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Hello, I recently installed my new GMRS radio and getting high 3 to 3+ SWR readings using the Midland Ghost and the Midland 32" whip antenna in an open area. When I connect the magnet antenna that came with the radio, I have a 1.3 SWR. The NMO mount is 3/8 through hole and mounted in the center of my Tacoma roof. The radio is powered direct to battery both positive and negative. The base of the NMO mount has ground continuity with the outside threads of the PL-259 female on the radio. The mount has good continuity with the shield/outside and center conductor on the PL-259 at the end of the cable with no shorts. I do get a short between shield and center conductor when I screw on either antenna. I'm thinking maybe the coax was compromised somehow during installation and I'm facing pulling the headliner down again and installing a new mount. I'm in San Diego if anyone works on these things and would be happy to pay a professional to get it right. Any advice would be appreciated. Here's my setup: Arcadian MABVT8U: 3/8 Thru-Hole NMO Mount with 17 Ft. RG-58/U Cable MicroMobile® Ghost 3dB Gain NMO Antenna - MXTA25 MicroMobile® Whip 6dB Gain NMO Antenna - MXTA26 MXT575 MicroMobile® GMRS 50-Watt Two-Way Radio - MXT575

(bluetooth) OD Master can't do a firmware update as far as I know. You need to be physically plugged in to do and update using the IAP software. The CPS software easily took off the stun/kill on mine. Not even a little struggle.

So, if I can pry, @Jaay, what didn't you like about your h8? What do you like about your wouxon that the h8 failed you on? My new replaced h3 locked up on me yesterday as i had to keep it in my pocket as the belt clips suck period and I'm tired of it falling to the floor/ground with every movement. Couldn't find any help to unlock the kill lock with one unit only. So I hooked it up to my Odmaster online and it downloaded the new firmware without my acknowledgement and ruined this radio, like the firmware did to my original unit.. So now, even tho the radio is locked with s kill lock and no number for it in the manual, it is locked and with the new firmware installed, which locks the radio in transmit mode and won't stop unless you turn it off. I liked the conveniences of the small unit with both ham and gmrs. But now I am seeing more for sale and tested on youtube and they all look like they are manufactured in the same plant and just put different names on them. So, I am interested in hearing your thoughts on your h8 as that was going to be my next replacement, moving up to 10 watts as I can't reach the local repeaters where I am in missouri, south of st. louis. Have a great Thursday and thanks again for responding to my post.. Crazy WSDX855 To the others, I couldn't get od master to fully load up on the screen it was all grayed out, but it did upgrade the firmware which doesn't like older version radios. so now I am just waiting for the guys in china to get back to me today.. They do respond quickly, that I will say..

We can't be wasting perfectly good coffee around here!!!!!! I know I can't afford to waste coffee as I suffer from having too much blood in my caffeine system for the first couple of hours each day.

I have one and it WILL do 33cm/900MHz, trust me. You set it to "Super Mode" and you can do from 18MHz to 999MHz. It only says "Dual Band" on the web site but it'll do 10M, 6M, 2M, 1.25M, 70cm, 33cm, CB FM, MURS and GMRS and alot of other Frequencies in between.

That would be a tragic waste

Kill and Stun are off in OD Master too. Interesting......

Just looked. Kill and Stun are turned off in the CPS, not sure about the OD Master.

Weird. Turned on the H3 and it was in Stun/Kill mode, no access. Thought I'd have to talk with Luxi again. Turns out if you use the USB port and their CPS you just reprogram the radio and you're all set. I have lots of AM stations in my radio for the airport and the CPS won't program those. But I also use OD Master and it has all those programmed in it so just re-reprogrammed it and it's all back to normal. Took about 1 minute. No idea what set off the kill mode though.

Pretty much. Except GMRS can do repeaters.

Theoretically yes, but in practice the opposite has often proven to be the result. What happened was that FM dropped out at essentially the same distance that AM became unintelligible. AM broke squelch farther away, but was completely unreadable at max distance. If I recall FM was full readable where AM was 50/50.

Neat! Probably a bit of both, plus a dash of luck.

I have traveled and spent time camping all over the place. The only place i have encountered 70CM tropospheric ducting is right here in the Indian Wells Valley or the foot of the Sierras. And the traffic i was picking up was coming form Southern California, just a mere 140miles south. Although i tried a couple times, i never was able to make a contact with someone 'ducting' in but their conversions were coming in like there were sitting next to me.

I do tropospheric ducting with GMRS. Just takes the right conditions. And I've never really gotten huge distances. Just impossible connections. Where I am and where I connected has a huge mountain in between that makes it impossible to have any sense of LOS. It's only about 70 miles and it only happens in the summer. And it's only happened once this summer and I'm not sure if it's conditions or from me going from a 7.2dBi to a 9.8dBi gain antenna. There was one night were I was able to connect and talk with several people with my HT and they said it was R9. Very unlikely unless you live in SoCal....

IIRC both are primarily line of sight so performance should be roughly the same, especially with HTs. You can take advantage of troposheric ducting with 11m/CB for the occasional long distance connection (whereas UHF just punches through the atmosphere) but you can't rely on that for regular communications.

just don't spill it on ya

you have a point.. my shirt was looking out for for me

and you didn't spill coffee on your shirt reading it.. you're lucky

two violators don't make a right

Hey just like GMRS!

Uh... unless I'm mistaken this is not correct. AM CB will talks more fars than FM, no? As to @LeoG's question as to what is the difference? FM is a little cleaner, sounds a little warmer. But nobody, en masse, is talking on it so unless it's you and someone else you plan to have comms with, there's no need to get one. I have one. It stays on AM band 24/7.

I'm really wrestling with what, in this thread, is the most odd and simultaneously impressive. The fact that the OP has been a member of this site for 4 years and has only just now chosen to post or the fact that his first post is literally a letter to POTUS. I applaud the energy you expended on what is almost certainly a wasted effort.

We had someone doing that on our 2m and GMRS repeaters a few months back. The person would play sirens and a police scanner. What made it worse is the person did it during our nets. Saying anything just made it worse. So we just started to ignore the ID10T and he stopped after a bit. We also had a drunk that we sent a certified letter to stating he is no longer welcomed on our repeater. He stopped after receiving the letter. We still don't know if he was the one playing the sirens and police scanner over the repeaters.

Hopefully you didn't get any coffee on your keyboard and monitor or phone.

One of the local linked repeaters near me has been in almost constant chaos the last few days from somebody playing music on the repeater/network. Don't know what is worse - the person causing the interference or the folks wining about it but it's a fun battle to listen to.