Just got done with the weekly drill......we started up again. "geriatric club" as I like to call them. The Baofengs are great, dump the rubber ducks. Uh antennas. I started making my own little j-poles, "throw-n-gos" as I call them. They work pretty damn good. I 've manged to hit repeaters as far as 70 an 80 miles away. Simplex at 40 an 50. Strange thing we noticed this past few weeks is the damn things are working on 6 meters. They are designed to work 2m and 70cm. Now distance on 6m has been only about 10miles and I haven't tried to stretch it. It just didn't make sense. NO, I'm not running a Baofeng on 6m, I'm running a TYT 9800. I have a temporary rig set up here at the new place. My "TNG" rig is sittin 25ft up on a pvc pole, zip tied to the shop's downspout. Yeah, do what you have to for now, but it's workin. I'm in Moore county, TN and have worked 2 adjacent counties. I'm sitting in a bowl. Not braggin. I need to go mobile on the 4 wheeler and go up to the ridge and see what I can do.

Back to the topic at hand, GUNNER GO FOR IT! If a Boatswainsmate can do it, a gunner sure as shit can do it. It doesn't even have cartoons on the test and I made General! Repetition, Repetition, Repetition! Slam the tests like BP said over and over till you're passin and then go take the exam. That's how Domey, Izzy, and I did it. Oh, did I mention there was I little "apple pie" involved the night before?

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Oh, and I made the antennas for the handhelds and those were the results from that. The 6meter thing was just recent findings because I needed to throw something together.