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probably one of the better radios in its size/class.

SOLD, please disregard. I have a mint, like-new Baofeng UV-9G for sale. It comes with the OEM antenna, manual, charger, clip, battery & programming cable. Also tossing in a Baofeng GM-15PRO that's also mint, like new. Comes with OEM antenna, manual, charger, battery and clip. Asking $35.00 total, shipped. Please make me an offer. PayPal Friend to Friend, please. PM ME

Thank you all for the input! Some clarifications from my original post... My roof is asphalt shingles. The round vent near the peak is metal - likely a galvanized steel because another mag mount base I had stuck too it just fine. @axorlovThe Laird B4502 is definitely one I should look at - thanks. It is only 15" with a base coil. I would still use a mag mount base to stick to the metal vent. @kidphcThe vent I'm talking about using is a low-profile flat round passive vent, about 24" diameter, not a pipe. It is just for attic ventilation. @KAF6045Yeah I will probably see what happens without bending the antenna first. I thought about making a platform for a mag mount, but then I have a lot more work to do to make it stealth to my neighbor, if I can even make such a platform stealth. They sell bracketry to lay across your roof peak and weigh it down with blocks, but there's nothing stealth about that. @SshannonGood suggestions. I am getting a Nagoya UT-72G tomorrow for putting on my wife's car, so I will play with it on a baking sheet outside the window for starters, and see how high I can raise it for testing. I was also thinking about the attic thing again. I was wondering how big of an opening in the radiant barrier I'd have to make at the peak of the rafters to get decent signal past it, if I put a ground plane plate up there for a 1/4 wave mag mount. I may have to experiment with that first because that would solve a lot of problems. I realize it's a "everything affects everything", but I might tinker with that, and I can always put the radiant barrier back in place if it doesn't work. Definitely want to keep as much of the radiant barrier intact as possible because that made about a 30F difference in my summer attic temps! @kidphcYes I am interested in seeing if I can get decent simplex comms from my house. I'm not expecting 10 miles or anything with a stealth antenna, but hoping for at least 2-3. That's pretty much our life radius. The repeaters here in San Antonio are awesome and I can get into them from just about anywhere with my HT with OEM antenna. Their network covers the entire city+. But in an emergency situation I'm not expecting to rely on them. I have some experimenting to do this weekend...

Amazon Prime Home Delivery FTW! If you buy inexpensive electronics from Amazon and it doesn't work correctly, don't automatically assume it's cheap Chinese electronics... you may want to check your video footage. This 'was' a sensitive piece of electronics... RF Frequency Counter. The second one I bought in a week, because the first one didn't work correctly on delivery either. hmmm... I wonder why. At least Amazon gave me a refund.

Mark, if you are serious about doing this and need assistance let me know. There are a number of things that are specific even to the way the codeplug has to be done in the radios that will need to be done correctly to get this working. MTR's are typically easier to program than the Quantar's. But I have done both. I will say this up front. You will need wireline cards in either of the stations to get it working right. There is no way around it. So doing an inventory of the stations to be used will need to be done to verify there are wireline cards in them and if not they will need to be located and installed. Quantars require some wildcard programming that is NOT documented anywhere. I looked. The only documentation I ever found used tone remote commands to control the PTT and my setup would not support that so I had to work out the programming to turn on the second audio input for the PL and some other things. Another thing to realize. While the RTCM can act as the interface for the linked system I don't know that it will do both at the same time and you MAY need to have another RTCM configured as a site on the simulcast that would act as the interface. For a voted channel bank system, I would use the console input and an RTCM or PI interface to bring in the system audio but that's a JPS voter configuration and I am gonna guess you will want to try to avoid the costs on that sort of setup. Let me know if you run into questions and I will try to help you the best I can.

Same here. I use mine as a base with the antenna on the side of my tower fed with Andrews Heliax and it does remarkable well. Best $99 I spent. Oh, mine only puts out 16 watts on 467 and the full 20 on 462, which is normal for this radio.

I'm happy but I got my GMRS license Friday night and finally was able to log in here tonight and just wanted to say hi.

Ok awesome this helps for sure! I will try to input this tonight. As I was scrolling through my menu options I did see the TX/DCS option. Now I understand where to input these codes and if there is frs chatter I can enter the RX/DCS code to eliminate that. Thanks!!

Based upon https://github.com/dl9rdz/asterisk-apprpt/blob/master/allstar/rc.updatenodelist this script, once started, loops continuously (lines 20-22) retries=0 while [ 1 ] do and has a two hour sleep before rechecking things... (lines 74-104) if [ $retries -gt 50 ] then sleep 7200 # doze for 2 hrs to lighten network load else sleep 10 fi break fi else $RM -f /tmp/rpt_extnodes-temp if [ $verbose -ne 0 ] then echo "Problem retrieving node list from $i.$TOPDOMAIN, trying another server"; downloads=0 retries=$((retries+1)) fi if [ $verbose -eq 0 ] then if [ $retries -gt 50 ] then sleep 7200 # doze for 2 hrs to lighten network load else sleep 30 fi else sleep 5 fi break fi done done Based upon this -- I have to wonder why a repetitive cron job is being used? At least, one that doesn't check to see if a copy of the script is already running (and either force kills that copy before starting a new one, or just exit without starting a copy). NOTE: the 2 hour sleep appears to be tied to the retry count. That could mean you have a network problem preventing you from retrieving the list(s). Edit the script to turn ON "verbose" and restart -- then after a while check the system log files for any messages.

Love this thread!

I have an 8Ft fiberglass antenna in my attic. Fortunately, I have a vent right over my ground location and it was the shortest run. Lately, everyone is trying simplex more. I can hear them but its noisy since the antenna is indoors. i however, plan on installing a mobile antenna on the peak of the eaves of roof side. Which again would be a straight run down to the grounding point. Why is this important? Ground wiring or installations shouldn't have 90 degree bends. Plus it will reduce the cost of the install by using the shortest amount of LMR400 or Heliax, which will end up being a majority of the cost of your install. I plan on using a mobile nmo base mount. They really are for temporary installations. The maintenance is higher, which is a problem. Why not a base vertical? 3 letters HOA. Should hide a tons better then a 1 inch round white fiberglass tube. From the front of the house it is about 54" to the installation point. So really 2 downsides. One N type connector, and maintenance up. The mount i plan on using. https://a.co/d/beQaNDn This is an option as well. Do you even know if the vent pipe is steel or aluminum? If it is aluminum, not going to work. With bends in antennas, it can cause a impedance shift at the bend throwing you out of the band you are trying to use. We often don't want bends in our antennas. You see tractors all the time with their antennas at 45 degrees, since the antenna bends when driving. They do it to keep the Swr swings low. You are going to take a compromise antenna, and make the install a compromise, couple the metal roofs proximity and you are making another compromise. I expect a thread on why you are only getting 1 mile on simplex at 50 watts and can't talk to a repeater without hash when it is 5 miles away.

I'm pretty new to this radio stuff (just using HT's on Jeep runs) so I didn't realize the losses would be so significant. I am trying to consistently reach a repeater around 35+ miles away. I was able to make a brief contact via the HT and Nagoya, so I figured I'd try and get another antenna up higher with the cable I had. I'll get some LMR-400 cable and elimate that from the equation. I've got a 20w radio arriving Friday, so I'll start over with new cable and go from there. Thank you both for your input and advice. It is very much appreciated.

Yeah, I thought I'd give the set up a try with what I had, before I spent money on good cable. I think we may have found the problem.

OUCH... 10dB loss per 100ft at 450MHz... Over 3dB for 35ft, not counting any losses at connectors. How borderline are those attempted stations? If they are only a few s-units to begin with, you may have enough attenuation to fall below the receiver threshold. Don't think I'd use RG58 for anything over 10ft (automotive routing), and even then I'd probably limit it to <100MHz (ie: HF and 6m).

Well, first off, the JPS box. That WILL work, but it's expensive, and if you are looking at the RTCM, it will do the same thing for FAR less money. I would expect a single box would be 2 grand. And you would need one for every site. It's also only compatible with an SNV-12 voter that's gonna be a couple grand for the chassis and cards. So again LOTS of money. So a brief explanation of how simulcast actually works. And what the GPS is doing. The first function of the GPS is frequency reference. There is a 5/10Mhz output on the GPS unit that feeds that reference signal into the base station radios (they are NOT repeaters by their configuration in simulcast operation). This keeps the transmit frequency synced with all the other sites. Because we are dealing with FM, a difference of 100 Hz on the transmit frequency between two transmitters will generate a 100 Hz tone and harmonics of that tone in the receiver of the subscriber radios. Obviously if there is any variance in the frequency, you will hear that in real time as it happens. So rock stable frequencies are required. Second thing the GPS generates for all this to work is a 1PPS (1 pulse per second) signal that the channel bank, or audio control circuitry relies on to 'launch the audio at the same instant. I spoke about latency of the signal and how that could screw things up. Well here's how the 1PPS and the simulcast audio controllers deal with the latency issues. A system will have a 'PRIME' or MASTER site. That is when the audio comes out of the voting system and gets sent out to the other sites. Now those links can be direct to each site or a ring where the audio gets shipped along one after the other. So the MASTER site tags the audio traffic in a sense so that the far end and all the nodes in between know to 'hold' the audio (buffer it) Until all the sites have it and then release it at the same instant. In the days of TDM, there was also a 'jitter buffer' that kept things in the buffer to deal with the changes in latency of the connecting circuits. With IP and computers, it's done differently but the result is the same. The audio gets held up until the next pulse or the one after, before it's launched. Now there is also timing adjustments for overlap where more than two sites can be heard at the same time. Those adjustments are to deal with multi-site overlap and actually move the locations of contention, where the received audio is distorted. The timing adjustments MOVE the area's of contention that are unacceptable or very undesireable to other locations that are more acceptable for poor audio reception. Basically you move them into some corn field and you are done with it. Now of course you find those area's of contention two ways. First is through testing of the system during implementation and tuning. The second is wait on people to point out the area's of contention and move them then and hope the go the right direction as you tune the launch timing. I have designed, build, rebuild and added to a number of these systems. Mind you, the stuff I was dealing with was all analog FM both wide and narrow band and I was dealing with channel banks that were 20K each for handling the audio launch timing and shipping of the audio back to the voting system for the receive. This was all broadcast quality gear that would ship audio at FM broadcast bandwidths (100 Hz to 19Khz to haul the 19Khz Stereo pilot tone) not just 300 to 3000 Hz for two-way FM. I have NOT specifically worked with the RTCM units, but i do know how they HAVE to work in order for them to do simulcast. The last piece is the PL tone. That has to also be generated locally to the transmitter or not at all. If you can get away with it, don't run a transmit PL tone at all. It will make things easier in the long run. If you choose to run a PL, the base station can NOT be used to generate it. The Quantar and MTR base stations both have multiple audio inputs and one of them can be used to take in a PL tone and out it ion the air. With the systems I dealt with, This was handled with a Spectracom product that interfaced into the Spectracom GPS units and provided the PL. One of the other things you will need to be able to do is controlling the sites individually to interrupt the PTT signal from the RTCM or whatever you are using to key and ship the audio. The audio levels for each site have to be adjusted independently of each other. And that have to be spot on. The only way to do this is a receiver in a location that can hear all the sites. So placement of the MASTER site is important so you can monitor the TX audio and adjust it. THis has to be done with an O-Scope, an audio volt meter, or a TIMS set that measures down to the 10th of a dB. Three tenths is ALL you get before you start screwing up the audio. And you don't get that much with the PL tone because where the audio maximum deviation is 5Khz for wideband, the PL tone should never go above 700 Hz of deviation, and with narrowband that is reduced to 300 Hz. So that has to be SPOT on. Have a GOOD radio not a CCR to do this. And program it for flat audio out so you can hear the PL tone or it will be a mess.

Welcome!!

I sent this to the team. This may be the way we go. Thanks for the link.

Ive got one and am happy with it.

Leave the hat at home.. Awwww.... That hurts!

Get off my lawn! ?

Oh, I know all about the FUN aspect of it! lol

Sounds like a good setup - try it and see how it works! I'm using an old/used VXR-7000 repeater with LMR400 coax, PL259 connectors, and a Tram 1486 antenna - I have a good/high location and I get a range of about 55 miles - it would be further but I'm surrounded my mountains.. Location more than anything else will determine your range but that tower should help. Be wary of "some people" that will leave comments and try to drastically over-complicate everything trying to impress us.

I went back and looked at this again and the cable I bought was an RD-201 PROGRAMMING CABLE. There is a specific driver through Radioddity that I just downloaded and that worked. I appreciate everyone's quick responses and support. Thank You!