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2M FM Simplex

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Elf36:
Turned on my VHF rig while tuning HF bands. 2M has great conditions this morning. Running 20 watts into a small vertical @20' I was able to work a station 38 miles West of me (146.520 FM) at 11:13. I normally have a very tough time working to my West. It's a bit of a dead zone for some reason. There's a station running 50 watts into a vertical at 110' working just about the whole state. He's got a pretty great set-up for sure.

RobRich:
Just glanced at the estimated MUF map. Consider giving 6m a try today. I suspect you might find opportunities for TEP DX into South America.

ThaDood:
Is there any way that you could get your VHF VERT above the tree, foliage, level? Being in the land of FL, I would believe that 20W on 2M could talk 38 miles daily. And, if you happen to have a 2M beam, you could bounce off of a tall BLDG and see how far you could get out. A friend of mine and I did that with 222MHz national Simplex FREQ 223.500MHz FM. He was over 20 miles away on a IC-3AT HT, (MAX'es-Out at 1.5W.), and I was on my base with a home-brew 1/4-Wave GND-plane. I talked him into downtown Corning, NY, mobile, then lost him. Minutes later, I heard him call me. He was standing 10ft from the front wall of a Wagmans Supermarket and found a sweet-spot to work me on his HT! If he moved a couple of feet, I couldn't hear him. It was a neat test. We also did that bouncing signals off of hills too. BTW, that trick works well on 440MHz, 446.000MHz simplex FM. Passing thoughts.

RobRich:
Oh well. I noted a rather high MUF in SA earlier today, though yeah, our MUF was like 15MHz lower so 6m was a somewhat long shot.

Polar Bear:
Sad

The furthest I ever worked simplex 2 meters fm was from Pennsylvania to FloriDA with a home made antenna up about 30' off the ground.

The most important part is to buy the very best coaX AND THE VERY BEST ANTENNA AND PUT IT UP ON A TOWER AT LEast 30 or 40 feet off the ground and buy a good radio - 50 watts - not one of those cheap POS chinese radios you see that are copycaTS of a good radio you should have bought in the first place.

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