"fogus" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hey, thanks Lamont! That helps a lot. Wavelength being the meters,
the number 300 coming from the speed of light in thousands of
kilometers (right?).
Yep

Just one question though: When I look at my walki-talki's antenna,
when I unscrew it, there is just a single threaded piece of metal, not
two cables. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't attaching a cable
to this threaded piece of metal change its receiving and transmitting
characteristics? What is behind this antenna plastic in my hand
held? A spring like structure? Doesn't the antenna need to push and
pull the electrons? How can it do that if there is only an entrance?
I'm kind of confused about this antenna design stuff. Is there a
paper online where I can read about it?

Without knowing what Handie Talkie you are using, but in general you need an
adapter from the HT that mates with 50 -ohm coax. Your local Ham dealer
should have the adapter. My guess it would be an SMA to SO-239 adapter.

See URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/SMA-Male-to-UHF-...QQcmdZViewItem


Are you saying that if I bought a spare antenna for my radio, put it
above my house, and ran a single wire (within the coax shieldings, of
course, but essentially a single conductor) to my radio, that it would
work, perhaps even better than inside my basement? That would be
great.

No you need both the center conductor of the coax and the shield to connect
to the radio.

Wouldent there be a major hurdle in setting up a repeater station, if
there were only one between two radios? I thought a repeater had to
receive on a different frequancy than it transmitted on.

A repeater does operate on two different frequencies, but the key to a
repeater is a duplexer operating into a single antenna -- see repeater block
diagram at URL:
http://www.hamuniverse.com/repeater.html

Not a simple matter however, a repeater needs a controller, timer, IDer and
quite a bit more. And they are expensive to buy or build.



Thanks for those model numbers, BTW, that helps emensly. Would those
work attached to a hand held, or would I need an appropriately powered
transmitter? I will look those up soon.

Well most handhelds are VHF/UHF only. When you are talking about 160M thru
10M, a different radio is needed -- maybe like the Yaesu FT-817ND
URL:
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamhf/1817.html

Sorry, that was actually a lot of questions.
thanks again
fogus


Do you have a Ham Store nearby - take in your HT and see what they
recommend.

Lamont