Dual band and GMRS antenna in one?

[VETCOMMS]

Is there such a thing for mobile radios?  I know hams have the dual band antenna but do they have an antenna that covers 2m, 70cm AND GMRS?

[MichaelLAX]

I never referred to it as a "Trash-80" in those days, but many derided them with that tag! I never realized how much they "modernized" them.

I started my days in personal computing first with a home built kit of the Sinclair Zenith ZX-81 and one year later I got my first Apple; the ][+ and later the //c, which I still have and use with a Floppy EMU to this day.

The //c was my "go to portable computer" when I worked the Cannes Film Festival in 1988 with a 1200 baud "pocket" modem (or was it already 2400 baud at that time?) to send documents back and forth from our production office back home in Hollywood. It even contained an Applied Engineering Z-RAM card for extra RAM and the ability to run CP/M software on its Z-80 card.

The photo below shows it with a modern day Floppy EMU device that adds a pseudo hard-drive to it, using a micro-SD card; as well as the 12v rechargeable lead-acid battery pack and the third party C-VUE LCD screen (which was much more affordable than the Apple LCD screen):

[MichaelLAX]

1 hour ago, markskjerve said:

Wrote a spreadsheet in VisiCalc for a local golf course to keep track of handicaps. We ended up selling over 50 Model-1's with that spreadsheet to golf courses all around the So Cal area.

What year was that?

What an innovation VisiCalc was: it was initially only available to run on the Apple ][ series and is generally acknowledged to be the "killer app" that spun the sales of Apple ][s into the stratosphere!

It was a shame that the co-authors of VisiCalc (Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston) did not patent it, as of course every major software publisher came out with their own version, with Lotus 1-2-3 being the initial killer app for the IBM PC!

I saw an interview with the co-authors many years later and they said they did not regret not patenting it (sorry for the double-negative): they acknowledged that they were part of the 60s generation that wanted to improve the world and they felt that their "invention" of the spreadsheet did just that!

[MarkInTampa]

2 hours ago, MichaelLAX said:

What year was that?

 

1980-81 or so. The Model-III just hit the store when I left. I then worked part time (still in high school) installing and setting up Model-III's with Radio Shacks other "killer app", Scripsit, for a year or so in the field for small print shops. The print shops were amazed that they could get a computer, a word processor, and a modified IBM Selectric typewriter or a daisy wheel printer with proportional spacing that operated at a whopping 10-20 characters per second! It made justifying margin alignment a simple task, something we take for granted these days.

My girlfriend's family at the time owned a machine shop. At the time the CNC endmills that they owned you programmed through a Telex machine on paper tape. I built a serial interface from plans for the Telex machine to use the paper tape part of it as a printer and wrote an emulation program in Basic to make it work on a Model-III. I was proud of what I did for a 16-17 year old kid at the time.

 

[KAF6045]

IGNORE -- I keep getting confused when submitting a quoted article on page X when there are X+ pages in the thread.

[KAF6045]

4 hours ago, markskjerve said:

I had a job in high school at the local Radio Shack demoing Model-1's. Wrote a spreadsheet in VisiCalc for a local golf course to keep track of handicaps. We ended up selling over 50 Model-1's with that spreadsheet to golf courses all around the So Cal area.

Hmmm, I never knew VisiCalc was ever available for TRS-80. I had a copy of MultiPlan (which, strangely, did one thing I'm not certain Excel is capable of -- but then, I haven't tried to write a sheet that required the ability to iterate a series of formulae to reach a final result). Had most of rules and tables to create starships for MegaTraveller in that.

[MichaelLAX]

5 hours ago, markskjerve said:

My girlfriend's family at the time owned a machine shop. At the time the CNC endmills that they owned you programmed through a Telex machine on paper tape. I built a serial interface from plans for the Telex machine to use the paper tape part of it as a printer and wrote an emulation program in Basic to make it work on a Model-III. I was proud of what I did for a 16-17 year old kid at the time.

Nicely done, Mark!!!

You are probably familiar with the story about how Bill Gates quit Harvard and got MicroSoft started after the publication of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics cover story about the first home mini-computer, the MITS Altair 8800 and his development of a form of BASIC that would run on that computer's limited RAM.

But you may not be aware that they (Gates and Bill Allen) used a Telex input device and punched paper tape so that they could feed Basic into it more easily on startup.

Gates and Allen were showing off the setup at a Computer Faire and someone stole the punched tapes and distributed copies freely.

Gates wrote a "letter to the editor" of a popular Computer Hobbiest Newsletter of the time complaining about how much time he had put into the project and was being denied his "due" remuneration for his efforts because of the widespread bootlegging of his program! How prescient!

Let's Go Brandon! 

[MarkInTampa]

4 hours ago, MichaelLAX said:

Nicely done, Mark!!!

You are probably familiar with the story about how Bill Gates quit Harvard and got MicroSoft started after the publication of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics cover story about the first home mini-computer, the MITS Altair 8800 and his development of a form of BASIC that would run on that computer's limited RAM.

But you may not be aware that they (Gates and Bill Allen) used a Telex input device and punched paper tape so that they could feed Basic into it more easily on startup.

Gates and Allen were showing off the setup at a Computer Faire and someone stole the punched tapes and distributed copies freely.

Gates wrote a "letter to the editor" of a popular Computer Hobbiest Newsletter of the time complaining about how much time he had put into the project and was being denied his "due" remuneration for his efforts because of the widespread bootlegging of his program! How prescient!

I met Bill Gates around 1980 or so. There was a TRS-80  user group that met up once a month in a chem lab at University of La Verne and he was there. I had a chance to talk to him about a few peek and poke commands for the machine shop project.

The funny part was the group meeting had no agenda, no speakers or anything. It was basically around 50 of us lugging in our Model-1's to the lab with our software collection. We just walked around the lab trading copies of software. That was the whole purpose if the meet. Can't say I saw him actually saw him trading copies of software or not, but that was the basically what the meets were about.

[Lscott]

Well it seems the original topic of this thread got lost. Oh well, I'll just add to the confusion.

There is the story about how Bill Gates saw an office suit called Visi On and that's what pushed him to develop the first version of Windows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visi_On

Where I worked we had a number of Wang Computer 8086 desktops running MSDOS. They were NOT IBM PC compatible but did run the Visi On system. They got them because at the time the company had a small Wang minicomputer they used for payroll, accounting and inventory. 

https://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/wangpc.html

After a few years they junked them and went with the IBM PC's and compatibles.

For engineering use, before the PC's arrived years later, we had a single Wang 2200 for doing various calculations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200

[MichaelLAX]

3 hours ago, Lscott said:

Well it seems the original topic of this thread got lost. Oh well, I'll just add to the confusion.

There is the story about how Bill Gates saw an office suit called Visi On and that's what pushed him to develop the first version of Windows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visi_On

I do not read that Wiki article the same way you do.

It is well established that Steve Jobs introduced Bill Gates to the prototype for their first Macintosh in an effort to get Microsoft to develop programming for this system.  And such an effort was successful in that Microsoft did have programs available even at the launch:

During the first Macintosh’s development and early years of production, Microsoft was a critical Apple ally. The software pioneer created important programs for Apple’s PC in the early ’80s. “We had more people working on the Mac than [Jobs] did,” Gates said of the early years, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography, Steve Jobs; At an Apple event in 1983, Gates told attendees Microsoft expected to earn half of its revenues selling Macintosh software the following year. And when Jobs asked Gates if he thought Mac would become another standard in personal computing, Gates praised the platform: “To create a new standard it takes something that’s not just a little bit different, it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s attention. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve seen, is the only one that meets that standard.”

This article, among others, including Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson, details how Gates came up with his Windows GUI concept from his early workings for the original Macintosh.

[Lscott]

The article says the Visi On app manager was released in December of 1983. The first Mac wasn't released until January of 1984, a short while after Visi On. There is also mentioned an early version of Visi On, as a demo, at COMDEX in 1982, two years before Apple's Mac. That jives with another story I read where Gates got the idea for Windows after seeing the Visi On system at a trade show, likely the above mentioned demo. The Mac, IMHO, just cemented his thinking that a GUI is the future.

Somewhere out there there is also some story how the early architecture for Windows NT was based on concepts developed for DEC's VAX systems, the person who worked on NT also had done the work on the VAX OS. 

And just for fun:

"Windows Is A Pane In The Glass"

Long live the Penguin.

[wrci350]

1 hour ago, Lscott said:

Somewhere out there there is also some story how the early architecture for Windows NT was based on concepts developed for DEC's VAX systems, the person who worked on NT also had done the work on the VAX OS. 

It's not "some story".  Dave Cutler, one of the three architects of VMS, led the development of Windows NT.  Is it a coincidence that if you advance each letter in "VMS" you get "WNT"?  (Kind of like HAL from 2001 was IBM minus one!)

The whole concept of a GUI (and use of a mouse) was developed at Xerox PARC in the early 70s.  Apple and Microsoft both got the concepts from there.

"Fumbling the Future" is a good read.  Tells how PARC invented the personal computer as we know it but Xerox never capitalized on it. 

[Lscott]

5 minutes ago, wrci350 said:

It's not "some story".  Dave Cutler, one of the three architects of VMS, led the development of Windows NT.  Is it a coincidence that if you advance each letter in "VMS" you get "WNT"?  (Kind of like HAL from 2001 was IBM minus one!)

I phased it the way I did since I wasn't going to research and find a link to an article with the details. Your memory is better than mind.

When I took classes, the second time around, the school had a VAX cluster with remote terminals. Much better than the crappy IBM key punch machines I used before. Even did some of the programming projects from home logged in remotely using a telephone modem. Got a bit familiar with the VAX CPU since one of the classes I took was doing assembly language on the machine. Most of the class hated it, it was a required course. I though it was easy since I had leaned some Z80 and x86 assembly on my own before so the general concepts weren't new. 

[wrci350]

3 hours ago, Lscott said:

I phased it the way I did since I wasn't going to research and find a link to an article with the details. Your memory is better than mine.

My last two years as a co-op student and my first six or so years as a full-time employee were as a VAX system manager.  (I always preferred that term to "system admin" which is the same job in the Unix world.)  I *loved* VMS.  Somewhere in a box of old computer books I still have my VAX/VMS architecture guide.  The chapter on system bootup was like magic.  

I was still supporting VAXes when Cutler quit DEC and went to Microsoft.  Sent shockwaves through our world!

[willselzer]

I have a tram 1480 with ground plane up on a 28 ft pole and was having reasonable success on the 2m and 70 cm bands on ham, and my gmrs jpole antenna connector at the antenna broke in a high wind event. I swapped the coax connector at my DB-25G radio to just listen to a little gmrs action. Sounded pretty good. I thought just for giggles that I would hook up my nano vna and check out the signal on the gmrs bands that cover repeaters. 467.550- 467.725. I was shocked that my swr was never worse than 1.75. Now keep in mind that as I checked 462.550 up to about 463.000 that the swr got a little iffy, close to 3.0. I live in a very low area, so transmitting at only 28 ft up didn't gain me any access to any repeaters. But I sure could receive. When I can get my antenna somewhat higher, I may be in business. I bought this 1480 online through Home Depot, and since then they have gone up in price. But that was where I found it at the lowest price. Maybe this was a quirk, but this was my experience with that Tram 1480. Will here at WRNV384.

[Lscott]

10 hours ago, willselzer said:

I have a tram 1480 with ground plane up on a 28 ft pole and was having reasonable success on the 2m and 70 cm bands on ham, and my gmrs jpole antenna connector at the antenna broke in a high wind event. I swapped the coax connector at my DB-25G radio to just listen to a little gmrs action. Sounded pretty good. I thought just for giggles that I would hook up my nano vna and check out the signal on the gmrs bands that cover repeaters. 467.550- 467.725. I was shocked that my swr was never worse than 1.75. Now keep in mind that as I checked 462.550 up to about 463.000 that the swr got a little iffy, close to 3.0. I live in a very low area, so transmitting at only 28 ft up didn't gain me any access to any repeaters. But I sure could receive. When I can get my antenna somewhat higher, I may be in business. I bought this 1480 online through Home Depot, and since then they have gone up in price. But that was where I found it at the lowest price. Maybe this was a quirk, but this was my experience with that Tram 1480. Will here at WRNV384.

Just one of those lucky situations. I've tested a lot of antennas and most gain types on UHF exhibit some oscillations in the SWR. If you're lucky the GMRS frequencies will be in the dip of one of these making it usable.

https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/282-ca-2x4mb-scansjpg/

https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/259-ca-2x4mb-jeepjpg/

 

CA-2x4MB Manual.pdf

[gortex2]

As reference the Motorola all band antenna for the APX series actually sweeps really well on 2M ham, 440 and GMRS. It suffers on 7/800 but I was surprised at how well it worked on 2M. I have since went to the Larsen and they work ok in ham bands but not as well as the MSI. 

PCTel is who makes the antenna - Here is the datasheet.

[bobthetj03]

On 9/3/2022 at 5:40 PM, WRTZ750 said:

Is there such a thing for mobile radios?  I know hams have the dual band antenna but do they have an antenna that covers 2m, 70cm AND GMRS?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IDTJ2KE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Fernleaf]

On 11/29/2022 at 1:51 PM, Lscott said:

Long live the Penguin.

Love the Tux!!

[Fernleaf]

On 11/29/2022 at 8:11 PM, wrci350 said:

my first six or so years as a full-time employee were as a VAX system manager.

I used to use the old VAX systems for Intergraph Corporation as an Applications Engineer way back. Most people never even heard of that system anymore!

[SteveShannon]

7 minutes ago, Fernleaf said:

I used to use the old VAX systems for Intergraph Corporation as an Applications Engineer way back. Most people never even heard of that system anymore!

I was project manager and programmer on an Intergraph FRAMME system between 1999 and 2005. Ours was PC based but I spent many hours working with folks in Huntsville that you might have known. 

[Fernleaf]

16 hours ago, Sshannon said:

I was project manager and programmer on an Intergraph FRAMME system between 1999 and 2005. Ours was PC based but I spent many hours working with folks in Huntsville that you might have known

Probably not. I left in the 1980’s. Integration began to tank shortly after that (definitely not because I left! ). Last I heard, the company does accounting software. Barely anyone has even heard of the company anymore. 
They did move their CAD system to PC when they became popular. But that happened years after I left. 

[SteveShannon]

24 minutes ago, Fernleaf said:

Probably not. I left in the 1980’s. Integration began to tank shortly after that (definitely not because I left! ). Last I heard, the company does accounting software. Barely anyone has even heard of the company anymore. 
They did move their CAD system to PC when they became popular. But that happened years after I left. 

I dealt with them in the early 2000s. Their stock went from $4 to $44 and then they were acquired. Although their CAD-CAM market share disappeared their Utility AM-FM business still does well. That’s the system I worked on. 

[Fernleaf]

Ah! Cool! It’s always amazing how small this works really is!

 But I think I took this far off the original topic. Sorry about that! Good to get to know the people on this group!

 As for the dual band, I own a Btech UV-5x3. Sweet little radio. Can cross over between GMRS and HAM. Got it from both Amateur and GMRS experts that this reading can be operated by either side of the equation as long as you stay in your own radio lane. 
 

Not sure if that applies to the topic or not, but thought I’d put it out there.

[MichaelLAX]

2 hours ago, Fernleaf said:

As for the dual band, I own a Btech UV-5x3. Sweet little radio. Can cross over between GMRS and HAM. Got it from both Amateur and GMRS experts that this reading can be operated by either side of the equation as long as you stay in your own radio lane. 

Isn't that a tri-band HT?  I have the UV-5Rx3 and I read in BTECH posts that the new UV-5x3 has more features and versatility than the earlier UV-5Rs, including the UV-5Rx3.  When did you purchase yours?

[Fernleaf]

I bought my UV-5x3 a little under s year ago. I was afraid to use it for violation of some FCC reg, but was assured by both GMRS and Amateur radio experts that it was fine for either... or both.