All Activity

I have 3 of them, all work fine. I just make sure I take the battery off to charge it.

Will it lower your output power? In my experience, it often does. Will it lower it enough to matter? In my experience, no.

Hey y'all I'm about 48 hours fresh into my GMRS license so please bear with me as I likely touch the third rail. Although I plan on spending 90% of my time on simplex there's a few spots in my area where I'll be graciously utilizing my local repeater. Within my short time with a license I've discovered that several of my states largest repeaters are connected. Double edged sword because I've actually chatted up a bunch of people all over my fairly gigantic state today. It's been pretty awesome, really nice people and I could totally see myself nerding out on the network. The other side of that sword is that I've read over and over again that GMRS traffic is slow to non existent these days. Not that I was happy about that, but as I was looking to mostly try and communicate with my wife and daughter a handful of times a week with this that actually sounded kind of nice as that was a chunk of the appeal to the whole family license. It's not that either of them would mind as everyone I've heard on the radio has been nothing but polite and G rated, but then I also don't want to be ruining other people's good times with my seven year old checking in with me here and there. So tl;dr the entire state network is awesome but now I feel like using a local repeater feels a lot less local. Trying to be vague as I'm certainly not looking to put a spotlight on any particular area but just wanted to see what the thoughts were amongst the crowd here. I've been lurking for a couple months and the community seems awesome so thought I'd seek opinions. PS, I'm obviously really green in this space so please fill in the likely canyon-sized holes in my knowledge if I'm missing something. I have transmit and receive tones of my local repeater programmed but still get everyone.

It really depends on the design. It probably will still be enough. Just hook it up and see.

A lot of power supplies have an adjustment for the output voltage that ranges up to 15%. Does your supply have an adjustment? Post the model power supply and where it came from and we may be able to help you find an adjustment screw or give you better advice on what to do. I

I bought an inverter for 110v to Dc 15 amp for my 20 watt mobile. When I plugged it in it shows 12.9 volts. Will this lower my output as the vehicle outputs 13.8 volt.

I bought an inverter for 110v to Dc 15 amp for my 20 watt mobile. When I plugged it in it shows 12.9 volts. Will this lower my output as the vehicle outputs 13.8 volt.

As of last April. Yes

Wow, check out this big bruit battery from Baoefeng and the price. https://www.baofengradio.com/products/battery-5200mah-bl-5rhplus-usb?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email

The FL DOT was a big user of low band VHF but found the supply for new mobile radios dried up. Their last supplier, some 10-12 years ago, was Midland. Before that I believe it was GE and Vertex,

Adam, When you use the CPS for the radio there’s one place where you can set the range of the radio. What choices do you see there? That should answer your question.

I'm not sure what happened to the hundreds of the conventional (non-simulcast) GE Master IIs that were taken out of service several years ago in California and what make stations that replaced them a few years ago. The replacement stations may take a while until they are taken out of service because of migration to 700 MHz system. Also, there are almost a hundred Micors Simulcast and about 50-60 Quintron Simulcast stations that were taken out of service. However, these simulcast stations do not have the local CTCSS encoding modules for these stations because the CTCSS was centrally generated from the control point. Good luck in trying to obtaining the parts. These stations were not repeater stations. The mobile inbound (voted audio) traffic was rebroadcasted from the control point and the receivers used a separate antenna than the transmitter antenna with vertical separation. The stations were either 39, 42, 44, or 45 MHz transmitting stations. A lot of cavities and intermod panels had to be used

right now relatively easy and kind of cheap. I'm sure everyone will be building repeaters but if this approves current off the shelf will be just that. "off the shelf' Gone.. Like Mark says, the duplexers are giants and i remember a time whan they were thrown away as junk.. I can lithely remember Placer County tossing them after trying to give them away.. Those days are gone. Now you can't find them.

MIDLAND said: "When you enable the Talk Around function, it only affects the individual channel you’re on—not all channels at the same time. It uses that channel’s RX/TX frequency and its stored Privacy Tone settings, so you can chat directly if the repeater’s out of reach." And if that is the case, I don't think the problem is with my setup. I am inclined to think it is the repeater then.

You can't.

This is almost all there is in the amateur community. If people want it, they will spend the money and find a way. Also, I doubt any companies will tool a new radio for low-band GMRS, because most HF amateur radios already transmit on all of these frequencies. I guarantee you, if the market opens, damn near every HF amateur radio manufacturer will spend the very few dollars needed to have their engineers write new code to limit existing radios to the low-band GMRS specs. The duplexers are pretty big... about 86" tall. However, the bigger they get, the easier it is for a DIYer to make one.

From a technical and hardware standpoint. Where are the radio's going to come from? While some hams bought up the low band commercial gear for ham use, most of that has flushed through and is gone. Repeaters..... There haven't been low band repeaters built since the days of the MICOR, at least by Motorola. They had tube finals that are now obtainium. Yes, I know 3 guys are gonna pop in here and talk about the 4 they have on the shelf. So that's 12 tubes. Where are the rest of them going to come from? So then it's NEW radios. From a new source. No one on the commercial front is producing radios any more, and unless they ca see selling millions of them, none of the big commercial guys are gonna go back to that. And even if they did, you're talking about radios that will be over a grand to purchase. So then you have the chi-com stuff that will need to be filling the void. They don't currently support the platform. The dual band and single band chi-com radios that are in the pipeline are the same radio they produce as the UV-5R and other common chi-com radios. They are HIGH BAND VHF and UHF. And that appeals to a number of people. Even they aren't producing VHF -LOW transceivers. So new product for how many people? Remember that you can decorate a Christmas tree with Baofengs for less than the purchase of the tree, on sale. Everyone bought a number of them and they toss the guts in a new case, toss some better firmware at it and give it a new model number and they flock. If it's JUST a GMRS radio, and I am betting that the FCC will be watching, it's not gonna be 40 bucks for a portable and 125 for a mobile. And have you ever SEEN a duplexer for low band VHF? Let alone priced one. They are HUGE, and they carry a HUGE price tag. I don't know that the GMRS community is going to take to repeaters costing 10 grand or more with a duplexer and antenna, and 500 dollar mobiles. Oh, and Low Band antenna's.... that's not going on a 1 1/4 inch mast pipe on the end of your house either. And repeater / real base station antenna's are 40 plus feet of vertical real estate. But the bare minimum 1/4 wave is still 8 or so feet. And that's gonna be unity gain. Honestly, I see this as an idea by someone for a radio service that doesn't really know radio.

LOL, thanks for pointing out that I'm an IDIOT. Do you treat EVERYONE who makes an honest mistake like this???? P.S. The Radio actually DOES work on 6M, CB-FM, 2M, 1.25M, 70cm, MURS and GMRS and I'll post another video to PROVE it to you. Love ya' Bro.

IMO - Folks Should Do Some Real Research On A Radio, Before Putting Out A Bogus / Nonsense YouTube Vid. This Type Of Junk Does Noting But Confuse New Potential GMRS Users. Some That Just Recently Purchased A Ham License & Now Seem To Be RF Experts, Are Putting Out Vids & Disputing The Manufactures Specifications On Their Products. Really.........

I noticed this as well on a H8 Gen 3 when I programmed the tone manually on the radio.

I'm very new to radio and just recently picked up a pair of H8 Gen 3s and a pair of H8 Gen 2s (bought their "mystery box" H8 offer). I've done a little bit of programming with ODmaster via bluetooth. Data cable came yesterday, so now I can mess with CHIRP and firmware. I'm tempted to experiment with Nicsure firmware, or any other custom firmware that might be out for these. Its been a fun learning experience so far.

How can I turn off the start up music when radio is turned on - or at least lower the volume without lowering receiver volume when the radio is in use. BTECH GMRS-50V2

Update on 33cm/900MHz. I now have 2 of these radios and while they do seem to TX on that Frequency there's no RX on either. Not sure if it's a firmware issue(since there is newer firmware out for them) or what but all the other Frequencies work just fine. No matter what the manufacture states they will do all the other Frequencies that I stated except 33cm/900MHz. Here's the proof.

i've noticed that too.. A year ago you could buy retired used Commercial radio stuff on Ebay cheap cheap.. I was lucky and got a few things including a couple high end Hytera Repeaters, one of them brand new. Now, the used commercial stuff is going for high dollar premiums and the junk left over from then..

I do want to make a correction. 33cm/900MHz does seem to TX but there's no RX as I now have 2 of these radios and can't get them to RX on 33cm even with the proper antenna. I can TX and RX on CB, 6M, 2M, 1.25M and 70cm along with MURS and GMRS without any problems. Despite with the website says they WILL TX/RX on more frequencies than listed if they're set to "Super Mode", I know for a fact because I've done it. The website is probably listing what will TX/RX on "Normal" range. P.S. They also do RX only on Airband, FM Broadcast and NOAA Weather Radio.