All Activity

Closest I know of is Bowman between Summerville and Orangeburg. That one requires club membership. But I suggest you change the title to "Charleston SC repeater?"

By the way, looks like the CPS discount code has expired but these are on sale now and the savings is better than with the code. My order shipped out today and should get it later in the week! Excited for it.

Seems like WINE for Mac has better support for Intel Macs but not as good for ARM Macs (I have an M2). UTM has been smooth for me so far. This was my initial hesitation with the VM idea until ChatGPT told me a license key wasn’t necessary. I remember back when I had a burned CD of Windows XP with the pirated license key written on it with sharpie.

Your CPS seems to work fine under WINE. It makes programming the radio a breeze. Thanks for all the work you put into it.

Can someone explain to me the purpose of POTA? I've been watching Mike on Ham Radio Tube and he's had several videos up where he is using various objects as antennas for his G90. I understand that there are "hunters" and "activators" and that the goal is for the activator to go into a park of some sort and get a certain amount of contacts in a certain amount of time and then that is plotted into an app of some sort? Simple question, is this just for the gamesmanship of saying "I can do it!" and it's something HAM guys do for fun? Or is there a broader sense to it in that they creating a map whereby other HAM people will know that contact can be made from this location to that location? And in that regard is it prep for a grid down situation? Or am I reading too much into it? I've been all over their website and still don't really "get it."

Im searching for a repeater in the Charleston SC area and haven't come up with anything. Does anyone know if I'm missing one?

If there's anything I can do in the BF-F8HP Pro CPS or other tools to help them work better under WINE, let me know.

LOL!!! And here I thought "Patio On The Air" was funny.

I understand your position. But in our case, it makes sense. We can currently sort of daisy chain comms as Steve lives about 3 miles south of Bob who wants to talk to Billy who lives 3 miles south of Steve. Bob calls out for Steve who relays it on to Billy. But if Steve would just put up a repeater, Bob could get Billy without bothering Steve. The spot we have to put up a repeater is above the line of sight of all trees and buildings in the area so while it won't get us to the moon, we feel confident it will link us all up.

That was quick.

It came today! Now I just got to find some one to go up on my tower.

Are there any “legitimate” domestic (US) uses for this radio?

That's good. The engineer in me would like to know a bit more about the "how and why" that is the case.

Well I just got a clean looking license free TK-3701D dPMR446 radio, NOT DMR446, which is the other allowed digital mode. The idea is to run some tests between it and the Icom's I have with the more functional dPMR digital voice mode. I want to see if they will communicate. There are some slight differences that might bugger it up. I won't know until I can get around to running some tests. Other thing there radios are the functional equivalent of FRS here, but in the EU where it's license free, 0.5 watts, and digital voice is allowed. I'll bet some Ding-Dong will bring their radios here on vacation and try to use it while at some major tourist attraction like Disneyland, Yellowstone etc. The radios only work from 446.0000 to 446.2000, the Ham 70cm band. Anyone ever bump into something like this on the air? If one has a spectrum analyzer, or SDR, it would look like the ultra narrow band NXDN mode, the modulation is the same but the digital protocol is different. https://kenwoodcommunications.co.uk/files/file/comms/uk/brochures/TK-3701D_20191030_LR.pdf https://kenwoodcommunications.co.uk/files/file/comms/uk/pmr446/PMR446-White-Paper-V6_18AUG2016_JT_KB.pdf

I always appreciate your detailed reporting and if you come across one such report on testing, please post it. In the meantime, if my 1/2 wave 2 meter HT antenna does not get me satisfactory results, but switching to my more bulky 5/8 telescoping antenna does, I will accept the positive results as proof enough for me!

Oh, yea. Whoops.

I think you are confused about what we are talking about. This is the microphone/handset - these are the only controls on the radio.

I went and did this. And it's quite easy; no problem finding it and downloading it to print. . And yes, the Official Copy I printed today does not have any mention of Line A that the one I printed in '20 did.

You know those loose azz buttons you complain about because of the jiggle confuckulation? That's how you change the channel

A definitive test, or comparison, should be done with a field strength meter and a uniform standardized test stand. That removes any personal bias and different physical antenna setups. Any changes in the far field has to be due to gain and pattern variations. Qualitative comments about hitting a repeater with one antenna and not another doesn't revel any insight on why that might be the case. Too many variables to control, any one or combination, can affect the results. I've tried this just for antenna matching. It's much more difficult to do than one realizes. I found just slight changes in orientation and ground plane made a big difference. https://www.hamradio.me/antennas/ht-antenna-comparisons.html https://reflector.sota.org.uk/t/antenna-testing-jig-swr/14791 Antenna Testing W9MDB.pdf

uhm..what? The microphone/handset is the ONLY way to change the channels.

Of course it can. You don't use the microphone for changing the channels.

As I have mentioned previously, I have used Parallels in my Mac to run Windows as far back as Windows XP for programming my non-Chirp radios. It is not well known that you don’t actually have to activate Windows for it to operate properly. To rephrase without double negatives, Windows operates properly without having to pay for it (authorize it).

Do they have anything like WINE for Linux that you can use on your Mac to run Windoze stuff? I run quite a bit of Windoze software on my MX Linux install without any issues what so ever. GNU/Linux has come a long way since I started using it way back in 2012. It's so easy to use a caveman could do it. LOL.

ahh yes.. right where someone would intuitively look for that setting.. Any idea if the channel can still be changed when locked?