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Damn it, I was content with the 2730A and able to tell myself I didn’t need the 2730B and then you post pictures. I can’t resist pictures! You’re costing me money. In all seriousness though thanks for the comparison. I really like my 2730A. It does pretty good paired with a Comet SBB-5 NMO. I have been thinking about getting the 2730B and moving my 2730A to the house. Looks like it would be an improvement from the bright screen of the 2730A at night especially. Have you noticed any other differences between the two or is it just the screen? I was wondering if you can swap heads between the two? Reason for this would be to keep one with mod in vehicle with the black screen and have a non mod one in the home.

This ^^^

It was also known the NV had captured US man pack radios. These where used to monitor military communications. There were versions with encryption, but were extremely bulky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NESTOR_(encryption)

At least on the official side. My buddy has his "export" mobile radio for 12/11/10 meters. He's run FM on 11M with a few people, and that's before the FCC allowed it. The question will it replace FRS. I think the answer is no. Why. The usage cases are different. People using FRS have short range communications requirements. The small size, radio plus antenna, fit in a shirt pocket or on a belt very easily. Anyone that's looked at some of the older "HT" style CB radio, well they're about the size of the old WWII walkies-talkies. The antennas for any reasonable radiation efficiency are ridiculously huge. These radios are not convenient to use. The retired cop in my radio coffee group tells us stories how the older Motorola radios were not liked that well. They were large, bulky and the officers complained about the antennas poking them in the armpits all the time with the radio on their utility belt.

The logical assumption is that there’s are CTCSS tones or DTCSS codes somewhere that you don’t realize are there, either on the FRS radio or on your other friends radios, or the radio is transmitting on frequencies the other radios are not receiving. We can’t really know for sure without more information, such as you posting a screenshot, a chirp file, maybe a device like the SW102 showing the output power and actual frequencies of the transmissions that others are not receiving. But we can speculate a bunch: Bad programming. Bad firmware. Both. But here’s something to try. When it’s transmitting and other people’s radios don’t seem to receive it, put your UV5R into “scan for tones” mode to see if it’s actually sending with a tone that the other radios filter out.

As far as I can determine, exactly 3 people in the US use FM CB. Is that better?

I got phone calls from both my sons and a sweet text from my granddaughter. That's better than anything radio-related.

True, but if they had used the radio as little as they probably really did, the movie would have been much less exciting. I believe you're referring to Bat 21 which was supposedly based upon an actual incident. I give Hollywood a little slack on some of these things. Nobody wants to see a movie about a bunch of soldiers who spend 20 days standing around scratching their b@lls and then have a 3.6 minute firefight.

Thank you all for the quick reply. It worked today. Love this community already, everyone is so willing to help. Cheers!

Just the gift of Time to work 6 meters for the VHF Contest.

No, directly from Btech. I ordered the repeater from them. They decided the duplexer was troublesome and sent me a new one already tuned to the GMRS spectrum. I removed the old and installed the new. I still have the old one, they didn't want it back.

From BuyTwoWayRadio?

The repeater I ordered was new and apparently they got a bunch of defective duplexers and needed to replace them. OffroaderX can tell you all about that. So the company just sent me a new one already tuned to receive the GMRS frequencies.

I would actually like to get one tuned to the frequency I use to see if it changes anything. Not planning on moving the frequency anytime soon so a hard tuned duplexer would be just fine. I would just remove the broad tuned one out of the machine and replace it with the single band tuned. Pretty simple operation. Probably less than 1/2 hour. That's about what it took me to do when I didn't know what I was doing, although not knowing what I was doing was just based on never had done it before. It's just removing some screws, swapping out the coax one for one and returning the screw back in place.

Had a friend ask me to make his Retrevis rt22frs radios compatible to talk to other brands of radios. I have a TIDradio Bluetooth programmer I use for my own radios and I removed all Tones from all channels. Then decided to test and found that the radio could talk to my uv5r but couldn't hear it back (simplex channel no tones- I'm a licensed user). And then couldn't talk to anyone else's radio till I restored it back to original. Wondering if anyone knows what is up?

@LeoG Where did you order the SGQ-450D from and did they do the tuning before sending it?

There is an issue with the data we receive from the FCC, which affects newer licenses. We worked around it and have processed all the available GMRS licenses that we can see through the FCC data export. If your license was issued in the last 48 hours, you should be good to go now!

I would say that is much better than a radio anyway!

For those new to radio, and aren't a complete radio dork.... yet.... 12dB SINAD is a standard measure to describe receiver sensitivity. SINAD stands for 'Signal to Noise and Distortion'. This type of measurement is particularly useful for testing analog FM receivers. It represents the point where the desired signal is 12dB stronger than the combined noise and distortion. A lower input voltage at 12dB SINAD indicates a more sensitive receiver. Receiver sensitivity is the ability of a receiver to detect weak signals. A lower input voltage (measured in microvolts or dBm) at 12dB SINAD means the receiver can detect weaker signals and still produce a usable audio output. A 12dB SINAD measurement of 0.25µV (about -118dBm, -119dBm) is pretty good. Most expensive radios are about 0.200µV (about -121dBm). I looked at that SGQ-450D duplexer specs a few minutes ago. If someone is interested in buying one, while it's only rated for 50w, it actually looks pretty good on paper. 1dB insertion loss is great and both the suppression and isolation are on par with other mobile duplexers that are 3 times the price. Again, zero personal experience with this particular device, but it looks good on paper and @LeoG hasn't thrown it in the trash yet... so those are both good signs. LOL

SOP hasn't changed, one still has to keep transmissions short to keep the enemy from triangulating your location. The Russians and Ukrainians are finding that out the hard way. Difference is you now have to worry about drones along with missiles and artillery. Signals are scrambled and most military radios use frequency hopping but the can still be located if they transmit too long.

My military radio usage was over 50 years ago, so things likely have changed a bit.

The Kraken system is like a child's toy when compared to what federal agencies and the military have. Even the equipment we had in the 90's was still better than the Kraken. We had no problems triangulating exact Iraqi positions back in 1991. And don't think for a minute that the feds are not using that kind of equipment right now. Transmitting briefly is standard SOP when using any military radio and has been for a long time. Transmit too long in a combat zone and you will get a missile or artillery rounds down your throat.

I have the Btech RT50 and it has a full spectrum GMRS duplexer. It says it's rated at .25µV at 12dB SINAD. Can't say I can prove it but it seems to receive well for the antenna and it's height. This is the replacement duplexer they sent me. The originals sensitivity was much worse than the replacement. Tuned full band.

that was the idea when using the AN/PRC-90. I just missed the AN/PRC-103 that was a pretty good improvement. There was a movie about a downed flyer. There radio discipline was pretty terrible and had they used the radio as much as they did in the movie it would have died or the flyer would have. The north Vietnamese knew what frequency to monitor.

All I got was a card and love from my family.