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One can place a budget on radio equipment?

Received the same "expired password" notice yesterday. Reset my password & logged back in with no issues.

Talking about it is legal Grasp you some of that

Here's my little setup. Nothing outrageous, but not necessarily simple. And the approx parts list, some smaller stuff not included.

Sure! On the way out right now, but I'll share what im using for this job. Its easy to do and the tools are very affordable.

All linking is a violation of GMRS regs. That shouldn't be really hard for people to grasp.

The logic of the question was altered by the $100 limit; the logic isn’t truly scalable. I wouldn’t use pvc. It’s too flexible and it gets brittle after exposure for several years. There are chimney mounts that strap to chimneys and support a metal mast or even a fiberglass or carbon fiber mast (fiberglass is perfectly adequate and non-conductive). A decent base antenna will work well in that kind of installation.

I really appreciate all the informed responses! The truth is that I can afford more, but the logic of the question was really the crux. After doing some more measurements, my cable run is likely to be considerably longer than I had originally expected, so I’ll probably go LMR400. My chimney has a metal top that I’m considering a mag base for, but I’d have to pull It down if I ever (extremely rarely) wanted to use the fireplace. I see the other option as a long piece of pvc tube with some guy wires, but that doesn’t get nearly as tall as my second story chimney. I’m pretty sure that standing at the closest upstairs window to Dallas that I’m already hitting repeaters close to downtown with the longer (included in the GM30 plus kit) whip, so I’m betting that I’ll be ok no matter what.

I agree, but I think it buys more than it used to. On our road home to Butte from Phoenix this past week quite a few places were advertising for help. At convenience stores the starting wage appears to be $21.00/hour. So $100 worth of stuff is now equivalent to about five hours of work. When I was a sophomore in college (1974), I worked on a farm for $15/day and they were long days. Within a couple years I got a job at an appliance store for $1.25/hour. Compared to what my wages would have purchased then, five hours will buy a much better radio, antenna, and cable than it would have then.

Any chance you can enlighten us on the equipment you used and the techniques to tune it in this particular instance? Details like brand names and models of the equipment so I can looke them up and see them type of details. Unless you don't want to give up your secrets LOL.

Thank you for the kind words. It was my pleasure! I'm glad I was able to help.

I agree. It's not so much that you need special stuff as much as $100 doesn't buy $100 worth of stuff any more.

Never expected it to. It's absolutely a compromise. But what it does is allow you to figure out what channel might work best for you in your area. And when you figure that out you can commit to a tuned duplexer. Of course when I first started out I didn't know squat about any of this stuff. And that was a little bit more than a year ago when I got a pair of HTs. But I'm a quick learner and generally don't need to ask questions because I can find answers myself. But duplexers are simple and complex at the same time and it took many vids before I understood how they worked. I always knew what they did. I'm excited to see if it'll improve my reception. We have 2 repeaters nearby. Commercial repeaters all gussied up with the best of the best. And you can tell by how they receive, very sensitive. While mine being much closer wasn't that sensitive. Kinda frustrating. Hoping for a similar sensitivity with the better tuned duplexer. Of course the commercial ones have the advantage of being 700ft+ in the air while mine currently sits at 40ft.

Outstanding! We look forward to your test results. As mentioned by many of us, a duplexer tuned for all of the GMRS repeater channels will not work as well as one tuned for just one channel.

my Notification window would not work. Zooming over and clicking did not open it.. Its working now though

EchoLink and Zello are the only phones apps i'm aware of. EchoLink never did accept GMRS or non HAM Bands.. I'm just saying, the only way to IP link now would be via a repeater system linked via IP.. Couple months ago i did read that a group was working on a Linx based version of (copy) of Zello, they probaly will end up getting that to work on Adroid phone and older jail broke iPhones. Personaly, i think it sucks that phones we 'own' are tied to the manufactures App sorces.. We should have open rain to run what ever software we choose.

It was very brief but I got the same thing accessing on an iPhone this morning.

Same thing. Did either of you report it to Rich? I did anyway. I think he’ll forgive me if I’m duplicating your reporting.

Also I got an “expired password” pop up when trying to access the repeater map. Anyone else? Or did I get taken by a hacker pop up?

Something is haywire with the home page you normally get when accessing MyGMRS.com. Normal graphics are absent and there are words on top of words at this time.

Yep, I can't wait to do a real world test when I put it back in the RPT50 Btech. Right now I have a wide band tuned duplexer in it that they sent as a replacement. And this duplexer worked much better than the one I gave Marc to tune. As soon as I swapped out I noticed a marked improvement in reception. Not sure how it's tuned, if it's the same tuning as the one I gave to Marc or something else. It's probably tuned better than the original just from the fact I could get better reception out of it. I've done a lot of real world testing with my current setup. I know where I can hit it and where I can't and where it's iffy. It's the iffy spots I'm hoping to see better results. And Marc I just want to say it so the people here see it too. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate your effort and I'm looking forward to putting it to good use. I know you just wanted to play with your toys, but it's hopefully going to be a real world difference for my repeater. This way we can both have our fun. And just think, now I'll have that other duplexer.....

Ya, 2 months ago.

@WSIK532 the entire process from setup and initial testing to the finalized range test and cleanup was about 2 hours. The actual tuning itself only takes a few minutes.