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Lightening protection should go at the point of ingress to your house/garage prior to the radio. If you have an antenna on a mast run cable down mast and as soon as you enter building you would put protection there.

Good Morning cbrown. Glad to here you had success in connecting to the repeater. BTW, repeaters are private property. Make sure you reach out to the repeater owner to obtain permission to use it. Regarding “private com(m)s”. A you asking how you can set up your radios so that no one can else can hear communications between your family? If so, the answer is you cannot. All communications are public. They cannot be masked, scrambled, encrypted in any way. Anyone within radio range of you (or the repeater you’re using) can easily and readily hear you. Since you were successful connecting to the repeater, it would seem to suggest that you have learned how to setup squelch codes on your radios (aka ‘tones’, CTCSS, DCS, PL, DPL, etc). That is fantastic. Although these are often referred to a privacy codes, they do nothing to make you communications private at all. What they do is give you an ability to limit which communications YOU hear. If you have a transmitter and you assign a 100 Hz CTCSS/PL code to your channel, your radio transmits a continuous 100 Hz tone. Receivers that are set to open squelch (ak ‘un-mute’) when a 100 Hz tone is received will open squelch so that only transmissions containing a 100 Hz tone are heard. If the receiver has no squelch code set, ALL communications above some user set level are heard by the person using the receiver. If private com(m)s means something different to you, please do clarify. I hope that helps. Regards, Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

well, 30 miles may be a bit of a stretch without a 100' tower, however on a 3 story building 8-10 miles can be easily reached. Rule of thumb is that each time you double antenna height you double range, however at lower heights, being able to get over trees and buildings and hills can sometimes tripple or quadruple your range. On a good day, my repeater can be hit (though unreliably) and heard from about 45 miles away by friends down in cape may and wildwood, however has dead spots the closer you get to the repeater till about 6 miles away. Thats with the antenna only being 25-30 feet up.

Got an extra 12volt battery hanging around? I keep a small 16ah battery on my bench just for that reason.

@IronArcher No, it cannot be done, b/c it doesn't really matter. I've been sharing some ISO-tee tests figures here, and all I get is people arguing personal opinions, swirling personal attacks and sowing doubt, deflecting from the problem at hand, while painting me as someone who is trying mislead people, etc. So, I've decided its just better to silently laugh watching people fumble around with garbage equipment, always wondering why their ranges are only a tenth of a mile, than me getting all worked up, writing long posts trying to explain things that noone cares. And why it doesn't matter to have any spec chart, of any sort? Well, its very simple: Because we are cheap. Lets just say we had a chart with a bunch of radios, so, you see that fancy XPR7550e, and everything looks great, a +18dBm better effective sens, tight selectivity, and better everything... so you quickly realize this is the radio you want, but then, finally, when you look a the last column, the pricetag... you have a heart attack.... so in your mind you quickly disqualify the XPR7550e, b/c none of things can be that much better than the 59 dollar garbage CCR special... so without having any sense of what a 18dBm difference truly means, or any of the other spec chart parameters mean, all of the sudden, that 59 dollar CCR garbage special becomes the best radio, the same radio Jesus used to call Home before ascending back to Heaven... Seriously, it doesn't matter. Only way to guarantee learning is making mistakes over time, and if it has to be an expensive mistake over a long period of time, so be it. The more expensive the mistake, and the longer you've made it, the better you learn the lesson, and I can certainly attest to heart to that... until then I'll be laughing... yeah, I am a cruel person, I am gMan the heartless, the troublemaker, the troll... etc etc. G.

Anytime. The guys and girls on this site can answer almost any question. Many are Ham/Emergency Communications techs, and we all started out somewhere Any other questions you have feel free to research/ask them.

I see that I've many replies and should say thank you ALL for help and insight... I got it to work on both of my test settings this afternoon with the repeater operator. Family so happy on this family hobby. Since BTWR was closed for the holiday. I had to import radio factory setting using CHRIP software to see what was going on. In doing so I saw via the programing software which showed it was not setup for +5 on duplexing. Just a side note, being a newbie, I asked BTWR before purchasing if they would set up this first repeater channel for me.... BTWR reply NO. I will say BTWR was helpful in getting me to pick this KG-805G and very help with it. Now I'm open for any other HT I should be looking at as I only have this one plus an old FRS unit. I hope I did not offend anyone with my repeated questions. It is one of those things, where you have to ask enough folks as everyone see things from different points of view. Sure I did not ask the right questions as I did not know what they where. So asking gave me many answers to the puzzle piece I was missing. You all played a part getting me to be successful in front of family and kids during the first radio check with repeater. Must thankful for the PM answers these guys gave just the right on out of the view of others. Be patience and helpful to us newbie as we are the future of GMRS... You guys have been a good witness to me and my kids of caring, helpful teachers, that what make you so great in my eyes... P.S. Now for any Newbie with Wouxun KG-805G GMRS Radio, feel free to call on me... I can be one of those puzzle piece you need for the question you have no clue how to ask it. We will PM several times until we get it right thus not boring others on the forum.

Congrats, wish I had done the same. Have fun. for me the learning never stops with this hobby. I never thought I'd have to become a pseudo electrician (all the electrical knowledge) pseudo astrophysicst (sunspots you know)pseudo mathematician (ideal angle for the sloper is, know how do I calculate they hypotenuse again?)pseudo audiologist ( omg was that dit-dah or dah-dit need to check why I can't hear it)pseudo botanist (now honey we can't plant that tree, it won't grow fast enough to give me the height I need for the dipole, or the venerable I think this antenna needs this leaf, so it looks more like a potted plant)pseudo camo expert (paint it this shade, it hides with the sky better).

Josh, one point, all radios receive on channels 15 thru 22, 462.xxx. In repeater mode radios transmitt on 467.xxx but still receive on 462.xxx.( duplex ) The repeater is opposite, receiving on 467.xxx and transmitting on 462.xxx. Your XMT400 has 2 sets of channels. One simplex, one duplex. This is seperate from 467.xxx FRS channels 8 thru 14.