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Greeting, I have been a ham operator for over 20 years and I have had a gmrs license for 30 days. I found my Retevis RA25, (clone of the Radioddity DB20g) to be a good deal for the money. It is a micro-mobile with a cigarette lighter plug and in UV mode it can be programmed to TX anywhere on 2m/70cm I wish to operate. I plan to purchase additional units for each vehicle. I believe that being able to give memory locations a name rather than just 462.XXX will be a lot more user friendly for my non-ham family members.

Excellent. The access hole in the rear of the meter was for the wattage. I opened the box and found a capacitor with long leads soldiered to the input (radio) side that was bent at a right angle. With the dummy load attached, and the meter set to infinity on the forward setting of the switch, move the switch to SWR and bent the cap until the needle just barely moved. Switched back to set position and was still at infinity. Reattached the antenna to the meter and checked for infinity. Switched to SWR and the reflected number on the meter with the antenna was 1.2:1 ON 467.625 slightly less on 462.625. I think I'm good. I saw 18 watts which I think I question from a 20 watt radio. I think my next investment is a better meter.

Just be careful.....Roger beeps are "good buddy beeps" to truck drivers. You may find yourself the recipient of an invite to a rest area men's room for a romantic interlude [emoji16] Sent from my SM-A125U using Tapatalk

The dummy load arrive. The SWR meter shows 1.3:1 with the dummy load. I would say the Workman meter is at fault. So instead of 1.75:1, I would say I'm looking at 1.45:1 if the error is linear. Haven't been able to find anyone in my area to talk to on the radio for a radio check. We are expecting strong storms in the area this afternoon so I'm not sure how successful I will be in talking to anyone. The 1/4 wave antenna should be here tomorrow.

When programming your Codeplug, be sure to leave gaps between the different categories for later growth (instead of having to rewrite it from scratch). For example: GMRS channels [gap] GMRS specific repeaters [gap] Ham 2 meter repeaters [gap] Ham 2 meter simplex [gap] Ham 70 cm repeaters [gap]... You get the idea! In operation, it ignores the gaps as if they were programmed successively.

I have 3 of the Larsen NMO mounts in my roof. 1 of these with the rg58au and 2 with lmr200. They are great mounts and will recommend them over others. There's a little cap on the bottom that covers the center lead solder point. You can put a dab a silicone on that but I don't think it's needed.

Let me get this right.... you come in here more than a week ago, make 1 post to stir the pot on a subject you know very well has history on this forum. Act shocked by the same responses that are in every other thread about this and then pop smoke with a backhanded snarky attitude. Does that about sum this up? Did someone put you up to this or are you just terrible at being a troll all on your own?

Not exactly.... It wasn't that he was complaining, it was that he REALLY got indignant when I blew it off and DIDN'T at first act like it was some huge deal and react accordingly. And It's my understanding that the group or whatever he is with was about to put up a repeater. Went and had a discussion with the property owner, and had everything sealed up. Then somewhere in the discussion the property owner dropped an F-bomb and they immediately decided they were NOT going to do anything there because he used a bad word. Now I am getting that third hand. But this dude was on a tear about the guy up north being drunk on the repeater and really felt I needed to do something about it. And since at first I wasn't, he seemed to get irritated with me because it came out of my repeater. He understood that it was a linked system and the guy getting wild was three states away. He didn't care.... I needed to react. So I did.... Scorched Earth. Which was WAY over reacting. But I was mad. I am ok with someone disagreeing with me. I am ok with him being offended by cussing drunks.... What I was actually mad at we HE decided I was wrong for not being really mad and offended that some guy in Wisconsin was drunk on a linked repeater system I have a node on. And when I told him I heard part of it, earlier in the evening, he was really indignant. I am good with someone having a different belief structure than I do. What I am NOT ok with is when they try to force their belief structure on me. Which is basically what happened here. I SHOULD have ask him if he got the guys call sign and then told him to contact the FCC about THAT guy. But I sometimes over react a bit. And pulled the plug out of pure irritation over his nonsense. On a side note. The repeaters are BOTH back on the air. Now, if I hear him on my repeaters again, I may well tell him he's not welcome to use them any more.... But I may not even bother with that. And regardless of how technically reliable a system is. If it's not YOUR system you shouldn't 100% rely on it. Because someone can decide to pull the plug.

I don’t mind OffroaderX proposing this (In fact I enjoy his videos), and I don’t mind having it discussed again for people who have recently joined the forum. I just happen to disagree with it because of Line A. However, it really won’t ever affect me to be honest, because I live near Line A and because I don’t expect to drive around with my GMRS radio on anyway. If I ever do it will be with a group of people and we’ll select something else so we don’t interfere with the Road Channel.

Sooner or later somebody will propose using channel 2 for dirt bikes (2 wheels), channel 3 (3 wheel types), channel 4 (for the Jeep crowd), channel 19 for those that can’t figure out the logic for the first few channels etc. Yup, something for everyone. Get enough people confused that means less people jamming up your favorite “official” road channel.

Results are expected: half-wave antenna performed better in a situation with questionable or non-existing ground plane. I would go with half-wave. SWR is better, efficiency is better, that was confirmed by test in the field. Half-wave antennas do not require ground plane and [almost] not affected if you have a ground plane nearby. But if you are satisfied with quarter-wave, it's all good. With regards to quarter-wave vs half-wave for power and efficiency: quarter-wave with good ground plane is identical to half-wave with no ground plane.