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#1
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For less than $30, you can buy a J-pole antenna that works well on 2 meters and 440. If you're feeling industrious, you can find all sorts of plans on the internet for building your own out of stainless steel (they are easy to do). You can also use a piece of 300 ohm television twin-lead to make your own (a quick google search will show up several plans). With a Baofeng and a J-pole somewhere outside, you should be able to hit some local repeaters. I have one on the roof, and with my Yaesu FTM-400DR I can reliably use repeaters 60 miles away full quieting.
If you want a better rubber duck antenna for portable use with a Baofeng, the Nagoya NA771 from Amazon is $15 and will perform much better than the short, factory antenna. |
#2
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Quote:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the stock antenna that comes with the UV5R isn't much good unless you are almost literally within spitting distance of a local repeater, and it doesn't work worth a hill of beans on FM broadcast unless you are in a very strong signal area. That lets me out, since I live about 1.5 to 2 miles from the so-called "local" machine in the next town south of here, and am about 45 miles (!) from most FM radio stations serving Cleveland. I cannot seem to hit the local repeater with my UV5R, although I can with my 1.5-watt Icom IC-T22A. There are some settings on my UV5R HT which I know aren't right yet, such as the transmit offset (currently set at 0.000 [simplex] rather than 0.600, IIRC) and the CTCSS tone, which is presently set to off. The HT's transmitter appears to be working, however, as I have tried it on 146.52 simplex and can hear myself in the Icom HT as nicely as you please. Therefore, the problem with transmitting to and hitting repeaters with the UV-5R must be caused by one of two things: that I don't have the CTCSS (PL) tone set properly, that the transmit offset is incorrect, or possibly both settings are set to 0 or off. The programming procedure for this HT isn't exactly straightforward (far from it, in fact), so I must be missing or skipping a step or two somewhere.
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Jeff, WB8NHV Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002 Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten. |
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