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I wanted to thank the GMRS community for being there . At 70 I was diagnosed with Advanced Prostrate Cancer and during a 42 times stretch of Radiation the last two months you guys broke the monotony of it all. Been into Hand Helds for awhile on the Border but just as a means of communication between guys who were working or hunting with me but during the Radiation stuck with the you sleep or your on the couch I started playing with the radio and found the Tucson reapeater which living by myself was a real God send and a little entertainment since TV sucks That led to getting my license,and starting to read,watching YouTube to get on the net. Now I got a base station and a radio for my jeep to install. Want to say Thanks again for the new hobby and being there even though you didn't know it Paul R Hereford AZ WRKZ773

my bad its a talkaround ptt button The KG-905G supports Talk Around. If you're on a repeater channel, talkaround essentially provides an additional PTT button that bypasses the repeater, transmitting on the same frequency on which you would receive.

The reason I asked, there was a line of jeeps coming through town Sat and they were loud and clear so I knew they were close. Then sure enough they passed right by me. We have lots of trails in the Ozarks. I keyed up and asked where they were from and no one even skipped a beat so I was pretty sure they were running a tone. It is a really cool idea going to a trail where people are everywhere using the same channel.

This very thing happened to me. I have a radio with a cigarette lighter power cord, in-line fuse very visible and easily accessible. But it also had another fuse I did not know about, which was inside the black plastic case that is the actual plug that plugs into the power source. Once when I thought my radio was dead (thought maybe lightning had hit it), it was actually that first hidden fuse had blown (the second visible fuse was still good). Luckily, I didn’t trash my radio. Found the hidden fuse using a VOM, replaced it, and radio worked fine. One more note on replacing power source fuses. Pay attention to the fuse ratings. Replace with exactly same rated fuses only, no more, no less. On the radio I cited above, I first replaced the fuse with a lower rated fuse. Radio worked fine on low power (99% of the time), but then blew days later the few times I used a channel programmed for medium or high power. Again, thought the radio was bad, but finally figured out the fuse I was putting in had a too low rating for the radio to operate at med or high power, so it would blow every time (went through 4-5 fuses trying to figure it out). But also and more importantly, don’t ever put in a higher rated fuse than what came with the radio, or what the manual calls for. Better to blow a few 25 cent fuses than a $150+ radio with a now voided warranty. I hope my lesson(s) learned can help someone else. Thomas ... EDIT: Corrected voltage ratings mentioned (thanks Lscott for pointing that out).

Honestly, the numbers you have received (1.03 and 1.5) are quite good that you have nothing to worry about. At 50 watt output power, your reflected power is a mere 2 watts. Some quality pre-tuned antennas are advertise to only be 1.7 or below and here you are down at 1.5. If the antenna could be adjusted non-destructively (meaning no clipping) I would surely play with it as a learning exercise just to learn how I could squeeze more out of it. But if adjustments are destructive, I would probably stop when when numbers fell into the range you have unless I was prepared to purchase replacement should I accidentally go to far. If it was a collinear design, I would not mess with it at all because they are too complicated for DIY field adjustments.