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I ran two antennas on my pickup. One being a 5/8 wave on an Allen set screw affixed type nmo lip engine hood mount, and the other being a 5/8 wave mag mount in middle of my pickups cab. testing from a fixed location the mag mount out performed the lip mount considerably on receive. It kind of blew my mind how much better. I kept going back and forth between the two antennas and each time the mag on the roof would pickup a couple extra “bars of signal” and audibly bring in a clearer signal. I try to not use repeaters as much as possible and a slightly better RX is a huge benefit between my home base and my mobiles. Just thought I’d add my experience as it kinda pertained to this threads topic.

A good Weller or Hako soldering station with adjustable heat and different size tips is a must. I use the smallest tips possible with the heat turned up when soldering tiny wires to tiny solder pads and tiny components. I want to get the pads/wires/components up to temp quickly without heating up surrounding components or solder joints.

That's a perfectly normal sort order... for a text/string field. It's comparing by character, your descending sort looks for Z-A then 9-0. "9" is greater than "12345".

An explanation is kind of overkill for this. If it's a sortable field, it should sort correctly. But for curiosity sake, the tone sort was related to my continuing search for a repeater that could be a match for what I'm hearing. It was just to make it easier to see if I had tried the likely ones. I gave up on the CW ID approach because without a tone I keep getting the ID from the repeater I already know not the one the unidentified conversation is coming from. Tone scan also fails on the weak signal. So I'm back to getting the user IDs copied correctly.

Keep this rule in mind: Users who continue to post inflammatory, abusive comments will be banned from the forum after two warnings are issued by moderators. It might make the forum safer if some of us UNblock anyone that might break this rule, and then report them every time they do.

Since I have ignored some people I seldom have a reason to report any posts. The exception is when people have troubles that only Rich can solve. I do report those. I’ll try to remember the next time I report a post.

@SteveShannon a followup post demonstrating how to report someone's post any time they violate these rules would not go unnoticed.

Look for these on Amazon. They really help when you make a boo-boo.

Sounds like it's related to the lipstick on the dipstick.

That reminds me of this joke. Q. What's the difference between the divorced Barbie doll and the divorced Ken doll? A. The divorced Barbie doll comes with all of Ken's crap too.

I know mine were 12 cent, the only time I've read any 10 cent stories are in reprints To satisfy my curiosity, I just did a quick search and found: Both Marvel and DC made the move over the fall/winter 1961 period.

I do!! I was born in 55. I was tempted to say I bought 10 cent comics but I couldn’t remember for sure.

I started with those also, I'd have to look it up to see by how much I missed the 10 cent ones, I was born in 1960, I probably started reading comics in 1964 Remember the 25 cent 80 Page Giants from National [which is now DC]?

Get a good temperature controlled soldering station. I like Weller, but lots of people use Hako also. Second, get someone who knows what they’re doing to show you the basics (or watch YouTube videos). Third, don’t be stingy on using flux.

I remember in Middle School, some dork used to "finger paint" on the inside of the stall walls and doors in the bathroom. MyGMRS TOS probably forbids me mentioning the media he used for this activity. I don't think the janitor was happy about it, either. Edit: Good grief! This is still going on today per this YouTube video that popped up on my feed, this morning!

Why would you want to sort by tone. Seams like zero usable info.

Neat! I've never been great at soldering, so I guess I'm going to have to learn. I've patched up some wiring harnesses but the few attempts I've made to fix small electronics usually ends up with the magic smoke escaping from the circuit boards. I'm more comfortable with macro level heat, like using a blowtorch to loosen a stuck bolt (and then shearing the head off it anyway).

now after folliwing the above instructions it's so nice not to see that SoCal on these pages. Pooof.. Gone

Red Cross has 47.42. Something close to that they could RX on their same antenna would still be a good idea.

SoCalGMRS should become an Amateur Radio Operator so he'll be a genuine "Sad HAM" and change his handle to SoCalHam and hang with his new hammers on the Radio Reference forum.

Several years ago, I sent Radio Shack a proposal for something that I think, if approved by the FCC, would have returned some of the yesteryear excitement to visiting their stores. Their response was something about legal "rights" to the idea and me generating tons of legalese paperwork for them, something I had neither time, money, or resources for. In that day, before the current flood of CCJ (Cheap Chinese Junk) GMRS radios, the average Joe or Jane had two options; CB or ham, for off-grid or grid-down comms. GMRS was an option if you were wealthy enough to afford Moto, GE, or other Land Mobile gear. As we all know, most wives, children, and other family or friends refuse to be bothered with studying for and taking a Technician test, no matter how simple it is. CB is on a long wavelength which makes portable comms unwieldy at best and nearly impossible from inside some buildings and automobiles without an external outside antenna. Mobile and base range is crippled by a 4 Watt power limit and short channel spacing, as well as frequent skip. At that time, Homeland Security had PSA's on radio and TV urging citizens to contemplate preparing for unexpected disasters with food, water, and communications gear beyond landlines and cell phones. My proposal involved petitioning the FCC to carve out a portion of the VHF Low Band somewhere above 42 MHz for a "Homeland Security" band. My proposal would allow for 50W mobile and base radios. Portables would be a maximum of 6W. A minimum of 45 channels should be provided at 15 to 20 KHz spacing with narrowband analog FM being the only accepted mode. 5 channels would be set aside as ht transmit, base and mobile receive-only. These would be the highest frequency channels of the band/service. Bases and mobiles would be receive only and transmit only on a corresponding fixed lower frequency in the band. A Dual Receive Capability capable radio would allow simultaneous receive on the ht channel corresponding with a fixed lower transmit frequency for that ht channel. One such DRC channel (the highest) would be for emergencies, like old CB 9. The next would be for taking the emergency to for detailed or prolonged comms if necessary. The other three DRC capable channels would allow any user to monitor the higher (6W ht only) frequency and their fixed corresponding lower frequency and use them for any purpose the service allowed. The purpose of this would be to allow persons with only a ht to have a clearer shot at making contact with an emergency monitoring station, or their own home base without having to compete with 50W bases and mobiles. All radios would be required to have CTCSS/DCS encode/decode capability and a fixed tone (say 100.0) would be used on the two emergency channels for all comms. Since Radio Shack was the creator of FRS, by petitioning the FCC for such, I figured such a project would re-vitalize the waning interest in their once-vibrant stores. While skip would still occur at the higher end of VHF Low Band, it would be less frequent than on CB. Unlike CB, ht signals at those frequencies CAN get into and out of a closed automobile and many buildings that CB could never touch. Alas, it was not to be.

If Guest PG3 lives within 200 miles to SoCalGMRS it very well could be him. Don't forget, SoCalGMRS can talk up to 200 miles.

Hmmmm... It would be a shame if everyone reported certain user's that do this every day.. multiple times...

... ... Respect other users. No flaming or abusing fellow forum members. Users who continue to post inflammatory, abusive comments will be banned from the forum after two warnings are issued by moderators. Harassment. No threats or harassment of other users will be tolerated. Any instance of threatening or harassing behavior is grounds for deletion from the forums.