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It was a very strong signal and discernible from the predicted ranges of the repeater even when voice didn't work. We tested the radios with straight gmrs (not using the repeater) and the tone never showed up. The strange sound appeared with Privacy Tones On or Off. As far as the SWR, he said it was "off the charts" on the Slim Jim Antenna and when he tested his fiberglass antenna back at the farm it read "8" However, the SWR was not for UHF so those results should probably be ignored. So far he's not been able to reproduce the tone back at the farm. Same repeater, same portable battery, same coax, and slim jim Antenna. So far though, I appreciate the help.

IDK, I have a few "POS Pandaland" antennas, and they seem ok... (at least for my purposes). At 460Mhz a 1/4 wave whip on an NMO mount is electrically very simple (no loading coils, etc.). It's not that the SWR doesn't change from the resonate apex of the tuned bell curve, it is a matter of how much it changes and if that change falls outside of a safe operating range or results in a humanly noticeable performance degradation. I'm no metallurgist, and perhaps there is much I don't understand on this topic, but at the relatively low <=50-watt power level used in GMRS, it would seem that a minor materials differences between a Pandaland vs other name brand whip antenna would have a negligible impact and be functionally imperceptible in most real-world scenarios. Anyway, that has been my experience. All I'm saying is that sometimes it is ok to give a Panda a chance!!

That does not sound right. Was the signal of the noise strong, like it was coming from the repeater, or was it weak like it was something far away? ..and, poor SWR would have nothing to do with this noise, but what do you mean by "strange results"? What was the SWR reading? and what do you mean by "more specific meter"?

Yup, I noticed that, so I registered and trying again with a direct upload and a link from G drive. Offending audio in question linked and attached here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cuIFnbH_eVS-tK4AAoTZZDrSx75JxyJJ/view?usp=drive_link Between the two it should be ok. My friend did hook the antenna system up to an SWR and was getting strange results. To the point where he's ordering a more specific meter. Sep 7 at 11-37.m4a

Perhaps an iron or aluminum bearing epoxy would negate that issue. I don’t know of any commercial epoxies that contain aluminum powder, but JBWeld has iron powder in it.

The BTech UV-5x3 is a tri-band Ham Radio that also supports the 220 MHz band and has some nice programming features over my older Baofeng UV-5Rx3. I do not know if the 5x3 supports transmission on GMRS.

Thank you Gregg and Lscott. Very helpful. The GM-15 is also currently on sale in the preferred colorway. much appreciated.

Depends on how much you use. The magnet mount depends on the capacitive coupling from the base to the sheet metal for the ground plane connection. Adding in a layer of glue increases the thickness and thus reducing the coupling. This could mess up the match.

That’s great. And when I spoke about participating I certainly didn’t mean contests and things like that, but rather engaging with leadership of the ARRL at the local level and higher to help them know how best to serve us. Contests might be a lot of fun (I haven’t participated in contests either) also but I consider the work they do to inform us of legislation and intercede with our government representatives to be their most important work.

Yeah, same with the bug zapper. They end up in the collection tray on the bottom sooner or later, but they seem they just can't help themselves. After a while of spending money on CCR's many people end up buying a much higher price radio. I like to tell people looking at the CCR's, cheap Chinese radios, you get what you pay for, and often not even that.

Modern epoxies have a tensile strength of 3000+ psi. Just glue it down, if you don't mind it staying there forever.

I'm a member as well to support their efforts on protecting all amateurs but I don't participate in 99.999% of their events as I don't like contests. I work community events such as parades and bike races/rallies.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDKMWYGR?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_14 Note display. Set menu item #41 to SYNC = ON.

Agreed. I have mine set to monitor one channel only, the one I'll transmit on. It's convenient to have the other three available with the touch of a button, but monitoring four channels, and being forced to switch to transmit on the last active channel, is not appealing.

Done that too. Although, we didn't have enough power to turn on the street lights when we keyed, it definitely caused the picture on TV Channel 2 to wiggle a lot.

It really amazes me that "Some People" get the same VSWRs on a cheap POS Pandaland antenna with a spread difference of almost 20 megs. Really? Wow, that is amazing that any antenna can do that.

@nokones that is hilarious. I would have done the same thing and messed with the guy. That is better than my friend driving through neighborhoods and scrambling everyone's TV's with his CB and linear amp when we were in high school. Since statute of limitations has passed. While at Ft Devens, we would have to test the airborne electronic warfare equipment and we would occasionally have some fun messing with the locals.

I remember doing some radio testing on 800 Mhz in the very early 80s. I was driving up S.R. 99 in Fresno and this Cadillac with Texas plates kept hitting the brakes in front of me. Then I realized that he was doing this everytime I keyed the 800 Meg radio. I drove up along side thinking he may be a tad impaired and I noticed that he had a box on top of the dashboard and a light would light up when I keyed the radio. The box was a Fuzzbuster (radar detector) and obviously he thought he was being targeted for speeding. So, I told my partner in crime let's have some fun. With the freeway speeds being 55 MPH in those days, we let him get up to about 80 and we keyed the mic and he slowed down to 55 MPH and we kept it keyed for several miles. I bet he was getting impatient going 55 MPH. We pulled off the freeway because we needed to get some gas and that was enough fun for the day. It's a true story, I know because I was there causing all this fun. No, the caddy did not have any bull horns on the front of his car.

Preemptive thank you for any advice/commentary/etc Newbie proud owner of an AR5RM and a Radioddity DB20-G….couldn't possibly need anything more….but I crave a GMRS capable radio with the simplicity of synchronization of the Main channel “A” Name displayed up top with the frequency of channel A displayed below in “B” It is my understanding from reading reviews that the UV5x3 has this channel synchronization utility and that the F8HP does not. Posting to confirm this. I am also attracted to deals and low cost like a moth to a flame….and the F8HPpro is currently on sale on the Bezos store front. Or, if Newbie is wrong about most of what was just typed; please suggest a similarly priced ($40-$70) option that has this nice, simple channel synchronization display ability Thankyou.

I have one, and in general it is a good radio, but if you are getting it because of being able to monitor 4 channels at a time... it is maybe less than ideal. I don't care for how it will jump to any of the four channels when it hears activity on one of them... when you want to transmit one that you currently had selected. There is not a good way to quickly and easily to switch from monitor all four channels (or three or two) and then only transmit on one without jumping to any of them that have activity. Yes, you can shut off the multi channel monitoring and use it one channel at a time (through a sequence of 4 or 5 separate button presses! . If you use it this way... only have four on the screen for easily switching to one for your four favorite channels but focus on only one at a time.. then it works great. if they would make a single button way to switch between monitor all and focus and transmit and monitor only one - which could be done fast and easy.. I would be 100% recommending it. And if you use it only to do one channel at a time... then I recommend it. That is my opinion anyway.

Yeah, you are exactly right! I heard that proclamation/warning and chose to ignore it. I'm not a radio purist so as long as it works reasonably well, I don't really concern myself with all the technical perfection (usually only detectable with test equipment). The photo I posted above shows the 3rd brake light mount with a dual band 2m/70cm antenna, but most of the time I use a little 6" Tram 1126-B 1/4wave antenna. I like that little Tram because it is very low profile, and most folks do not even notice that I have an antenna up there. My SWR is 1.2:1 on my Btech 20W mobile and it works great for my real-world purposes on both GMRS and 70cm. In fact, based on my experience, I might argue that for UHF, ground plane is often over-rated. I can drive in circles, presumably transitioning between lots of ground plane (to the front) and arguably zero ground plane (to the rear) and the folks I'm talking to usually can't tell the difference. That's good enough for me!

IIRC, the cycling self-test is expected. Fire up the software, plug the radio into the computer, and go to File > Configure, and pick your COM port. Then, fire up the radio and plug the cable into the radio. In the software, jump over to the Radio menu and pick "Upload" (yes, this is backwards from the cheaper radios and CHIRP)...upload loads from the radio to the computer, download sends from computer to radio. When you hit "upload", the software may ask you to confirm, then the radio should switch from power cycling to displaying "PC Prog" as it reads. If successful, save that basic code plug (as backup or whatever), then save it again with a new name as your working codeplug. I will usually unplug the programming cable from the radio and power it off when i get a successful read, while i work on the code plug. Here is what my programming looks like for the GMRS Simplex channels (the handheld-only channels are excluded). This is my GMRS repeaters Group and for the Common > Key Function menu (for the front panel buttons): one other gee whiz item is the startup message (what the radio displays when it starts up), which is under Common > Power Saving. check the "overwrite" box, and you have a few characters to have it display when it starts up. I dug one of mine out of the shelf to check this stuff hands on and get screenshots. When you're done programming, save your working file, power up the radio and plug the cable back in and let it start cycling, then back up to Radio - Download. The radio should stop cycling and shift to "PC Prog" again and then restart when it's finished. at that point you should be good to unplug the cable from the radio and check out your new programming (connected to an antenna or dummy load, if you want to key up). Mine is a -6 range (400-470mhz, rather than the -7 being 450-512mhz) because I wanted to cover 70cm and GMRS, and it's programmed to display my ham call and "70cm", as i also have the VHF twin to this radio (VX4204) and i ran the pair together on my desk for awhile (the other one is my call and "2m"). Hope this helps; if you're already good, feel free to disregard

Man I could have some fun when passing people with third brake light mounts if that was actually true.

I’m an ARRL member because I want to support the one main U.S. based group that represents us hams. They are not perfect but I think having them is better than having no organization. But the only way for a group like this to succeed is for its members to participate vigorously, informing the organization how to best serve the members. Not enough people do that and to its detriment the league sometimes fails to listen.

This kind of thing is why for some people...