All Activity

So you have a ground plane antenna with out a proper ground plane? Why bother you neutered your antenna. The whole system is not good at that point. You probably 1/4erd your tx distance. All that time and money wrapped up in a bad ground plane makes the rest pointless.

I don't have a repeater so I don't know what the setup page looks like. My point was the combination presented should be logical from the user's perspective.

One friend is using a rugged radio G4, and the other is using a Radioddity GM-30 handheld. I will have them check if they are set to wideband, and also I will try holding the mic at different positions. Thanks for the help.

If The Repeater Owner Has Previous Approved Or Denied Requests Attached To Their myGMRS Repeater Log, The "Request Access Disabled" Function Is No Longer An Option, Regardless Whether The Station Is Listed As Open - With Or Without The Squelch Tones. The Only Way To Correct & Have That Option Available, Is To Delete The Listing, Which Deletes Previous Requests, & Re-post The Repeater Station. Some Repeater Operators In WI Done That When They Went From A Paid To An Open Repeater Station.

It is certainly interesting when you chart it that way. As you say, the SWR improved on the bands for which the antenna was not designed, but not on the bands for which it was designed. In effect, it made this antenna a little more broad-banded. Now I need to do some more testing. I'll try a couple of different antennas and maybe the dummy load test.

He's using a nanovna -- it has the smith chart on it.

Some fancy pictures you have there! How did you draw them maybe a swirl o'graph? I had a SWR meter on the CB but it was a needle and flat graft of numbers. Reminds me of the ole navagation system Loran C location mapping.....

Thanks for posting.

That does make a difference, but what is the actual difference? How much of the difference is due to the antenna? Are the cables exactly the same length? Have you tested the insertion loss for each cable at each tested frequency? Remember, attenuation in an antenna makes SWR appear better. I believe these are the tabular results and I’ve arranged them by frequency It appears the older cable actually results in lower SWR for the 2 meter and 70 cm bands when connected to an antenna designed for those frequencies according to the value in the upper left of the screen. It would be interesting to see a single wideband sweep of just the cables into a dummy load to eliminate the effects of the antenna. Frequency Old Cable SWR -> New Cable SWR 462.000-470.000. SWR 1.900:1 -> 1.495:1 441.000-450.000. SWR 1.464:1 -> 1.498:1 151.800-154.600. SWR 1.888:1 -> 1.408:1 144.500-146.400. SWR 1.151:1 -> 1.395:1

There are some that are listed as Open but have tones unlisted and the request button enabled. Shouldn't @rdunajewski set up the site so that combination isn't possible, i.e. should be Permission Required in that case? There is/was one, now offline, that was Permission Required and Request Access disabled - shouldn't that be Members Only Free? These options need to make sense and apparently leaving it up to the repeater owners to choose sensible options is a failed exercise.

I was surprised. On the forums, there's always someone saying how Chinese coax is crap, real men only by USA cable, etc., but nobody's ever shown me the actual results. This is only one specific set of circumstances, and it's possible that if I had a good ground plane under the antenna, or a different antenna, the difference wouldn't be so obvious. Maybe in some cases, there's not enough difference to make a difference (RIP Paul Harrell), but in this case, it was worth the extra expense.

Would anyone here be interested in setting up a trivia game bi-weekly or monthly? A different person would volunteer to create the questions and keep give answers at the end of each round. Maybe 2 or three rounds of 10 questions. Scoring would be on the honor system. No prizes, just for fun and bragging rights.

That's really something. Even with such a short length, it makes a big difference.

IME, the general rule is that assuming both antennas are appropriate to the band I want to use, I'll get a bit more distance and clarity both rx and tx with the longer antenna. Often it isn't enough to matter, buy sometimes it's pretty noticeable. Individual radios may sometimes prefer one antenna over another for reasons I don't understand. That's kind of a long way around to say try them both under the same conditions and see what you get.

I recently installed some NMO mounting points on my truck, but for a variety of reasons, I wasn't entirely satisfied with them and decided to do it over. For the first installation, I used generic Chinese RG8X coax, but this time I went with USA-made MPD digital RG8X. The first thing I noticed was that the MPD coax is much more flexible and easier to work with, but even more significant is what happened to my SWRs/Smith graphs. With the Chinese coax feeding a Diamond SG7900 Super Gainer NGP 2m/70cm dual-band antenna, the 2 meter and 70 centimeter bands were good, GMRS was in the "I can tolerate it if I don't use it too often" range and MURS (Which I've never used and could live without, but why not test it?) Started at 2.0:1 and went up from there. The first four pics are the sweeps of GMRS, 2m, 70cm, and MURS in that order with the Chinese coax and the last four are the same after changing to the MPD coax on the same antenna. 2m and 70cm remained good and even improved a little, but GMRS and MURS improved dramatically -- all the way to, "Yeah, that'll do." If (like me) you have sometimes wondered, "Does it really make that much difference?" the answer is yes, it does. The MPD ain't cheap at $2.34/foot, but I only needed 30 feet. TBH, even if I needed 100 ft, I'd buy the MPD. The difference is that obvious. As the saying goes, if you buy the best, you only cry once.

Can you receive those same repeaters as well with the shorter antenna? You answered your own question.

Welcome, Zack!

No flashing required. Some early models had a few differences: USB-A and R8 firmware, and some USB-C models had the R8 firmware; so I specified to help whoever stumbles on this next. Could probably ship to Midland to flash. But you're right, at that point it's worth upgrading. But hey, gotta start somewhere!

I get people telling me the same thing from time to time. With no mic gain you just need to talk softer or further away. A good habit is to never use more power than you absolutely need! Use low power for all wheeling situations. When I use my kg1000+ people say I sound over modulated but when my family talks on the same radio to me I think they all sound fantastic which makes me wonder if some types of voices don’t do well on the kg1000+.

I do wish that Wouxun would include a way to adjust mic gain in their radios. And yes the KG-1000G mic is on the hot side. Another thing that greatly helps is holding the mic at an angle to your face instead of flat. PS: ignore Negative Nancy

I see you met our resident troll. Yeah he’s kind of a piece of work, not real good at social cues. Welcome to the forum anyway and congratulations on having an awesome sister! Cheers p.s. there is an ignore setting

Man midlands are a lot of work for no benefit at all. I’ve never once had to upgrade firmware on any radio ever. And all my radios work just fine. But they aren’t gimmicky radios that use worlds like “privacy tones” to lie to people. Midland….uugg

Like what. I’m actually pointing out a specific issue they the op brought up. You’re just getting upset. I actually read the rules before I paid my fees. It’s called taking responsibility. I know most people like you and many others don’t think that a good trait any more but I was raised to actually do research, read rules, in general have knowledge mostly from actual books. Today we have the interwebby and people are more uneducated than ever before. I mean it’s basic gmrs/FRS knowledge. 1-22 So you tell me what I have to learn and I’ll learn it. But in this case I’m not the one that had no clue what so ever about basic stuff even with the entire world at his finger tips. In today’s world no one should be ignorant but it happens all the time. It’s like telling the state trooper you did t know the speed limit. It’s like telling the state trooper you didn’t know you needed to use turn signals. Ignorance is No excuse. When you and all other gmrs users signed up we all told the fcc we have read AND understood the rules. Yet stupid questions and lack of understanding happens on this site every day. READ STUFF

He's got the 50W radio, he should make them change.. and they will have to endure his wrath if they refuse.

WE THINK YOU HAVE A LOT OF LEARNING TO DO ... So get on it SOCAL !!