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Thanks, @SteveShannon!! I appreciate all your help!!

Yes, the Radioddity GM-30 and it’s clone, the Baofeng UV-15 can be flashed with the firmware from the “unlocked” Baofeng UV-13Pro Ham Radio; making it, in effect, a UV-13Pro! I purchased a UV-13Pro from AliExpress when it first became available, as it gave me portable tone scanning for my hobby “war driving” of finding repeaters and “sniffing” out tones. It never occurred to me that the 13Pro was a hardware “clone” of my Pofung UV-15 (Baofeng UV-15 a/k/a Radiodd GM-30) even to the extent of battery swapping! And now with Chirp support, all of these models have tremendous potential and continued versatility. What is this “sync” function you are referring to, and I can see if my UV-13Pro supports it.

Yeah, that is very odd. Privacy tones make it so you can't hear a signal unless the tone is present. You should hear the signal with no tone and it should go away when the tone is enabled, unless your radio is broken. That could be possible. You hear noise when tone squelch is enabled because the radio is broken, and you're just hearing random noises from the radio itself.

Nice! Welcome to the community!

Well done!! Enjoy GMRS!

WSJV 482 here! Made my first contact today in Waynesville, NC! Didn't get his callsign but at least I finally hit a repeater!!

If I get up at 3 am it’s to use the WC.

Yep, had most of that for a long time. I don't agree on some of the survivalist/prepper frequencies - we have to work that out for ourselves and our locale. I can see somebody misreading that and getting up at 3AM to use the CB.

Do you hear this noise when the repeater is turned off?

Interesting potential modification of the GM-15pro/UV-13/Radioddity GM30. Would be curious if the GM-15pro keeps it's sync function after the firmware modification. https://youtu.be/G44BtmgYqhw?si=4Ni5-nVrD4FNZB_P

Yeah, yeah and use lag bolts with construction glue! lol

If you have a smart phone the mapping software likely has a GPS feature allowing you to get your current coordinates.

Well, maybe some logging equipment as there isn't a bit of farmland in quite some distance, well beyond the repeater. I here's a google maps pin of nearish were we tried the repeater. To further add some details, we would hear this noise on 20 or 22 repeater only with our without privacy. https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZKxaU34Jv3kgCZ7y9 <-approximate repeater location

Easy way to test is stick a thick sheet of plastic under the antenna magnetic base while the vehicle is stationary. If the match still looks OK then the glue won't make much of a difference.

Honestly if you’re going to do anything that’s more permanent than peel and stick you should really just punch a hole and install a through-hole NMO mount like @gortex2 showed.

You have probably seen this but for what it's worth, I passed this info around my contacts https://radiofreeq.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/shtf-survivalist-radio-frequency-list/

If we are going that far....braze a plate down.

That is the sound of telemetry data, while listening to it with an analog receiver. Its very common to hear on FRS/GMRS channels in rural areas where farming is mostly still family run and they don't have big budgets for automated monitoring and control systems.

Sounds like you are trying to connect to AOL by phone.

It was a very strong signal and discernible from the predicted ranges of the repeater even when voice didn't work. We tested the radios with straight gmrs (not using the repeater) and the tone never showed up. The strange sound appeared with Privacy Tones On or Off. As far as the SWR, he said it was "off the charts" on the Slim Jim Antenna and when he tested his fiberglass antenna back at the farm it read "8" However, the SWR was not for UHF so those results should probably be ignored. So far he's not been able to reproduce the tone back at the farm. Same repeater, same portable battery, same coax, and slim jim Antenna. So far though, I appreciate the help.

IDK, I have a few "POS Pandaland" antennas, and they seem ok... (at least for my purposes). At 460Mhz a 1/4 wave whip on an NMO mount is electrically very simple (no loading coils, etc.). It's not that the SWR doesn't change from the resonate apex of the tuned bell curve, it is a matter of how much it changes and if that change falls outside of a safe operating range or results in a humanly noticeable performance degradation. I'm no metallurgist, and perhaps there is much I don't understand on this topic, but at the relatively low <=50-watt power level used in GMRS, it would seem that a minor materials differences between a Pandaland vs other name brand whip antenna would have a negligible impact and be functionally imperceptible in most real-world scenarios. Anyway, that has been my experience. All I'm saying is that sometimes it is ok to give a Panda a chance!!

That does not sound right. Was the signal of the noise strong, like it was coming from the repeater, or was it weak like it was something far away? ..and, poor SWR would have nothing to do with this noise, but what do you mean by "strange results"? What was the SWR reading? and what do you mean by "more specific meter"?

Yup, I noticed that, so I registered and trying again with a direct upload and a link from G drive. Offending audio in question linked and attached here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cuIFnbH_eVS-tK4AAoTZZDrSx75JxyJJ/view?usp=drive_link Between the two it should be ok. My friend did hook the antenna system up to an SWR and was getting strange results. To the point where he's ordering a more specific meter. Sep 7 at 11-37.m4a

Perhaps an iron or aluminum bearing epoxy would negate that issue. I don’t know of any commercial epoxies that contain aluminum powder, but JBWeld has iron powder in it.

The BTech UV-5x3 is a tri-band Ham Radio that also supports the 220 MHz band and has some nice programming features over my older Baofeng UV-5Rx3. I do not know if the 5x3 supports transmission on GMRS.