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The Amazon man just delivered my BTech GMRS 50Pro - ask your questions now/post your concerns! I will be uploading a video about it in the next day or two and looking for feedback/questions, even from "some people".

My suspicion is your problem is in the transition between to components. An example would be coax to connector, connector to antenna connector, antenna connector to radiating element, and so on. It's in there and I'm sure you will find it if you get aggressive looking for it.

How did the solder joints look on the antenna? Did you buy a complete cable or did you get bulk cable and install the ends yourself? The destructive way to see if water has gotten into the coax from the connectors is to cut the connectors off and examine the dielectric. The dielectric material will discolor when it gets wet. I've seen issues with bulk head and other adaptors where the treaded portion of the SO239 was too short and that can cause problems too. Another issue is a mismatch of threads IE standard versus metric or the thread pitch was off a little. I've had troubles with less expensive 90 degree PL259 to SO239 adaptors and with Pl259 to PL259 adaptors. They caused issues with SWR.

May have an official answer soon. (or it might be another meaningless exercise, never know with these folks)

There's a ham club in Bushnell. Have you contacted them to find out if any of their members could be bribed with a six-pack to help you out? Maybe they have some GMRS fans in their ranks who'd help in exchange for use of your repeater (or adult beverages). Crash their lunch or breakfast meeting, or send their contacts an email. https://k4hog.org/

I should have my RT97L in about a week.

So any one close to Bushnell, Fl can give me a hand? I can't clime my tower do to a injury. They repeater system should be hear in about a week.

I did a little testing using a Nagoya UT-72G antenna on a pizza pan about 9 feet off the ground on my back deck. Using an HT, I was able to get about 3 miles to the east and 1-2 miles to the south and southwest. Not spectacular, but not bad for an unfavorable setup. To my surprise, there were a couple of places about a mile to the west where I could access the repeater. I was surprised because there's a tall hill to my west. I guess there are a couple of places where radio waves can sneak around it. I plan to use it with a better antenna on a 25' mast attached to my truck or RV, so I expect much better distance under those circumstances. I just couldn't resist testing it. TBH, for a lot of purposes, i.e. camping, 2-3 miles is plenty. Still, I should be able to better that considerably with a gain antenna and more height.

Is 16 an emergency channel? People in Alaska use marine radios inland all day every day and I never heard of anyone getting in trouble for it. Maybe they know enough to stay off 16.

Staffords is P25 Phase II. Its very simple to do what he did. Ton of videos and forum directions on how to do what he did and folks helped him. Just like here.

Welcome to the forums!

Newbie to GMRS, but boat loads of radio experience from the Army. Not sure how much will be relevant. But I'm just in it for fun. After buying a pair of radios, I realized that there are ZERO repeaters near me.

As long it's brought up in the proper forum, then no you won't, but in the end it's up to the Moderators decision. Many of us use SDS100/200's to listen, as well as SDR's.

With more departments going digital, usually P25 with a few doing NXDN or even DMR, usually on a trunking system, its getting really hard to do. That's where using an SDR comes in handy. But then again you're not going to be TX'ing with an SDR so it's moot. Then there is the issue of encryption using the digital modes. Huge rants about that on "radioreference.com" to the point if you bring it up you can get booted.

I have no analyzer other than an SWR meter. I have to locate my 50' section of RG59/U that I got with the RT97S and hook it up to the antenna and my mobile unit. See what the SWR says. If it says good then I know it was the coax in the system. If it says bad then it's the antenna. I can always double check by putting the Hyperflex on and see what the SWR says. I guess I could test continuity between the pin and shield on the cable and make sure it's a fully open circuit.

Is it possible that it was something that changed due to expansion and contraction with temperature? Otherwise, have you tried connecting the old coax to an antenna analyzer to see how it looks?

I pulled everything apart on the old antenna and coax. I don't see anything that stands out. I see no cracks or bulges/warping of the fiberglass. All the waterproofing at the joints of the antenna seem fine. The screw joint between the upper and lower sections of the antenna were secure. I opened it up and there was no indication of water penetration past the Oring. The Oring was in good condition, still soft and plyable. I removed the lower sheild/support and there was a small spider web in there. The electrical tape and the self fusing tape were in great shape. Took a hell of an effort to get them off. Clean and dry inside. Took the fitting off and it looked perfect. Shiny, no evidence of water at all. And same with the lightning arrestor side. That was an N fitting, so just by itself more water resistant. Of course this was wrapped with the self fusing tape and covered with the electrical tape. Made sure to have a water loop drip so there was no water that could slide towards the fitting. I don't know. I'll have to do some tests because physical inspection says there was no water penetration.

This happens in the US all the time. Tons of radios get bought on governemtn sites or other markets that are still full of stuff. Granted your correct it should get wiped but doesn't alwasy happen. But I can say its also not too hard to add a system if you have a radio as this person did above. This was disacussed heavily on other forums and just like here, people helped him do what he did. Its no different than all the folks here telling new users how to use HAM radios on GMRS or other non GMRS radios on GMRS. "no one will get caught" is what I see all the time. Same stuff gets said on putting public safety stuff in legacy part 90 radios. If everyone would simply not help these folks most of this would not happen, or happen way less. But as others say...you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point...

Tony Whitt ain't got's much 'Whitt's' Name fits him, and he comes up in a search for Phoenix Shipyard

Negative Nancy AKA Mr 200 Miles just can't resist can he.

only reason why I could see this is if there is a distress call and it's to find that area to help in rescue

You should see some of my other finds. Figuring out where a used radio comes from is part of the fun collecting them. I usually do a read of the radio before reprogramming them for my use. I got one analog radio that apparently was used by the maintenance department at a nuclear power plant out east. That took a while to track down based on some memory tag names, a few lucky guesses and matching frequencies in the radio to what I found on the FCC's database for a particular license holder. Sometimes reading the radio the internal messages make it easy like the below. Usually it takes a lot more effort to figure it out.