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Greetings... Does anyone out there in GMRS land have any experience with 3rd brake light antenna mounts? Like these: https://bulletproofdiesel.com/collections/antenna-mounts Do they leak? Are they strong enough for a ~32" antenna? I've been using a magnet mount on my GMC truck, running the coax out thru the rear sliding window, and placing the antenna on the roof of the cab just in front on the 3rd brake light. From an RF signal perspective, it works just fine, but I would not mind transitioning to a more permanent antenna mount. I like the idea of a no-drill solution and keeping the antenna's location more-or-less in the center of the ground plane. That makes this antenna mounting option seem like an elegant solution even though it is a bit expensive. Any feedback or personal experience is appreciated... Thanks

Dude - You Are Responding To A Post Dated 12.22.2022....... Please Take The Time To At Least Look At The Date Of The Post You Are Responding To With Your Comment Post.......

I've been using for a long time to get into local repeaters without issue. Performance is much better with a whip cut for 220, s9 no worries about damaged PA.

Its not just the Chinese...

You can not practically measure swr on an HT. Just do some radio checks with a buddy and see how you sound and how they sound. Thats the best you can do. I’ve found the 771 does best for me. All my hts have them. I hear a guy just about every week on our local repeater trying out all kinds of different ht antennas and from my perspective they all sound exactly the same. But don’t tell him that he gets all kinds of upset. He must spend $100 a week on ht antennas.

Yeah, spoofing DMR ID's isn't that common, true. I miss programmed one of my NX-1300's setup for DMR. I got called out on that error when making a contact while out of town last summer. Oops. I guess if that's what you find important then the feature is of value to you. Me, not so much. Just a difference of opinion.

I got close. I paid $35 for the original version of the radio with antenna, battery pack and charger base in like new condition last spring at a Ham swap.

I would be careful about that. Go to the link below and look at the section for 220 band. http://anytonetechzone.byethost7.com/878techmods.htm

First, don’t mistake SWR for antenna quality. If it were that simple we’d all use dummy loads. They typically provide a very low SWR but have no ability to radiate RF. Second, the SWR meter is not a sufficient ground plane for a VHF antenna. Typically you’d need either a planar surface of metal or an array of radials of at least a quarter wave radius or length to provide a decent ground plane. For VHF that’s much larger than the body of the SWR meter you’re using. The fact is that measuring SWR for handheld antennas is frequently futile and unnecessary. Instead hook up the antennas and see what kind of performance you get.

For shame, making poor Granny come out of retirement and be a windows installer!

I promise this is not clickbait, but more a question as to what am I doing wrong. I’ve heard a lot of guys on my local repeaters proclaiming that the Nagoya and Diamond antennas are the best HT antennas that money can buy. I’ve also seen similar things on the YouTubes. So I grabbed one of each. However when I test my antennas on my SWR meter they are showing higher sometimes dangerously higher SWR than the stock “rubber duck” or gooseneck antennas that shipped with the radios. I am almost certain I am doing something wrong, or not understanding something. Radio Equipment: BF UV25, BF UV5R, Moto APX7000 Testing Equipment: Surecom SW33 Procedure: Radio>Meter>adapter>antenna touching the body of the SWR meter as directed for ground plane, testing on low, medium, high power Diamond SRH805S VHF: Unacceptable borderline dangerous with a VSWR of 10.56 across all radios and power settings, high of 12.1 and low of 6.2. Diamond SRH805S UHF: SWR is almost perfect. Averaging VSWR of 1.15 across all radios and power settings, high of 1.49 and a low of 1.1. Nagoya NA-701G VHF: Did not conduct this test as it would not be fair for an advertised GMRS antenna to be tested on VHF. Nagoya NA-701G UHF: Marginal performance averaging VSWR of 2.036 across all radios and power settings, high of 2.6 and low of 1.04. Rubber Duck VHF: Acceptable performance averaging VSWR of 1.86 across all radios and power settings, high of 2.78 and low of 1.01. Rubber Duck UHF: Excellent performance averaging VSWR of 1.47 across all radios and power settings, high of 2.1 and low of 1.01. Gooseneck VHF: Acceptable Performance averaging VSWR of 1.584 across all radios and power settings, high of 2.29 and low of 1.01. Gooseneck UHF: Excellent performance averaging VSWR of 1.01 across all radios and power settings, high of 1.01 and low of 1.01. TLDR: why am I getting higher SWR on the “better” antennas than I am on the “rubber duckies”?

Shhh! According to certain folks GMRS isn't a hobby. Although I looked up the definition of hobby, just in case I had been wrong all these years, and it certainly fits.

It was about 2 years ago.. I'm sure it works well, but the install was a kludge..

I run the 275/575 in all my Jeeps. I like KISS and that works for my needs. Not a ton of room in a Jeep.

Nice! That's really good to know. Did you try it recently or many generations back? I find the latest versions work really well, surprisingly since Broadcom took over.

I did, right before trying Parallels.. VMWare was so difficult and convoluted to get installed i was never able to get it running. - By comparison Parallels required one or two mouseclicks and it did everything, including downloading and installing Windows after it installed itself. It is literally so simple, grandma could do it.

Have you tried VMware? It supposedly works on a both MAC platforms. It's free. Plus, you can download Windows 11 directly from Microsoft. You will have 30 days before having to buy a product key. If it works, great. Pay if you want to keep it after 30 days. I use VMware foe all my radio programming whether in Windows or Linux.

You're smart enough to understand economics. The 878 is a $14 radio, but some of us will pay what it's worth to the individual. I happen to feel that $200 for a disposable radio is a fair price. Would I pay $205 for it? He'll no, that exceeds fair market value for me. Would I pay $600 for a Yaesu FT5? Not on my life. The 878 far exceeds my performance expectations for a disposable radio. Simply put, a bargain.

I don’t understand. You called the Anytone 578 a $15 radio but you pay $200 for the 878? The 578 plus is a 50 watt (vhf, 40 UHF, and 5 watts 1.25 meters) mobile version of the 878 but with cross-band repeater capability. I don’t know that it’s worth $485, but it’s certainly better than the majority of the inexpensive radios.

I can not speak to the specific software or the programming cable you need for that radio, BUT I have an M2 MBP, in parallels I can’t seem to get cables to work. I have tried an APX7000 and CPS33, Harris XG100P with RPM14, and several different “cheap Chinese radios”. I’m sure there is something I could do to fix this issue but I am not an elite hacker, so my warning is this. Assuming it works at all it will not be plug and play. note to add: the softwares for all of the above mentioned radios work just fine, just can’t read or write the radios.

Unfortunately that's what we have to deal with. I know Yaesu's HTs are garbage as most have poor recieve audio quality. At that price point I would expect more. That's why I opted to buy my 878s for $200 instead of $600 from the big three. At $200, I consider it a throwaway radio, which it is. Gotta admit Yeasu does build reliable HF rigs. They have yet to get the VHF/UHF sector working reliably.

It is definitely a known design issue.

The rub is that they charge $900 to repair a $1300 radio (pre tariff price). The bigger issue is that Yaesu knows it is a problem which is most likely caused by them during the manufacturing process. They solder a capacitor in place that is only used to program the USB controller. But Yaesu does not program the chips themselves, they use the factory programming from Silicon Labs. So there is no need for Yaesu to even put that capacitor on the board. Several people that have had their radios repaired by Yaesu for the bad USB port was told directly by the Yaesu repair tech to not use the built in USB port. He told them to use an external sound card instead. This is a common issue with the FTDX10, FTDX101 and FTDX991. I'm really surprised that we haven't started seeing the FT710 have the same issue.

Another neat feature of the 878 is it will do 220, albeit only 1/2 watt. Same chipset as the 578.

It’s true that a person can spoof another person’s DMR ID, but that’s probably not done frequently in amateur radio. The exact address isn’t important to me, but being able to see their country, call sign, and name is nice, just like having your logging software look up call signs automatically.