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Welcome! I haven’t used Chirp lately, but if I were you I would binge watch Notarubicon videos on YouTube. Starting with a Baofeng isn’t a bad idea.

I don’t think Rich gets notified unless something is reported. Everything on the home page works fine for me now and has for a few hours.

Still messed up over here at 14:30EDST. I first noticed the issue this (Saturday) morning about 07:30EDST. A friend reports that he sees nothing on the home page. I did not notify Rich. I thought if a note was made on here he somehow got the word. Problem experienced on my Android using Chrome.

hello guys! new here Reporting in! I'm in the market to look for my first GMRS radio!! exciting I know haha. I got a two pack radio set from amazon about a year ago I got help from a real radio guru he knows his stuff!! super thankful for the help! but he couldn't figure it out ( wasn't CHRIP programmable sadly)so I ended up returning them to amazon and life just happened and never got a new radio since. so here I am in market again! I'm looking for a mid tier GMRS nothing cheap please all comments and advice is welcomed looking for a radio which is as programmable via CHRIP. I am also located in NC and want to start hiking again so why I'm able and willing to pay for okay radio. - WSCC962 OUT

Yes in many ways it buys much more than it used to. The abilities of a modern cell phone as a computer held in your hand are amazing compared to computers in 1974. That computer power of a cell phone was only available to governments and BIG research facilities back then. What a Boafeng HT can do now for less than $50 was easily $300 or more not that long ago.

As a very wise-man says in my videos all the time: You snooze, you miss out.

Too bad you missed it. It's a pretty good little repeater.

It’s working now. I didn’t reset my password.

The wife has already started quoting “If you give a mouse a cookie”.

One can place a budget on radio equipment?

Talking about it is legal Grasp you some of that

Here's my little setup. Nothing outrageous, but not necessarily simple. And the approx parts list, some smaller stuff not included.

Sure! On the way out right now, but I'll share what im using for this job. Its easy to do and the tools are very affordable.

All linking is a violation of GMRS regs. That shouldn't be really hard for people to grasp.

The logic of the question was altered by the $100 limit; the logic isn’t truly scalable. I wouldn’t use pvc. It’s too flexible and it gets brittle after exposure for several years. There are chimney mounts that strap to chimneys and support a metal mast or even a fiberglass or carbon fiber mast (fiberglass is perfectly adequate and non-conductive). A decent base antenna will work well in that kind of installation.

I really appreciate all the informed responses! The truth is that I can afford more, but the logic of the question was really the crux. After doing some more measurements, my cable run is likely to be considerably longer than I had originally expected, so I’ll probably go LMR400. My chimney has a metal top that I’m considering a mag base for, but I’d have to pull It down if I ever (extremely rarely) wanted to use the fireplace. I see the other option as a long piece of pvc tube with some guy wires, but that doesn’t get nearly as tall as my second story chimney. I’m pretty sure that standing at the closest upstairs window to Dallas that I’m already hitting repeaters close to downtown with the longer (included in the GM30 plus kit) whip, so I’m betting that I’ll be ok no matter what.

I agree, but I think it buys more than it used to. On our road home to Butte from Phoenix this past week quite a few places were advertising for help. At convenience stores the starting wage appears to be $21.00/hour. So $100 worth of stuff is now equivalent to about five hours of work. When I was a sophomore in college (1974), I worked on a farm for $15/day and they were long days. Within a couple years I got a job at an appliance store for $1.25/hour. Compared to what my wages would have purchased then, five hours will buy a much better radio, antenna, and cable than it would have then.

Any chance you can enlighten us on the equipment you used and the techniques to tune it in this particular instance? Details like brand names and models of the equipment so I can looke them up and see them type of details. Unless you don't want to give up your secrets LOL.

Thank you for the kind words. It was my pleasure! I'm glad I was able to help.

I agree. It's not so much that you need special stuff as much as $100 doesn't buy $100 worth of stuff any more.

Never expected it to. It's absolutely a compromise. But what it does is allow you to figure out what channel might work best for you in your area. And when you figure that out you can commit to a tuned duplexer. Of course when I first started out I didn't know squat about any of this stuff. And that was a little bit more than a year ago when I got a pair of HTs. But I'm a quick learner and generally don't need to ask questions because I can find answers myself. But duplexers are simple and complex at the same time and it took many vids before I understood how they worked. I always knew what they did. I'm excited to see if it'll improve my reception. We have 2 repeaters nearby. Commercial repeaters all gussied up with the best of the best. And you can tell by how they receive, very sensitive. While mine being much closer wasn't that sensitive. Kinda frustrating. Hoping for a similar sensitivity with the better tuned duplexer. Of course the commercial ones have the advantage of being 700ft+ in the air while mine currently sits at 40ft.

Outstanding! We look forward to your test results. As mentioned by many of us, a duplexer tuned for all of the GMRS repeater channels will not work as well as one tuned for just one channel.

my Notification window would not work. Zooming over and clicking did not open it.. Its working now though