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What is MDC? I don't think any of my radios have that. They do have other types of codes.

There is a system by me that MDC or DTMF is REQUIRED to use the repeater. It sees your assigned ID given to you by the owner and will open the repeater. It also tracks who is using the repeater to cut out the people from playing around being "dumb".

I remember when I was on the fire Dept. in the late 80's we were on 33.780. The antenna on the portables were about 2 feet long. It seems almost everyone now wants a "stubby" antenna because they do not like the longer ones. The mobile antennas were very long too. Sounds like a good idea until you see all the equipment you need and prices of said equipment. Just my 2 cents from the peanut gallery.

What you have should work. TSQL means you're listening for and transmitting the same tone. Tone means you're transmitting a tone (to get into a repeater, for example) but the radio will break squelch on *any* signal strong enough on that frequency, whether or not it has a tone. For repeaters, you only need to send a tone, to open squelch on the receive side of the repeater, you don't need it for listening (unless you're in a really busy environment and you want to *only* hear traffic from that repeater on that channel). My area is fairly busy, so if I'm listening to the repeater on 20, there's often a bunch of other noise on simplex 20, which my radio will hear, so I like having the receive side tamped down as well.

Ok,thanks; no good for me then. I am looking for an upgraded 5200 MAh USB-C battery for my DMRs; I just ordered the 3800 high capacity one with USB-C from Amazon:

And now you spelled “Marc” wrong.

I just spelled "Mark" wrong! (honestly, i dont remember either conversation)

Thank you for the feedback. I've made corrections to the GMRS channels, but I feel like im not setup right for the repeaters. I pulled the details from this site, but my setup looks different than amaff. Any corrections i need to make here?

I'll use the Roger Beep on simplex with new users. Me: Don't forget that you can't talk at the same time, you have to wait for them to stop talking. New User: How do I know when they've stopped talking? Me: When you hear the beep. New User: Oh, okay. I keep it off on my repeater units. I don't know why some people get so torqued-up over it, but I don't want a sad HAM to have an aneurism.

The factory specifications of the subject radio should list the voltage operating range. Anything outside of that parameter would be detrimental to the electronics components of the radio.

I recently trolled a ham Facebook page with that very fact. In reality, I think it has to do with the fact that hams almost exclusively use repeaters while GMRS users use simplex a lot. If the repeater has a courtesy tone, roger beeps just create chaos. I was challenging the people on the page to justify hatred of the roger beep, but nobody came up with anything beyond, "they suck and so do people who use them".

It's for the 5RM series.

Tell me about it. That place is a dump. I couldn't in good conscience actually charge anyone else to occupy that space...

Thanks! I'm only 5 weeks postop and it seems to be coming along well. My house is in a favorable location for radio. I can reliably hit my club's repeater with 2 watts from my yard and 5 watts from inside the house, so I don't need crossband repeat at home, and if I go south, I can't reliably reach the radio at my house far enough away to make any difference. When I have an antenna on a mast, I expect that with crossband repeat, I could extend my reach to the repeater quite a few more miles south.

Same concept as a screwdriver antenna.

That cool! I'll have to take a look later and see what they have.

Im kind of hurt. In one of your videos you said that a forum member mentioned it to you, and I was all excited because I thought you remembered our conversation, but nope! You love Josh more than me. I don't think I can go on. You're not getting your hoodie back...

Rent free!

Get out of my head!

Everyone arranges these things according to how their brain is organized, so you may not do the same thing I would do. If this were me, I'd save this configuration in CHIRP, open a new window, and load GMRS/FRS frequencies from <File> <Open stock config> and copy/paste the frequency list into a clean CHIRP page as a point to start. 23-52 in that chart are the GMRS channels and they already have the bandwidth, power, and tuning step programmed. That gives you a clean place to start. Then open the file with your current configuration and from it copy/paste the channels you want to add. You can do that as a block, for example Fam1 through Caravan, and the four repeaters as another block. I think you'll be happier if you get the GMRS/FRS channels together in order. Then, if you want some channels with "privacy" (they aren't) tones on them, copy/paste a block of frequencies to another set of memory slots and add your tones to them. I used GMRS 15-22 for this because that's plenty for family use and I can use up to 50 watts if I happen to be in a vehicle. Remember to change the names on this block; Fam1, Fam2, whatever. The way my brain works, it's easier for me to remember if I start each block on a number like 50 or 75. This is just a suggestion, though.

With your frequency numbers on the channels being wrong / all over the place, I'm leaning towards starting over being easier, honestly. The nice thing with Chirp is that you can do that pretty easily. 1. Read from your radio so you've got your current config (or open your current config). 2. go to File > Open Stock Config > US FRS and GMRS. 3. Do another Read from Radio from your radio so you can get a 2nd page open with your radios config, and blow the memory channels away on this one so you've got a blank slate. What you're doing makes sense (having a few personalized channels for yourself + the standard GMRS channels) but not when your labeling (FRS1) doesn't actually match up with what frequency FRS1 should be (you have 467.5500, but it should actually be 462.5625...). Otherwise your radios aren't going to work with other people's. I have no idea where you got that frequency list from, but it needs to go in the trash haha Compare yours with the file in #2 above and you'll see what I mean. Also know that unless the person you're trying to talk to isn't transmitting the tone your radio is listening for, you will not hear them. So if someone is on a standard, no tones channel, let's say, GMRS1, and your GMRS1 (or FRS1, they're the same, more or less), assuming you've corrected the frequencies, but you have a tone, you won't hear them. So it's a good idea to have a set of "Open" channels on your radio as well. This is what my normal loadout looks like. The first set are what we use at the track when we're trying to just hear ourselves and not anyone else who might be on an open GMRS channel, the my local repeaters, then a full set of 'open' GMRS channels.

I run a solar system to power my radio's and light my shack etc. I recently received a report that my signal was not as good as usually on our local repeater. did some checking and sure enough I had degraded my voltage by running to much lights etc all day in my shack and voltage was 11.5. next day after fully charging signal report came loud and clear (solar was at 13 volts). this is a 50 wat unit set at mid power (13 watts?). so it seams it does make a difference on my setup. just sharing

Logic dictates that there is some point at which lower voltage will result in decreased performance and possibly even damage the radio, but I'm not willing to potentially sacrifice a radio to find out where that point is. For a while, I was using an Anysecu WP9900 plugged into the "cigarette lighter" socket on a jump-start battery pack. It consistently showed 11.8-11.9 volts, but it didn't drop appreciably when transmitting. I didn't test its power output, but I was getting signals out to my favorite repeater with full quieting. I did test it when I had it hard-wired in my truck. It ran 13.8-14.8 volts, and max output was ~19-20 watts (25 watts nominal max power). I now have it attached to a 50 Ah LiFePO4 battery as a backup during storms. It shows 12.3-12.8 volts and tops out at ~18-19 watts. It does seem as if losing 2 volts cost me a watt. Neither I nor the person I'm talking to is likely to notice a difference in signal strength/distance.

After more investigation it seems the RX issue at 33cm/900MHz was the antennas that were supposed to be tuned for that frequency. With other antennas the radio will actually TX and RX at 33cm.

THanks for the feedback. The intent here was to have all available GMRS and FRS channels. To have a few GMRS channels that were set for family communication, and then to be able to touch my local repeaters. With that context, am i close or do i need to restart this whole thing?