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A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Look at page 3 in this document. They show the simplest solution for your situation: https://reeve.com/Documents/Articles Papers/Reeve_AntennaSystemGroundingRequirements.pdf It simply depicts a lightning arrester inserted into the feed line right where it enters the house and then connects the lightning arrester to your grounding bus. It’s a direct connection from the shield to building ground and a gas discharge tube to connect the inner conductor to ground to protect against static.

Using a tone on an emergency channel will just make comms more difficult. How about this, at the trailhead/parking lot, place a 3x5 card in the window of your vehicle with the FREQUENCY that your group will be using. First thing SAR is going to do is find your vehicle..... As for sub channels/tones, your best choice for simplex comms is to leave it off.

I ran a simple receive test with three radios that were off frequency by only 12.5Kc from the transmitter. The Wouxun "KG-935G" was able to filter out the off frequency station. The Anytone "AT-D878UVII plus" and the Baofeng "UV-82HP" both failed. Ken WQXQ522

Hard to tell for sure what is going on... Have you confirmed if the radio works properly on simplex/direct radio to radio? and.. maybe try removing the RX/DEcode tone to see if that makes any difference?

Great info Sshannon

I appreciate the information.

That’s what I thought he meant also.

I have no idea why you felt the need to involve me in this discussion, but since you did, here I am. You are slightly misrepresenting the exchange from the other thread, however. The discussion there was about "re-locking" a radio, not just about programming GMRS frequencies. Honestly I don't even know if that's a thing ... there are lots of magic key sequencies to unlock various radios available on the Internet, but I haven't run across any that will re-lock one so that it is type-accepted again. If a such a sequence (or flag in CPS, etc.) DID exist, then I would argue that it would make the radio type-accepted again. If one unlocks a GMRS radio, then it is no longer type accepted, since 95.1761(c) disallows certification of a radio for GMRS if it has the CAPABILITY (emphasis mine) of transmitting on a non-GMRS frequency. The only exception would be a Part 90 radio that also has Part 95 certification. So the instant a GMRS radio is "unlocked" it is no longer type accepted. Whether or not one actually has MURS (or any other) frequencies programmed in the radio is irrelevant. And BTW ... the whole "in an emergency you can transmit on any frequency" thing is a myth. Nowhere in FCC Part 95, 97 or even 90 will you find that.

Alternate take: perhaps (given the backgrounds) we're overthinking the possibilities, and by screen room, what the OP meant was a literal "screened room" similar to a screened in porch, just meant to keep the bugs away?

And now we have gone full circle on this topic!

No apologies needed! We are all looking for reliable emergency communications and, the more different ways to achieve that, all the better. (Note: Unlike commercial satellite communicators or phones, a PLB does not require any subscription.) Cheers, Bill

I agree with your comment about range. I think the use of the phrase “short range” was simply intended to reflect that the useful range would be limited in practice because of the line of sight nature of UHF and because output power is relatively low. Saying that it’s a short range service doesn’t mean that it must only be used for short range communications; if it did the rules would need to define what is meant by “short range”.

I have no idea what network Garmin uses, so I can't really speak to that. However, my entire radio and IT career has been as successful as it has been because emergency services and government agencies found out the hard way that the hardline internet backbone and satellite communications not only don't have 100% up-time, but also happen to fail at the least convenient times. Also, if you watch the NOAA, NASA and other private space weather agencies, you will here about the outages as well as the predictions for potential outages. Most reports are released for public consumption weekly. Once in a while, something big happens and it makes regular news, like with all the StarLink satellites being damaged a couple of days/weeks ago, due to a massive storm caused by a CME. I think, maybe I am presenting my opinion in a confrontational way. If I have been, I apologize. That is actually a great idea. These are among the best options. I only have the opinion that HF radio is better because the radios are cheaper to buy, are not subject to service blackouts and don't require a paid subscription that expires in order to get help. That said, most people don't want to carry the small lifpo4 battery and a radio if they are on foot and every pound counts. If they wont carry a radio, the ease of something like InReach or PLB is light years ahead of other options and most definitely a great idea.

Wireline refers to two locations connected by a physical, terrestrial connection. Telephone networks communicate between points using a physical hard-wired connection hence the term wireline. The term can also trace its beginnings back to the early days of telegraphy where physical wires connected each station to the other. The term predates radio and its modern equivalent wireless.

I want to thank everyone for the help, i found an i20r with the help of WRDU953 who came to my rescue with one, i can now start to get running again, thank you all for the info.

I am not aware of any disruptions severe enough to prevent GPS usage in the U.S. As for communications, Garmin has not posted any outages affecting their world-wide inReach Satellite SOS capability for at least the last year. Going back to the start of this thread, we are talking about snowmobilers and hikers in Wyoming trying to use their extremely short range and license-free FRS radios in that state’s “Be 307 Aware” emergency communications scheme. To summon emergency help when outdoors and out of cellphone range, a satellite communicator or Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) would be my recommendation for most people.

So, just for grins and giggles, I took some readings on one of my antennas... MFJ Analyzer 145.520 = 1.0:1 147.000 = 1.3:1 Nano VNA 145.520 = 1.2:1 147.000 = 1.2:1 Surecom High Power 145.520 = 1.1:1 / 46.07wFwd / 0.131wRev 147.000 = 1.08:1 / 41.22wFwd / 0.061wRev Low Power 145.520 = 1:1 / 5.1wFwd / 0wRev 147.000 = 1:1 / 4.67wFwd / 0wRev If you look at the readings, they are all close enough. The truth is, they may all be correct. It takes different cables and connectors to test with these devices and those numbers will change based on the changing of hardware. Shoot, realistically, just disconnecting and reconnecting the same gear twice could give you these kinds of variations. If we look at the Surecom reading 145.520 = 1.1:1 / 46.07wFwd / 0.131wRev... the reverse power is 0.285% of the forward power. So, if we switch over to 5w of output, I am not shocked the meter is reading a 1:1 SWR, because 0.285% of 5w is too low for the meter to read. Its about 0.014w. the scale on the device doesn't have enough place holders displayed to show the SWR... so it rounds to zero (or 1:1). I still think that TDukes needs to either calibrate the Nano VNA, the Surecom, or both. But for what we do as GMRS users, I think the device is working as intended and is "close enough" to know our stuff isn't going to break. The need to fine tune that last drop of power (maybe 40 miliwatts at 5w scale "if" his VNA is correct) is pointless except as an exercise.

And Channel 9 is limited to 0.5 watts.

The problem is, tone 11 isn't the same on every FRS/GMRS radio.

For most normal people, GMRS is not a hobby.

Actually, FTDI and Prolific are totally different in how they implement the USB to UART function. FTDI chips have a unique id which allows them to always create the same COMnn irrespective of which USB one chooses to use. Axorlov has already covered the Prolific foibles.

FTDI and Prolific are two different companies. Prolific's popular PL-2303 chip was cloned by no-name Chinese manufactures and sold as genuine in huge amounts, that made Prolific to end-of-life this chip 10 years ago and disable counterfeit chips via Windows driver. You actually want FTDI chipset in the cable to avoid silly games with Windows drivers. They are more expensive, but they work out of the box. Vast majority of Prolific 2303 chips on the market today are fake. Or buy from proven trusted vendor, like bluemax49s, who uses genuine Prolific chips in his cables. He also exchanges Prolific cables should not they work for your application.

A countrywide option would be to use FRS channel 9, tone 11 or 911. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk