Category: UHF/VHF

  • Slim Jim vs J-Pole: Which Roll-Up Antenna Wins

    Part of our Building Your First Ham Radio Station guide. Both the Slim Jim and the classic J-Pole are popular roll-up wire antennas for VHF and UHF, and they get compared constantly since they share a similar half-wave design philosophy and a similar build process. What They Actually Have in Common Both are end-fed half-wave…

  • Repeater Coordination Councils: What They Do and Why It Matters

    Coordination is not legally required, but ignoring it is how repeater owners end up in years-long interference disputes.

  • Combining GMRS and Ham Radio on a Road Trip

    Part of our GMRS Radio: The Complete Guide. A road trip is one of the best real-world use cases for running GMRS and ham radio side by side, each covering a role the other cannot fill as well. GMRS for Caravanning With Non-Licensed Family If you are traveling in multiple vehicles with family members who…

  • Ham Radio and Drones: Legal Considerations and Practical Uses

    Drones and ham radio overlap more than people expect, both in the legal weeds around control frequencies and in some genuinely practical uses hams have found for combining the two. Amateur Bands and Drone Control: Proceed Carefully Most consumer drones use unlicensed ISM band frequencies for control and video, not amateur bands, and that is…

  • Installing a Ham Dual-Band Mobile Radio in Your Vehicle

    Part of our Building Your First Ham Radio Station guide. Installing a dual-band mobile follows the same basic principles as any mobile radio install, and getting the fundamentals right the first time saves you from chasing mystery problems down the road. Power: Straight to the Battery Run power leads directly to the battery rather than…

  • VHF/UHF Weak Signal SSB: Beyond the Local Repeater

    Part of our Getting On The Air guide. Most hams experience VHF and UHF exclusively through FM repeaters, and that is a perfectly good way to use those bands, but there is an entirely different style of operating happening on the same bands that most repeater users never encounter. Why Weak Signal SSB Exists FM…

  • LoRa APRS: A Different Take on Long-Range Tracking

    Part of our Getting On The Air guide. LoRa APRS blends two technologies that most hams already know separately, traditional APRS and LoRa radio hardware, into something that behaves a bit differently from either one on its own. How It Differs From Traditional APRS Standard APRS runs on 144.390 MHz in the US using AFSK-modulated…

  • MARS/CAP Mods on the Yaesu FT-857D: What They Actually Do and Where the Legal Line Sits

    Part of our The Yaesu FT-857D: The Complete Guide. What a MARS/CAP Mod Actually Is I cover what a MARS/CAP mod actually is, the DoD and Civil Air Patrol programs behind it, and the legal reality of transmitting on the frequencies it unlocks in What Is a MARS/CAP Mod? The short version for the 857D…

  • The FT-857D as a Shack in a Box: Why It’s One of My Favorite SHTF Radios

    Part of our The Yaesu FT-857D: The Complete Guide. One Box, Every Band You’d Actually Need When I think through what a grab-and-go radio needs to do in an actual SHTF scenario, the list is short: reach the local repeater network, monitor and work HF for anything past line of sight, and do it all…

  • Taming the FT-857D’s Menu: A Practical Cheat Sheet

    Part of our The Yaesu FT-857D: The Complete Guide. Why This Radio’s Menu Fights You The 857D packs a genuinely deep set of features into a single-line display and a numbered menu tree, which was a reasonable design in its day and hasn’t aged gracefully. Settings are grouped by number rather than by plain-language category,…

  • Common FT-857D Problems and How to Fix Them

    Part of our The Yaesu FT-857D: The Complete Guide. ALC Clipping and Power Foldback on 40 Meters This is the complaint that comes up most in FT-857D circles: power output drops or the ALC meter spikes and clips specifically on 40 meters, even though other bands sound fine. It’s a well-documented calibration drift issue tied…

  • Buying a Used FT-857D: What to Check

    Part of our The Yaesu FT-857D: The Complete Guide. There Are No New Ones Left Yaesu discontinued the FT-857D in 2020. Every unit on the market today, whether it’s a dealer’s used listing or a private sale, is coming from someone’s shack or go-bag, not a warehouse. That changes how you should shop for one.…

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