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I actually have never attempted a hardware mod to any of my legacy Ham radios (pre-CCR), primarily because I am not involved with MARS/CAPS. I did not get involved with GMRS until I discovered that the UV-5R that I purchased from Amazon would communicate with my grandson's Motorola FRS radios. That being said, I note that Ham Radio Outlet and DX Engineering often sell a "MARS/CAPS" modification to many of their amateur radios being sold by them, that are capable of such modification. Given warranty issues on new purchases, I would suggest that is the way to go when purchasing a new radio.

I agree. It likely isn't worth the extra cost. If you can still get decent range and talk to those people or repeaters that you are wanting your signal to get to, then it doesn't really matter.

Did you try my codeplug? Let's say you drive I-95 to the Baltimore suburbs and want to enter the Ellicott City 650 repeater. https://www.mygmrs.com/map/2440 Go to Channel 36, and use your instructions to change the Tone in Menu 1: to 192.8 and this should work! What is wrong with this methodology? NOTE: I updated this codeplug slightly, so that if you downloaded the original one, please delete it and redownload this one, named Anytone AT-779UV GMRS 202509081100.dat

I have an aluminum 2020 F-150 and mounted a 2meter and GMRS antenna on each side of the 'BackRack'. Works OK, but not quite as well as the NMO in the center of my 2012's steel roof. Here's the 2 meter side - the other side is jammed into the tree and almost invisible.

That is just how it works with duplexers. You will always have a lower power output after the duplexer than what going in. How much loss will depend on the quality of parts used and how well tuned the duplexers are. I did an unscientific test to see if 50 watts had more reach than 20 watt. There is a GMRS repeater about 50-55 miles away and while I can get in at 20 watts, others had a hard time hearing me. My signal was loud and clear. The extra power did not get me anymore range but it did punch through foliage and other obstacles better than

Parents live in Sequim ... I am new as well!

Welcome, and safe travels to you!

Are you suggesting this for the sake of a magnet mount or for the sake of a ground plane? It looks to me like the tool box is using an through hole mount in which case ferrous metal isn't needed. And for ground plane, aluminum works just fine.

That was 48 Watts outta the repeater and 24 Watts outta the duplexer.... that loss is huge and lame at the same time!

That seals it. Two antennas, done. separated by about 30'. I'll update as I test range and propagation.

Yep. My home repeaters and my portable repeater are all capped at 50', using LMR400. Hard line, even ultra flex, is too stiff for portable use. So, I keep it short.

Okay, with 24 watts going into the duplexer end of 100 feet of RG-213 you get roughly 7.44 watts out of the antenna end of the coax. With LMR400 (I don’t know how KMR400 compares) the output is better than 12 watts at the antenna end.

You mean to avert losses in that cable. 100' is when you start getting into hardline. Heck, 50, 60 feet is when you start getting into hardline for UHF.

I measured output power at the TX of my kenwood TKR 850. I also measured coming out of the duplexer at the antenna plug. I am using RG213 and/or KMR400 (swapping back and forth in testing). The cable length is 100'. My comment for increasing power was not for gaining distance as a know that does work that way. I was more interested in foliage penetration. This tree is above canopy but the lower portion of it's foliage is at the rest of the trees canopy thus wanting to penetrate better. I can not speak to the tune of the duplexer but my SWR meter says 462.702 (the Freq i want). I do not remember the sales facts but I will update later after work but I feel good about the tune for the seller. Audio quality does not appear to be an issue for this novice ear. Antenna is a HYT(T) whatever tuned to that freq. I think it is 3db gain?.

Welcome!

All of the Part 95 certified Wouxun GMRS radios that I have messed with are locked down and can't be opened up for amateur bands. I haven't tried with the 805G. Now all of the Wouxun amateur band radios I have played with are easily unlocked.

OK, pretend I'm newish to this hobby and know next to nothing. I had to google MARS mod. So if that video is correct, you pop off those two transistors on the board and you can talk HAMS and GMRS?

Hello everyone from TX ... new to GMRS and got our license over the weekend. Looking forward to the next step beyond FRS. ~WSJY335

I change the radio transmit tones by: A+* to get into the Funnction Menu Using B/C to get to Menu 1 T-CTC UP/DN to choose a value D to save and exit menu I could make duplicates of each repeater pair, but that's not exactly what I'm trying to do. The scenario is I'm on vacation for a week, out of state, and I want to save that area's repeaters into say ch. 36 and 37. And to make it more complicated let's say they are on frequencies already saved in ch. 32 and 34 I think the simple answer is the change the tone on the default repeater channels and just live with it. Or be limited to channel 39.

Minor quibble: while to my knowledge the more recent wouxun stuff is locked down pretty solid, not so much for the 805g. That said, without a keypad, it isn't the easiest thing to use. My yaesu ft4x is also uncharacteristically easy to unlock/mod compared to most yaesu gear, requiring holding keys at startup similar to many inexpensive radios....I suspect the ft65 is similar as well. On the other hand, my btech GMRS 50x1 is locked down solid, and btech pretty much stonewalled me when I asked them about the possibility of unlocking it

I’ll give those a look I like that idea better than my plain pizza pan on the cab lol. John Deere green doesn’t upset me since it’s up on top I’ll never see it!

I like that solution a lot. That, and hood / fender mounts. Yeah yeah they're not "ideal" but they work fine for everything I use them for.

You will be better off tuning a non ground plane antenna with those third brake light mounts as you will only be getting a good ground plane in front of the antenna. My 2010 F150 is all steel but it is pretty thin. The mag mount will hold the Comet 2x4SR at highway speeds but even a small tree branch will knock it off. I will definitely look into adding reenforcement of some type when I finally decide to drill for a permanent NMO mount.

I’ve seen these discussed here on the forum, they are definitely pricey but it’s an option. Third Brake Light Antenna Mount - 2017-2025 Ford Super Duty

Yup, anything not getting out of the duplexer is heating the duplexer up. I suppose same with SWR, but not as dramatic. As for the tuning Marc had done for me the range didn't really increase that much but the clarity of the signal did. And the sensitivity of the repeater receiver vs being able to receive the transmitted signal on the HT was affected. The repeater could hear me but a lot of times I was just barely in range of the repeater. Whereas before I couldn't even trigger the repeater. I only moved up to a 100 watt duplexer because the transmitter pushes 71 watts at 13.8 volts and I have to reduce that to maintain below 50 watts after the duplexer. I've hear that a 50 watt duplexer does well up to about 35 watts in and after that doesn't. And I can say that a 50 watt duplexer doesn't do well with 65 watts in even though if you look at the specs it says 50-80 watts in.