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I know this is GMRS focused, but field day is still very relevant. It's all radio after all. Saturday-Sunday 6/27-6/28. If you're a amateur radio operator, activate your station! If not, listen any way you can - HF, VHF, UHF or shortwave. GMRS: announce your call sign and "listening" or "monitoring". When you hear another station, start a QSO or conversation with someone you've never spoken to. Exchange names, locations and whats happening in your area. Log your contacts. Get out of your comfort zone, call CQ. If no one talks, start talking! I'm hoping that we will have the MyGMRS linking initiative up and running over the weekend to encourage making contacts... say HI! Please monitor this site for more info as it arrives. I'll be listening... WRCU527 / K7VLL Darren

Yeah while field day is centered around amateur radio, I feel its a great opportunity to expose folks to the utility that GMRS offers. I've found a great community of like minded people around GMRS that may have never delved into amateur radio otherwise. I plan on activating 20 meters mainly and calling on the local GMRS repeaters for general conversation to learn what others are doing across the US. WQYM541 good luck on your trip! I hope to hear some of you on the air.

Maybe it isn’t for “Points” but I have never been in radio for points. During past field days when we could all get together. I bring my camper and set it all up with my icom 7100 mostly for HF and have an existing dual band antenna in the camper for gmrs. I’m also set up for vhf, emergency services radio, and another for 2 meter. Many did not know about GMRS. One of the head people didn’t think we should have gmrs for demo. My comment was after all it is radio just like our vhf repeater only on UHF ( I have the 2 meter and my GMRS radio both on motorola GM 300’s) and FRS / GMRS is a start to get interest going. And during an emergency many people might just have the toy radios. Heck this year where we are doing field day from home we are also integrating ZOOM into the mix. The best part of this year doing it from home is I don’t have to figure out a covered dish Meal to share!

I see that your callsign is in our system now. You should be able to register. We screen the guest forum posts so we don't have a bunch of spam show up.

If all the parts come in, I'll be traveling across northern Kansas this weekend trying to get a 30,000 Watt signal, and two 100,000 Watt signals back on the air in the 3-Meter band. (a.k.a. FM Stereo) I might try some simplex on 146.520 in the 2 Meter band while I'm on the road, but unfortunately, I won't be able to play with amateur radio much during this year's field day, since I'll be busy with commercial radio.

That's very strange. I just tried it again and it works for me. Maybe you have some security limitations on your computer. Anyway here is a snippet of what is there. It is a radio propagation modeling program using publicly available geodata. I this this would along the lines of the for pay service you use but for amateur radio, or other radio service, uses. **************************************************************************************************************************************************** Calculations The hart of every RF simulation tool is the prediction model. There are many models that predict RF propagation but the most known is the 'Hata-Okumura' model. This model is 'the mother of all models'. Over the years new models have been developed where the growth of commercial cellular networks like GSM UMTS, and now WiMAX are the main drive. These networks operate in th UHF and SHF bands (450 to 2400 MHZ). Other frequency's are used for broadcast of Radio and TV (VHF and UHF, 50-800 MHz) and a small portion for PAMR and PMR networks. Their focus is in the VHF and low UHF frequency's (50-500 MHz). The prediction models used for these networks are devided by coverage distance. For GSM, DCS and UMTS (900-2400 MHz) these models are limited to predictions over a short range. Due to the nature of broadcast the distance over wich predictions are made is extensively bigger than for cellular networks. The difference in range for the model is devided in to two main categories: 2-way communication or 1-way communication.This choice is influenced strongly by the en-user terminal. A if a uplink is required, a hand held terminal will limit the coverage because these devices have limited transmit power and poor antenna performance. In the case of broadcast A Radio receiver does not need to talk back to the broadcaster so bigger powers do no harm to the link budget. When prediction over small distances are required to be accurate it is important that the influence of local buildings (clutter) is taken in account. when predictions are performed over bigger distances the dominance of clutter decreases and eventually can be left out of the calculations. This simplifies the formula for calculating RF propagation. Accurate RF predictions require detailed clutter and height data bu this data is generally expensive and only affordable when income out of the exploitation of a radio network is high. For amateurradio, emergency services, and students for example it is not realistic to have this accurate data available. Therefore low budget and easy accessable data must be accessed. Radio Mobile uses geodata that is available on the internet for free. Based on the Hata model many other models have been derived. Also models have been improved for their specific purpose. But some general models have been almost the same and available for free. On very well known model is the Longley-Rice model. This model is accurate over a wide range of frequencys and over various distances. Based on this model the US Institute for Telecommunications Science (ITS) created a propagation prediction model know as the Irregular Terrain Model or ITM. Radio Mobile uses the ITM model. To understand the operation and limitations of the model I have collected information about the Longly-Rise and ITM model on this website. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************** The link below is for the "on-line" version. Maybe you'll have better luck with this link. http://radiomobileonline.pe1mew.nl/ This is the snippet from the link above. ****************************************************************************************************************************************************** Welcome To the website dedicated to Radio Mobile Online. Radio Mobile Online is the online version of the popular RF propagation tool Radio Mobile by Roger Coudé. Radio Mobile Online can be found at: http://www.ve2dbe.com/rmonline.html Radio Mobile Online is a radio wave propagation prediction tool dedicated to amateur radio. It uses digital terrain information and a mathematical model to simulate radio transmissions between two fixed sites (radio link) or between a fixed site and a mobile (Radio coverage). The digital terrain information comprises two databases: Elevation and land cover. Those databases are located on the server and represent a total of 198 GigaBytes. Radio Mobile is a popular tool for RF studies. Between 2012 and 2015 663304 studies have been performed and 26198 accounts have been made. More information? Follow this link: RMW Online popularity. ***************************************************************************************************************************************

I'd be concerned with anyone who let a repeater go out the door & didn't check the duplexer the first time. If he didn't get it right then, what's the chances he's going to get it right this time? It sounds like you bought it from the seller as a working package. Before you send it back - make sure you've got the cables hooked up correctly - the High side should be to the Receiver, low side for the Transmit. I've seen too many jumpers crossed up not to ask.

This has already been tried and rejected. See: http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-turns-away-petition-to-allow-hams-to-operate-non-certificated-transmitters-on-gmrs BTW, it has been previously suggested in this thread that price/cost is a factor in certified vs. ham equipment. I am not really sure that is true. It is hard to make a comparison since there are not many HAM single band UHF radios. But, for a rough comparison... GMRS - Midland MXT400 $250 Midland MXT115 & MXT275 $150 Btech 50X1 $200 HAM - ALINCO DR-435TMKIII $230 YAESU FTM-3207DR $169 So, I'd say while the GMRS radios are a bit more expensive, the price difference is not very significant and could well be accounted for by multiple factors like, lower demand, and certification costs. Also, you have to be careful to distinguish between radios manufactured for the ham radio market by vendors like Kenwood, ICOM, Yaesu, etc. and the low end radios labeled as "ham radios" because they are simply uncertified in any service. These include most of the CCRs

I had to email 6 different groups, 2 are testing, 3 are not yet and one never responded. Luckily the closest one is a Laurel sponsored and I was able to get signed up. But, I know the struggle, some are sacared, others are just having trouble finding a place to hold the test. I was told I'm going to have to take the test in my car, but it's happening.

There is an open source project for solving transmission line problems using Smith charts. I was alerted by a fellow Ham and EE who uses it. https://www.w0qe.com/SimSmith.html

There is a tremendous amount of benefits with Amateur Radio vs. GMRS. First, lets just talk about voice. On GMRS simplex, the absolute very best you can expect from a perfect setup, is going to be about 70 miles. Likely less. That would be mobile or base. With Amateur Radio VHF and UHF, the power limits are 1500 watts with no radiated power restrictions. That means with a little elevation, you are talking coast to coast on the higher portions of VHF and the lower portions of UHF. On the lower portions of VHF, you can talk to Europe, Mediterranean, Northern Africa, etc. Even in my mobile, I can talk to NY from Virginia on VHF simplex. With things other than voice... there is no limit to what you can do beyond no encryption. If you can dream it, you can do it on amateur radio. There is APRS, which provides transceiver location services. There FLDigi which is used for texting and simple messaging. There is WinLink which is a 100% radio-based email service that allows you to email other operators as well as people on the public internet. And much, much more. The benefit of HF and MF is, the ease of global comms as you drop in frequency. I was driving around in my Jeep today on an HF frequency that Tech license holders have access to. I talked to people in 3 different countries on 2 different continents with a simple 100 watt mobile radio and a whip antenna. It's really a lot of fun. As far as a base station goes, I don't use mobile radios for base a station. I have base station radios that I use for VHF, and a VHF/UHF repeater. I talk on VHF on the base for several hours a week, sitting in my executive desk chair. As far as the quality of conversation... I can't really say much about that. I would assume there are plenty of people to talk to without getting into religion, politics, etc. I avoid them like the plague. With regard to if it's worth it... that is a personal choice that each person needs to decide for themselves. I think it is. I held my Tech license for 17+ years before I got my General and had a great time. I also think the GMRS and FRS are great radio service and fill a nice niche.

Welcome to the insanity... er, I mean family of course.