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So I spoke to one of my tower site owner friends and this is specifically what he had to say. I've been in the tower leasing business for nearly 30 years and my opinion is that it would be very difficult for someone to get into the tower leasing business today. I built 12 towers between 1994 and 2001 and all 12 ended up getting cellular tenants. 25 years ago it was possible to get some cooperation from the cellular companies regarding where they needed to improve coverage, today that is impossible unless you are running a 100 million dollar company with 5000 towers. Today, the cellular providers simply WILL NOT give you new site build locations or help you in any way. I know this to be true because I have been trying to get a dialog going with the cell companies for 20 years now. The cellular companies have sweetheart deals with about a dozen very large tower companies and give their new site builds only to them and nobody else. You could argue that a small startup tower company with less overhead could potentially build a new tower and potentially lease it to a cell company at a lower lease rate than what the big tower companies are charging but they simply do not care. So, if you go and build a 500' tower somewhere, or a 250' tower, or any other height without having a commitment from some type of tenant you are taking a huge risk. You might get lucky and have a tenant express interest in your new tower a year later, or 3 years later, or 10 years later. Or, you might end up with no tenants, ever. As was mentioned by others in this discussion, if you build a new tower in any area other than one that is extremely remote and undeveloped you will need to deal with local zoning regulations and permitting. Many jurisdictions now have tower removal requirements which means that, if you build a new tower and nobody uses it for 12 months or 18 months or some similar timeframe your conditional use permit which allowed you to build the tower will be revoked and you will be legally forced to dismantle your tower. If you have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket my advice is to build new houses or apartment buildings, not towers. That is from a guy with actual experience in playing the game with vertical real estate. And while he is a guy ON the Internet.... he's NOT JUST some guy voicing his opinion without first hand experience. And neither am I. I am also a tower site 'co-owner' and manage the site. I have contacts in the communications field because I work in that field and have clients that are also tenants on various tower sites including the one I manage. I am not gonna tell you to NOT do this. I am gonna tell you that you REALLY need to think about what you are going to do, and be realistic. If the FAA has not granted you a build permit for a 500 foot tower, you are NOT going to get to go that high. I would consider refiling at a lower height and see if they allow it. But I wouldn't file any higher than 250 feet. I don't know where this site is with regard to an airport or a municipality that will have zoning requirements. You have a NUMBER of different regulatory entities that can shut you down with this whole thing and the possibility that even after the tower is up require you to remove it if you don't get tenants on it within a specified amount of time. There are ways around that, and if you get to that point let me know and I will share that info with you. But it costs MORE money in licensing and equipment that you will most likely NOT want to invest to keep the tower standing as it's all donation to the same government entities that are wanting you to REMOVE said tower but are done at a federal level that is out of their reach. And you need to consider this.. vertical real estate leasing is in some ways just like the leasing of buildings and homes. You will NEVER make money with only one site in the long term. You will have times that the site has no income or not enough income to be self sustaining. This is a tax write off to a point, but only to a point. Insurance, property taxes and the like can be written off. But other business expenses like electricity can't most of the time. Point is if you DON'T know what you are getting into, don't assume that if you build it they will come. Because they may not. And a tower site has a limited number of prospective clients to begin with unlike an apartment building where anyone looking for a roof over their head is a prospective tenant.

I wanted to throw out of post of good commercial antenna's that work great for GMRS as well as other LMR applications. Every antenna listed I have used for home and on towers and have had little if any issues with. Laird - Laird FG Series is a great antenna for home use and limited tower site use. Great for a home repeater when a tower is not available. Mostly omni. FG4500 - Unity Gain Fiberglass Antenna N Female 100W 450-470mhz - Cost around $125 FG4603 - 3db Gain Fiberglass Antenna N female 100W 460-470 - Cost around $140 FG4605 - 7db Gain Fiberglass Antenna N Female 100W 460-470 - Cost around $200 You can get more specifications from Laird here - FG Series Antennas I get most of my hobby antennas from The Antenna Farm The next step up is the dipole antenna and is normally the base antenna I'll install on a tower site. The DB aka CommScope Dipole is a rock solid performer and works well in long term use. I have used these in the ADK park on mountains caked in ice to towers in SE VA and other than physical damage never replaced one. DB404 - 3.8db Gain Dipole Antenna - N Male 250W 450-470mhz - Cost around $500 DB408 - 6.6db Gain Dipole Antenna - N Make 250W 450-470mhz - Cost around $1000 You can get more specifications from CommScope here - CommScope I use various vendors for CommScope gear. Antenna Farm linked above does carry the DB404 as does MyGMRS. MyGMRS would be my first choice as it helps support the site and forum. His price is comparable to what I get it for from Tessco. When looking at an antenna also remember the cable to the antenna to be almost as important as the antenna. Putting a DB408 on a tower isn't going to perform as expected when you run LMR400 to it. It should be LDF. In reality if its on a tower it should be LDF anyway. Some real case uses of antenna''s above for me. My 38' Motorhome has a GMRS repeater. for years I ran the GR1225 and since have switch to the RT97. I run the FG4500 on my ladder and it works perfect for camgrounds/race track use. I have used the FG4605 for years on a repeater at my fathers house. He had a small mast system and it was a great match. I ran 1/2 LDF up the mast and to the antenna. The DB404 is my favorite. Thats what I have at home on a 1 1/4" Pipe on my roof. I run the DB408 at the tower with 7/8" LDF down to the combiner/duplexers. Just wanted to get some info out there on better antennas and options. TRAM, Comet, Ed Fong are all that. They are hobby antenna's and may not meet expectations. Some even cost the same.

Hey folks. I have had a small group of people ask me about tones and GMRS/FRS basics in the past week. I figured I would take one of the conversations here and share it for people new to the service. Hopefully it will help you understand Private Lines, Privacy Tones, sub-channels, tones and squelching methods, in general. I am only covering the two most popular in GMRS and FRS, but there are many others available as you move into different radio services and technology. Before we get into what all that stuff is, lets talk about why it exists. Per NOAA and the US Census Bureau, the lower 48 states is approximately 3.1 million square miles. Also, 83% of Americans live on 10% of the total available square miles and 40% of all US citizens live on the east and west coast in counties touching oceans. Following this logic, about 500,000+ licensed and unlicensed operators (estimated by me) are sharing FRS and GMRS radio space, in roughly 310,000 square miles. So, how does 500,000 people in close proximity, sharing 22 channels, all use their radios at the same time without interfering with each other? Motorola brings you PL tones! Lets get this out of the way... regardless of what the manufacturers may tell you or how they label their products, there is no privacy. Period. Private Lines (PL), Privacy Tones, Sub-channels and any other name for the same service, does not stop people from hearing you, it stops you from hearing them. I know... seems like a day in Opposite World, but that's how it works. I suppose the first thing to do is explain what the PL tones really are, what the more common types are and what each of them do. A traditional squelch is a signal level squelch. Meaning, no audio will come out of the speaker until a strong enough signal is received. Then there are also user squelch types. With analog radios, the most common type of user squelch uses encoding called Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS. This feature is defined as being used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio channel. So, as mentioned above, its not that you as a person speaking have any type of privacy, but rather you don't have to listen to everyone on the same frequency. Hopefully the third time is a charm. Many GMRS and FRS radios only have simple CTCSS functions called Tone Squelch, often displayed as TSQL on the screen when enabled. This means two things. One is, regardless of what you do with your squelch knob or set your RF squelch to, no audio will come out of the speaker unless the tone you selected is embedded in the signal you are receiving. The other thing it does is, when you transmit, what ever tone frequency you have programed gets transmitted with/in your signal to unlock or open the squelch of other radios configured the same way. There is another method of CTCSS called "split tone". This means that you can use one tone when you transmit and another for your receive. This comes in handy when repeater owners are trying to limit who can access the repeater, as higher cost radios typically have split tone capability, compared to poorly built and inexpensive radios that would be problematic on a repeater do not. Also, this makes it a bit more difficult to "discover" the input tone by using scanning tools. Another function of split tone CTCSS is that you can also set your radio to transmit a tone to unlock a repeater or other radio, but leave your receive tone set to null (nothing). When this mode is enabled, there is typically a display on the radio that either reads TN or TONE. That means you can bring up a repeater or unlock a radio squelch, but also hear everyone else regardless of what tones they are running, if any at all. This is actually a great feature for GMRS radios since Repeater Channels share FRS frequencies and GMRS simplex frequencies. So you can tell if the frequency is in use as well as being able to talk to others who many not be using the repeater. CTCSS is an analog squelching system. There is also a digital squelching system called Digital-Code Squelch or DCS. It has similar use cases as CTCSS, but it is sending digitally embedded numeric codes instead of a sub-audible tone. I apologize in advance, but this next portion may get a little confusing. If you have questions, just ask and myself or one of the other knowledgeable members will be able to help. All of the numbers below are simply random samples I selected for example. Last I checked, there are 38 standard tones and an additional 13 expanded tones (not available on every radio) for a total possible 51 tones and 83 DCS codes. Along with the use examples above, you can get creative with DCS, because we are dealing with binary numbers instead of a tone. You can have the numbers used in a bunch of different combinations. For example, the number 411 (or 4 1 1, three separate numbers) in binary would be transmitted as 100 001 001. The reverse of this would be 011 110 110. So we are swapping the meaning of a 1 and a 0. So the combinations could be as follows: Normal-Normal = Transmit sends 411 and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in the standard format 100 001 001. Reverse-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 reversed (or bit swapped) and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 reversed, meaning 011 110 110. Normal-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 standard binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a reversed binary format. Reverse-Normal = Transmit sends 411 in a reversed binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a standard format. Unfortunately, I am unaware of any radio's that have a DCS option to leave your user squelch open while transmitting a DCS code. If DCS is enabled, you cannot hear anyone else unless they are using the same DCS number and binary combination. CTCSS tones can also be "reversed". CTCSS tones, since its analog, we have a phase reversal, often called "reverse burst" when it is only reversed at the end of the transmission. (Something to Google in your spare time.) On some high-end radios, squelching can get really exotic. You may be able to create your own custom tone instead of using one of the standard tones. You may also be able to combine CTCSS tones and DCS codes. For example: User-CTCSS = Transmit 2600Hz tone, squelch opens with 2600Hz tone. (random number example) T-DCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 code. DCS-T = Transmit 411 code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone. T-rDCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 bit swapped code. rDCS-T = Transmit 411 bit swapped code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone. Now, here is the kind of disappointing part. Some manufactures try to make their equipment sound like something its not. They will use things like there own custom number code to identify a traditional CTCSS code. For example, Midland uses code number 22 (also known as a sub-channel) to indicate the tone 141.3. This makes coordination on tone selection a bit cumbersome between some brands. It also means that if your radio doesn't display the actual CTCSS tone or DCS code, you need to keep your owner's manual handy for reference. So... I don't know if that explanation made things better or worse. LOL Anyway, some companies use verbiage like "Privacy Tones" which adds to the confusion for some people. If you are using a true full CTCSS, it just means you are limited to whom you can hear, but everyone can still hear you. The examples I provided above for DCS are not what actually gets transmitted, but rather a conceptual process to help understand at a very basic level of what occurs, simply to understand the difference. DCS adds a 134.4 bps bitstream to the transmitted audio. To move past concept to the weeds, this video does a great job.

L-Com HG459U $150 from L-com website. 9 dBi gain. Regardless of which brand/style/model that you buy, remember that the 465mhz is the "center" of the GMRS band. An antenna that is specifically designed and tuned for 465mhz will provide maximum efficiency. If you go with a very wide-ranging design, make sure that it is tunable.

Thanks for that site. I never even knew about that. I posted a jpg of the line of site, but I'm sure the curvature of the earth over the 17 miles has an effect on the signal. I had posted an a different forum about my problem, but just wondered if a different antenna would make a difference. the DB 404 may be a bit too expensive, but one of the Laird antennas aren't out of the question. I can receive that repeater great using a Nagoya Mag mount antenna stuck onto a cookie sheet, and can hit the repeater with a couple of watts on an HT and base, but audio is very bad, where as I can hit the repeater great using the Comet. with great audio reports, but it doesn't receive the repeater signal anywhere near as good as that mobile antenna

My farthest 2m contact was with someone else's gear. I was on Flagpole Knob (about 4,000' ASL) with the Woodbridge Wireless radio club for Field Day about 20 years ago. Stacked beam array, 1500w on 144.2 MHz USB. Talked from Dayton, VA to just over 1,000 miles to an operator just south of Dallas TX. That was pretty awesome.

If you want a cheaper folded dipole, which I recommend over anything vertical, here are a more budget friendly option for UHF. -Harvest FDU1 310~480 MHz UHF 500W Folded Dipole. 70 bucks. - Costs around $70 -Harvest FDU2 310~480 MHz UHF 500W 2-Elements Folded Dipole Array Antenna. - Costs around $140 For VHF, I've had excellent results with the following dipole (not folded), and its not too expensive. You can build a 2-bay, 4-bay, 8-bay etc, array out of those. -Sirio WD140-N VHF 140-160 MHz Base Station Dipole Antenna - Costs around $99 specs can be found at the Sirio site: https://www.sirioantenne.it/en/products/vhf/wd-140-n-wd-155-n This antenna is very high quality, in fact, I think it might be better built than the newer Commscope DB antennas (not the old ones)

I think so, the Harvest brand folded dipole goes for 70 bucks on eBay. The 2 bay dipole goes for 140 bucks on eBay. I think folded dipoles are great b/c they have super wide bandwidth and they are very resilient to noise. single dipole link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133810193897?epid=1941709490&hash=item1f27b585e9:g:Y5EAAOSwLCdgUyaI 2-bay link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133927735178?epid=1941709490&hash=item1f2eb70f8a:g:yowAAOSwIytgUyhQ

I don't remember how much I've used either of them, since it's been a while for either one, but the KG-1000G and KG-UV9G applications have worked for me in Linux. I've also had success with CPS applications from Radioddity, Anytone, Ailunce (Retevis), and Vertex running in Linux.

I wouldn't expect any miracles on 2m. LOS is LOS. Using power to overcome shadowing is a high-loss game. I'll be impressed if you pick-up an extra 0.5-1 miles. My own personal experience, watt for watt and all else equal, I don't get an extra block in my neighborhood, moving from GMRS or Amateur 440 to 2m.

I always use the -d switch, and it does nothing for the narrowband mandate, the only way around it on the version I am using is to change the clock.

I didn't have to change any clock settings to enable wide band on my repeater. I just created a desktop short cut to the application and added the "-d" switch to the filename string in this format: <filename>.exe -d That's what worked for me, though your mileage may vary...

For someone new to GMRS, I always recommend staying away from non-GMRS radios (ie commercial radios), until you've learned the ropes.. Remember the warning on my earlier reply about "some people" ? But, its good to know all options and then make the choice thats best for you.

I own and have used every one of those radios... All are great radios - Except for the 50X1 - Scratch that one off your list. Its overpriced and VERY limited in its features and in my OPINION, it is not worth the price - and you will never actually get 50W out of it. The XS20G is a great (very) little radio. The UV9G Pro is a great radio - but also very complicated.. Same with the 916 (I have one, it will be a long time before you can get one)- But if all the pre-programmed SHTF stuff is what you want/need, then either is a great choice.. I would recommend also considering the KG-905G OR the KG-935G. The 905G is SUPER simple.. the 935G is a little more complex/does a little more, but IMO, still easier than the UV9G or 916.

Do you really mean should you be able to transmit, or are you thinking that your transmission should be able to be heard? Some radios arrive from the factory with transmit not allowed and a change to the configuration of the radio may need to be made. But if you’re thinking that because you can hear someone transmitting that they should be able to hear you, that’s a bit more complicated. Lots of things could prevent your signal from traveling to them. They could be transmitting at a higher power, for instance. Or, you might be able to hear transmissions because you have no CTCSS set, but they might not be able to hear your transmissions because you have no CTCSS set on your transmitter and they require it. So, I’m afraid my answer isn’t terribly helpful without understanding the actual problem better.

Sometimes is not that they ignore your calls, but because they have set some PL tones, your call won't even open their squelch.

My 'go to' radio is a KG-935G, so I can change the bandwidth. That said, you originally stated that you were interested in channels 15-22 which, as a GMRS operator, you can select wide or narrow (depending on your radio) Some let you change stuff and/or have the ability to put custom channels into memory. That however, is not universal with the current crop of radios that are Part 95e radios.

Is this an "all or nothing" option for your radio, or do you have the option to select wide or narrow by the channel? Perhaps you could add some custom narrow band entries with the same frequencies as channels 15 - 21 in channel slots 8 - 14, and leave 15 - 22 as wide band?

It just got to wondering how many KG-1000G owners are actually familiar with and use the Priority Channel feature on this radio. So this post is for you. If you a KG-1000G owner, are you aware that you can set a priority channel? Are you aware that, unlike many other radios, even when you are tuned to different channel, and even when both of your receivers are tuned to different channels, that transmissions from your designated priority channel will still come through? Did you realize it will do this when you are not scanning? It is a very cool and useful feature. Yes, it requires the software to preset the channel, but once the channel has been set you can enable and disable the feature from the radio. It makes it sort of like a poor mans “Three-Watch” (as contrasted with Dual-Watch) radio. Of course, poor is relative. When the feature is enabled (function menu 23), the radio checks the priority channel in the background every few seconds. If a transmission is detected, the priority channel breaks through, no matter what channel(s) you may currently be tuned to. Admittedly it has some weaknesses. Recently I submitted recommendations for improvement to make it more useful and convenient to set up. Since this a tips and tricks thread, I thought I would pass this on. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

So of course your beef here is long-talking on a repeater all day long without ever ID'ing with a callsign irrespective of the language spoken. The Pig-Latin repeater has that same problem: 527.264! ?