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Well, I think this thread has pretty clearly established that GMRS Channel 20 is considered by many to be the "official" travel channel for GMRS. Since this thread is about "un-official" GMRS travel channels, it would seem to me that 19 for highway conditions and 16 for off-highway use would both make pretty good "un-official" travel channels, each for their respective purposes. As with every idea along this vein, they have to start somewhere. Once started, they need to catch on locally, then spread to other areas, gaining acceptance along the way. With 4x4 clubs being pretty popular, each club could choose to adopt channel 16 as their "official" GMRS channel. I think this would be fairly easy to implement within the off-roading community, as there are groups within the community to promote the idea. While some groups may choose not to implement such a plan, I'm sure many would do so, just as they did with CB channel 4 years ago. For highway conditions, the use of channel 19 would be a lot trickier. Even though this was the case with CB for many years, I think it would be harder to get this idea off the ground for GMRS. The main reason for this is that there aren't a lot of recognized groups to promote the idea. Maybe writing a letter to your local AAA branch would be a way to promote this idea. If they were to buy in, and promote the idea within their membership, you might have a chance of getting this idea off the ground. My expectation, however, is that they would most likely adopt the official or semi-official channel 20 instead, if only for the reason that it doesn't have the geographical restrictions near the Canadian border that are found with channel 19.

If I'm correct, 7 x 7" is minimum for 1/4 wave ground plane. I had the 8 x 8 x 1/4" aluminum plate laying around from another project so just primer/painted it. Also, the fiberglass top will not deter RF propagation and unless I run a branch along the top nothing should hit the antenna.

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Ran the coax down the vertical tower that holds the 3rd brake light, across the bottom of the swing out tire carrier to the passenger side corner, then above the bumper to the vacant area under the tub, above the rubber flap that's behind the rear wheel, then a small hole in the inner fender/tub next to the rear most rollbar mount, along the top of the tub lip and along the rollbar (under the wrap) up to radio mount. I did make my own 239 connection on the radio side so I could thread bare coax through the body while minimizing the hole diameter. Wrapped everything outside the tub in split or flex tubing and it's all secured with either stick on zip tie mounts or aluminum rubber insulated hold downs. With a small bit of slack at the swing out tire carrier hinge it flexes enough to not bind. It limits my carrier to only open 90* but I have no need to open it further. It clear the raised window. IMO a 1/4 wave antenna with a decent ground plane is superior to nearly any mag mount or lip mount. Someone questioned whether the brake light tower would flex.. emphatic 'No'. Also, the 8 x 8" x 1/4" thick plate clears the wiper by 1/2" or more when operated. Ran my aux reverse light wiring along the same route and mounted them on the bottom of the tire carrier. Pictures to follow.

@bobthetj03I cruised through the TJ forum to find a picture of your TJ to see if you have a 3rd brake light. Check out my antenna mount on my LJ earlier in this thread, maybe it will interest you. Works very well.

If it's any consolation I never hear travelers on channel 19. Go figure! You posted earlier that "No one knows about channel 20" yet you dismiss my quotefest that pretty much negates your argument. A lot of people know about channel 20 and its recognition as the traveler's channel. I suppose GMRS being what it is, most folks just don't want to chit chat with strangers. I don't know what else to do to convince you not to reinvent the wheel. I could go on with page two through ten of the search and keep quoting but I figure you would take the initiative if you were truly interested but it sounds like you just don't care. That's fine. None of this is going to work anyway unless someone takes the initiative to reach out to the dozens of other GMRS user groups and forums. In the meantime we can dust off the CB and have at it.

That is absolutely correct. Talk-Around is not the same thing as "Reverse (frequencies)".

Should probably point here: https://forums.mygmrs.com/guidelines/ The other link was from before a pretty big site/forum upgrade, I suspect things have shifted around a bit. They're also in the menu in the top right, under the "browse" submenu, at least on mobile view.

I'm pretty sure I ran the unzipped executable file, but I didn't get any errors when I did so. I also do have other Radioddity software installed within Wine, so that could account for the OCX libraries. I'm not sure if I have them or not, but as mentioned, I didn't get any errors running the DB25-G application. I can't read and write to a radio, though, so it's possible I'd get errors at those steps.

My mistake: I just checked and it did download as a ZIP file and the same program, The Unarchiver, unzipped it for me. My answer yesterday was from memory and remembering that The Unarchiver did the extraction, my memory was incorrect about it being an RAR file.

Well search for GMRS travel channels too. I happen to use DuckDuckGo as my search engine, and sometimes “Startpage.com”, so if you use something else your results likely will be different. The main point is people just propose something without doing any research first to see if the topic is covered elsewhere. I’ve spent hours looking for info at times going through hundreds of search engines hits. This topic comes up from time to time on this forum with same tired old answers given. What this site needs is a well maintained FAQ section where issues like this are easily accessible to everyone.

Antenna mount is done. Thank you rivnuts. Will terminate with PL259 and mount Kenwood TK8180 tomorrow. Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk