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If you are a Broadnet member & have any technical issues with you equipment etc, send me email to wrmz361@gmail.com KE2AUM-WRMZ361-73

If it is listed as an Open Repeater, it is an open repeater and permission is not required. I wouldn't worry about it, just use it. Most repeater owners don't monitor their own repeater anyways unless it is the only repeater in that particular coverage area.

You also have SSB voice privileges on a portion of 10 meters: 28.300-28.500 MHz. Here’s the problem. VHF and UHF radio’s typically do not include 6 meters, even though 6 meters is technically VHF. But 6 meters is almost always included in HF radios, as is 10 meters. I would not try to buy a radio that includes just the bands you’re allowed.

Using an external antenna gets the antenna up higher and out of the metal box of the vehicle. I set up my wife with the Nagoya UT72 and a handheld microphone with an H3 radio. Makes using it much easier and gives much better range than the short antenna on the HT.

My mistake, I am guilty of being vague. I am looking for a station which can reasonably handle all bands I have voice privileges on (6m and up). Agreed the spectrum scope seems helpful. I am initially interested in building antennas. The contact thing will be fun once I find folks on the air but I need to spend more time searching for traffic instead of just 'scanning'. I programed my HT with all local repeaters within 25 miles but only heard one organized net one time. I am investigating the local HAM clubs.

Are you talking about UHF and VHF or HF which will allow you to grow? The Icom IC-7100 goes on sale from time to time for $899. It does all of the popular HF, VHF, and UHF amateur bands. The Yaesu FT-991A is another, but it’s incrementally more expensive. The color spectrum scope is nice though. If you’re really just talking about 2 meter and 70 cm, there are few purpose built “base stations” but many mobile stations that can easily be used in a fixed location. I would look at Icom, Yaesu, Alinco, and Kenwood, although it’s hard to find Kenwood now.

I got my tech license recently and I am excited to get going. I have a HT and find it interesting but I am looking for a budget friendly base station for the general bands I am authorized to use. Budget friendly means under $800 for a radio that has room for me to grow and not limiting in a short time. Thank you in advance for your suggestions. P.S. I have Radioddity and BTech GMRS bases, Radioddity and Bufwang HT's. I am not brand loyal so.....

If It Is Listed As Open & The Access Tones Are Also Listed - Use It

They either mean what they say when they label it open or it’s not really open. I would use it without seeking permission but if you get a chance contact the owner to say thanks.

Should one ask for permission to use a repeater even if it is posted as "open system"? In passing by, I can see just using it for a short moment without permission, but if it is one I would use more frequent???

I'm not sure why, but cruise lines seem to go out of their way to block certain things. It's their world and laws don't really apply, they can do whatever they want. I recently took the Queen Mary 2 from New York to Southhampton UK, and was appalled to see what they were doing with the internet. If using "normal" internet things like google, Youboob, FB, Insta, tik, it works great, super fast (the boats main connection out is using Starlink). Anything else is choked off to about ISDN (1Mb) speeds but still somewhat functional. So if using your own email servers and not googles or outlook/microsofts, downloading email with attachments, is a minutes long experience. Commercial VPN's like Nord are all blocked, even their websites. I connect via my own private VPN back to my office and the std VPN ports are blocked. NP, as the IT person, I logged to the web admin interface at my office and changed my ports there and on my devices client. That worked for 2 days. After that it was blocked. I changed the ports again, after a few hours, blocked. I changed the connection type from IPSec to SSL VPN which uses normal web ports 443 to negotiate and that worked for another 2 days or so. After that they simply blocked my office IP address, not just for my device/login, for anyone on the boat and probably every Carnival boat (the boats parent owner/operator). I checked with my evening table mates (in my Tuxedo of course, it is the Queen Mary) nobody could even reach my website. So they have a short whitelist of sites that get normal speeds, a blacklist, and the vast majority of the internet is a greylist that gets choked off speeds. I seemed to have jumped from grey to black by simply using my private VPN tunnel to my office. Yep, your in their world.

Many of us have used hand held radios with an external antenna with good results. As others have said, getting the antenna outside of the vehicle is the biggest improvement you can make. Adaptor cables that go from SO239 to SMA are cheap and make connecting an external antenna to most hand held radios easy to do.

Our GMRS repeater is at least 100 miles away from any other repeater that uses the same channel and tones. I am 80 miles away from the other repeater. Normally there is not any issues. But when tropospheric ducting happens, one of the other repeaters can be heard at full strength and will also key up our repeater. I have another GMRS repeater that is 50 miles west of me. On occasion I talk to a guy that lives 150 miles east of me on that repeater that is 50 miles west of me. It's amazing how far you can reach when atmospheric conditions are just right. This goes for any band/frequency from HF all the way up to 900 MHz and higher.

thats true.. I ordered the DMR ver because i wanted to compare to my Hytera HP682. Also ordered a UV28 Plus on the analog side.

And less than half the price.

per the specs on Baofeng it looks to be the same radio minus DMR... It as the same zone and ch options, Which attracts me.

As has been said, you may get SOME additional punch through trees and what not at 20W over 5W, but the biggest thing is putting the antenna outside of the big metal box. The nice thing about it though is that with the antenna on the outside, not only does it improve your transmit range, but you'll be able to hear them from further away than you otherwise would as well, with a handheld inside the car without an external antenna. All that said, if staying in touch is super important to the group....if a large separation happens, have a plan for correcting that / regrouping.

Did you order one yet ??

yea,,, and i still eat candy at my old age..

i can give you my experience while RV' ing with RV friends. Most of the time we travel in groups of 3 to 4 other RV's on the road. We all have GMRS radios and we all started out using HT's. After the first time together using HT's we discovered communicating with HT's pretty much sucked. We were lucky to reach each other when we got separated by as little as a mile. The low profile HT antenna and fact we all were pulling huge signal blocking clumps of fiberglass and steel was the problem. Once we all got mobile radios this problem pretty much went away. With the mobiles we can stay in touch easily as far as 20-25 miles apart and sometimes further, especially when we are hitting repeaters. Traveling through canyons is a bit of a problem even with a mobile but dependable within 2 miles. I will say one of they guys in our group 'was' using a Midland Ghost antenna, which worked pretty good for the most part but he was the first guy we lost in the canyons..... Early on i did adapt my HT to a Mobile antenna, which helped a little but no comparison even close to using a good 50W Mobile.. In my case i use a Hytera HM782

Really? Even at club level road racing (SCCA / NASA) I've seen a mix of mobile and H/Ts. Once you get up into your IMSA / WEC / World Challenge, even the lower tiers, it's basically all mobiles. I haven't spent enough time crawling around circle track cars to tell you one way or another in that world.

UHF is line of sight until it is reflected or refracted by some atmospheric condition. Google Tropospheric Ducting. Physical features such as mountains can also cause reflection or refraction.

I figured it was that easy, maybe I am not close enough to the repeater, I am in the estimated range, I will try to get closer. Thank you for your help

Is the UV32 nearly the same radio except without DMR?

OK, here's one for the folks that actually understand how EM propagation works in practice: A couple of years ago, the current distance record was set for LoRa at more than 800 miles. The communication was between a fishing boat and one of the buoys in its fishery across open ocean. https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/new-lora-world-record-1336-km-830-mi Frankly, I'm confused as to how that happened when, by my best guestimates, the unit on the buoy has a horizon at around 4 miles. The one on the boat, due to its greater height, had a horizon at more like 15 miles, but that still doesn't make it better! Now, I was under the impression that signals in the 800-1000 MHz range sere strictly line of site, with neither ground nor sky propagation. Nonetheless, this event would imply that either I'm completely wrong about how EM propagation works, or somebody's fibbing...