Mastodawn

Elmer? I have a question. My cute little Yaesu FT-60 can hear the weekly net on the nearest repeater pretty well, but they can't seem to hear me, on either frequency.

I've double-checked whether the offsets are + or - and I'm pretty sure the PL tones are correct.

I'm starting to think that 5 watts is not enough to reach a tower 5.4 miles away (according to Google Maps).

Anything else I should be trying? I'm thinking of driving over to tower next week....

#hamradio #amateurradio

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Comrade Weez Mar 10

@ClimateJenny There's a lot of things which can affect range of a handheld, notably topography and building attenuation. If you're sure the offset and split is correct and your CTCSS freq is correct and set for tx encoding, go outside where there's few obstacles between you and the repeater. You ought to be able to 'kerchunk' the repeater from 5 miles away with ye olde rubber duck antenna.

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Climate Jenny 2.1 Mar 10

@weezmgk My topography is about as good as it gets, but I'm wondering if my attempt at an antenna upgrade might be the issue. I'm going to revert to the rubber duck and see what happens.

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Comrade Weez

@ClimateJenny Use the OEM antenna. There are some counterfeit Nagoya antennas sold on eBay, AliExpress etc which are garbage. If all else fails, gin up a 1/4 wave ground plane, put it outdoors, 10-20ft of RG58 coax would be OK but not much more as 58 is pretty lossy at 150MHz and up.