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Thanks to @TheMeatTrapper (WRMN250), @SteveGibbs (WSBM443), WRXS569, @WSGE773, @WSCY890, WSDK964 and @WSDV406 (me) and for joining the check-in net tonight (8/13/25). Besides the check-in, tonight's question was "If you could master one skill, what would it be?" A sample of the answers (you'll have to jump in the nets to hear the full answers) were: "understanding why women are always mad at us", morse code, bladesmithing, and much more. Join us every Wednesday at 8pm on Brentwood 600, tone 123.0 for a quick one fun question check-in net. Always feel free to weigh in with your answer to the nets' questions here on this thread. If the nets get large enough, we'll start making each net it's own post. But for now, we'll keep it all here.

They seem to be a very popular radio and I'll bet they cranked the assembly line up to 11 to make more radios and many more are failing.

That seems to be A Thing with these, unfortunately. When they're good, they're great, and I guess I just got lucky with the 4 I bought. But they seem to be having some pretty serious QC issues.

You got 2 duds.. I've been seeing more and more reports of this (here and on the big GMRS Youtuber channels in the comments).. getting more and more common with the H3's..

Flipping between ham and gmrs (and unlocked) modes shouldn't break anything. One of my two GMRS-mode radios is a ham model, and my ham radio is a GMRS model. (Why? Because I wasn't paying attention when I was setting modes and I'm too lazy to swap antennas/modes, that's why) Two of my four radios (one ham, one GMRS) are warranty replacements, and I have a fourth radio that's dead somewhere. All of them read 0W on an SWR meter but could still TX to a nearby (i.e. in the same room) radio after they died. Assuming you have all your settings correct (allowed frequency/channel, correct offsets, etc.) and still can't talk or it shows 0W, send it back or contact TIDRadio support and have them ship you a replacement. Or get a different radio. I think I'm done buying H3s after this and will be switching brands when my remaining radios start dying.

Possible you got 2 duds. If you have nothing showing on the meter likely it's showing correctly. What does the working radio show? If that shows 4-5 watts and the other shows zero then you got a dud x2. I've gotten 2 duds out of 16 radios. And they would transmit about 1000 ft or so before getting static and wouldn't reach any repeaters.

I have 2 H3's and convinced my brother to get one on the Amazon sale.. It came quickly, but inadvertently he bought the Ham version.. No matter, I know how to change it over to GMRS... Got it changed over and programmed to our repeaters and such.. Went smoothly.. We just couldn't get it to work right.. It would receive somewhat but transmitting was a problem.. I finally decided it was defective and we boxed it up and asked Amazon for an exchange.. The exchange came today, got it programmed and zilch.. Recieving, but not transmitting at all. Same problem as before except maybe worse.. . Hooked it up to my fars-o-meter and get nothing even though the radio's meter shows all bars.. Now I think I may be missing something on the switch from Ham to GMRS.. Seems easy enough, but what the heck?..

I have 3 H3'S. I haven't updated the firmware. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless there is something specific that needs fixing, I'll just leave mine as is.

Thank you, now I understand what that setting is for my radio

Wild azz guess for the win.

Excellent

I imagine it's some form of VOIP software. I'm not savvy enough to venture anymore of a guess than that.

Enlighten me?

There is. The usual default is 0123 and I only see it in software. It's editable; not hardcoded like the MAC on all network card/radios (Wi-Fi).

Please forgive my incredibly dumb question here, and granted this could very well not be a thing, but technology for radios has changed since 1996 I have no clue: How does a repeater owner get around to banning someone? Is there some form of radio ID sent when you key up on one?

DMR IDs are only sent from/to whomever you contact. Most of the CPS requires an ID but the only purpose is to identify units on the same network.

The timing of this is perfect for me: I was listening in on a repeater and someone, that owns a different repeater, was driving through KY, (on a Ky repeater) trashing Ky. They are on a repeater in Ky, their repeater is in Ky, they live in Indiana and trash talk Ky. It was not the first time. So, I, politely, set the record straight; not on their repeater. They lost that zone, came back on their repeater and started trash talking me, personally, (because he assumed if he was out of range of the other repeater I would be out of range of his?) I told him I could hear him and he was just lying about what I had said. So, he threatened to ban me from his repeater and get every repeater around me to also ban me and I laughed. I sent out 'requests' in April, he replied with 'enjoy' to the official request and sent message saying he banned me, yesterday morning and saying he would talk to the other owners in the area... Threating me, again. Well. This is not about rude behavior, this is someone thinking they can group the repeater channels in the area and make them high school cliques. There are 8 channels for repeaters. The section cited is who is allowed 'control' over the equipment. Not the use of. It's America guys; you can broadcast on any frequency with any tone you are licensed to and if their, expensive, equipment cannot discriminate, I have no responsibility to spend a calorie changing the programming on my radio. I should post screenshots and email chains but let's see if they want to have their $0.02 here.

Yeah, I have to agree: seems to turn DMR into GMRS and not in the broader spirit of Ham Radio. But to each, their own...

ISM radios, such as the Motorola DLR200 DLR600 and DTR700 radios, for communicating with other radios you will need to know the Group Profile ID Number and have your radio programmed accordingly. For Direct Connect, you would need to know the 11-digit Private ID numbers of the radios you want to communicate directly with and have that info programmed in your radio. The radios do come with a factory default program and will communicate with other factory default programmed radios, but good luck and finding anyone with a factory default program when the SHTF that is nearby within no more than a mile. These radios cost almost $500.

I wonder how they link them. They won't tell me

I see this question so often that this almost needs to be a direct post about it so it can be referenced. I came up from CB radio many years ago where guys would think that if they had a 1:1 match that they had somehow accomplished something almost magical and akin to hitting the lottery. Or they would brag about how they had a 1 to 1 match and how great their radio system worked and nothing could come close to it's performance. The truth is far less dramatic than that. And when you really start to understand signal levels, delta of signal levels, meaning how much difference in signal level A from signal level B actually is and what the perceived and actual effects of that level difference is, you quickly find out that it ain't much. Now you meter actually SHOWS the percentage of signal forward VS reflected which is SWR. SWR is the RATIO of forward vs reflected power. Of course reflected power is power that is NOT being radiated by the antenna. Some same it backs up to the radio and is burnt off as heat, others will tell you it reflects from the radio back to the antenna and is then radiated (which is BS and due to phase changes would really DECREASE your signal) and there are a few other stories out there of what becomes of the reflected power.. but the crux of it is, it's not going out the antenna as signal. So then we get into the discussion of decibel or dB. And here's where the rubber really hits the road. Because while the radio is rated in WATTS for transmit, the receiver is rated in dBm for receive. And the whole idea of GMRS radio is talking to others. The other guys receiver is what you are trying to effect a response from. And NO amount of power matters if there is no one listening on the other end. That is referred to HAM radio at this point... no one listening. So a cool little tidbit of radio is that wattage can also be expressed as dBm. Now, some might know something of decibels from school and that it's a logarithmic number that is a delta or difference from some other value. That's where the little 'm' comes in on dBm. The 'm' in this case is 1 milliwatt and it equals 0 dBm. so the 'm' sets the reference point of the delta. Positive numbers are values above 1 milliwatt and negative numbers are values BELOW 1 milliwatt. So then we can start looking at something recogniziable. 0dBm = 1 milliwatt 0.001 watt 30dBm = 1 watt 33dBm = 2 watts 36dBm = 4 watts 39dBm = 8 watts 42dBm = 16 watts 50dBm=100 watts 60dBm = 1000 watts Couple things to see here. A change of 3dB is double / half the original power. 10dB adds or removes a zero from the value and 30dB of change is 1000 times or 3 zeros So for every 10 dB of change, you add or subtract a zero or move the decimal place up or down. Now we have that established. We can get into receivers and receiver sensitivity. Most GMRS radios are going to hear down to -115 to -120dBm range. Now that's pretty wide, but that range covers from the crappiest radio to the best UHF receivers you will find. Then we get to the 12dB Sinad which is a 12dB signal to noise ratio receiver test. This is the intelligible signal (receive audio) being 12dB above the background noise in the sound coming out the speaker. Still has some noise but is fully understandable. This falls around -108 to -105. Then there is full quieting at -100 to -90. That is a dead silent signal where only the intelligence (spoken word) is heard in the receiver. These are in 10dB hops. Remember the 10 dB rule right. It's a signal level change factor of 10, one decimal place. Obviously smaller changes can be measured with test equipment. But your NOT going to HEAR a difference in the speaker with less change than the 10 dB hop. So NOW we get to SWR. And we start looking at signal change based on SWR or 1.5 , 1.75, 2, and 3. Anything over 3 is bad. And it's not really effecting the signal levels mean as much as it's creating a problem for the radio that's transmitting. All numbers are based on 100 watts transmit power. 1.50 : 1 SWR is 4 watts reflect and 96 watts radiated or a 0.1773dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 1.75 : 1 SWR is 6.7 watts reflect and 93 watts radiated or a 0.3152dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 2.00 : 1 SWR is 11 watts reflect and 89 watts radiated or a 0.5061dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 3.00 : 1 SWR is 25 watts reflect and 75 watts radiated or a 1.25dB difference from a 1 : 1 match SO... it takes a signal change of 10dB to HEAR it, and these changes are less than 1dB change until you get out in dangerous territory. So from a perfect match to a 2 : 1 match makes basically NO difference in the signal the other guy hears. These are the numbers. All this is on the web, and yes I use a calculator for it because math SUCKS. But it doesn't lie. But this is how I can sit down and figure out if you give me distance, antenna gain at both ends, cable loss at both ends and receive signal strength, I can tell you how much power you are running. There are some other things not mentioned like path loss that are taken into account (that's the distance portion) but it's all numbers once you have a good understanding of it.

There is a designated Aeronautical channel for private fixed wing aircraft for air-to-air communications. That channel is 122.750 MHz. Private Rotary Wing (Helicopters) have their own air-to-air communications channel.

Yea,, when you are interested in only those in your group.. Who cares about those 'other' guys?

As I mentioned it doesn't have to be unique. Using some made-up ID works, which defeats the purpose of having a DMR database in the radio. I've done the later accidentally, used the wrong ID when programming my radios. That happened when a guy on an out of area repeater noticed my call sign didn't match the call sign that showed up on their radio. Oops.

TIDRadio doesn't seem to publish release notes for their firmware - I think they just announce it on their FB page and hope you find it. Kind of frustrating. IIRC the latest firmware just fixes some issues with the airband frequencies so unless you really like listening to local airport traffic, it's not necessary (and it's not super exciting anyway).