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Not quite sure where that last comment came from. I was trying to determine if I was on the right track or not, and hoping someone that had experience with a 5100 could help point me in the right direction. As I said, I'm new to this and tried to do my research before posting here. To determine if I was actually getting out, I was going to take the radio off the bench and go to a high point to be sure what I was actually hearing was in fact the repeater, and to see if I could get a response to confirm my settings. I live in a valley, so reception here is sketchy at best. Thanks for the help guys, and have a good one.

NOT true, as it's happened Twice last year for KZZ65

Hopefully he’s not calling everyone a nazi, as seems to be fashionable lately.

I’m not too concerned as I believe the plan will work as intended. That said, it’s never a bad time to buy new gear so I picked up a couple more Icom’s today; 2730 Black Edition and an ID-52 Plus.

So to re-cap this, would someone be able to give a proper example of what we'd need, say as a link on Amazon? To give an idea of my setup, I have: KG-1000G base mounted underneath the passenger seat Midland 21-406 mounted above the seat belt inside the cab so I can actually hear the radio Federal Signal ES100C external siren connected to a Whelen HHS3200 The Midland is meant to be used to hear the radio since the base is under the seat and muffled. It seems sometimes it works and others it doesn't. I originally had a Y connector purchased from Amazon and it would only ever output audio from one of the outputs. I suspect it was either stereo or somehow the wrong kind. I figured it was just bad quality and broken, and later bought two separate plugs, and spliced them together with a third to connect to the Federal Signal so I can hear it outside if I'm out of the vehicle. But still had issues with only hearing one output and it mysteriously not working at certain times (along with low/muffled audio). I figured I must be dumb or something's wrong with the radio, but after reading this thread, I am leaning on the culprit of me just being dumb. Could someone give an example of what would be a proper connector to get all these things working as intended? (I'm looking to hear both A/B channels through a single external speaker (and since there are actually two speakers, just have them mirrored--- aka broadcast the same sound). I do expect there would be distortion issues if both channels receive at the same time but I assume there isn't really anything that can be done with that.

i think your are pretty close to what we will see. I watched a launch video for a new line of Laser Etcher (Roly) company in China He said the tariff increase could mean about a $25-40 dollar hike on their product (a $2500 item) but also said they have the option to ship the parts here to the U.S. than assemble and ship from the U.S. to avoid cost increases. Im not sure how that works since they would still be shipping parts here to the U.S. but i guess that could mean radios could be done the same way

The price at the border.

That doesn’t seem like a tone problem. If you are getting a response that means both transmit and receive are working. Maybe there’s nobody else listening who wants to talk. What are you saying?

ummm

I don’t see why not. The NOAA stations TX 24/7 using wide band FM so any radio that can receive the frequency should work. Also you really don’t need a squelch setting if you’re close enough. Plus you shouldn’t be using any kind of tone either.

SteveShannon, that's what I've been trying to do in the Tone Mode column of the RT Systems software, but still not able to get things to work. I've selected DTCS(T), which I think does what you are describing. It looks like I have good signal going out and am getting a response from the repeater, just can't seem to raise anyone. I am able to Tx and Rx on other repeaters. I'm going to pack this radio up and get to a high point where I know I can hit the repeater with a handset. Hoppyjr, RT Systems does I have great tech support! They got back to me quickly and suggested I speak directly to iCom support.

So is the tariff levy on the wholesale or retail value? If it’s the wholesale value for sure then the price for just about all imported consumer goods might not go up nowhere near where the fear peddling media wants the public to believe.

Decided to sniff around once I was home. WSHI569's in Somersville, CT. 162.475 appears to be the closest one, and isn't reporting as degraded or as an outage. So the question is: can he receive it on another radio and this one's misconfigured / goofy?

If I recall, one of the reasons why the Television Industry wanted to migrate to digital emissions so they can be creative in using the same bandwidth of their licensed broadcast channel and cram in other broadcast channels in the same bandwidth.

Is that what you kids call it these days?

Although GMRS regulations constrain us to transmitting on one of 30 designated frequencies, some GMRS radios allow us to program those frequencies into empty memory channels in our radios so we have more memory channels than just the 30 frequencies. In that sense they truly are DIY. Fortunately we no longer need to polish our own crystals.

Sure there are. I would consider all repeater channels DIY channels. You have to program the radio to make them work if they are tone encoded. You have to do that yourself. The other simplex channels are all programmed to work as is.

My experience with Icom, and the RT Systems software was pretty simple, I just clicked the mouse in the field. I wanted to edit and it allowed me to edit there. Not sure why you’re having trouble, consider giving RT systems a call. They have great tech support.

was talking to my friend in Sacramento this afternoon. Not only was the Public Safety Act used to fund cities and counties to upgrade their communications from analog to digital but it also allowed some funding that clever grant writers used to get money to assist counties and its broadband cable providers to extend their plant into unserviced or underserved areas. And it was also used to create service tier levels for low income customers. That money has dried up but they are dipping into other grants getting money for the same thing.

Gmrs doesn’t have “do it yourself channels”. They are all pre-programmed.

The main reason they went to digital is so they could spy on everyone and everything. Digital data can be stored on a hard drive, it can be searched and categorized. It has the advantage of having 4 times the bandwidth for over the air and it does encrypt the signal so you can't easily receive the signal in analog form. But these days simple encryption is easily thwarted and listened to.

Decades ago, FCC initiated an order to what was called "Frequency Refarming" of frequencies which involved narrowing frequencies to create more public safety channels and that order along with the Terrorist Attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 caused the initiating of another order that required the Television industry to move off of some of their allocated channels to free up bandwidth for public safety. Public Safety Radio Inoperability became a major goal for the Federal Government at that time.

Just leave the receive tone out, or set the squelch mode to tone or whatever it requires to disregard the repeater output tone.

The main reason why the migration to digital and encryption is because of over-the -air broadcasting of private information suchas, names and birthdates, and drivers license numbers and license plates information, from States law enforcement Data Bases like CLETS in California and the nationwide law enforcement NCIC data base. If my memory serves me right this requirement for encryption began sometime around 2005 by the Federal DOJ and/or FBI, and some States years later also made it a mandate for the various State Law Enforcement agencies to encrypt the private information if it was going to be broadcasted over the air.

I'm trying to set up my ID-5100A to access a couple of local GMRS repeaters that have different Tx and Rx DPL tones. The radio has had the MARS mod. The radio firmware has been updated to the latest version, E3, and all is working well in that regard. I'm using the RT Systems software along with their cable to program the radio. Everything seems to be working except for the repeaters that require the different DTCSS codes in and out. I've tried the iCom manual and have looked at the RT Systems help videos. It appears this radio is not capable of doing both? At least using the RT Systems software, it will not allow me to enter both tones. If anyone has any suggestions or found a solution to this, I'd really appreciate hearing what that is. I'm pretty much a newbie at programming a radio, so I may well have missed something. Any thoughts?