This page has miscellaneous ham and RF resources.
My favorite antenna calculator on Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magicbug.antennas
To determine what your repeater performance should be use Radio Mobile (free). To use it, buy the package that contains the how to. It installs it so it works and guides you through the setup. Radio Mobile is available at:
http://www.ve2dbe.com/ or http://www.cplus.org/rmw/download/download.php?S=1
My amatuer radio call sign is WB8VSU. There is a UHF repeater running under my call sign (club repeater) in Miamisburg. For the Hamvention location in 2017, there should be coverage for HT ‘s as long as you are using a single band HT. The obvious reason is all the RF in the area of the Hamvention location defenses the dual band / wide band HT’ s. Single band HTs are more immune to the defense. According to Radio Mobile a VX-2 should work.
Here is a link to what the repeaters coverage area is which was created from Radio Mobile for a 35 watt mobile with a 5 dBi gain antenna:
rg
Repeaters website:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/daytonirlp/
For lightning protection best resources are Polyphasers book and the ARRL Handbook. The ARRL Handbook contains good electrical safety information for the amatuer radio operator as well. Links:
https://www.arrl.org/shop/ARRL-Handbook-2017-Hardcover-Edition/
http://www.radio2way.net/Polyphaser%20Guide.pdf
On Friday January 5, 2018 I did a presentation at the Dayton Amatuer Radio Association titled “Basic Lightning Protection for Communications Towers”. The links used in the presentation are at: https://sites.google.com/site/darathursdaynite/technical-information/grounding-presentation-wb8vsu-jim
To see how easy to make an antenna to use in a emergency situation see:
http://www.artscipub.com/simpleton/simp.quickie.asp
WLW Transmitter history:
http://j-hawkins.com/wlw.shtml
For Amateur Radio related items you can email me at my call sign @arrl.net.
A spreadsheet to calculate resistance to ground for ground rods of varying lengths and diameters along with varying soil resistance. Download the file at this link:
https://the-regulatory-compliance.guru/ground-rod-calc/
Recent I designed a prescaler for the frequency counter I built in 1979. The prescaler has 2 divide by 10 counters and one divide by 100. Which divide by 10 is used is determined by a jumper. Switching between divide by 10 or 100 is selectible. The one divide by 10 works from below 100 KHz up to 50 Mhz. The primary divide by 100, at 0 dBm works from 14 MHz to something over 1 Ghz. The primary divide by 10 only works to 500 MHz. (I have a couple extra, drop me a note at wb8vsu@arrl.net if you want one) Here is what it looks like:
