quote:

Originally posted by Jimineer:
I recommend putting a Tram VHF / UHF antenna with a radial kit up on a 20 flagpole to help out your HT.

I already determined that a Harbor Freight telescoping flagpole/mast setup is going to be used, I live in an HOA neighborhood and from my GMRS forum, this was recommended . My antenna rig will be a portable setup that can be set up or taken down in less than 10 minutes. I will likely use a metal tub/bucket filled with concrete to hold the PVC sleeve that comes with the pole kit, giving the mast some flexibility in placement around my property. I only plan to use the radio system for emergencies when cell phones are inoperable so having a temporary setup will be ideal to setup and strike easily, and performing periodic net checks will be easy to setup.

The antenna I'm looking at is the Comet CA-712EFC, a fixed UHF omni-directional that is 10' high, but weighs less than 3 pounds and has a 9 dbi gain rating. I'm also considering the Tram 1486, a shorter UHF antenna that requires tuning for GMRS use. And I have chosen a mobile to use as a base station, a Wouxun KG1000G Plus connected to a Samlex power supply. And the cable will be LMR400 coax, hopefully keep it at 50' length, since from what I understand, the cable is equally important as the antenna.

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:

quote:

Originally posted by Jimineer:
I recommend putting a Tram VHF / UHF antenna with a radial kit up on a 20 flagpole to help out your HT.

And the cable will be LMR400 coax, hopefully keep it at 50' length, since from what I understand, the cable is equally important as the antenna.

The type of cable is important. You want the lowest resistance/ loss cable possible at the frequency of use. You want to keep it as short as possible though. Keeping the cable a certain length is an old CB radio myth. LMR400 is good at UHF.

Search YouTube for “DXCommander choosing the right coax for ham radio”.

Finally - I purchased a HT as recommended by the thread. My first ever. I got the FT65R as recommended per my short list. I got the Diamond antennae instead of the Comet - still not sure which is better suited for these usages and my radio. The diamond is more rigid, the comet is flexible (and doesn't stand up straight when sitting the radio down upright). Not sure if there is any functional difference. Perhaps I should get both?

Yaesu has some SW on their website. Not sure how good it is. Need to figure out what SW to use for programming. Yaesu, Chirp, Adams, other?

Need to look into taking the Tech test too.

The FT65R is supported by Chirp.

Thanks! I'm trying to read up a little on SW options. Sounds like the two most popular is Chirp or RT/Adams. I'm not sure but sounds like Chirp requires a third party cable and is potentially subject to driver issues. While the RT SW is essentially turnkey for radios that have been around for awhile. It requires a dedicated cable suppled w/ the SW but no driver issues. Only runs on Windows which is annoying but viable.

Probably is easier and no harm in checking out Chirp first since it's free. Just need to figure out the cable thing. I bought a Yaesu PC to Radio cable but sounds like it won't work here - perhaps only usable w/ the Yaesu SW.

I'll look into where to download Chirp and how to use it. I know there are some YT videos posted above.

I passed the Technician and General exams this morning.

The ARRL License Manuals (study guides) really helped.

https://home.arrl.org/action/Shop/Store

How was it? Was it hard? How much time did you need to study? I'm going to start soon - no idea what to expect.

The Technician material wasn't hard to learn. The General was harder, of course.

It's not so much that it's difficult or complicated, but that there's so much to learn. Tons of terms, fair amount of calculations, a lot of specifics about electricity, antennas, rules, frequencies, etc.

I studied all day for 4 days.

One thing that may have helped is that I didn't bother with any of the online practice tests. Instead, after I studied the license manuals, I tested myself by testing with the entire pool of questions. I then reviewed the sections with questions that I missed and repeated the entire tests using the pools until I felt confident that I could answer all but a few questions.

Cool. Thanks. Wow, 4 days!

So, I just put the Nagoya NA-771 15.6 inch antenna on the Baofeng GM-5RH radio....HUGE difference in receiving and transmitting clarity. Still does to about the same difference in semi urban/suburban area, but the reception and transmissions are very clear. I can also walk through the whole house now and NOT lose the local NOAA Weather Channel. So $20 antenna on $30 radio = Big Improvement!

Just something I noticed. I know some of us try not to buy things from China, and I personally will opt for other countries if I can. I purchased a Nagoya 72G antenna and the package has Baofeng tech on it Made in Taiwan. So Btech radios are supposedly designed in South Dakota but built overseas, I guess whichever country has capacity gets the contract.

Btech is basically Baofeng. Baofeng Tech. Btech is Baofeng's U.S. distributor, and I believe they also source and rebrand some of their radios from Anytone, another Chinese company. You'll find that pretty much all of the GMRS stuff and much of the ham stuff is made in China.

And all these Chinese radios are made in the same place- The Patriotic People's Radio Factory in some Chinese province or other.

Yea I am sure even if the radio was made somewhere else, 99 percent of the parts inside would still be from China.

At least I have a Btech amp so I can push out 19-20 Watts on my BF GM-5RH. Spent some time comparing it with the Tidradio TD-H8. The BF is driving the amp a few more Watts than the Tid. Unfortunately, 467 mhz gives me a 1.86-1.92 swr (462 is 1.00-1.02) so the antenna isn't perfectly tuned and the 3 4.7" radial ground plane doesn't seem to help. I'm probably getting better reflection off the siding behind me. I wish I could put on glasses and see a virtual Smith chart, that would be cool. I have some cheapo KMR-400 coming so we'll see how much loss I am getting compared to the RG58 coax. Fun stuff. "There are no solutions, only trade-offs".

on a side note, China may be dominating the market on this stuff (at least for the little HTs) but I also don't see young American men and women in factories pumping out this tech any time soon. And from what I've read, the Chinese people can't even take advantage of this tech.

At least my line of site to the repeater is reasonable.

quote:

Originally posted by SigSentry:
At least I have a Btech amp so I can push out 19-20 Watts on my BF GM-5RH.

Isn't GMRS limited to 5W?

^^^^^

No, 50 watts is the max. But GMRS HTs are pretty much in the 5-6 watt range because of battery power

Most GMRS HTs are 5 Watters. Tx is limited to 50 Watts (e.g. mobiles and repeaters). But even 50 Watts in the real world will be a little less. However, more Watts is a diminishing return to punch through obstacles. If your location is fixed then the antenna will be the best investment.

Seems a tad more complicated than that.

Why these limits on GMRS? Is it that UHF isn't effective for long-distance transmissions because the radio waves do not skip off of the ionosphere?

Or is it more a matter of avoiding overloading GMRS radios receiving transmitted signals?