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An h3 with issues? Really? No way. It must be Friday… or Monday or any day. I’ve heard the “formware” isn’t very good.

Every radio gets set up the same way. I need to be able to grab Amy radio and hand it to Amy one and have it work like every other radio. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 7yr old, I hired hand, my wife my dad, a neighbor…… I have gmrs1-22 simplex then the named repeaters start. I’ve never had a problem and I and my crew use them all day every day.

1) Are you in GMRS mode? 2) How did you set the offset? 3) Does it do this right after you do the factory reset and you try to transmit on channel 26, before you've touched any settings?

How do you all set up your channels? There's heaps more available than my MURS option. My thought is that my radio will be outfitted with all the channels while the ones I give to other, such as my wife, I'd only put in a couple of GMRS channels, maybe the local NOAA channel, and perhaps a couple of FM radio channels. All those will have easily identifiable names to the channels (ex. MAIN-01, BAKUP, etc.) that would be simple for anybody to use and recognize. Just curious as how you keeners get things running slick.

Hi everyone. I'm new at radios so please be patient with me. I just got a tidradio h3 plus gmrs radio. I want to program a custom repeater on channel 26. It's already the frequency i want to use. The rx is 462.625. The repeater has an offset of +5. And rx and tx tones are 141.3, i've tried both wide and narrow bands. What happens is when i go to transmit on channel 26 with those settings it says "canceled". I'm sing the odmaster android app. I've tried doing factory reset and starting all over a few time with no luck. Does anyone have any ideas? I'd sure appreciate it

See, that's cheating.

My antenna is 52’ abgl and 2700’ absl and sits about 300’ above the valley floor. It has as far as the eye can see range at 270 degrees and about 29 miles in south 90 degrees, The valley floor is all desert, no trees or tall buildings, just distant mountains with exception to one big one just south. It gets most use by 4 wheelers/off roaders in nearby hills.

Sound advice for someone that wants their repeater to work. Now, if you're building a dummy load, by all means use a nice long piece of LMR400.

Have you simply done trial and error by, wait for it, trying ctcss rather than DTCS and see if your problem goes away?

I have had a few radios that did this with DTCS tones.. Switched to CTCSS and the problem went away on all of them.

Sounds like you have a good location which is probably better than any coax or antenna. I need more punch since I am limited in height and live in hilly terrain with lots of trees. Height is might, and that's something I'll always lack. Highest up I'll get is 80' above ground at 166 FT above sea level. To the east and west of me 5 miles away are 300-400' mountains, dead cutoff

I am using a DTCS tone (431 NN) on GMRS channel 22. I have this programmed into several Baofeng UV-5G Plus handheld radios as well as 2 Wouxun KG-1000G Plus mobile radios and a BTECH GMRS-50V2 mobile radio. More than half the time it works as expected but quite a few times the receiving radio shows an incoming signal (receive light comes on) but no audio. Sometimes the receive light doesn't even come on. This happens at varying distances (20', 500', 1/4 mile, 15 miles) and various power settings in different locations around my area. When not using the tones, it works flawlessly, we just have to put up with noise breaking through even at fairly high squelch settings. I chose DTCS after reading about it being the newer technology and having more tones to choose from but am curious if using a CTCSS tone would yield better results. Any constructive input would be appreciated.

right at this moment, I'm running about 130' LMR 400, lightning protected and my repeater talks 100+ miles every day. Everyone that uses it is happy, There is no need to throw anymore money at it. Which would be a good chunk of change if i did. I did go through an ordeal with Antennas, I now have that sorted out and back in business. Sharing my experience, hopefully people can benefit from that.

I know a couple of people that have them and had no problems I'm hoping I just got a lemon. I've never seen a bad review on the radio I'll find out when the ne radio arrives.

The price difference between LMR400 and 1/2" Heliax isn't really that large. The dB loss between the two is pretty significant. Going up to 7/8" is a big jump in price and the gain in signal isn't that huge in shorter runs. But pretty significant when distances grow.

you are welcome to use whatever you want, its your money.. I can tell you i have operated repeaters in the spec range i specified and had no problems talking over a range of 100+ miles. I've had more issues with Antennas effecting my range than the coax and length. Just my two cents.

The maximum run of LMR400 I am willing to use on 70cm or GMRS is 100 feet. And you definitely have more loss once you get to 80 feet or more. I kept the LMR400 run to my base GMRS antenna at 35 feet and 80 feet for my dual band antenna. Just personal opinion here. But if I had a run that was over 100 feet between a GMRS repeater and its antenna(s) then I would look at using 7/8 hard line. there is not a whole lot of difference between LMR400, 1/2 heliax, and 7/8" heliax when talking about 50 feet or less. But there is a definite difference once you get to 100 feet or more, especially once you go up to 7/8" heliax.

I have an RT97 repeater and had the same issue initially (continued static after transmitting to it from one of my radios). I had to change a setting in the "Function Setup" portion of the software. I believe that I had to turn Tail Tone Eliminate to "ON". I never had any issues after that. I did increase the Squelch Level to 4 initially then eventually to 5. Other than programming the frequencies and tones that I wanted, those were the only changes that I made.

As far as I can tell, most FRS radios come with tones already set. That's how they advertise them as having "64 channels" or whatever the mierro de toro of the day is. As Alec said, most people are absolutely clueless about them. Odds are that almost nobody on an FRS radio will hear you unless you intentionally coordinate it with them. GMRS users seem to be more likely to operate without tones set when on simplex, but even so, groups tend to set tones to avoid having to listen to a bunch of other people.

A close friend of mine who I talk to regularly on gmrs has two v2 50 watt btecs. Both work perfectly and sound amazing on my end. He’s only going on 3 months of use but they have been good radios for him. Ymmv.

If you are running a base station, simplex or repeater communication I'd say that might be so. But if you are running a repeater I wouldn't go much more than 50' with LMR400. Plus the dissimilar metals in the coax can cause issues long term. I'd use 1/2" Heliax minimum for a repeater for the whole run and when it got farther than 125' I'd switch over to 7/8" or larger.

I've never made a random contact on simplex. You just aren't reaching enough people. It's extremely useful for communication with people you know, family groups, etc., though.

It was in my truck with red wire going to positive terminal on battery and black wire to ground on truck frame which comes straight from battery.

I think you may have burnt out your transmitter on the radio if you're using a home power supply you might want to check the amp on the power supply. What may have happened is that you're putting in too much power into the transmitter than it was meant for, so it burnt it out

Has anyone had any troubles such as the radio quits transmitting and a burnt smell emitting from it no smoke but still receives ? I had mine a day shy of a week and this happened I contacted support and they are sending me another radio. I haven't seen any negative reviews about the radio and had planned on getting another to use as a base station but now a little skeptical about it. If anyone knows if these radios have constant problems like this please let me know. Thanks,WSEK643