And they said no one else would hear it.
Doesn't cover Lake Front Royal as requested, but the antenna was also supposed to be placed onto the roof instead of right smack middle of the side of the building.
Oh, RG-8 will do fine at 120' for highband. What's -6db among friends.
You should have heard the idea's woven by the salesman when someone wanted a lowband to VHF crossband portable.
Typical answer: Yeah we can do that, did you ask anyone who knows anything first? Well, no why?
Memories
Hey Mark
This is the problem everywhere, too much crap is being sold out there or salesman trying to push products that have no technical background. I've always said get an engineering firm like CTA or RCC to plan out a well balanced system. Then do a RFP or go on the available state contracts.
Plenty of options for Chester Gap, a yagi or corner reflector could put the needed signal on Lake Front Royal. But if the requirement was to cover into Warren, Chester Gap, Huntley or Hume, then maybe a re-location of the crossband repeater VHF antenna and change out the cable to LMR-400/500. There is nothing wrong with the CDM's, they just need to get them to work like they should.
Everything worked well 20 years ago on Low Band when I ran up there. But with the trees growing like they have across the region, all of us are running into propagation issues. When you try to explain the tree issue to people who do not understand, you get lots of blank looks. I have had to move 4 high gain parabolic antennas on an 800MHz BDA system to point at different fixed sites in the last year due to stupid tree growth blocking.
Low Band can work well if properly designed; the county has to be willing to do whatever it takes to get the mission accomplished. This includes placing a tower and remoteing communications on a location that allows coverage across the service area, not coming up with stupid rules like "no towers allowed" and living 40 years in the past.
I understand the economic situation of Rappahannock, with only 6,000 people living in the county and no tax base, there is not a lot of money to spread around. They could have made a 4 year plan to change out to current technology getting everyone updated with new low band equipment. Or you can go with free equipment from another county and pay for usage on another counties system.
Either way, at some point all of the radios will need to be replaced because of non-serviceability due to equipment no longer being supported by the manufacture.
