Channel Jumper wrote:

You need to forget about the walkie talkie idea.
Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to tell you - this is called
HAM RADIO / NOT HAM WALKIE TALKIE.

I need the walkie-talkie for when I climb the tower to adjust the HF
antenna and talk to the guy in the shack looking at the reflected power
metere.

For even a 100 something dollars, you can buy a brand new Yaesu mobile 2
meter rig with 50 watts of transmit power and a new microphone, which is
programmable.

That's worthless, it doesn't even have a 6146 in it. Real 2 meter rigs
have a 6146 on the output. I've got one in the shack to talk to the guy
hanging on the tower adjusting the HF antenna.

You are going to need to get away from the walkie talkie mentality, and
the hitting the one or two local repeaters and thinking that it makes
you a ham.

My walkie talkie doesn't have a crystal for the local repeater. If I want
to talk to the local repeater I need to use the Heathkit Lunchbox or the
aforementioned real 2 meter rig. The walkie talkie is for talking to the
guy on the tower adjusting the HF antenna.

Even just in my situation, I put up a Diamond V2000 antenna above the
roof of the house and I bought a Yaesu 8900R transceiver and I entered
in over 100 repeaters and I can talk 6 meters, 2 meters and 440 Mhz as
much as I want.

Even though it is not HF, I can make contacts 100 miles away.

Hell, I can make contacts 100 miles away with 0.1 watts out of a signal
generator into a key. In fact, I have 34 states so far doing this (and if
anyone in Idaho with a good 40M beam is reading this, I need some help
on the 35th).

This is something you cannot do with a walkie talkie, even with a mobile
external antenna.

Actually, I have an HF walkie-talkie made by Racal, and I _can_ make
contacts 100 miles away with it. 5W SSB into whip and so far I have
20 states on that (also looking for Idaho by the way).

Unfortunately, the ARRL and the clubs are afraid to tell their members
this stuff, in fear of loosing members.
They coddle and nurse maid these hams until finally they are so brain
washed, they believe that what they are doing is still ham radio.

That's nice, but what the hell does it have to do with my question about
antenna grounding for an HT220?

Go buy yourself a real radio and get on the air and talk to people from
other places and if you don't have a General or higher class license,
put your nose in the book and start studying and upgrade your license
privledges...

Real hams build their own radios, they don't buy them. Right now I am
trying to build an antenna adaptor for my HT220.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."