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Or I got luck and got one that was fairly accurate. I have two of them and they both read the same for power and SWR. I had one on my home base and when I got the new one I swapped out to see if it would read the same. It did, so I didn't even swap them back. Just took the older one and it'll go into my shop setup.

Not going to be the receiver sensitivity that'll be the issue. The wideband duplexer is what is really going to limit the sensitivity.

I agree. Fortunately, the behavior that Marc described is becoming less common, at least in my area. I don’t know of any hams in our club who look down their noses at GMRS licensees, but most of us would be very happy to help an interested GMRS licensee become a ham also. For any widespread emergencies amateur radio has an advantage, but for nearby emergency communications GMRS and FRS are much more easily accessible to more people. Ham clubs should be studying how these services can be complementary to each other.

That is just sad. I guess that is where Randy came up with the term "sad ham." I have been very fortunate that I have not had such experiences. All the hams I associate with are very good people. And many of them are dual licensed.

The problem with the whole concept of teaming up with an amateur radio club is that some amateur radio operators despise people with a lower level license than them. There's no way they would accept somebody from the gmrs service as deserving of their time. I have a general class amateur radio license. I am what is lovingly referred to as a no code General Tech. It's a dig that General and extra class license holders use to insult General class license holders who did not have to pass the morse code requirements. I have literally had dozens of experiences where General class license holders who passed their Morse Code test and extra class license holders who have passed there Morse Code test found out that I was a no code General and stopped talking to me in the middle of a conversation because I wasn't worthy of their time. While there is a good amount of people in the amateur world who are absolutely amazing at Radio stuff and love to share their knowledge, there are way more people who are just grumpy old sour pusses who would rather cut a finger off than help someone who isn't "worthy of their time."

Maybe they fixed it in the past six years…

I wonder how good the RX sensitivity is on the 97L. I read somewhere that it's spec'd at 0.35uV, compared to 0.20uV for the 97S. Any one know if this is correct? ps: I hope not as 0.35uV is not very good for a repeater. It would have a hard time hearing the HT's when far out but the 20+W TX would get to them well. thanks for any info.

There's a good observation here: "ham vs GMRS" doesn't help. People wanting to establish a good GMRS repeater would get a lot more traction on such projects by working *with* a ham club. In my area there are a lot of really good 2m and 70cm repeaters. And the groups operating those repeaters have solved a lot of the hard problems. If you can build a good relationship with them, you might get help navigating the waters of setting up a GMRS repeater.

My Surecom 102 seems to be pretty accurate. 4.7 on a 5w HT, 48w on a 50w mobile, 25w on a 20w mobile. Might not be perfect but seems close enough.

All they have to do is put "up to" and there ya go.

Others have posted VG info already, won't add to that. I do know a couple "professional" storm chasers, they both have LMR licenses for their pursuits. Mostly so they can encrypt their radio traffic, so as to not have other chasers, especially those who take groups out to show off storms, their info.

It certainly would. I ran a center mag-mount CB whip for years on another truck, but hated having the cord so visible and really hated what the mount did to the paint. Drilling a hole in the roof and moving my NMO mount there would also be better, but I’m not drilling a hole in this truck. I’m already getting into repeaters >20mi away on my 778II, so I’ll stick with this low-profile setup.

If you get a mag mount on the roof it would likely perform even better.... i run one of the chinese copies of the midland on my car, and can get 20+ miles to the local repeater with no issues with my 778uvII

See attached file and read the instructions below I had found on-line some time back. ==================================================================================== KPG49D v4.02 Password Bypass -> KPG49D.exe: 0x0000418A change 74 to EB Once modified, when the Data Password dialog box opens, just hit enter or type anything and it will then go onto read the codeplug. The password is located in the .dat file at 0xB5-0xBA. KPG-49D V4.02.zip

Of that I am very aware. These are mostly leaf trees so there's that.... Always had issues from the house to the shop which holds the repeater. 50w vs 25w. I could always come in mostly clear to the house, but from the house it was hit or miss. Then I got a 50w radio for the house and the problem is mostly gone, certainly not R9 reception but easy to talk and understand. Needed the extra wattage to punch through the leaves it seems. On top of that what helped later on was swapping out to the Comet 712EFC. Eventually the repeater will have that same antenna and upgrade from the Retevis 7.2dBi. So sometimes a little more wattage works. And since the 1st wideband duplexer was swapped out for the 2nd wideband duplexer I've been able to hit the repeater mostly successful with a 5w HT. R7 at best, no communication at worst. Duplexer is coming in today

It would be very hard to find a mass produced antenna with so much gain that it would cast its signal too high or too low for another antenna at a 140 foot offset 20 miles away. That's 0.00135%, or 0.076 degrees. That level of focus of signal is in the realm of laser beams, or antennas for communicating with equipment on the moon. Another way of looking at it is that a boat's radar, which is designed to have good resolution characteristics, could merge two objects into one if they're less than 300 feet apart at 20 miles.

Trees are one of your worst enemy when it comes to UHF, especially cedar and pine trees. And it's not always possible to get an antenna above the local trees either. We look forward to updates.

I have gotten 20 miles HT-to-HT once when both of us were on elevated terrain features. Given the 140' elevation difference, you might be able to do it. The best-case scenario is if both stations are on higher elevations than everything in between, but one station higher than the other does improve your chances of getting a clear line of sight. You'll have to consider gain when you select your base station antennas. The more gain an antenna has, the "flatter" its signal, and it's possible to make the signal so flat it passes over the station at a lower elevation. There are some folks on here who know more about that than I do and might be able to help you figure out if that's going to be an issue. Generally speaking, more gain = more distance, so you'll have to balance the two factors.

Yeah, they're fine otherwise (they read 8v when not on the charger). Since I have enough of them (all four radios came with two batteries, plus the two batteries from warranty replacements), I can just swap with a spare from the bin without worrying about charging them while using the radio. I'll mark this one but keep charging them separately.

Since the radios have a real off switch that physically disconnects the battery from the radio when off it really doesn't matter a whole lot as long as you turn the radio off when you charge it. I've been using the charging stand since I've got the H3s and I only charge them when they are turned off. Sometimes I charge the batteries separately when I need a new battery now and pull from my extra pile, then that weak battery gets charged out of the radio. Just don't charge the battery while the radio is on and you shouldn't have any issues.

It would probably be too difficult to send them all in and ask for updated batteries. You should label or otherwise permanently mark the good new battery. Am I correct in believing that the bad batteries work in every way except negotiating ultra-high voltages once they hit fully charged?

Yeah, this. I once hit a repeater that was ~30 miles away by standing on top of a parking garage -- with an $18 handheld.

@SteveShannon I didn't take pictures, but I tested the new battery. Drained it to 7.3v and charged it overnight - it's reading 8.5v across the terminals while it's on the charger. Success! Looks like maybe they fixed the battery management circuit and the high voltage coming out of the batteries when they're plugged in and fully charged. Now if only I didn't have a stack of the bad batteries that look identical to the one good one.

Yes, a few years later I have come across this... I have just acquired 4 TK-880H-1, a TK-380 off eBay, and a KPG-46 cable(including free KPG49D software download from BlueMax49ers). In trying to read the 880 radios, three of them so far have said a pw is needed to read. When prompted for the password and you start typing SYSTEM, does that word show up in the password 'field'? When I hold down shift and start typing, the cursor disappears and nothing appears in the box regardless of what I type. As suggested elsewhere, I have not yet tried to boot up the radios while holding down the 'SCN' button. On another note and as suggested elsewhere by Jones I was able to write a single line to two of the radios. Transmit was verified by a Tidradio HT and a red LED on the second 880. Reception on the 880s shows green LED but no volume(yet). I'll play with volume later. It makes sense that one would be able to write(a plug) to the radio without the password given that I saw in the Kenwood Help section that the pw is only needed for reading the radio's programming(core plug) and is not needed to write to the radio. Any suggestions on trying to type password characters?

Did my walk around the block with to have a record of the 2nd original duplexer. Since I do these things late at night I have a digital recorder I use to "listen" to me. I do the test of the repeater and then switch to talk around to let me know where I am in case the repeater test doesn't go through. There are a few spots on my walk that are iffy. Like I've mentioned in other threads I have 1.6KM of dense forest in the way of my signal, 70' trees with my antenna at 40'. After the new single channel tuned duplexer is installed I'll try to do the same test in the same spots.