I heard 2/16 stations on the Wayne County (MI) Repeater Crawl tonight. As expected #N8DUY came in S5/9++ and I could hear #W8FSA . The rest, not so much. Keith #KD8ZSK NCS.

On the plus side my entire 50W station now fits in my backpack. On the minus side, I need to get some more/better 2m portable antenna options to make it actually useful.

The #N8DUY repeater was reachable full quieting from 50+ miles away (west side of Ann Arbor MI to Essex Ontario). Thanks to Sean #VA3SGM for that report.

Bioenno LiFePO4 battery arrived today. Hooked it up to my #Kenwood #TM261A (late 1990s, 50/10/5W 2m mono band rig). The simple tests worked.

First real test is the weekday 800a #N8DUY net, and then Friday evening there's a Wayne County repeater crawl (map at https://tinyurl.com/WCRCMAP ) coordinated by Keith #KD8ZSK

I am fine at 5 or 10 watts into the antennas I have, but I really don't want to run full power without putting something on a meter to check it out first.