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As has been mentioned, the ARRL has a book on the subject of Ground and bonding. Information can be found here: http://www.arrl.org/grounding-and-bonding-for-the-amateur. If you are in the mode of learning, purchase and read it. The ARRL also has links to a lot of other references for those that care to dig in deeper. But be aware that there are competing theories amongst true experts about the ‘Best’ way. From a pure safety standpoint, the National Electric Code describes the minimum requirements. This means, in part, that the NEC does not concern itself with RF grounding in any way that may help or hinder radio performance. Anything you may choose to do special for RF is over and above. So, at a minimum, follow the national electric code. At least if when you do, should you have a lose from lighting, your insurance company should have no leg to stand-on in denying your claim. Now, let’s consider a common installation and a common and appropriate method of grounding. Here is the scenario. You have a 30 foot metal antenna mast mounted outside, next to and attached to your home. A vertical antenna is mounted to the top of the mast. Your radio will be located in a first floor room or in the basement. The coaxial cable will enter the home within a few feet of the mast. Hear are the steps involved. A ground rod would be driven into the ground within a couple feet of the base of the mast. A heavy copper wire (#6 AWG) or larger would be used to interconnect the mast to this ground rod. Clamps made for this purpose would be used to secure the wire at both ends. A coax of appropriate type and length is attached to your antenna. The coax runs down and is secured to the mast periodically so it does not flail in the wind. A coaxial cable lighting arrestor gets attached directly to the ground rod. The antenna coax attaches to the appropriate port on the arrestor. A 2nd coax connects to the remaining port on the arrestor and is runs into your home and connects to your radio. The penetration into the home is sealed well against moisture ingress. A #6AWG copper bonding conduction is then run below ground between your new ground rod to your home’s main/primary electrical ground rod. This bonding conductor is then securely connected to both ground rods. Clamps made for exactly this purpose are used. This step ensures both ground rods are now at the same voltage potential. If your conditions are different, then some additions to, or modifications of this basic scenario will be warranted. In the end however, the basic principles will still be applied, just perhaps in a more complex configuration. In summary, the mast gets connected to its own dedicated ground rod(s). A ground rod exists exists within feet of where the coaxial cable enters the home. The coaxial cable from the antenna gets connected to a lighting arrestor just before it enters the home. The lighting arrestor is either attached directly to the ground rod or interconnected to it with heavy copper cable (if it cannot be conductively mounted directly to it for some reason). All ground rods are bonded together with heavy copper cable per the NEC. And there you have it, the basics. If you pursue knowledge on this topic you will learn that none of these precautions will prevent damage to and perhaps total loss of your equipment in the event of a direct hit. Direct hits do happen to home antennas, but are relatively rare. What is far more common is lighting strikes nearby that induce voltage on your antenna system, and the static build up on the antenna system that can shock you or damage your equipment. It is these later two more common conditions that these steps ultimately help you with. Good luck on your project. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

These GMRS forums is NOT the place to discuss your politics. If you want to do that take it elsewhere.

@Lscott This is kind of strategy this individual uses, baits people into agreeing, and then he uses it against you when its convenient.

Along with the power issues Micheal mentioned (causing damage by have the two antennas close), there is a chance you are building a two element vertical UHF beam and don't even realize it. A full wave length of a GMRS signal is about 2 feet (61cm). If the antennas are 2 feet apart or any correct segment of wave pattern within a couple of wavelengths, the passive vertical will act like a reflector and the slim jim will act like a driver... essentially creating a focused beam that hears better for a pattern 40 to 60 degrees forward and creates nulls (where you can't hear as well if at all) of about 40 to 60 degrees behind it. So yeah, combine the possibility that you are fringe of the repeater making placement critical and you may have accidentally built a beam making it so it can't hear in the direction of the repeater, the terrain may be an issue and you are looking at almost 10 dB of line loss per hundred feet with both the LMR195 and the RG58, I'd say you need to make some changes. Find a sweet spot on the roof using an HT (as mentioned above), ditch the PVC for fiberglass or wood, get 1 piece of LMR400 or better hooked up... you may make it work.

I rarely hear traffic on the road anymore. Most people use their smart phone on waze for routing and road conditions. GMRS has been a savior here in Arizona for overlanding offroad because you lose a cell phone signal as soon as you leave the pavement.

Uuuh... getting snarky now... let me repeat this for you: You REALLY are a legend on your own mind if you think that you can tell me what I need. After the last several post of yours I wouldn't touch anything coming from you with a ten foot pole... and I am sorry to disappoint you, but I don't need any sleep ATM, I can do this all night long. Lets go, lets see if we can get the thread locked... by posting more of that nonsense of yours; hmm, lets see if you can find someone's quote and twist it real good, lets see if that much twisting is enough to prove that the USA never landed on the Moon, or better yet... the Earth is flat!! yeah, did you know the Earth could actually be flat? Because I've read in a bunch of articles, all written by very reputable sources, you know, experts in the matter, they claim the Earth could indeed be flat. G.

The more I learn about the FCC's General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), the more I am fascinated by RF in general. It touches everyone's lives every second of every day, yet few people pay much attention. How cool is it that after 42 years and 14 billion miles away, the 22-Watt radio on Voyager 1 is still sending data back to earth every day (how important is that antenna?). So why aren't more people interested in GMRS or RF in general? There's no test to get a license like amateur (ham) radio. It's $70 for a 10-year license, and is really easy to get started. So here are some theories. People don't know: GMRS exists Why GMRS exists Why they'd want to use GMRS How to envision themselves participating in GMRS What it takes to get started with GMRS What it takes to continue and improve with GMRS Technical information they should know about GMRS Etiquette when transmitting (TX) on GMRS What a GMRS "Net" is and why Most people within the GMRS community are helpful once you're in, but the community is very inviting in a go-figure-it-out-yourself way, and no one has assembled everything you need to know about GMRS all in one place. We GMRS people are putting the onus on outsiders to sift through thousands of painfully esoteric webpages with a winnowing fork, separating useful info from useless, poorly written, or incomplete info. When I first heard about GMRS on a 4x4 trip, I arrived home and Googled around and settled on a Midland MXT-275 because it seemed perfect for mounting on my truck dashboard. At the time, I had no idea that Midland doesn't manufacture a GMRS radio capable of operating on split-tone repeaters (Dear Midland, I know you're reading this: why do you squander so much potential?). Edit 6/28/2021: Midland heard our cry! They just updated the MXT-275 to include split-tone programming on repeater channels. So for example, now this radio is able to reach a repeater that receives (RX) incoming transmissions on 467.550 with a PL tone of 103.5 and repeats the transmission (TX) at 462.550 with a PL tone of 88.5. I didn't even know what "split tone" was or even what "tone" meant, or carrier or squelch or hundreds of other little things you all take for granted. Since then, I realized that if the big, bad manufacturers like Midland, Kenwood, Motorola, and iCom can't even invite the public to learn more and provide useful content for each stage of the customer journey—Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, and Loyalty—the 2-way radio industry has much deeper problems and aren't there to help guys like me. As we get involved deeper into GMRS, there's little-to-no hand-holding going on at each level of knowledge. I ending up relying on the Ham community here and there and a guy who is basically a saint at a little radio shop in Phoenix, Arizona (hope Tim over at Procomm and the others at the nonprofit AZGMRS.org don't mind me giving them a shout-out). Edit 4/14/2020: By the way, AZGMRS made this awesome list of FCC-approved GMRS radios that they recommend. If you live anywhere near Arizona and are reading this, now would be a great time to become a member. Their repeater network covers some 100 miles around Phoenix with more and more repeaters joining the network (check out their sweet coverage map). But it's still frustrating. I wish a GMRS expert—presumably a manufacturer—would just come out and say exactly what a total newbie needs at each stage of their involvement or level of need. Two-way radio manufacturers should stop wasting time trying to sell, and start marketing and branding, which means educating the public about the 5 W's (Who, What, Where, When, Why [+how, +how much]) without trying to sell to them. Most new users don't know what they need because they don't know what's possible. For example, I wish I knew that manufacturers don't typically include the best antenna on their radios right out of the box. It took me over a year to realize that the best bang for the buck for a portable base antenna to include in my go bag is N9TAX's Slimjim and that Smiley Antenna makes the best bang for the buck antennas for hand-held radios (which by the way, everyone just assumes newbies are supposed to know that hand-held walkie-talkie radios are called "HT" for "Handy-talkie" and what a "QSO" is). How would a newbie know that the cheap Nagoya 771 "upgrade" antenna for Baofengs that everyone talks about actually isn't the best bang for the buck for the GMRS frequency band of 462–467? How would a newbie know that antennas work best when tuned exactly to what they call a "center" frequency that accommodates 5 Megahertz in each direction (+5 and -5 Megahertz) at the expense of hearing other frequencies? I learned the hard way that in order to properly install an NMO antenna mount on the roof of my truck, I would need a drill bit specifically made for drilling NMO antenna mount holes, and that yes, it is worth the money to do it right the first time. I'm still in the middle of learning how a "quarter-wave" or "5/8 wave" antenna works, the difference between dB gain vs. dBi gain, mic gain, antenna gain, because again, everyone seems to just assume I already know what all this means. I still don't understand what antenna "tuning" means and why you have to "cut" an antenna to "tune" it. Can I make my own antenna right now in a pinch with a copper wire in my garage? Ok, show me! How do I measure it or test it? What is SWR? Can I measure it myself? What do I need in order to measure it? Is one SWR meter better than another for my level as a newbie? Is there something I should learn to make it worth buying the better meter that opens up a whole new world of capability? Is it worth learning all that? This graphic did a great job beginning to explain what dBd gain means for those of us who know next to nothing about it, but now I need to go find out on my own and sift through a thousand webpages to find out if dBd is something new I need to know. Speaking of dB, I know that "dB" is a decibel, but is it the same as my stereo volume? Why do I see manufacturers saying that the microphone and cable have a dB rating? What is going on here? This is madness! We can Google things all day, but which info is true and correct and the most helpful? I think that the entire industry is sitting on a Gold Mine of consumers sitting at home for weeks on end who would love to buy GMRS equipment and communicate via GMRS to friends, family, neighbors, and other GMRS users. Whoever provides the most useful, relevant, and engaging content that stops making assumptions about what people know or don't know will win. STOP ASSUMING. START EDUCATING.

I was driving a vehicle that doesn't have a mobile radio. I have a HAM and GMRS mobile in my truck. I have never been a "rag chewer" on the amateur side or GMRS. I have always used radios as a tool as I did in my professions. The post was just about what I heard along the way.

Honestly, I'm not surprised. An HT inside a car is a low performance radio (generally speaking) inside a big metal RF trap filled with RFI generating electronics. Even if you had an external antenna, unless there are some repeaters in your path with good elevation, I would expect your range to be less than a mile. If you were driving alone, I know how boring it can get. Unfortunately the radio choice in this case wasn't the best option if you were looking for company. When I travel alone, I usually use 20m and 40m. You can find operators day or night.

Wait, ... the Earth isn't flat?

Thanks for the help. Struggled more figuring out the process than I did programming the radio. Going to be a work in progress, as I have several permission requests on repeaters pending. I managed to turn back on the annoying key pad beep, I’ll have to figure out were in the computer programming that is and fix that! That, and the voice guide I can do without. Went into the radio and got rid of those pronto. This is a good preliminary start. I’ve got a 9 pro on back order, that will be more of a challenge. But this helped me understand the process. That, and the help you provided, thanks again. Edit to add: Well, it’s take less than 24 hours for me to determine I want to arrange things differently. Decided to go with a more strict geographic, i.e. by the interstate road, listing. But, that’s OK, I’m sure I’ll change it several times before I settle in on a strategy I like.

Also remember repeaters don't need to be listed anyplace. None of my repeaters are listed at this time as I got tired of dealing with unwanted folks on them. There are repeaters out there that have coverage and are linked that may not be open to other users. Remember not all repeaters are open as in ham radio. Here is a link of a GMRS network that may have something in your area - https://midwestgmrs.com/

Your situation suggests that you may not have the “clear shot to that repeater” you suggest. 14 miles with truly a clear shot should result in very good strength (perhaps 40dB of more to spare), and with minimal effect from the environment. Given that pickup is touchy in the garage and that you are also having communications using the antenna on the roof, there are other factors that coming into play. These could very well be losses caused by many obstructions in the signal path and reflections caused by the environment. Changing the physical location (horizontally and/or vertically) may make a difference. Marc makes some good suggestions. Heed them. Always start your troubleshooting by making sure first that your antenna, then your complete antenna system, making sure both show they tuned correctly. You may wish to invest in and learn how to use a NanoVNA. I concur that your antennas are too close together. Depending upon your operating power you could perhaps damage one radio while transmitting on the other, but this is a completely separate concern from what you brought up. For example, if your antennas are 3 feet apart, one antenna has a gain of 9dBi, one of 5dBi and assuming your amateur radio transmits at 100 watts on 70cm, the GMRS radio could see as much as 10 watts coming back in if my calculations are correct. If your radios cannot handle that in a sustained way you could experience a failure. Consider arraying your antennas vertically rather than horizontally if they are going to installed in close proximity so that you can benefit from the axial losses in their coverage patterns. As far as additional troubleshooting is concerned. Consider getting on the roof and trying operation merely with a 5w HT at various locations to see which locations might exhibit stronger signals. It would be interesting for you to contrast the results against your chimney mounted GMRS antenna and perhaps there is some insight to be gained. When you are operating in the fringe area of a repeater for what ever reason it is fringe, the smallest physical displacement of an antenna can make the difference between whether you receive or do not receive a signal. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

To do grounding the proper way will cost more than your radio and antenna combined. I would at minimum put a polyphaser/transector where the feedline enters your house. Grounded to a ground rod or building electrical if possible. Minimum should be #6. Below you can grab a polyphaser for around $75.00. If you have a mast that is metal you should try to ground that to the same point as the polyphaser. https://www.dxengineering.com/search/brand/polyphaser?cm_mmc=ppc-google-_-search-_-vendors-_-keyword&gclid=Cj0KCQiAoY-PBhCNARIsABcz772B_ofhyz47cdi2i0FWZStI2MENLroGG3T5-nRA_loZkBmDokje9fsaAhwlEALw_wcB Good manuals to look at. https://wiki.w9cr.net/index.php/R56_-_Standards_and_Guidelines_for_Communication_Sites

Pretty sure you can just link your repeaters together but then you can also link into the myGMRS Network when you want. I see a few repeater networks on the myGMRS Network map that don't routinely link into the regional hubs. There are three nodes in Minnesota that are all linked. I link into them from time to time as well.

@MichaelLAX the weather, specifically lightning, is extremely predictable in the Mid-Atlantic. We don't get random storms and NOAA/NWS does such a good job that they are typically correct within 30 minutes as to when the weather is going to start. Even during the peak of the season, we go weeks without rain/lightning. So it's pretty easy to disconnect when a storm is forecast. If I am going out of town, like to Florida or New England, I disconnect before I go. I don't have any base station equipment in Florida. 23 years in this house and never lost a radio or amplifier. I did lose 2 antennas to lightning strikes, but even with proper grounds and lightning suppression, the antenna is getting taken out on a hit.

At what age is Social Security not taxable? At 65 to 67, depending on the year of your birth, you are at full retirement age and can get full Social Security retirement benefits tax-free. That is directly from the IRS FAQ. I'm 73 now, so... ?

The part 90 rules don't just apply to equipment certified under part 90, but also regulate the use of any equipment in "the Public Safety, Industrial/Business Radio Pool, and Radiolocation Radio Services."

My license was granted 11-02-2021, and lists the three you have above, and also 467.650 MHz.

My GMRS License was granted on 1-14-22 and there is a reference to not operating North of Line A and East of line C on 462.650 MHZ, 462.700 and 467.700 unless a previous authorized such operation.

It appears that these prohibitions would apply to Part 90 equipment. I haven't investigated this matter, but is there a similar prohibition for Part 97 (amateur radio service) equipment?

I wouldn't say a fiber link is better than DSL. My house actually had DSL for 3 years as we had no fiber or highspeed from any other place. I averaged 2-3mb and that's it for up and down. My P25 would work most of the time until we got down below a 1mb then I would get garbled on the base. For link speeds it really depends on the system and how much it needs. A site with 3 channels of TRBO and controller needs more than a single channel. QOS is also very important. In a closed network such as public safety uses its easy to have QoS for Voice and less Qos for other traffic. In the commercial world the ISP doesn't give you or I QoS for our home networking. We just share the pipe and when it gets busy it slows down. Depending on the importance of the system will change the requirement from the ISP. Thats why when you call someone like Verizon for Fiber they have different plans for residential or business. Normally you will find a business account cost more for the same speeds. When building a system going to the ISP with a SLA (System Link Agreement) we will provide what we need. And for reference a system I worked on a system 15 years ago was a trunked system with 8 channels. We used a single T1 to the site. It was on a microwave link so congestion was not an issue. One of the things I think hams forget about in regards to the LTE style links is the idea of a disaster. The LTE modem on the Trbo repeater is going to work about the same as your cell phone. For those that have been involved in disaster scenarios you know that cell can be overloaded or completely gone. Many times Fiber and copper phone lines still work. All in all its about what service you need and want to provide. If I'm going t promote my P25 ham gear as a RACES/ARES type system I am going to make sure it has the ability to help, otherwise its just another radio on the air.

Section 90.427(b) specifically prohibits programming unauthorized frequencies into a transmitter: (b) Except for frequencies used in accordance with § 90.417, no person shall program into a transmitter frequencies for which the licensee using the transmitter is not authorized. So, how does that fit into this conversation? I’ll try to answer with some scenarios that I hope will explain my understanding. 1. Ms. Sierra Citizen, while out for a walk, finds a sheriff’s deputy slumped over in the front seat of his cruiser. She has no cellphone service or any other communication device with her. She picks up the microphone in the cruiser and asks for help. I believe the various exceptions which allow emergency communications would protect her from prosecution. 2. Mr. Joe Prepper has every frequency programmed into his portable radio. He finds a person slumped over in the front seat of their car. He picks up his portable radio and calls on an EMS dispatch frequency for which he is not authorized. I believe that even though he potentially saves the life of the person, he has clearly violated 90.427(b) by having his transmitter preprogrammed with unauthorized frequencies. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t prosecuted. The bottom line is this, the emergency provisions allow great latitude in radio usage in true emergencies, but they don’t serve to waive the rules that establish and protect communications systems simply to be prepared.

I'd rather have your expertise and there's no need for bickering. If someone knows what is best for each application, stand up and say it. The rest of us need to know when to lead, and know when to follow.