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SWR is the Standing Wave Ratio, and is a function of your antenna, cabling, connectors, antenna mount, ground plane effectiveness, and environment. As power is reflected back into the radio rather than efficiently disappating it in the form of RF output, the reflection back into your radio is the standing wave. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but accurate enough to explain that if you see a higher SWR your radio is usually the last place to look, the last thing to blame. And into a dummy load -- it would be a terrible dummy load if it were reflecting power back into the radio. Their purpose is to absorb power with the proper ohm load to avoid elevated SWR that could damage the radio. Anyway, the RA87 has been very reliable for me over the past year or so. Unfortunately it fits in great with the utilitarian interior of my old Bronco, but not as well with the cushy interior of my newer F150. I'll probably go with something with a remote faceplate if I can figure out where i want to mount it, and how to route the antenna cable in this newer truck. In the old Bronco a few visible wires and a big radio under the dash just ads character.

The wattage refers to the power the speaker can handle. What tou need is to match the size and mounting.

If a receiver has a 2 watt audio output to the original speaker and it goes bad can it be replaced with a 5 watt speaker without hurting anything in the radio itself? Thanks, WSEK643

My RA87 in the truck as been great performer for months now. Many of the issues I faced early on was from me learning the radio. If things go sideways now( from me playing with features) I simply reload the code plug and all is right again. Not having a cooling fan is a good thing in my dusty truck.

Did you have either an antenna or dummy load on the power meter? If not, that could "in theory" fry them...."some people" say it will, and some say it wont....

It will be paired with my current Comet 712EFC, so 9.8dBi gain. 60 feet of M&P Hyperflex 13 and 24 feet of Heliax 1/2" hardline past the lightning arrestor. Eventually I'll get that same antenna on my repeater. I've only had it for a year now.

Compliment it with a high gain antenna 9,10,10 db gain and good coax and that 50w will radiate over 500watts. Should cut through cover very well.

I have had good luck with my Retevis RA87. According to my SWR meter, it pulls a steady 1.0-1.1 SWR reading & anywhere between 40-45 watts of power with a Larson magnetic mount antenna. It also pulls the same SWR & wattage on a dummy load.

It can be a frustrating thing to not have a clear cause and effect. It certainly could simply be group of failures caused by a bad batch of components.

I haven't had one go bad yet. Only be delivered DOA.

Picked up the KG 1000G Plus to use as my base station to complement the repeater I have at my shop. The repeater makes it fine into the house but sometimes the house has a hard time getting through the trees to the shop repeater. Going from 20 to 50 watts is only a bit more than 3dB, but it seems to work from the repeater to the house. I had already setup the CPS with my channels and only needed to read the radio and write back. The CPS doesn't cover the A,B,C,D buttons so I'll have to do those manually. Like the power button in that you don't need a long press to turn it on. People complain about the screen brightness. Not exactly screaming bright, but it's in a lighted shop and not in a dark vehicle. Since I already have a KG XS20G I'm already pretty familiar in the way it should work. Wife doesn't know yet. I'll probably install it after she goes to bed and she'll see the new radio when she gets up. LOL. Hoping it might get rid of some of the off center DMR that I have in my area. The XS20G lets it right through with the SOC receiver. Hoping the Super Het might limit or eliminate it.

Well that’s the interesting thing Steve, is I’m not exactly sure when these radios went kaput…. They worked fine for a couple weeks after my initial chirp setup. I was happy with them. Then I went in and did a few repeater adjustments…and added a few other frequencies to monitor and then I picked them up one day and noticed they wouldn’t key repeaters. So I put them on my surecom uhf meter and it shows 0.00 watts and now here I am

https://www.facebook.com/reel/563050153490031

Nor I.

I did test this with my Mac desktop and had the same results. I also put in a report to Rich.

If I bring up one of the repeaters in list view with stale/offline enabled and click on the repeater name, it will bring up the repeater info and a map view of the repeater location for what it's worth.

Here’s what Gil @WRUU653 found: “Yeah, there is something glitching, I found if I turn on both stale and offline tabs all the repeaters disappear from the map. But if I click on a repeater that is on the map and then click on that repeaters info, then go back and select stale and offline they show up. A ridiculous work around. I had wondered if this was because of my security settings as I hadn’t seen anyone complain about it. I’m using IOS on an iPad. I’ll go put on some coffee and see if it behaves the same on my Mac desktop. I’ll let you know what I find and I guess we should let Rich know.”

They can be made to appear in the map view by going to the list view first but there’s either a bug or a poor design that causes problems if you start in map view. I’ll dig up the complaint I turned in. Also, Gil I think found a workaround. Here is my complaint to Rich, which matches what you said:

And also there is the fact that dogs are shit producers.

<sarcasm>Not really </sarcasm >

They do - but they don't show up on the MyGMRS map view and you have to know to select stale and/or offline repeaters in the list view.

Sorry, I didn't notice the emoji. It was my Oops, its there. But you're right sarcasm and tone is hard to express in text.

Unless removed they should still appear when old data is selected.

The two largest and OPEN repeaters in my area are not listed on MyGMRS anymore. After one year of the repeater owner not logging into MyGMRS they get delisted from the map. I've talked to both repeater owners and they told me the same thing - they simply got tired of repeater requests, problems or questions. New users are welcome, both changed the MyGMRS listing to open repeater and listed the tone and don't log into the site anymore so the listings are gone.

hiding an 80' tower from your wife.. your are good.. you need to sell lessons..