On Sunday January 22, 2012, the US Postal Service will institute an across the board rate increase for their shipping and mailing services. This rate increase, which will see first class postage increase by 1 cent, will also affect the shipping of Priority Mail packages. Consequently my shipping rates will increase slightly on that day.

The good news is that all antenna orders before the 22nd of January will ship at the old rate. If you are looking for a 2 meter J-Pole antenna, or one of my other amateur radio, public safety, and scanner antennas; you can order now and ship at the existing rate, saving you a little bit of money.

This is the first shipping rate increase I’ve had to make in over three years. Even though the Postal Service has increased their shipping rates on an annual basis (as have all shipping services), I’ve been able to keep shipping in line by closely analyzing my shipping costs and keeping costs in line the best I can.

Thanks again for your continued business, it is greatly appreciated.

Merry Christmas from KB9VBR J-Pole antennas. I hope your holidays where Merry and Bright and that Santa Claus brought what you wished for. Maybe your Christmas wish was to contact rare DX, peace on earth, or to receive a bright new  shiny rig under the tree. I can’t help much with the 2nd wish, but if you received a new VHF/UHF radio for Christmas, this is the place to come for a new antenna.

The KB9VBR 2 meter J-Pole antenna is a great choice for your new VHF 2 meter rig. If you received a handheld radio, read my post about how to connect your handheld radio to an external antenna. New hams often start out with HTs but find the range limiting. A good antenna makes all the difference between making the contact and getting lost in the noise.

Merry Christmas once again, spend some time with people you love. After that, if you need a diversion, head on down to the ham shack.

Are the hams in your family naughty or nice? Are you or a loved one expecting a radio under the Christmas Tree. A KB9VBR J-Pole Antenna makes a great Christmas gift for your loved or ham buddy across town or across the country. I’ll ship your antenna to any US address for no extra charge. Buy your gift here and don’t worry about getting it delivered.

But, you gotta hurry. Christmas day is Sunday December 25, 2011 so today, Wednesday December 21, 2011 is the last day I can take orders and still get them under the tree.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Our community, Wausau and Marathon County, Wisconsin is in the process of converting their analog radio system over to a narrow band digital radio system. Marathon County has about 130,000 residents and covers an area about the size of the state of Connecticut, so this is no small task. The new system has several microwave links and simulcast transmit and receive sites to effectively cover the area. Unfortunately a slew of technical issues is causing the transition to take longer than necessary and driving up the costs.

But this post isn’t about the technical difficulty of the new radio system, but instead illustrating the fact that when the new system goes on the air, my primary antenna I use for scanning, a KB9VBR J-Pole Scanner antenna will still work with the narrowband digital frequencies. Instead of moving to an 800MHz trunked system, the county is still using their existing VHF frequency allocations. I’ll still be able to use the same antenna and feedline, but I’ll have to upgrade to a P25 digital capable scanner.

Antennas are antennas, regardless if they are receiving an analog or digital signal. So the antenna you buy today to monitor analog frequencies will work tomorrow when they transition to narrow band and digital communication modes. As long as they stay in the same frequency range that the antenna is tuned for, the antenna will still work.

MURS or the Multi Use Radio Service is a license free radio service designated by the FCC for short range business and family communications. MURS has five channels in the 151 – 154 VHF MHz range that can be used. MURS has some distinct features that makes it very useful for a wide variety of communications:

• No license is needed for MURS communications
• Voice or data can be transmitted on the MURS frequencies
• 2 watt transmitter power limit for base and handheld communications, but no limit to antenna gain
• You can attach external antennas to a MURS radio, like the MURS J-Pole antenna.
• Antennas must have a max height of 20 feet.
• There are a wide variety of MURS radios available, like the popular Motorola RDM2020 handheld unit.

The best thing about MURS is that it is license free, so you can hand just about anyone a MURS programmed radio and not worry about the user having a FCC license.

What types of activities or groups are using MURS radios? MURS is great for search and rescue operations, coordinating volunteers at parades and community events, business operations and facilities, and personal communications. The radios are inexpensive and the MURS band is relatively uncongested, so it makes a great choice when other radio services may be loaded with communications.

Since MURS radios can use external antennas, but the antennas are limited to a 20 foot height, you’ll want to select a high performance antenna to maximize your signal range. The MURS J-Pole antenna is a great choice as it is lightweight, affordable, and very sensitive. The antenna’s wide bandwidth covers the entire MURS frequency range and the low noise floor will easily pick out a weak signal from a distant MURS station. Mounted at the 20 foot height, you can ideally expect a 5-10 mile range with your MURS radios, although surrounding buildings and terrain may affect performance.

Need more information about the Multi Use Radio Service to determine if its a right choice for your needs? Check out this MURS resource.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! My antennas make great Christmas gifts and I will drop ship them to any US address.  Wouldn’t you love to see a KB9VBR J-Pole Antenna under your Christmas tree? If you want your antenna shipped as a gift to a friend, just leave  me a note during the checkout process of who and where you want the antenna to go. I’ll even include a nice little card wishing the recipient a Happy Holidays.

Christmas day is Sunday, December 25th. The last day to order one of my antennas for guaranteed Christmas delivery is Wednesday, December 21 by 11:59pm central time.

Thanks again for your support, I greatly appreciate your referrals of my antennas to your friends. Have a most excellent Holiday season this year.

Michael, KB9VBR

I recently received a Kenwood TM-281A two meter amateur radio transceiver as a door prize at last month’s state ARES/RACES conference. Well, last week I finally got the radio hooked up and put a few frequencies into it. General impressions: this is a very nice rig with clear audio, easy to use functions, and sensitive receive.

I’ve owned quite a few 2 meter and 2/440 rigs over the years from all three of the major manufacturers: Icom, Kenwood, and Yaesu. Each has their peculiarities and differences, but with everyone putting out quality products, it really all boils down to features and capabilities. With that being said, the Kenwood TM-281 delivers and easy to use, quality product. The radio is ruggedly constructed with a large heat sink along the back and bottom. I like the fact that the heat sink isn’t on the top of the rig. My Icom 2100 has a top mounted heat sink and that think filled up with dust and gunk after a couple of years of mobile use. Buttons on the rig are lit and big enough to push while on the road. The radio also has a very nice volume control and channel selector with detent clicks. Pushing the channel knob also access the setup menus.

Setting it up in my basement shack, I had it connected, programmed with one frequency and on the air in less than 10 minutes. The instructions are well laid out and the index quickly brought me to the section on where to program memories. But you can just as easy us it in the VFO mode as it has automatic repeater offset shift and enabling tone control was straightforward. The only thing I found a little cumbersome was using the direct entry keypad on the microphone, but it seems like this is a downfall on all the radios these days.

Audio on the Kenwood TM-281 is excellent, although compared to the audio on my primary base rig, the Kenwood TM-V7A, it seems a little tinny. The TM-V7a has a larger, top mounted speaker that give a fuller, richer sound. The TM-281′s speaker is smaller and front mounted, which is an advantage when the radio is mounted in a vehicle. Since I didn’t mount it in my car, I don’t know how the smaller speaker fares when up against the vehicle noise while on the road.

Out of the box, the Kenwood Tm-281 puts out 65 watts of power on high and 25 watts on low. This is great for mobile use as we usually run our mobiles on high power anyways. I’d love to see a more energy conserving 10 watt mode for low power base station use. I hooked the radio up to my 2 meter J-Pole antenna that I use for my secondary VHF and digital station. This antenna is mounted on a mast at about 10 feet. I had no problem picking out other mobile signals within at 10 mile radius on the repeater’s reverse frequency. The radio also has a built in weather alert function, and I scanned the weather band, picking up about 4 transmitters in a 60 mile radius. This rig definitely has a very sensitive receive. It also wasn’t bothered by my other rig while transmitting on a second 2 meter frequency.

The radio has up to 200 memories, but if you use the 6 character alpha tags for your memories, you will be limited to only 100 memory channels. 100 memory channels seems a little small for a radio in this day and age, especially if you travel a lot. My first 2 meter rig, an Icom 2100a, offered that many channels 10 years ago and I had it filled pretty quick.

All in all, I’m impressed with the Kenwood TM-281. It’s a highly capable, affordable amateur radio rig, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a starter radio or second rig for the shack or vehicle. I have  a feeling this one will eventually wind up in the wife’s car.

It’s hard to believe that the Christmas holiday season is right around the corner. But the intrepid people that put together holiday lights displays for their homes have already been busy for months designing the concept and pulling together the lights and effects to turn their house into a winter wonderland.

Many lights displays now contain synchronized music and more and more lighting designers are turning to the Low Power FM Broadcast J-Pole antenna to help transmit the sound to the car radios of the viewers. The LPFM J-Pole antenna works great in this regard as it’s half wave design and low noise floor will give you a strong without flutter or dropouts even with the lowest power transmitters. Since the FM transmitters preferred by the Holiday Lights crowd tend run around 5 watts, a good antenna is key for a stronger, better signal.

Many popular transmitters, like the Ramsey FM-30B require an ‘F’ connector for their antenna port. All my antennas come with an SO-239 connector that is a standard for VHF and UHF antennas. I recommend an F to SO-239 adapter so that you can use off the shelf coax with standard connectors.

November is a busy month for antennas, but turnaround for the LPFM antenna is usually only 3 days, and I ship via USPS Priority Mail, so you can have your antenna in under a week. Order before Thanksgiving and you should be on the air around the 1st of December.

Kathy Schramm, KB9UAZ opens this year's ARES/RACES conference

I had the privilege of once again attending the annual Wisconsin State ARES/RACES Conference. I can’t believe that this annual event has been going on for 13 years now, and of those 13 years, I’ve only missed two conferences, the first one, held in 1999 and again in 2004.  Being licensed since 1999, I’ve been an active participant in emergency communications and really look forward to these conferences as a place to learn and network.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Mutual Aid, being there for each other.” We often think of mutual aid as providing coverage for our neighboring county if they have a communications event or incident and need more operators. But we should also think of our providing support for our served agencies as a form of mutual aid. They are looking for communications resources, and as ARES/RACES operators, we have the unique skill of providing support for when the served agency’s systems may be overwhelmed.

I think the best presentation of the conference came towards the end of the day when Dan Lenz, KB9IME gave a report on what was observed at this year’s Simulated Emergency Test (SET).  In Wisconsin, this year’s scenario was to test the efficiency of local and district nets in funneling information to the State’s HF net. For the most part, limitations and deficiencies were found, but as the Wisconsin Emergency Mangement hamshack operator observed; a lack of traffic making its way to the state hamshack didn’t necessarily mean there was a failure in the system, but instead local nets where funneling information to the districts and district nets where handling traffic properly.

Lenz’s comments on why we train are telling of his attitudes towards training in the State. We need to drill and train in the field, so we are comfortable with field operations. Checking in from home won’t improve our communication abilities when we are called to provide emergency communications in the event of a disaster or other incident.

Finally, according to Lenz in approaching the reason we drill: SETS and drills are not contests, they are not supposed to be ‘successful’. If you found that your plan didn’t work, that is a success. if everything goes right, it’s time to worry.

I can’t wait for next year’s conference.

A big segment of the scanner community is centered around listening to aircraft communications that happen on the ground and in the air. Living near a major airport, these transmissions can be quite numerous; but even in less populated area you can hear a plethora of signals. Air to ground signals can carry several hundred miles as you listen to planes flying in uncontrolled space. If you are near an airport, FBO, runway, or airstrip, the ground communications can be just as interesting.

My airband J-Pole antennas work great at picking up aviation signals. Most airband listeners tend to gravitate towards discone antennas. While discones work great for scanning because of their broad band nature, they aren’t necessarily the best choice for the aviation band. The Aviation band J-Pole antenna has two distinct advantages over discone and quarter wave antennas.

First the antenna is a half wave by design, so it has more gain than a discone, up to 3db more in most cases. Discones have a spherical radiation pattern, so they pick up signals from all directions equally. The J-Pole’s pattern is more doughnut shape; that is it slightly favors the horizon as compared to the sky. The doughnut shaped pattern works better for aviation as it will give you the advantage of receiving the FBO and ground operations. VHF signals are line of sight, so you’ll have no problem picking up in-flight signals regardless of the antenna style.

The airband J-Pole antennas are custom tuned for the aviation band, so they work equally well for receiving and transmitting a signal. They are usually set to Unicom, but can be tuned to any frequency of your choice at time of order.

Get an airband J-Pole antenna and let your aviation listening soar to new heights.