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Remember that 'ground plane' isn't the same as electrically grounding something. You need a big piece of metal for the signal to bounce off of, you don't need the antenna to be electrically connected to the panel. I don't know that I'd trust double sided tape on the exterior like that, but OEMs hang body panels off with that stuff now so what do I know

Hey everyone. Had a quick question about using one of the dreaded magnetic hockey puck NMO mounts in my 17 F350 which is of course aluminum. Obviously magnet won’t stick to the top of the cab so I’ve put some felt down with double sided tape to stick it there for my ground plane. question is the felt and double sided tape interfering with good grounding of the antenna? I really don’t want to screw anything through the top of my cab to secure the antenna mount to. Right now radios work in excess of 5 miles but if somehow fixing this would get me some more miles that would be great. I don’t have an SWR meter to check any of the specifics. Just bought MXT500 radios for farm use so communicate is kinda important at times. what’s everyone done to remedy the aluminum cab issue? Thanks I’m new here btw so bear with me as I learn these things. We’ve had business band radios for years but they have stopped working and now going another direction since we can’t fix and program our own radios. WSJV395

More necro-posting.

That's it, I give up. I'm not going to worry about DMR as cool as it sounded. It's just too much hassle trying to get my computer to "read" the dang radio. I'll stick with Analog and be happy I have it.

Howdy. Also from Texas. Been wanting to do Big Bend National and Big Bend Ranch State parks myself. Let us know how it goes.

Thank you very much….yes, synchronization. Very helpful work around you suggested.

I'm having the same issue with the RT3S as I did with the DM-1701, no way to select the COM port so it won't "read" the radio. It says usb my be unplugged or in use. I've unplugged everything but my mouse and keyboard so there's only 2 things plugged into usb. I'm going to try downloading a .iso of Win10 and run it in VirtualBox to see if it'll "see" the radio there. If I can't get it working then I'm just going to give up on DMR. It really sucks that the CPS software doesn't work better or isn't set up better so as to let us select a COM port. None of my Analog radios give me this many problems.

You are.. kinda.. Dual-Watch/TDR only disables the active-monitoring of both the A channel and the B channel. On most radios, when you disable Dual-Watch/TDR, the B-channel still shows, it's just silent. What you want is "Channel synchronization", which most/many radios do not have. A work around is to set A to display as "Channel" or "Name", then set B to display as "Frequency" then always keep both A and B on the same channel.

Trying to simplify the configuration/display. Have seen on Youtube that some have configured their specific models to have A set as "main" and B is the same channel as A, but displays the A frequency. I see that with some models such as the Baofeng BF-F8HP......and utilizing the older version of CHIRP, there was a check box in Advanced settings to enable or disable "Dual Watch" I set configured by Baofeng AR-5RM utilizing CHIRP-NEXT and some with the Baofeng UV-17 program........and configured my Radioddity DB20-G with CHIRP-NEXT and a tiny bit with the Radioddity DB20-G program. Despite four days of research and struggle, I just can't figure out how to set up both units with the Main "A" set up as Channel Name and "B" below displaying the frequency of "A" I have the feeling that I may be attempting the impossible with the specific models I have. Please point me in the right direction if possible. Very much appreciated. Thank you.

I have an Epson printer that after it goes to sleep to save power it won't come back out when you call it to print. I put an outlet timer on it that turns it off for 1 minute at 6:20am and that fixes the whole issue. Might be a simple automated way to have the repeater reset itself once a day. Makes me feel a bit better it happens to someone else besides me. I sent a bug report to Btech about it and didn't even get an acknowledgement response, which is unusual. My courtesy tone stopped once, but it's never been a noise burst. Mostly it just reduces in volume.

In mine the Rx and Tx connectors were SMA on the inside. The cables in the repeater are SMA to connect to the receiver/transmitter but N on the other end of the cable. You can't connect without buying new cables or chassis connectors. I chose new chassis connectors.

A planned road trip to Big Bend this fall led me down the GMRS path of enlightenment. I am now the proud owner of a Baofeng AR-5RM (and an AR-771C GMRS antenna) along with a Radioddity DG20-G (along with a Midland MXTA26 with a magnet mount). Already found a few active GMRS channels on the Baofeng when outdoors......need to take the DG20-G with the Midland MXTA26 outside to test it. Thanks to many on this site for the informative posts. Safe travels to all.

DEFINITELY not speaking for BTECH here... The duplexers in the first batch apparently couldn't handle the transmitter's output power and failed. I've been running one with the newer duplexer for over 6 months with no problem. On my unit, the courtesy beep will eventually just change to a noise burst. Like you, I found that power cycling the repeater fixed the issue. Since I have the repeater plugged into a programmable power strip that I can reach (via VPN) over the Internet, I case I need to an emergency kill, I'll just program the power strip to reboot the repeater once a week, something like every Sunday at 1 AM.

DEFINITELY not speaking for BTECH here... The GMRS-RPT50 fills (what seems to me to be) a niche market, compared to some of the other BTECH products. Different suppliers behave differently - BTECH can just tell Baofeng "Here is the new manual copy for the BF-F8HP Pro" and it will start appearing in the boxes with newly-manufactured radios. I know, as I reviewed all of / wrote some of the manual copy. Not all suppliers are so easy to work with. I got called in on the RPT50 product because the routine to enable the microphone for communication, as opposed to just programming, came with a pirated copy of a utility that was entirely in Chinese. I came up with the routine using the free ExtraPuTTY program. I have mine set to ID 15 minutes after a conversation ends - any repeater traffic before the timer expires resets the timer. If you open the top of the case (I'm not sure if that would affect your warranty status, as BTECH was sending out replacement duplexers for people who wanted to self-repair) you'll see that the separate RF In / Out connectors don't have cables on the inside. They're there because you can disconnect the Tx and Rx cables from the duplexer and attach them to the internal side of the separate connectors.

I'd be curious to know if turning it all the way up would 'fix' it. That's not ideal, obviously, but it would be a data point, on whether or not it had much of an effect.

I believe I have it at 5 now.

Can you reference a repeater in SoCal that triggers this “problem”? I’d be happy to take a drive… Yellowstone… not so much!

Not quite sure what you're asking, regarding privacy on simplex. Can you clarify at all? Regarding the DM32, are you referencing the baofeng dm32 (dmr radio)?

Got it.

No, of course not. They have their own frequencies / repeaters. But last I checked, GMRS radios are allowed to listen to non GMRS stations. Before the trip, I programmed in the repeaters for the park areas we were going to be in, with transmit disabled.

The rangers use GMRS in the park?

Yeah, naa, it's a pretty widely known issue with these. Mine hasn't ever done it within a couple hours of home. But some repeaters, when they transmit, are doing...something... that causes the radio's squelch to hang open. See also, my Yellowstone Park example. It's only ever done it, for me, with the repeaters in the park, never anywhere else I've found. Why? No idea.

Will this work as a way of privacy on simplex? And have you seen the Dm32?

You can go with a high gain antenna. There is no rule on the ERP with the 462 MHz main channels, but that will change your effective radiation pattern.

Sorry, but with over 200 channels and scanning I have never exhibited this problem. Can you still return it?