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KA7TXE in vicinity of Rattan, OK
stared out w/ a hand held connected to a Comet vertical antenna mounted above the peak of the roof. could hear but could’nt get out. sooo , purchased a 50 watt mobile & power supply connected to same base ant. rated for 100 watts.
still not reaching any others. It should about 61 miles as the crow flys
here’s my dilemma listened to the net again last night. Some one made mention they were putting 25 watts getting through the tower and reaching 60+ miles. ! I think I’m programmed in the base/mobile, tower in & out w/ + or –
If 25 watts comes in “loud & clear”! @ 50 watts i should pinging RRVAR tower.
Bob Lewis ka7txe CLEAR ! standing by
Bob,
Welcome aboard! I was eating a late lunch and saw notice of this come in. In case you did not know it, you can subscribe to get updates from each of the forum areas. Here – Website Forums – Tips & Tricks #1 – is a link to review that. Now, to your problem.
I have reached out to a fellow Club member with access to software for modeling terrain and asked him to look at where you are relative to where our repeater is located. Hopefully he can post here if he has anything meaningful. If he can’t make a post but he passes anything along to me, I will post it.
I do wonder about one thing – Have you ever successfully gotten “into the repeater”? We use a “tone” (146.76- PL 203.5) to differentiate our repeater from others on the same frequency. We have to do that otherwise we would experience even more interference than currently exists. No tone means that you would be able to hear, but you would not be able to transmit. Which sounds a lot like your current symptoms. So, if you have not gotten into the repeater previously and if you can come to the Club meeting this coming Saturday, please bring your handheld. Closer to the repeater we can confirm that it is programmed correctly. If we can get a good test from High Cotton Kitchen, we have eliminated range and tone issues as the cause.
We might even be able to help with confirming tone is correctly programmed with this exchange. What is the make and model of the two radios?
I will standby for some follow up to those observations and questions.
73
Phillip Beall (W5EBC)
Bob,
As Phillip recommended, check your transmit settings.
That being said, at 44 miles you are quite a ways out for our repeater and there is a fair amount of dirt in the way.
An analysis of the link says you will have about a 17 dB fade margin, which isn’t a lot.
Below you can see the path info:
Please let us know if we can help.
73,
Charles WA5VHU
Thanks Phillip,
1st, Yes. I can communicate on my hand held Yaesu ft-70D in the Paris area.
I just hit my 1st year as an Amateur Tech. Salas graciously assisted w/my programing software for the FT-70
I’m still reading my instruction manual for programing the Yaesu 300 mobile/base. It may well be a tone issue
73
Bob L. KA7TXE
Bob,
You are welcome and yes, thank you Charles. I don’t have an FTM-500, but I will ask a couple of people. From the display picture to me it looks like you are on the top VFO (A band), so you won’t transmit on the repeater frequency until you change to the bottom one (B band). I think when you press the “V/M” button it will toggle between the active VFO (top or bottom). When you key up I also think the frequency will change to red while transmitting, so you can test it that way. And like I said, I’ll ask some guys that I know that have the FTM-500 and see if they can validate that and maybe swing by and make a follow up post.
UPDATE: Bob, someone tells me that isn’t an FTM-500 depicted above. Sorry, I thought it was. I guess it is an FTM-300. OK, I’ll ask around some more…
Phillip
Bob,
From another friend who owns and operates a 300: “That radio in the pix is set to transmit on 146.170; and to listen on both. Press the “main “ button to change the transmit frequency.” Please let us know your result.
Phillip
Bob,
Once you get the repeater 146.76- tone 203.5 set, you will need to turn the squelch setting to T-TX or T-TRX. I believe you can push the F button and then find the SQL option.
Give that and a try and let me know if you need anything else.
Rattan is probably going to be a little tough getting into the repeater. The last net seemed to be on a great propagation night. The gentleman with the 25 watts, was “loud and clear” on that night. A lot of times it is very noisy. At your distance, it could be hit and miss. Hopefully, getting the squelch set up will allow you to operate the repeater. I look forward to hearing from you on the air.
73
Mark W5PTX
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