Jeff Parker

I often use the lowest power I can. This means 2.5 - 3W around here typically gets right into the repeaters. 1W works, but one would need to be outdoors. Try experimenting with lower power settings - you might be surprised how little you actually need for local work!

they absolutely can and will find out if you make it a habit. the FCC has automated monitoring systems and volunteer monitors too. plus other hams will notice if you're operating outside your privileges - we tend to police ourselves pretty well in this hobby as for penalties, first offense might get you a warning letter but repeat violations or blatant disregard can result in fines ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, or even license revocation in serious cases. not worth the risk when you can just upgrade your license instead

honestly for most people the biggest rate gains dont come from SO2R, they come from learning to run properly. like if youre not already comfortable holding a frequency during a pileup and keeping your CQ rate clean, adding a second radio is just gonna split your attention in a bad way. i ran single radio for years and got my CW rate up to around 120-130/hr on good band conditions just by being more disciplined about when to S&P vs when to stay and run. that said, SO2R is absolutely real for mult hunting. the classic use case is youre running 20m and you hear 15 is opening, you can jump the second radio over and snag a few mults without killing your run frequency. but the filtering thing you mentioned is the real issue. if your antennas are close together and on different bands youre gonna get a lot of desense unless you have good bandpass filters. the Array Solutions or the Dunestar stuff works well but its not cheap. i tried it once with a cheap diplexer and it was a mess. if i were you id focus on contest strategy first. learn to predict band openings for your location, practice your exchange until its muscle memory, and work on rate discipline. then maybe revisit SO2R when that stuff is second nature.

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up with a uv-5r just to get started. it works fine for hitting the local repeater, no complaints really. but i will say once i borrowed a friends yaesu at a hamfest i noticed right away the audio was clearer and the menus made more sense. im probably gonna upgrade sometime this year. either way just get something and get on the air, dont overthink it too long or youll still be reading reviews in 6 months lol

so ive been a ham for about three years now and honestly kind of embarrassed to admit i dont have any kind of go-kit or emergency setup at all. just my base station and a handheld. been thinking about this more lately after we had a pretty bad ice storm and the power was out for like 4 days and i realized i was basically useless from a comms standpoint. anyway i want to put something together that i could grab and go if i needed to, or just have ready at home if the grid goes down. problem is every time i look this up online i get overwhelmed by all the options. some guys seem to have like these massive pelican cases with everything in them and other people say just keep it simple. i guess my question is what would you actually prioritize if you were starting from scratch? im thinking something that could run on battery power for at least a day or two and cover local repeaters plus maybe some HF if i can swing it budget-wise. also does it make sense to join the local ARES group first before building this stuff out, or just start putting things together on my own?

Elevated radials at 8ft will definitely outperform ground radials, especially on your sandy soil. Uniform 32ft lengths work fine for multiband - the tuner will handle impedance matching. I'd go with the remote tuner at base to minimize feedline losses. Your parts list looks solid.