I hike with a FT60 too; it’s simple and robust. It’ll handle San Bruno mountain except for right along the top ridgeline. Walking 20 meters downhill will let it work again. That mountain is just a crazy bubble of RF.

I use two techniques to figure out if the handheld I’m carrying will work. First, if the S meter reads at S9 but the squelch isn’t opening, then it’s overloaded. The second is to call into a clearly viable and local repeater. Failing to open the repeater is a pretty good sign of overload.

Yep, the park includes the parking lot, but it’s a different not POTA or SOTA park on the east side up the hills. Though there is a summit not too far away (W6/CC-072 San Bruno Mountain) that’s challenging for another reason: it’s littered with FM and TV broadcast towers. I’ve never tried to SOTA it, but I bought a 2m bandpass filter for my handheld for when I’m out hiking it. It’s a pastime listening to folks on 146.52 calling CQ but unable to hear the 10 people trying to respond. It’s such an easy peak to get to but so many folk fail because their radio’s frontend becomes overloaded.

This exercise is definitely an excuse for more ham stuff. If I can squeeze out an additional 3db over what I have, then it’ll be worth it.

I haven’t built a feedline match before. That may be worthwhile just for the experience in building such.

Indeed, many of my wire antennas work with NVIS. I rarely do nighttime radio, so my 40m work is generally localized. My EFHW with a 40m fundamental in L / V ish configuration at 10m height and 20 to 50 watts of power does a great job, 59 reports locally and up to 600km away. I even played around with attaching a wire to the top end of my telescoping vertical to make an inverted L specifically for pulling out the vertical’s null and into NVIS operation.

Perhaps the park is more about being an excuse in expanding my antenna collection because my EFHW maxes out around 50w SSB, but I’m not going to complain. Who doesn’t want more antennas?

I’m looking at K-6450, but it’s not the only POTA that’s a cove. There’s plenty of small beaches up and down the coast that are surrounded by cliffs and mountains. I hope our discussion can help others looking at similarly difficult POTA parks.

My first experience with this beach was when I took my radio with my 1/4w vertical for some simple play and SWLing because I wanted to avoid local QRM. That trip was successful in removing the QRM and nearly all bands were quiet from any eastward activity and nearly silent from north-south stations despite decent band conditions. Afterwards I checked POTA to see if the beach was a valid park, which it was, and noted how few people have activated it. That makes sense as depending on DX for activation is a difficult proposition. I suspect those who did activate probably did so from the parking lot (better power budgets and a larger sky view), went on a weekend for higher band activity, knew how to maximize local propagation, and/or used digital to deal with very weak signals.

Hence why I’m looking at NVIS options. If I can setup the best portable NVIS that I can muster, then that antenna with my beach DXing setup should cover the contacts needed to active the park.

As for the planned spot to operate from, this time I’ll try working from the cliff tops instead of on the sand. There are trees that I can use and is not a crowded location (the beach is popular, not the cliffs). I don’t want anyone tripping over poles or long wires after all.

I did consider a OCFD but the multiband feature didn’t seem worthwhile over a monoband dipole or multiband fan dipole.

Thinking about it again, perhaps it is worthy. If the fundamental is 40m, then I should get dipole performance with an interesting radiation pattern on the second harmonic (20m). If I deploy as a sloper, then perhaps I can get an OK 20m DX setup and decent 40m NVIS out of it. Good timing of the activation right could mean I can capture VK stations without pulling out my 1/4w vertical.

I’ll give it a quick model and perhaps find myself winding a 4:1 balun. :)

Congratulations and welcome to the world of collecting radio equipment that you swear you’ll use someday!

That’s a fairly full-spec DMR HT. Others to consider around that price point and lower are Yaesu VX-6R, FT70DR, and FT-60R as well as Icom’s IC-T10. They all have their quirks, but they’re quality radios and can be field programmed easily.

One thing to consider is how much budget you can afford for accessories. Things like:

• Antennas
• Extra batteries
• Charging stand
• Hand mic
• Band pass filters

I recommend at least getting a roll-up J-pole antenna, like the Ed Fong DBJ-2. Stock HT antennas will work, and they do their job well, but they’re just not the same as a full-sized, resonant antenna. A roll-up J-pole is a full sized antenna that you put up 10 feet into the air, yet it can be packed into a small pouch. You’ll reach out to much further away repeaters or be able to make simplex contacts further than three or four miles out.

If you have a specific area of interest in the hobby, then drop a reply with some details. I, and others here, can help narrow you in on the right kit without spending big bucks.

A friend of mine explained why it’s important to his kids: they can’t chat with a group of their friends.

Why? Because parents don’t want to install WhatsApp or other group chats due to legitimate concerns about scammers, pedophiles, and other child predators. SMS chat fills that gap, but it breaks horribly for groups bigger than 10 people. Hence if some kid is on Android, they break their chat. Given the penetration of Apple devices, it’s the kids with Android who are considered at-fault. “Just get an iPhone!”

Welcome to anticompetitive practices targeted at your children.

As is typical, this science reporting isn't great. It's not only that AI can do it effectively, but that it can do it at scale. To quote the paper:

"Despite these models achieving near-expert human performance, they come at a fraction of the cost, requiring 100× less financial and 240× lower time investment than human labelers—making such privacy violations at scale possible for the first time."

They also demonstrate how interacting with an AI model can quickly extract more private info without looking like it is. A game of 20 questions, except you don't realize you're playing.

Best is a matter of how you rank features! The FT-60R suggestion is a good one, but that’s a choice of robustness (it’s incredibly solid) over some other features. If you’re after satellite work, it’s not a great choice. Or if you’re really interested in APRS tracking during your runs, it’s also not a great choice. Or, like in my situation, I need to help my local club in working with their Yeasu 70cm repeater running FM and C4FM, which is why I have a FT-70DR.

The UV-5R is doing you well. Let’s find things you’d like to do that it doesn’t do well. Is it 1.25m band support? FM satellites? Audio quality? Digital modes? The radio’s physical size or hand feel?

Or are you beginning to think about beyond HT, but still portable. Like HF or trying out SSB on VHF?

BMS boards can be very small for the currents demanded by HTs. I’d br surprised if they’re not integrated into the packs, even if there’s only two contacts.

As to if our HT batteries are… I don’t know! I haven’t seen a teardown of a Yeasu SBR-24LI but maybe I’ll tear mine down when it kicks the bucket.

I totally agree. Heck, I don’t do any digital VHF+ except for C4FM, and only then because it came on my preferred radios and I was curious. Simple, ubiquitous FM works great for me. 😁

Manufacturers are going to reuse hardware and software components to minimize engineering costs for their products. That’s why we see DMR, P25, and C4FM in amateur equipment: they’re modes their commercial products need. Hopefully the free nature of M17 means it’ll eventually become a $0 addition to a manufacturer’s offering. Although I suspect the Chinese radio brands will pick it up first in trying to get a competitive advantage. I know I’d buy a radio with off-the-shelf M17 support.

As an aside, your mountain bike mention makes me want to share some of my HF bicycle portable setup. Maybe I’ll collect some photos.🤔

Don’t let that hold you back! These radios are inexpensive and not rare items. If the modifications look difficult, then maybe ask a fell ham to help you. I know I would help anyone interested at my local club.

OpenRTX brings M17 to a few radios. I haven’t tried it myself (digital VHF doesn’t interest me) but it looks inexpensive to get into.

I’m not worried about proprietary modes on the ham bands because they cannot compete as software slowly becomes more integral to radio. There are two commonly held values that I think explain what we’re seeing with digital radio today, and what the inevitable outcome will be.

Hams have money but are frugal with how we spend it. We tend to seek the highest possible value for the lowest possible price. If it’s something simple, we tend to spend only a little money. If the thing is packed full of features, then $1000 will quickly disappear. A wire antenna? DIY or, at most, only buy a choke/transformer. That shiny IC-7300? Already ordered with delivery tomorrow.

Hams tend to be hackers. Proprietary is not a barrier, sometimes a fascination itself, so long as the proprietary thing can be hacked into something entertaining, useful, weird, or just for fun.

These two values, frugality and hacking, are acting together to make modes like VARA popular. These values are also why VARA and other proprietary modes are doomed.

VARA is cheap when compared to a popular competitor: PACTOR. Would you pay $1,300 or $70 for roughly the same set of features? VARA’s pricing model leans into this price advantage with a free tier clearly meant to target the frugality of hams. Try VARA out and, if you like it, then $70 is cheap enough to close the sale. VARA is also a soundmodem that runs on generic computer hardware. Your average ham can download VARA today and have it running in minutes on components they already have. VARA is a solid value proposition for hacking a digital HF station together.

But, in time, an open source modem will arise. VARA will lose popularity when it inevitably competes against a free, as in beer, and free, as in freedom, tool. Selling a software modem is a losing battle against a similar software modem that costs nothing and runs on anything, operating system be damned. VARA will never run on some esoteric microcontroller, which we all know must happen ASAP. Who can say no to a Winlink toaster?

I expect digital VHF/UHF radio to follow a similar path as commercial portable radios replace hardware with software. What may be a voice codec as a chip (hardware like PACTOR) will become some DSP firmware (soundmodem like VARA). The frugal and hacker values will push VHF/UHF further into freedom; M17 and OpenRTX being a great example.

I use 2mm bullet/banana connectors for my EFHW and linked dipoles in windy conditions. They work perfectly well with strain relief, which can be as simple as a strip of plastic with four holes.

Recently I’ve been using K6ARK’s method of adhesive lined heat shrink: https://youtu.be/HlFXs5kk_8w

Edit: I forgot to say the usefulness of K6ARK’s style is that you can reel the whole wire. Disconnect at the length you want and plug your transformer at the link. Keep the reel hanging with your transformer or use the remaining length as a counterpoise.

Another idea to consider is a vertical antenna. 5 meters is a 20m quarter wave and presents decent efficiency when coil-loaded into the 40m band. A capacitive hat could be helpful too, though it is something I haven’t personally tried.

If you’re looking to use 40, 80, and 160 as local propagation, maybe a linearly loaded or folded dipole could do the trick. You can run it lengthwise or as a fold along the top of the boat. It’ll make setup easier and not location dependent.

I’m not sure there is much slack to pick up. Local broadcasters put out informational messages, emergency services are active, and mobile cell towers are being deployed. While deadly, the fire itself affects a small area, so you won’t hear large amounts of HF traffic in/out of Hawaii.

Hawaii ARES has been activated and, as to be expected with a local disaster, is leaning heavily into VHF/UHF. Their current status is here: https://bit.ly/HAM-UPDATE

We’ll probably get reports to read about their part in the coming months.