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Nothing looks wrong on this pic. The voltages seem fine. Without the oscilloscope with 500MHz bandwidth it's hard to diagnose. However, if you put your multimeter (totally not rated for 500MHz) into Voltage-AC mode, and check pin 1 when pressing PTT, and you see <anything>, the signal goes in. Now, do the same test on pin 4, where the amplified signal should be. Keep antenna or dummy load connected.

My Surecom SW-102 gives the same SWR readings as my RigExpert AA-650 antenna analyzier.. But the rest of your post was very impressive - You must be very smart!

I often get 1.1:1 - 1:2:1 on my MXTA26 and when I put it on a good groundplane I have seen 1.0:1 more than once.

Ahh, screw the day job, this is fun. Here is the excerpt from the service manual, page 72: Notice the R:0.01V T:7.52V (in pink) close to the bottom-left corner. So, maybe 7.88 is not too high, after all.

oh wow, ok. I just read through the data sheet again (I may have to read it a few times) I just checked that voltage regulator that I put in. It was showing 13.8v / gnd / 7.88v so pin 2 of the PA is getting that 7.88 from the volt reg so I guess I can start from there, or should it actually be 6v? I guess the 17v is like the maximum? At least I can hold off on buying a new PA for now. I know I'm probably putting more into this old radio than it is worth, but it's kind of fun trying to figure it out

Btw, the service manual with the schematics for the V2.0 version of the radio is here: http://www.repeater-builder.com/kenwood/pdfs/tk-880h-svc-man.pdf I'd walk through it it with you, but I'm busy at my day job right now. LOL

Careful here. Pin 2 is 6V, Pin 3 is 17V. Refer to the table on Page 2 in the datasheet. Edit: these are max values, so Pin 2 should be around 5V, and Pin 3 is around 12V.

Yes, this is the part. I agree with Sshannon, oscilloscope would be needed. But here is the datasheet for the PA, just in case: https://www.mitsubishielectric-mesh.com/products/pdf/ra45h4452m.pdf You can quickly check the voltages on pins 2 and 3 (refer to Page 2 in datasheet). Maybe the PA is fine, but there is no driving voltage. It also may have an effect on the audio amplifier.

4 years to get a petition for recon argued, debated, picked apart and lobbied for is incredibly short. The only ones I've seen that moved faster were when the Commision realized it had made an error. Those are few and far between.

Yeah, it's due to the much higher insertion losses when their tiny duplexer is tuned for a 5 MHz offset, I believe. I'm amazed they didn't check to see if the VHF unit was operating in anything like a usable band configuration, to be honest…

That’s not a petition; it’s a rant. I won’t sign it.

How close are the radios? Try it with the radios at least 50 feet apart.

Use a good quality lightning arrester where your coax enters the house and ground it. If you know a storm is approaching you should disconnect your radio from all external cables: power, ground, and coax. If you want something that is more resilient then there’s a document that describes how commercial communication sites are protected. Nobody goes to them and unplugs everything when there’s a storm. I’ll post a link: https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/Lands_ROW_Motorola_R56_2005_manual.pdf Meanwhile here’s a short video:

I guess you can't beat free.

Just remember, smoke signals are line-of sight!

Glamour shots and meter readings. 40 miles from my roof top. SWR at 468MHz is 1.024

IMO... I wouldn't let the narrowband only grant turn me away if it otherwise met my needs. The biggest issue of wideband vs narrowband is the equipment is mismatched (narrowband radio into a widband repeater, or vice versa). It would just come down to setting up the radios accordingly. On another note, from what I saw on retevis' sitez the stock tuning for the original rt97 wants 10mhz offset in vhf or uhf...not even feasible in vhf (2m), being only 4mhz wide. It makes me wonder if the lower rated power on the gmrs model is to get it to sneak under the thresholds for certification (from some of the numbers we saw in the report), if it's accounting for signal loss tuning that tiny duplexer down to a 5mhz offset, or a bit of both.

Might be coincidental to them shipping with everything set to narrow band. If the testing agency doesn't dig deeper to learn how to change the default channels (being GMRS with just the 22 frequencies (pairs for the 8 used for duplex) they may have just tested on the presets.

Forgot to mention..Thanks for reminding me... Always beware of the "some people" that try their best overcomplicate everything.

I agree.. I have put one up, and am [partially] responsible for getting a 2nd one up, covering most of Southern California.

They ^ are correct - and upon reflection I can see that I was not clear: You may speak in any language that you choose on GMRS, however the FCC says thou must sayeth your callsign in English or morse-code. My point was speak "normal language" as in, if someone comes in spouting alpha codes or other jargon, they will likely be laughed at. and you dont want people laughing at you your first day on GMRS.

No. America refers to a single country while the word when combined with North or South refers to a continent.

America is also commonly used to mean the United States of America. From Wikipedia: The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States(U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America.

I have three of the RT10's. They do work. RX sensitivity pretty good. TX power is lower than my 6580's but it seems adequate for what I needed them for, use within repeater useful range. TX audio is ok, RX has some strange audio expander, like with M's "hear clear". Does not do "squelch tail elimination" when talking into one of my 927 Quantar repeaters. It is also DMR and does that very well. So for a sub-$100 radio its ok. I'd still make my primary portable a XPR6580 though. Mobiles I use 35 Watt MCS2000's and for repeaters, Motorola Quantar. GeorgeC W2DB/WQYN409 Crowley, TX

If it is worth anything I try to connect into the national net on Sundays from around 4PM to 9PM Alaska Time. If you drive into the coverage of the ER repeater you could participate.