Leaderboard

Been using it on low power to talk with the various repeaters here in the Tucson area. At first was using medium power, but tried low, and it's clear and nice. So why not give the electrons less of a workout. I'm very satisfied with the radio and antenna.

STARTED OFF LATE 90'S / EARLY / 00'S WITH UNIDEN & MIDLAND FRS/GMRS HT'S FOR COMMUNINATING WHILE QUAIL HUNTING THEN ATER A STROKE PARALYZING MY LEFT SIDE AND ELIMINATINATING ANY HUNTING ACTIVITY I GOT BACK INTO GMRS RADIO WITH SOME KG-805G'S THEN KG-905'S AND FIMALLY WITH THE KG-935'S. WITH BAD EYESIGHT THE DISPLAY ON THE 935G WAS AN IMPORTANT FEATURE AS WELL AS THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMING BEING SIMILAR TO MY KG-XS20'S & KG-1000G'S. I CAN ONLY PROGRAM USING SOFTWARE DUE TO MY PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS USING THE DISPLAYS. I HAD ALS0 PREVIOUSLY USED THE GARMIN RINO RADIOS FOR CLIENT HUNTERS WHILE GUIDING FOR ELK AND TURKEY IN NORTHERN ARIZONA YEARS AGO.

Michael (and OffRoaderX), I salute you for your generous donations... This forum is filled with people like you and others who have helped me in the past, and others, and it is greatly appreciated. (I was going to send kudos to you via PM, but then decided a salute needs to be public). Thomas ...

The Ed Fong is a great antenna, and reasonably priced. I have one in 220 and one of the dual bands. The 220 might get used again soon, but the dual band is now a scanner antenna. Its biggest downfall is there are some Tram verticals that out perform it for the same price.

440 MHz refers to the ham 70cm band which is below the GMRS frequencies. A J-Pole cut for the 440 band would need to be shortened by a small amount to put it into the middle of the GMRS band.

You need to install and use Wouxun 32 bit software to have all options. CHIRP does not have actual profile for KG-UV9G.

A box will be heading your way next week Lou..

Lou: A box is going out to UPS today with the following: Baofeng UV-5R5 Baofeng BF-888S Baofeng BF-T1 and specialized programming cable (USB to USB-micro) All have been pre-programmed to your 4 repeater channels, two simplex channels and the remainder filled to the other GMRS/FRS channels as space remains. I did my due diligence and this is a tax deductible 501(c)(3) organization helping out the homeless of Atlantic City and I strongly encourage others here on myGMRS to donate their unused HTs to them (or a local homeless organization that is utilizing GMRS): https://www.havenstreets.org

You can have one mast with two antennas, or you can have one antenna to cover 2m, 70cm, GMRS. If you use two radios for that (of course you will be using two radios!) you would need an antenna switch. Mburn's way is more fool-proof: each radio has it's own antenna. Btw, the universally-loved Ed Fong's J-pole is not always the answer. Both Browning BR-6140 and Diamond X50 give me better results than Fong's on GMRS. If you already have Ed Fong antenna, nothing wrong with using it. But if not, you may look into other options. Browning is the same price, shorter, with RF choke integrated, and better quality overall.

Yes you can do this, and it is exactly the way I operate from home. The ‘best configuration’ is truly relative to your goals. In my case, GMRS receives top billing on top of a HD fiberglass mast. The dual band amateur antenna is mounted about 16-18 feet lower using a custom side-mount arm fabricated from PVC. The lower antenna is offset 22” from the main mast and the coax that feeds the upper antenna. I am able to operate well on GMRS, 70cm and 2m (one service at at time of course) at 50w each without any negative issues that affect me. Yes, if I am transmitting on GMRS, 70cm reception suffers a little while I am actively transmitting due to desense (which is to be expected) and the opposite is true as well. But I do not detect any appreciable desense from 2m to GMRS and vice versus while operating. What this means is I cannot carry on simultaneous conversations on both 70cm and GMRS services at once, nor can my wife be operating GMRS while I operate 70cm. That is perfectly OK, since she only uses GMRS to talk to me while I am out. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

I for one have always had in the back of my mind an emergency situation where a GMRS radio would save the day. But, as we all know, traffic is slim and folks monitoring for emergency calls is minimal. So, my Offroad club does volunteer/pro-Bono vehicle recoveries. Got contacted by a guy who was stuck at 8500' but lucky enough to have cell phone coverage due to the proximity of a large but remote mine, end of the road, 50+ miles off pavement. We got him recovered after a 2 hour drive to get to him 5 miles off the main dirt road. But that's not the story. The story is: while in route to recover #1 we're chatting on Ch. 16 truck to truck (my Kenwood 8180 and 2 of my 905G I hand out to my compatriots). We're many miles from anywhere gabbing away on the trip when I hear an unfamiliar voice. I ask who it is, he says his name and tells me they've slid a Toyota Sequoia off the road and need help. I asked how he got us and he said he put his Baofeng HT on scan and heard us chatting. Told him we'd get him on the way out from #1. This Toyota was at the top of the Ruby Mountains, Harrison Pass at close to 10k feet elevation, 30 miles of dirt then 6.5mi in, 4wd/Low Range for 6.5mi. They'd walked out 8 miles from their rig to their camp (muzzle loader deer hunt). Without giving you all the details of the recovery (didn't get it done last night with 3 capable Jeeps with winches and recovery gear in darkness; he's since hired a pro and they're in route as I write). Anyway, just a little story on how screwed these guys would have been and how lucky they are to have had a radio and someone in range. I suggested they hit the slots; even tho' their luck was bad getting stuck, they got good luck just getting out of there. No telling how long they'd been there with no comms. They spent the night in a local motel since the Toy is there only rig.

I have tested with the antenna on the roof, as well as in the Attic. In my testing it seems identical. So, I will be keeping it in the attic. For now, the extra expense of getting it right when on the roof was not worth it to me. To significantly increase range, I would have to raise the antenna a lot higher than what my roof could provide.

Hi Marcus, Before I get into more details, since you did not mention which radio you have, the first thing to realize is that not all radios support GMRS repeater use or might do so only after performing extra steps. Your owner's manual will help you determine that. If you don't have a paper copy of the manual, try looking for it online on the web site you bought the radio from or the manufacturer's web site. You can also try online manual archives such as manualslib.com. If you've determined your radio can support GMRS operation, continue reading... In case it might help, here is some fundamental information about repeaters. Repeaters use two frequencies. The frequency that the repeater transmits on is the output frequency. Since that is the repeater's output freq, that is also the freq you'll monitor to hear what comes out of the repeater. A repeater also uses an input frequency. This is the frequency that the repeater monitors to hear your transmissions and rebroadcasts them basically simultaneously on the output freq. This is known as duplex operation and is fundamental to how duplex repeaters work. When you see a repeater frequency listed in mygmrs, that is the output frequency that the repeater transmits on and that you monitor. But what about the input frequency you need to use to transmit to the repeater? That is accomplished via an offset. Normally for amateur radio, a + or - 5 MHz offset is used for UHF operation. GMRS is also UHF, but it uses only a +5 MHz offset for repeater use. The +5 MHz offset means that for whatever output GMRS frequency is being used, the input frequency is 5 MHz higher. In your original posting, you mentioned 462.650 MHz. You can tell this is a GMRS output frequency because it is in the 462 MHz range. (Note that there are also 462.xxx simplex, non-repeater frequencies in FRS and GMRS. The 462.xxx freqs only represent a repeater output when we are discussing GMRS repeaters.) So, for a repeater output freq of 462.650, the input freq you'll need to access that particular repeater is 467.650 (notice the 467 instead of the 462) because we are offsetting by +5 MHz. So how is the +5 MHz offset accomplished? It depends on your radio. There may be dedicated memories which take care of the offset. Otherwise, you may need to take additional programming steps. If so, consult the manual. For my Wouxun KG-905G handheld radio, which has preprogrammed repeater memories, such memories show a "+" sign in the display to represent the +5 MHz offset. If your radio is capable of GMRS repeater operation and it is preprogrammed with the eight possible GMRS channels in memory, select the appropriate memory for use with the repeater you are trying to access. It's possible that your radio might display a repeater's freq info with a alphanumeric label such as "RPT-19." If you're not sure which GMRS output frequency that represents, consult your owner's manual. There is also a possibility that your radio has a menu selectable option that can display a memory's content as a frequency instead of the alphanumeric tag. Let's say you've determined that your radio is 1) GMRS capable, 2) has a memory assigned for the particular GMRS repeater you are interested in, and 3) you have selected that particular memory. What's next? Access tones, aka PL tones. Repeaters typically require analog (CTCSS) or digital (DCS) access tones. This is done for two reasons. First, since there are only eight GMRS pairs (input and output freq combinations), that means several repeaters you might be able to access locally may use the same repeater freq pairs. In that case, so that you access the repeater you're interested in, you may need to transmit the appropriate transmit tone to "open" that particular repeater. As such, if a repeater requires you to send a particular transmit access tone, that is the most important tone. But if a repeater database such as mygmrs also lists a receive tone, what about that tone? That tone only influences what you hear or if you hear anything at all. So what will you hear, if anything? Let's take the case of a repeater that does support your use of a receive tone because it transmits an embedded CTCSS tone of say 156.7 (for example). There are three possibilities: 1) if you set your receive tone to none, you will receive/hear the transmission from the repeater in all cases. By setting your radio's receive tone to none, you are instructing your radios receiver to send the message to the radio's speaker regardless of whether or not the received transmission has a tone embedded in it from the repeater. 2) if you set your radio's receive tone to say 156.7, you will hear a repeater's transmission only if the same 156.7 tone is embedded in the transmission from the repeater. By setting a receive tone, you are instructing the radio to send a message to its speaker only for transmissions that are received which have an embedded tone that matches the receive tone you specified. 3) if you set your radio's receive tone to say 156.7, if a repeater's transmission has a different embedded tone or no tone, you will not hear the transmission on your radio. As you can, in the case of GMRS repeater operation, your use of a transmit tone only matters when a repeater requires you to open it via a transmit tone so you can transmit to it. If you use a receive tone, that has nothing to do with opening a repeater to transmit to it. Your use of a receive tone determines only if you'll hear a message or not. So even if a repeater requires an access tone to open it for your transmission and you use the correct transmit access tone, if you utilize an incorrect receive tone, you will not hear any transmission from the repeater. Another thing to be aware of is that some repeater's require split tones. That is, different tones for transmit and receive. This can be either two different CTCSS tones, two different DCS tones, or a CTCSS tone and a DCS tone. If you're having trouble talking to and hearing from a repeater, split tone operation and whether your radio is capable of that might be the explanation. Earlier I mentioned there are two reasons repeaters typically use access tones. The first reason discussed earlier above was due to necessity. Since there are only eight repeater pair channels, access tones provide a way to distinguish between repeaters which share these eight channels. A second benefit of using access tones, especially transmit tones, is to try to lock out trolls/jammers. Of course, since they might discover the access tones, repeater owners occasionally change which transmit tone you'll need to access the repeater again. As such, if you were able to open a repeater previously but now can't, this is the first explanation to consider. If so, you'll need to find out what the new access tone is and update your radio. Do not share such info publicly in forums - otherwise you will let the trolls/jammers know about the new tone. Another thing to be aware of is how various radios are programmed differently. The most flexible radios allow for total programming via their keypads as well as via PC software and programming cables. The least flexible radios require most if not all of their programming to be done using PC software and a programming cable. Other radios fall somewhere in the middle. For example, to program frequencies in free memory slots in my KG-905G, I must program those freqs via a PC/cable. But once those freqs have been programmed in the memories, I can change the characteristics (e.g. high/low power, receive tone, transmit tone) of the freqs via the radio's keypad. I cannot stress enough how nice/important it is to be able to change such parameters in the field untethered to a PC and cable. Though it's not in the scope of my answer to the original question to go into purchase decisions, for anyone considering buying GMRS radios, do your homework regarding must-have/desirable features. Otherwise, in an attempt to "save money," you might find yourself buying multiple radios instead of the right one from the get go. Especially if all this is new to you, I know I've provided a lot of info. If needed, it might help to digest it in bite size pieces, a paragraph at a time. Hope that helps. Happy radioing.