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Well if we don’t care about staying part 95 legit a Motorola mcs2000 trunk mount is about the best you can get. They will last way longer than consumer junk for less money and can take waaay more abuse. And they come in 40w and 100w flavors.

My lady was not exactly an enthusiastic radio user, until, I gave her kids and their partners a radio for the other car when we had to use two vehicles last year. I couldn't get the HT out of her hands after that. Now I have a semi permanent solution for her Subaru so we can pop a cheap DB20G in there when needed. A few years back, a group of us used to convoy in three to five different vehicles up to Whistler to go ski. We always had a few blister pack radios for inter-vehichle comms. We played road trip games for 'many' hours. It actually felt like a pretty short trip because of it. And if anyone is interested, I can share how I both, routed the antenna wire and how I made a temp mount for the radio without drilling holes or using the loom grommet on a 2020 Outback. (Like you see on all the youtube videos) Message me as I don't want to derail this thread.

Unless your interested in transmitting on HAM frequencies, I'd say you can read the material and skip the licensing. Of course, GMRS does not need a test.

Wrong on both counts. GMRS is for whatever you want it to be used for. HAM is for whatever you want it to be used for. There are plenty of HAM's who use HAM while off-roading or hiking.There are plenty of GMRS users "making contacts" especially through repeaters. Who cares what they use it for. It's there to be used, for whatever someone wants to use it for. If someone wants to use a log book regardless of service, why would you even care?!

Hi Steve, My old Dad used to say just enough knowledge to be dangerous. You are absolutely correct this is a capacitor and after borrowing a tester found it to be 105pF I think I will just stop there and get a new one Thank You very Much for Your help. No I do not have A radio just scanners probably need to get licenced as the courses would help with the knowledge.

Since you don't mention GMRS only i would recommend an Anytone AT5888UV which has a removable head (works easy) and they sell a separation kit which is basically a long CAT 3 or 5 cable and a mount for the head. If you are 3D savvy you can make your own head mount. This is a dual band radio. The one i have, which I rdon't use anymore came shipped unlocked so was able to program GMRS. I used in my last jeep for a while then went to a Midland MXT575 (which i liked a lot)..

The only GMRS radio with a removable face that comes to mind is the KG-1000G+ ... I have had several (one in each Jeep, one in the office.. 2 turned into a repeater).. and have many (manyy) friends with them, and they are all happy with it. The only thing I dont like is that the faceplate is really hard to get off because the connector/latch is so tight.. I guess that's a good thing, and if you just mount it and forget it, it's a non-issue.. But if you put in on/take it off every day, it's a thumbnail killer.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a mobile with a removable faceplate or remote head? I recently purchased a Retevis RA-87 and I like it, but I dont have anywhere ih my vehicle to to mount it.

I'll believe you just as soon as you prove you actually found someone willing to talk to you.

well, it's been 69 years so, I think I'm in the clear there?

ARRL has log books. I have a mini one for the occasional portable no cell service ops. Never have I ever logged a GMRS or CBRS contact, but the fields in a log book can be modified to suit any radio service I would think.

I don't know radios but I do know software, so I'm gonna nerd out for a minute: No, as you noticed, sorting numbers stored in a text field does not always return useful results. Fields in a database have a specific type - numeric fields can only have numbers, text fields can only have text, then you've got stuff like dates, timestamps, booleans (true/false which is sometimes stored as 1 or 0). You can't have combinations of types in a column in most databases so if you have text and numbers in a list, everything is stored as text and the sorting has to go by character value, which is when you wind up with "111" coming before "9" just because of the first character in the string. And if you do manage to squash two lists together and end up with text and numeric values (like [67, 77, "Unlisted"]), the software is probably going to complain that your array can't be converted to a common type or it'll do something weird like calculate a numeric value for "Unlisted" based on the numeric value of each character or turn the numbers back into strings, and then you're back to a weird sort order. It's dumb sometimes and we know it's dumb, but that's how this stuff works. That said, there's three common ways to implement a sort that does what you want it to do: One way is to pad out your numbers so they're always a fixed number of digits ("77 Hz" becomes "077.0 Hz", "251.4 Hz" can stay as is) so that the hundreds digit is always there to be sorted first, making string sorting work correctly. This lets you use pull values straight out of the database without doing anything extra behind the scenes to sort it, but it's still a little janky because most people don't use leading zeroes when writing out numbers and you'll end up with DPL and CTCSS tones mixed in because "071 DPL" and "077.0 Hz" both come before "251.4 Hz". You could flip stuff around like 'DPL 071' and 'Hz 077.0' or put a prefix like 'CTCSS 077.0 Hz' to enforce grouping, but that doesn't always look right, either. Second way is to store your numeric values in separate fields - CTCSS becomes its own numeric column, DPL becomes its own column, and then you use something like 0 for "No Tone" and null for Unlisted. You can tack on ' Hz' or ' DPL' in the display. This works if you don't mind having multiple columns instead of a single one - would probably work for RX/TX tones as long as you don't mind having four columns instead of two (CTCSS Rx, CTCSS Tx, DPL Rx, DPL Tx instead of just Rx and Tx). Last way (and probably the best if you want a single display column) is having a hidden index for the values that is numeric, and then you sort by that index - you could map CTCSS frequencies directly ("77.0 Hz" becomes 77) and assign text values obviously high/low values to force them to be at the top or bottom of the list. Unlisted would end up as 999999 if you want it to be last when you sort by ascending, or -999999 if you want it to be first. That gets stored in a separate table and then you do a little magic behind the scenes to sort the list by index before being displayed. This also lets you do do stuff like grouping - you can stick a numeric prefix on things so they're always together. If you pad out all the numbers so they're 6 digits, you can make your CTCSS tones start with 100 (so "77.0 Hz" becomes 100077) and your DPL tones start with 500 ("071 DPL" becomes 500071), when you sort, your CTCSS and DPL tones will always be in their 100xxx and 500xxx groups. Plus you can do stuff like custom sort orders - giving "No Tone" an index of 0 and "Unlisted" an index of 999999 lets you put them at the start and end of the list, with all the numeric values in between. This looks a lot cleaner and you have more control over your sort order but now you have to maintain a table of index/display values, so if you have a column with values A, B, C and indexes of A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, and someone wants to add a record with value D, you have to remember to add D = 4 to the the index list or you'll end up with a null index value and it gets displayed in an unexpected spot in the list (usually first). No idea what the software currently supports, but implementing any of the solutions are going to have trade-offs. The good thing about GMRS tones is its a fixed list of values so there wouldn't be much maintenance of the index, but implementing it in the first place is probably a bit of a hassle. Dealing with this kind of stuff is why they pay me the big medium bucks. Anyway. That's a lot of text to say "yes, storing numbers in a text field gets weird when you sort them and we know it sucks and there are ways around it but it might not be worth dealing with it". Thank you for coming to my TED Talk and letting me rant about sorting instead of working.

N9ZAS?

Ok, that's Great !! I just graduated from my Skybridge Pi 4 to a Openspot pro4 and I'm much happier with it ! I'm typically lurking on TG3100 or on 91 Worldwide. I have my choices of my Rfinder B1+ or my Anytone 878 or my 578, or my xpr 6550 Maybe we'll yak sometime !

1. That looks like a capacitor, not a resistor. 2. This really isn’t an electronics lab kind of group, but many of us fiddle. You might get better results at one of the websites/forums dedicated to diy fixing consumer electronics. 3. Do you have a GMRS radio?

I’m on DMR very frequently, because i have a blind deaf friend that I write code plugs for. He travels as president of the deaf/blind division of the National Federation of the Blind and wherever he goes he asks me to prepare a code plug that includes local DMR repeaters and talk groups. I just built him a hotspot also which is set up for both YSF and DMR, with both Brandmeister and TGIF network talk groups. So, I’m constantly aware of them as I am fiddling and trying new talk groups for him, but I don’t personally spend much time monitoring or chatting on them.

Steve, Are you active on Brandmeister Dmr talkgroups at all ?

Hi everyone, It looks like I have managed to Zap my Pre Amp as it has now stopped working. I know these are relatively inexpensive but I like to fix things if my limited knowledge permits me. So it's a (other company) mrp-2000 the version on the board is 3.1. I have found that one of the SMP resistors has no reading when metered while every other one has. The trouble with some components these days they are not marked up and (other company) are no help. I was wondering if anyone has one and could see if their one is marked up or if working good you could check the resistance of said resistor. Please see the attached picture of component affected I have de soldered and it sits to the right in picture. Any help would be much appreciated. This resistor is first inline from radio antenna centre pin.

Only the CTCSS tones are numeric values. Because that field also includes DTCSS values as well as words and abbreviations “Unlisted”, “No Tone”, “Hz”, “DPL”, etc, the field is alphabetical text field. But you could run a report and handle the extract however you wanted.

We used log books in the US Navy when communticating with other ships before computers. I did SSB with my CB in Hawaii off the 17th floor and never thought to do a log. What did it matter I thoght. Same feelings today. We (at home) never logged phone comms when telephones were new. In business relations note might have been taken on a scratch pad and of course in the Navy Petty Officers all carried a pocket notebook (wheel book) and might still do. But keeping track of GMRS conversations during daily activities seems a waste of effort... to me. And with that said, I do have a list (and make one when traveling) of the Repeater Stations that I might encounter during my travels after mapping my routes, just in case.

I ran out of these for today lol, but had to add one !

Yes, if you ignore the numerical value of the numbers. Not as useful or what people would expect. But it is a less used search type so maybe not worth improving the code.

I ran two antennas on my pickup. One being a 5/8 wave on an Allen set screw affixed type nmo lip engine hood mount, and the other being a 5/8 wave mag mount in middle of my pickups cab. testing from a fixed location the mag mount out performed the lip mount considerably on receive. It kind of blew my mind how much better. I kept going back and forth between the two antennas and each time the mag on the roof would pickup a couple extra “bars of signal” and audibly bring in a clearer signal. I try to not use repeaters as much as possible and a slightly better RX is a huge benefit between my home base and my mobiles. Just thought I’d add my experience as it kinda pertained to this threads topic.

A good Weller or Hako soldering station with adjustable heat and different size tips is a must. I use the smallest tips possible with the heat turned up when soldering tiny wires to tiny solder pads and tiny components. I want to get the pads/wires/components up to temp quickly without heating up surrounding components or solder joints.