On 5/4/2014 6:49 PM, Russell Conner wrote:
"Several decades on 2m and 1.25m tells me that what Phil says is true:
he should be able to get 30 miles (or more) reliably in all but the
twistiest terrain."
Except I keep saying over and over we ARE IN THOSE TWISTIES.
and the hand helds are effective only part of the time. And yet, no
one seems to be listening to me on that point. It gets frustrating.
Hell, I am very frustrated.
We're frustrated too.
I never told you that your handheld would absolutely work. In fact,
I'll tell you flat out that when you're in the twisties, the only
sure-fire solution is to put a repeater where it can see all of the
twisties. Depending on the twisties, you might need more than one
repeater, crosslinked.
I don't know if anyone else on this list is (or was) into VHF Amateur
Radio Direction Finding (T-Hunting) as practiced in Southern
California. I can tell you from several years of working my way to the
top of that aspect of the hobby that we consistently found places that
lead the competition into the twisties where they lost the signal, and
sometimes never found their way out.
T-Hunting is scored by driving distance, and one night we set up a hunt
where the winner drove 50 miles (straight line was about 20 miles) and
fourth place drove 110 miles.
If you're looking up at the terrain, talking to someone beyond the ridge
is going to be nearly impossible. If you're in a hole, talking to
someone outside the hole is just not going to work.
You can't get what you want. You can get 95% of it, and you can get
better than you're doing with 5 watts. I'm trying to get you to think
about your antennas and how they work because I think you can get some
improvement there, and that's usually fairly inexpensive.
... and I pointed out the Motorcycle Amateur Radio Club because they're
likely far more expert at your specific needs than I. I don't ride.
We saved you from buying a very nice, very trick, slightly expensive
radio that will do a lot, but will not work as well for you as a
high-power 2 meter rig that costs much less. I also spent some time
tracking down an example of an amplifier, and a link to the antenna
pages on the MARC web site.
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