Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Bonine
On 8/25/14, 10:54 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
RG-213/u is good stuff. Double shielded and 95% coverage. However,
I've seen some RG-213 "style" coax, which is basically junk
counterfeit coax. If it's not from a known name brand manufactory, it
might become a problem.
I expect that this is a story most of you have heard in one form or
another and/or experienced.
A local ham was having trouble hitting the repeater using his handheld
at home, so he decided to put a whip up on his tower. He did so, and
discovered that he couldn't hit the repeater at all with the new
improved antenna.
The problem was that he bought poor quality coax. Note that I did not
write "cheap coax". Based on the type designation he shouldn't have had
much loss in the run. The designation makes little difference if the
manufacturer and/or vendor is providing shoddy merchandise that doesn't
really meet the standards implied by the designation of the coax.
So perhaps more important than the price is the source.
73, Steve KB9X
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Steve - a real ham wouldn't be using a handheld radio as their primary amateur radio.
The handheld works on the principal of nodes and junctions / Kirchoffs circuit law - the same principal that holds true for all electronic circuits.
When the antenna is attached directly to the board, there is no feed line loss or impedance mismatch.
The handheld radio is designed around the rubber duck antenna.
When the rubber duck antenna was removed and a feed line was connected it became a imbalance load, the radio did not see the same impedance as a direct connected antenna, so it immediately thought that the radio was being operated out of band - or off frequency or that the antenna was missing, so it just folded back it's transmit power to nothing.
There is a difference between receiving and transmitting. You don't have to know much or do much to receive a radio signal.
It wouldn't matter if you used 3.250 hardline - the handheld was not designed to be operated this way.
Had the new ham had an Elmer that knew this, the Elmer would have advised the new ham not to buy the handheld radio as a primary radio for amateur radio.
The handheld should have been the last radio that the new ham should have bought, not the first. The handheld technically doesn't talk anywhere - except the local repeater, and it doesn't do anything except let the person talk to whom ever can hear their signal.
This is the problem that the Original Poster has.. The OP doesn't know anything about amateur radio today and thought that he could compensate for a lack of intelligence with a more high tech transceiver.
The Flex on the other hand takes more skill to operate than say a old Kenwood TS 520 that needs to be plate and tuned before you can operate it.
There are many menu's in the Flex and unless you have someone that can help you set it up - it probably isn't going to work very well or sound the way you want it to sound or do the things you want it to do.
My thought would be that if I knew nothing, I would at least ask someone which transceiver would be a good entry level transceiver.
Even if it was just an Icom IC 7100 or a Kenwood TS 590 - he would probably have a better radio then the Flex...
There is no use arguing with someone that doesn't know anything and is only concerned with price.
Unless you were operating QRP - you darn well better have a lot more then one piece of coax and a lot more then 40'....
Even a dipole antenna needs to be 40' off the ground before it starts to perform.
Maybe we can sell him a good G5RV and a Palomar tuner to go along with his Flex...