a room with 2.5 wavelength would develop a definite mode developing what would be akin to a standing wave at points through the room.  Obviously there's a lot for me to learn about RF and how it behaves. 

[LeoG]

RG8X isn't really that good for GMRS, works well with CBs

[SteveShannon]

2 hours ago, WSKY567 said:

That does sound really good.  I feel as if I need a lot of study on antenna theory before actually starting a build.  I have a degree in electronics but that did not extend into antenna theory and the education is over 50 years old now.  It blows me away that you can inject a signal into a DC dead short with HF and produce a 50Ω RF load as with a J-Pole.  I have watched videos on the process of building one but they were nuts and bolts e.g. place your wire here.  I need to understand how to compute those measurements along the elements of the antenna.  I'm still struggling with the 6 foot antenna I'm using.  A full wave is about 25 inches.  The antenna I'm using is about 2.5 wavelengths.  In my mind that should decrease SWR, propagation, and reception.  In sound propagation in a room with 2.5 wavelength would develop a definite mode developing what would be akin to a standing wave at points through the room.  Obviously there's a lot for me to learn about RF and how it behaves. 

If you want to start a new thread and describe where your feed point is I would build the same antennas, hook the analyzer to it, and provide you with the results. 

[WSKY567]

41 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

If you want to start a new thread and describe where your feed point is I would build the same antennas, hook the analyzer to it, and provide you with the results. 

Wow!  That's a heck of an offer!  Give me a little time to do some study on the subject and I'll take you up on that.  

[SteveShannon]

12 minutes ago, WSKY567 said:

Wow!  That's a heck of an offer!  Give me a little time to do some study on the subject and I'll take you up on that.  

We’ll learn together. 

[WSKY567]

2 hours ago, LeoG said:

RG8X isn't really that good for GMRS, works well with CBs

I believe you LeoG.  I'm running blind right now.  Have a lot to learn.  Having said that, Getting 22.2W at a 1:1.01 SWR using a 20W rated radio can't be too bad.  This is a temporary setup per winter weather.  I'll be studying materials for a much higher mount for this coming spring.  I'm in a two story home and will be shooting for 30' AGL.  Along with the antenna that will put me close to canopy here.  That should give me close to a seven mile horizon and put me in touch with some more distance repeater installations.  I'll see this spring.  

[LeoG]

Here's the info for the cable at GMRS frequencies just to show you how much you can lose if you aren't matching your cables to the frequencies you are using.  Even good cable is kinda lossy.  In order to get lower loss you need to get into the hardlines.

 

[WSKY567]

2 hours ago, LeoG said:

Here's the info for the cable at GMRS frequencies just to show you how much you can lose if you aren't matching your cables to the frequencies you are using.  Even good cable is kinda lossy.  In order to get lower loss you need to get into the hardlines.

 

That's really handy.  Would you share where I might find that calculator so I can compare LMR-400 to 1/2" Helix?  Calculations look to be accurate as log 3db is a half power ratio.  

[LeoG]

Here ya go.

 

https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/

[WSKY567]

5 minutes ago, LeoG said:

Here ya go.

Thank you sir!!

[Radioactive]

Be careful with long runs on gmrs. The loss is high at 467 and unless you have some good LMR or hardline then the cable loss will outweigh the gain of elevation. 

[WSKY567]

18 minutes ago, Radioactive said:

Be careful with long runs on gmrs. The loss is high at 467 and unless you have some good LMR or hardline then the cable loss will outweigh the gain of elevation. 

Pretty much decided to go with Times LMR-400.  1/2 inch helix is just too costly and to difficult to manage for the added benefit.  Right now I'm studying more on ferrite chokes to understand best placement etc.  I will have one horizontal run of about 6 or 7 feet, a vertical run of about 20 feet and another descending ~30° run down a roof line that I am guessing will be about 15 feet including drip loop at the bottom of the antenna.  I'll be able to attach to truss frame for stability.  

[GreggInFL]

15 hours ago, WSKY567 said:

Pretty much decided to go with Times LMR-400.

That's specifically what I use and it works well.