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100% agreement. I will continue to maintain the Retevis programming application on my computer--- but I don't use it. The Chirp program, in my opinion, is much easier to use for the RA87.

FWIW, I've never declined an access request to my repeater (detailed on the previous page). The only reason I don't publish the tones and label it as "open" is because word will get out (beyond the members here) and I'll have people on the repeater who won't respect either FCC regulations or my own rules. With request "by access request", I know that whoever is asking at least has a GMRS license and I have their contact info should I need to make operational changes to the repeater that need to be announced.

Another open repeater now is Vance 600 (467.575) with a a PL tone different than the usual tone. New location and placed at about 300 ft up it almost reaches Summerville.

These and other fixes will be in 1.2.5m. Unfortunately, I can't make some changes to the CPS until I get firmware that's close to the release version, and then I deliver the CPS to BTECH and they validate it before releasing it. With the original V29 firmware and CPS 1.2.5l, new features in pre-release test firmware were pretty well set and the remaining firmware versions were bug fixes or UI improvements that didn't affect the CPS. Firmware V33 was released while I was out in the Mojave Desert - the reason that elevation now works properly instead of telling you you're at an altitude that requires supplemental oxygen is because I took a radio to Badwater Basin (282 feet below sea level) as well as other locations (see picture) to verify the accuracy of the reported altitude. The firmware change notes were written by me at my campsite and uploaded via satcom ($$$) to BTECH because I was in the middle of nowhere. The changes to enable SK1 and add NOAA were felt to be minor enough to wait for 1.2.5m. 1.2.5m should release either with or within a few weeks after the next firmware update is released. That isn't entirely under my control. It adds the SK1 and NOAA changes as well as many other changes - both bugfixes and improvements to the CPS and its manual, as well as support for the new features coming in the next firmware release. One complicating factor is that Baofeng won't give BTECH certain critical information I need to make some CPS updates until BTECH says "this firmware is good - put it in new radios". Then it's a mad scramble for me to finish the CPS and get it to BTECH for testing. I can't tell you about new features or other things in the upcoming firmware release, but I will say that 1.2.5l was my internal build number 290 (since 2023). The forthcoming 1.25m is now up to build number 319 and I still have 5 critical pending items and another 10 WIBNI (Wouldn't It Be Nice If...) feature requests that won't hold up the release of 1.2.5m if I don't get to them. 2 of the 5 critical ones can't be addressed until BTECH approves the next firmware release and I get the data I need from Baofeng.

Thanks for the help , when I get home from work tonight I’ll give that a try , greatly appreciated!!!

Let me know if my PM reply to your PM on this helped.. if so I can post it here to help ohters in the future.

Sent you a PM after you PM'd me about this. if what I send you solves it.. I'll repost it here to help others with the issue.

Recently got a db25g I programmed it with chirp for my local repeaters for the life of me I can’t figure out why it won’t transmit or receive anything I have proper ctcss codes and everything any help or advice is greatly appreciated

Was wondering if anyone owns an Ailunce Ha1g, i just got one and figured out majority of programming but for the life of me I can't chance scan list when scanning. Any help would be appreciated.

@WA7SKG I have a db25g I programmed in my local repeaters with correct ctcss and offsets everything looks good but for some reason my radio won’t transmit or receive anything any tips or advice would be appreciated

As a relatively new gmrs user, I myself don’t use repeaters often because I know they are owned by people who put alot of time money and effort into them. I didn’t help them. I just found them listed on a website as “open”. And as such I feel like if I get on those repeaters im tying up their air space, using their resources, drawing their power and cycling their machines of which I did nothing to help with. So I try to stay off them unless absolutely necessary despite them being listed as “open”. I’ve never for a moment thought the big repeater owners actually wanted traffic on their machines by anyone other than those they give permission or those that are in their close knit groups because that would put wear and tear on their system by people they don’t even know. Maybe I’m off base. Maybe other people feel the way I do and it could be the reason a lot of useless tiny coverage repeaters pop up. I personally would rather see 1 repeater convering an area well than 4 covering it poorly but who am I to make any comment on the subject as I bet repeater owners prolly feel like everyone just leeches off their hard work which is what goes through my mind every time I key up someone’s “open” repeater. None of this is sent in jest or malice whatsoever. Just adding into the conversation is all. Huge respect to everyone keeping the positive vibes and RF pumping off their towers and over the airwaves.

Please fix the SKey1 Shortcut bug in BTECH BF-F8HP PRO CPS Version 1.2.5l. Window > Radio Function includes SKey2, but SKey1 is absent. When writing to radio, user preference for SKey1 Shortcut is lost. For example, if I set SKey1 to FM via radio keypad, then subsequently use CPS to modify memory channels/zones and write changes to radio, Skey1 Shortcut becomes inoperable and requires resetting to preference via keypad. Also, NOAA is an option for SKey1 and SKey2 via keypad, but not listed in the CPS shortcut picklist. Much appreciated! ...73

When you want to connect two or more LiFePO4 batteries together you top charge them individually and then when they are all fully charged you can put them in series or parallel. If you put two batteries together that are of unsimilar charged state they might discharge into one another but the protection circuits in each battery will shut it down if the current levels get excessive and out of the set spec of the BMS.

I second what @WRHS218 said. Once you join Texas GMRS Network you will have access to a lot of repeaters, many of which are not listed here. MyGMRS.com has a much better forum though.

I don't know how it got to this. I will tell you how it will end though. There seems to be an almost 'ham club' mentality about having a repeater. Long ago, someone told me if you found a town with 2 hams in it, there would be a minimum of 3 ham clubs. Because each one want's to have his own thing, and then the third club they are both members of. GMRS repeater ownership (and I use to see this a LOT in ham too) somehow is some status symbol, or just 'part of having the license'. People will stand up a medium to poor coverage repeater hanging an antenna at 20 feet in the air just so they can hear their call sign in CW on the air. Not that they know CW or know it's correct, but it's THEIR repeater. Never mind there is a monster coverage repeater or two in the area that everyone has access to, they need to do their own thing for whatever reason they have. SO here's the outcome. Guys that build monster coverage GMRS repeaters do it for others to enjoy and operate on. There is no other reason to build a repeater like that. It's far easier and cheaper to just build one with the antenna on the end of your garage and be done with it. This happens at a cost in time, money and labor. You don't park antenna's multiple hundreds of feet in the air using LMR400 or RG8. Antenna's that will put up with the wind at 200 feet do NOT come from Ed Fong, Retivis, or Comet. And they certainly aren't cheap. When the little play time repeaters start pulling the users away from the big repeaters, and it's not the asset that it was, or the owner doesn't see it that way, they will QUICKLY decide that it's not worth the effort to keep theirs on the air and the big repeaters will go away. You will go from being able to talk across an entire county on one repeater to hopscotching across a city from repeater to repeater trying to carry on a conversation that would have been no problem on the big repeater. And you can sit here and pontificate all you want about that not being the roll of GMRS. NO ONE care's. Figure it out. That's what it's being used for regardless of what you say, the regulations indicate, or the FCC has conveyed. It's a social gathering medium. Pure and simple. So while it may be meant for that use. It's what it's being used for. I just personally experienced a setback with a project at my site. We crested $400 A MONTH for the electric bill. I was looking to run an inverter to power part of the gear that will not power off DC any reasonable way. But converting 48 volts to 120 volts and the feeding servers don't make them draw less, the draw went up significantly. Which lead me to look at what I am sitting on. I have a bunch of good 75 and 105 Ah AGM batteries that would sell easily for 50 bucks a pop. Just the 48 volt plant batteries are worth a grand. Then there are another 12 divided between the 12 and 24 volt plants. So another thousand plus dollars. IN BATTERIES, sitting there so that others can use the repeaters I host for NO cost to them. SO yes, when it seems that Elvis as left the building and the repeaters aren't getting used, they will be shut off, sold off and I will NOT care in the slightest. I can't wrap my mind around why we are getting on here and COMPLAINING about the actions of others. Are these other repeaters interfering with YOUR repeater? Are you unable to put up you own 20 foot antenna for your own repeater that will equally not serve anyone, and have less coverage than two walkies on simplex? I fail to understand the issue here. Do you have thousands of dollars in equipment that the user base is slowly dwindling away because they put up their own repeaters and they choose to go hang out on them and talk to no one because no one is in the coverage footprint besides them?

My radio resides on the dash of the JEEP and there is no necessary reason for it to venture "in a working mode" into my home. We just don't have any repeaters around and those that have GMRS radios in their vehicles don't turn'em on to my knowledge. Workers use the FRS radios and even a friend of mine hardly every uses his except off road... The most I ever used ths one was when I had a friend that traveled with us off road. He got sick and is home bound 70 miles away.. AND THANKS for the list of other radios Nokones. That was a kind gesture.

Open up Device Manager and then click on Ports. FTDI chips will say Silicon Labs since that is who created the drivers for the FTDI chips

Line of sight does make more of a difference when using VHF and UHF. I'm glad to hear that you are getting into all of the repeaters now. A j pole antenna has zero gain when measured in dBd, which is the same as a dipole antenna. Using the kv5r loss calculator and your specs, you will have an ERP of 21.8 watts. As you see that will still work even though you are losing about half your power output. Switching to 50 feet of LMR400 will only gain you 6.9 more watts on ERP. I would not bother switching out the RG-213 to LMR400 for that little power gain. What will make a difference is going with an antenna with higher gain. But no need to change anything if it is working well for your needs.

I did figure out the port part but as far as the cable goes I don’t know which one I have

Do you have the FTDI chip programming cable or the Prolific cable. You need to make sure that you have the appropriate driver for the type of cable you using. And you do need to select the correct port in the CPS. Usually, the correct port will have a white background and the others are grayed out. Select the port that is white

CHIRP's idea of zones is very different from zoned Baofeng (and similar) brands. I think it may be based on some high-end radio. Anyway, to CHIRP, zones are a table where you can use a checkbox to put a channel into one (or more, or zero) zones. On the Baofeng radios, zone names are basically text strings that live in the settings menu and channels go into zones based on channel number as someone described above. Regarding your issues with the BTECH CPS, I'd be very interested in hearing about them, since I wrote that software. Assuming you are using CPS version 1.2.5l, can you give me more details (via DM if you like). In particular, were the unexpected channels created on the radio after a write, or did the duplicates appear in the programming software? If you have a .dat file that causes the problem, I'd like to see it. You can either DM me here or email BTECH support (not putting the email address here to foil spam crawlers) and just put "Terri asked me to have you forward this to her" near the top of your email if you don't want to reach out to me directly (just because I say I wrote it is no proof that I did, although the "About" box will provide a hint). Before we get that far, can you load your .dat file and just click "[Next]" at the bottom of the channel window to go through all 10 zones? You might get a message about corrupted data when moving to a new zone. The CPS assumes that if it's in a .dat file it can load, it's valid. But paging through each zone does additional checks to make sure all the settings are valid.

I also am having issues with the cable . I have a programming cable from a TM-481A and from what I understand is the same cable for the 880. But I’m also told that I need a cable driver for it to work ? I am running a mini computer can’t seem to get the software to read my 880 . Any and all help would be greatly appreciated

That is the important part. I changed the Tx power calibrations on my radio by accident using the factory debug software (sorry, I can't share, please don't ask). A Surecom SW-102 hooked directly up to the radio didn't register any power or even the frequency I was "transmitting" on. However, another radio next to it could hear it and we could carry on a conversation in the same room, but not at any greater distance. If the OP can talk to the other radio at 1/4 mile in simplex, then I'd look to see that the Tx / Rx (if used) tones for accessing the repeater didn't get clobbered somehow.

I am considering the Wouxun KG-905G based on a test done recently by myself and a friend. His house is over 13 miles away from mine. While testing my 10-watt portable repeater he could receive on his various inexpensive handhelds but couldn't really make out any words. However, on his Wouxun KG-905G he could hear me clearly with little background noise. This may never be an issue for most folks (receiving while on the fringe of coverage) but it did show that there is a difference, at least on receiving. This is probably simply due to the Wouxun KG-905G being a super heterodyne radio.

I'm using a 40 watt radio with 50 ft of RG 213. Moving my antenna high enough to get a clear line of sight made all the difference. Turns out, I was misreading the line of sight graph. Now, I can carry on clear conversations with all the repeaters within my local area.