All Activity

I hope everything went well and you heal quickly. Don't rush physical therapy or try to use your shoulder too soon. I'm running a Comet GP-9 dual band antenna and its base is at 22 feet above the ground mounted on some 1 5/8" fence posts that are anchored to the house. Our club's repeaters are 22.5 miles away with the antennas up on a tall radio station tower. I'm running a Comet CA-712EFC with the base at 20 feet above ground with my Wouxun KG-1000G. With this setup I can easily get into the 2m repeater with my Icom IC-2730 set on low power (5 watts). And the other people can't tell if I'm running 5 watts or 50 watts when using the 2730 and the GP-9. Using a hand held around the yard is a different story since I am low to the ground and using the short HT antenna. I have to use a minimum of 20 watts to get a good readable signal into the 70cm and GMRS repeaters. I can sometimes get into the GMRS repeater with a HT out in the yard if I am facing the direction of the tower but it's not a strong signal. I can't get into the 70cm repeater at all with a HT. The 2m and 70cm repeaters use the same antennas which are at 900 feet and the GMRS antennas are at 400-450 feet. Cross band repeat works well around the yard for me. Another good use is if you are traveling with a group and there is only on mobile radio but several hand held radios.

Oh, yeah, I can get days on a 3,800 mAh battery if it's mostly on standby. With regular use, about 3 x 8 hr days. Or, I guess 24 hrs straight through, if you have enough stamina for that.

Well I suppose it was two questions, first being how big of a deal it is if my kid is talking back and forth with me on this repeater network and second would be if there's a way to limit my transmissions to just the local repeater and not get and receive everything from the rest of the network. I have both send and receive ctcss codes to that local repeater but that doesn't seem to limit anything.

I don't know how the airwaves are where you live, but here it's unnecessary to have "privacy" (they aren't) codes engaged on all channels. There's not enough traffic to keep me from communicating with friends and family, and with a DCS tone engaged, you won't be able to hear anyone else on the channel. The UV-5r has plenty of memory slots. I have the GMRS/FRS channels "bare" and another set of just the GMRS channels with codes engaged. If I'm talking to family, they'll have gotten the radios from me, so we can communicate on the coded frequencies if we feel the need. FRS channels 8-14 are restricted to 0.5 watt. The UV-5r is nominally 1 watt on low power, although a lot of times it's less. I recommend you set the power on 8-14 on low and then try to avoid using them unless you really have to. Most likely, nobody will notice 1 watt vs 0.5 watt, but it's the polite thing to do.

I've been trying for months to get an antenna mast up outdoors, but it's one thing after another. Most recently I had shoulder surgery and won't be able to lift anything heavy for several months. Right now, I'm using a mag mount on a pizza plate, so crossbanding won't give me much more than I get from my HT. If I had a good antenna on a 40' mast, I might find a use for crossbanding.

I was responding to the points being made about repeaters being expensive and bulky. In some circumstances, you might get better distance even without the repeater. I've done that a couple of times on ham just to get the feel of it, but so far, I haven't had circumstances where I felt the need. I hadn't thought of that, but if there were lowband GMRS channels, I'm sure someone would start making radios capable of crossband repeat.

The main issue I see is finding a 6M antenna for an HT. There's plenty of HT size 27MHz CB antennas to be had but nothing for 6M/50MHz that I can find.

But I have a new radio that let's me select different sounds for the beep! You know I've got to try it out.

No good buddy beeps unless you want to find yourself with no one to talk to. Sent from my SM-S911U1 using Tapatalk

NEWS in the GMRS world: Source: National Communications Magazine Article: Petition from GMRS operators in the D.C. area for the use of unused low band frequencies. A group has filed a petition with the FCC for unused low-band channels in the 30-50MHz bands. National Capitol Communications also known as Mid Atlantic REACT in Washington DC. Michael C. Trahos GMRS call sign KAB7046 and ham operator KB4PGC. Asking reason: The need for longer-range, publicly accessible communions tool in case of severe natural disasters. The frequency targeted: Old cordless telephone channels 46 to 49MHz. According to NCC's analysis, 10 channel pairs 16-25 have no active FCC license and could be repurposed for GMRS repeater operations supporting both simplex and duplex communication up to 100 watts. Low powered baby monitors and walkie talkie channels 49.83 to 49.89 MHz. NCC proposes allocating these five channels for unlicensed 2-watt FRS use. Abandoned VHF paging freqs. 35 and 43 MHz. Previously they were used by commercial paging services. NCC recommends reallocating seven of these freqs. To GMRS, with the potential for 300-watt repeater operations and a 8-MHz separation for enhanced range. The petition argues that these VHF low band channels offer propagation characteristics that far exceed the range of today's UHF FRS and GMRS radios.

Yes the 6m band can be fickle at times and it's not called the "Magic Band" for nothing. All of my experiences with the VHF Low band outside of 6m has been while in the military. I've used man portable and vehicle mounted radios and I was never impressed with the range. This is especially true with something like the PRC-77 that only puts out 4 watts. Most of the time we had to use some type of relay system. We didn't have repeaters so we would have two radios setup at high elevation on two different frequencies to pass traffic. I agree that a 50 watt mobile setup with cross band repeat is a viable option. I use cross band repeat quite often even at home. While I can get into the local 2m repeater with an HT when outside, using cross band repeat is a whole lot better.

Welcome, but what question are you asking? (even your tl;dr didn't make it clear)

I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I have.....questions. Why are there DTC tones on every "FRS" channel? If you're trying to keep to the GRMS rules, your transmit power is wrong on 8-14. Why are GMRS 17 and 19 labeled as FAM1 & 2? The order seems to be kinda all over the place but if that's what you were going for, and the radios you're trying to talk to are set up similarly, it CAN work. It just seems a bit all over the place, without knowing the logic behind it (IE: did you copy someone else's cockamamie config blindly? Or is it set up that way on purpose?)

You’re right. Although a wattmeter might measure an extra few decimal points of outgoing power, it will make zero real difference in range.

We can definitely talk farther on low-band due to being able to take advantage of ground wave, sky wave and ducting, but repeaters could be very helpful because those propagation methods are all inconsistent. I tried to use SSB voice on 6m for more than 20 years with terrible luck. When the conditions are right (which isn't often), we are able to talk 20-30 miles... but most of the time, it's RF LOS. The really long distance stuff seems to be happening on FT8 and other weak-signal protocols most of the time, but still dependent on the solar cycle and ducting. To get over the whole handheld issue, I personally would have a crossband repeater in my vehicle, use UHF handheld to my VHF vehicle for full power and range. I do that with Ham radio all the time. I think the biggest challenge to bringing repeaters online will be duplexers. I don't know of any that currently exist. So, until commercial units become available, we are going to have to make them ourselves. Thankfully, the longer the wavelength, the less sensitive the size/length of components would be. Novice builders will have better luck as they start making their own.

This is purely anecdotal: I have a 20w mobile in my vehicle which gets 13.8v (minimum) when the truck is running and 12-12.8v when the truck is not running. While I have not done any serious tests to determine maximum distances, I see no difference in signal strength or clarity at known distances using the radio with the vehicle running or not. The maths would seem to show there wouldn't be much difference between 12.9v and 13.8v. If I remember correctly my 20w radio draws around 8-9 amps when transmitting. I measured it years ago when I thought I really cared. These days, if it works and the magic smoke doesn't leak out, I don't worry about it.

I just got my GMRS license and i'm unsure if i've set my handheld up correctly. I have a Baeofeng UV5RM and used CHIRP to setup my channels. I'd like to know if I set this up correctly, and are there any pro tips a new guys should know. Thanks! Baofeng Channel List 8.23.25.img

the price is what blows me away.. I have two of the new Baofengs DM32 radios with 2500 mH and i get an easy 2.5 days out of them, 3-4 in monitor mode. That 5200 on a UV5 has to last an easy week for under 25 bucks..

Repeaters are cool, but you don't need a repeater to get more farz from lowband than you currently can with GMRS UHF. For some settings like ranching/farming operations, you might be able to replace a repeater with a single base unit. The antennas might be too long to be practical for handhelds, but they'll be shorter than CB antennas, so mounting them on vehicles and equipment should be simple. It's possible the radios would sell well even if repeaters were slow to come online.

I have several of the 3,800 mAh batteries and they have enough juice for 24 hrs or so. That big battery should provide plenty of talk time. I have several radios that use the same battery. Maybe I'll buy one eventually.

It's a power supply, not an inverter. An inverter takes DC and changes it to AC. Good chance the power output will be a bit lower. Probably won't matter that much though. Unless your normal signal is going through obstacles such as trees.

After reading these comments I feel like a majority of the people think the public hobby sector of radio has enough of the spectrum. Maybe we should petition to take some away from all the services like ham gmrs/frs and murs so they don't take up as much of the spectrum. 6 meters has been great this year so I'm not opposed to this proposal but have you tried 11 meters? It's free and has been open almost every day this year and people run big power there all day long,10s of thousands of watts and nobody bats an eye. Just don't link your gmrs or ask for lowband I guess

yup.. could be a chrger too. Some people with big linears use chargers for whatever reason.

The more I think about this I think maybe you’re not really talking about an inverter but rather a 15 amp switch mode power supply, 110 volts AC input and 12.9 volt dc output. Is that correct?