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Anyone get involved in the ARRL International SSB DX contest this past weekend? How did you do? I find it amazing that people travel out of country to talk DX back to the US. I spoke to several people who live in nearby towns but were in another country for the contest. I was looking for as many countries as possible. Using 100 watts on an 80m dipole, I spoke to 110 people in 47 countries, plus Alaska and Hawaii, on 80m, 40m, 20m, and 15m! It was a good weekend. I had to stop early, though. This is the list of countries I was able to reach... Antigua & Barbuda Argentina Aruba Bahamas Barbados Belize Bermuda Bonaire Bosnia-Herzegovina Brazil Canada Canary Is. Cape Verde Cayman Is. Costa Rica Croatia Curacao Dominican Republic Ecuador England Federal Republic of Germany France French Guiana Honduras Ireland Italy Lithuania Luxembourg Martinique Montserrat New Zealand Panama Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Serbia Sint Maarten Slovenia Spain St. Kitts & Nevis St. Lucia St. Martin Sweden Turkey Turks & Caicos Is. US Virgin Is. Venezuela http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/HAM-GMRS/ARRL_2020_Int_DX_Contest.JPG

700+ qsos between all 6 bands and 300+ countries in total (around 70+) per band here.

I don't have a GMRSV1, but if it is like other Btech rigs with CHIRP, then you would select 'TONE' for transmit tone only, and if you want tone on receive as well, then you would select 'TONESQ' which will allow you to set both tones separately. If you want to receive everything, there is never a need to set a receive tone on your radio.

Only one comment. WOW!

https://www.bridgecomsystems.com/pages/bridgecom-systems-spring-repeater-system-giveaway?gsr=Ls2KI-8ahVWZ8spi

It's like being angry at the guards for catching your kids playing around on Area 51's land. "How dare you scare my kids that were breaking the rules?! I want to speak to your manager!"

Its been my experience that everybody wants to own a repeater till they have to maintain it or pay tower rent. Also Lot's of people build small repeaters with low power radios using cheep duplexes with low antenna height. I decided to hunt down some of the machines in our area only to find "GARAGE" repeaters, (3' antenna on a 3' tripod on somebody's house roof) over half with less coverage then what you could work simplex from a base but listed at 35 miles of coverage. I can not understand why people put repeaters into service that don't cover any useful area and then list them on myGMRS. I would bet a lot of the machines listed are no longer on the air or have a tiny foot print. I would also bet when somebody takes a repeater down the listing remains. Here is some other food for thought. Several of us in the WI, IL and IN area have linked a system of repeaters together on the myGMRS network. Our system of 5 machines is open to any licensed user and covers a few 1000 sq miles of area and it yet it has only 18 users. I promise it is not because the machines are junk but rather the limited number of GMRS users. I know Rich is working on something new and he is well aware of the dead listings, we will just have to wait and see. Just my $.02