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Have a couple things cooking in Johnstown at the site. First is we acquired 12 matching equipment racks for the site. For those that have seen the pictures of the hodge podge of equipment racks I currently have this is a MAJOR upgrade. So for those needing an equipment rack or 6, I have plenty that need new homes. Of course as equipment is moved from rack to rack it will be down. So if you are experiencing an outage, it's only temporary. I reprogrammed the Johnstown625 machine tonight. It's now the Johnstown600 machine. I found out that I was stomping on a guy two towns over and I first and foremost do NOT want to interfere with anyone else. He has been licensed since the FCC actually granted you repeater pairs you were allowed to use. 625 was one of his pairs and he was established so I vacated. Another interesting discovery while doing the retune. I have an SWR of 5:1 on the transmit antenna currently. Gonna rig the tower this weekend and hopefully get new line run and a different antenna in place on the tower. It has seemed to be a bit noisy at times and I really wasn't paying close attention. That of course is going to change. I will be putting a power monitor on the antenna system so I know when there is a problem going forward. I also figured out I have a 10dB loss in the transmit combiner. That works out to 50 watts in and 6 watts out to the antenna. It's actually sort of funny that the thing talks 40 miles in most directions with that sort of power output. I am giving some consideration to trying to space the antennas horizontally apart far enough at the top of the tower (needs to be 30 feet I think) so the coverage will more or less overlap. Not sure if I can do that and not shadow the antenna's due to the horns still being on the tower.

It's not the authorized resellers that are doing this, so don't blame them. They are still selling them for the official price. Check a few of their websites and you'll see that's the case. These are people who are buying RPis from the authorized resellers (at the MSRP) and turning around and offering them at jacked-up prices. Is that illegal? No. Is it unethical? I would argue that it is, especially when these folks are using things like bots that monitor the authorized reseller websites and as soon as there are any RPis available they buy 100 or 1000. I don't think many hobbyists have those resources available to them. That's why many (hopefully all) of the resellers have taken measures to prevent this. Here's the word from Raspberry Pi: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain-update/ I didn't mean to take us off into a discussion on the ethics of the free market. Personally I find it disturbing that I can't just order a couple RPis any time I want like I could a year or so ago. Fortunately I have a small stockpile (we're talking 3 or 4, not 3 or 4 hundred!) that I can use for any projects I am working on. I might even be willing to part with one or two. $1500 sounds like a good starting bid. ?

My programming cable came today - yes if you put the AM freq's into the main channel listing, and then you can edit the scan groups (1 of 10) to only be those channels...and you can make the scan key on the keypad of the mic default to just scan that group (you can also change this in the radio menu - it defaults to all right now). so the short answer - yes it works.

So ive been running a wouxun mobile as a base station for over a year now. It has earned its spot in my ham shack having no issues in over a year. I am getting a couple other brand radios to cover some ham frequencies. Several times in this past year Ive tried to find a reason to dislike this radio that many of the super powers in this forum call junk. i havent run across any to date. We set up and use repeaters which are in very close proximity to very important repeaters. The radio equipment that are being used for the actual repeaters and link radios are a different brand and that is mainly a duty cycle performance of known components. But I have used the repeater with my wouxun radio with no interference in either direction, Some of my ham buddies have switched to the 1000g to run gmrs. One in particular has ove 50 years in the radio world and he describes the 1000g as being solid. So much so that he ordered some more wouxun to run as mobiles. He runs radios for hours every day and continues to say they are solid. I agree completely. So if you are on the fence about this brand, I would say with malice that the 1000g is a great selection for gmrs. WRMK691, KI5UCM

Handheld definitely has convenience on it's side...power can help too, though line of sight is even better. If using a smaller antenna let's you use a better/higher mounting location, it's likely worth it. A 1/4 wave for gmrs is just a little 6" hatpin. depending on your choice of radios, it's nice when you can just make one common code plug (term for the file of programming) to use on both radios (base and mobile).

Power wise, there's lots of options at various price points, the key is making sure what you get can provide enough current to support what you want to run. Less expensive power supplies may scrimp on filtering (read, interference) or features. Dx engineering has a few options here link while se of the Tekpower on Amazon are well regarded as well. Antenna wise, indoors or outside below roofline are varying levels of less than ideal, but that doesn't mean they won't work to some extent. Haven't tested simplex, but I get into the local repeater fine with a small 5/8 wave whip indoors on a bookcase, mag mounted on a piece of sheet metal.

You likely don't have the front mic HUB grounded (ie: the radio thinks it is off hook). Been too long since I was into the MCS2k software, but there should be an "ignore HUB" setting or similar tick box that would work. Or, if your mic jack is open, slap a palm mic in that has a hang up clip attached.

The correct answer is "It depends" .. anything else is only a guess.

As pointed out already USB is only 5 VDC. You can get a DC to DC converter however there is a second problem. Most USB adapters/plugs can only supply 1 amp max. A 5 watt radio will likely draw up to 2 amps at the battery terminals on transmit. The total power drain on the low voltage side of the DC to DC converter will be higher due to the lower input voltage, power in = power out + converter losses, which will exceed the rating for the USB outlet.