Leaderboard

Why not make the sheet into a google sheet and share with you net folks. Simple and every one sees everything.

Well you sure seem on the ball… don’t let anyone talk you into throwing in the towel. ?Cheers and welcome ?

On another note, I discovered PAPA now has a repeater on Joaquin Ridge near Coalinga, in the same general area as one of the CARLA sites (#15)..was picking up a new signal recently, and discovered it's a PAPA machine that went up in September.

I think it’s more accurate to say it’s not type accepted for other services, not bands. The OP might be asking about extending it to work on another amateur band, which would be acceptable. But if the OP wants to use it on GMRS or MURS, then this warning from BTech is relevant: “You may be tempted to use FRS, GMRS, MURS (in the USA) or PMR446 (in Europe) frequencies. Do note however that there are restrictions on these bands that make this transceiver illegal for use.“

That's what we need here, more enginears, injuneers, engineerz, - well, you get what I mean.

I'm and engineer, spelling wasn't my strong point.?

I finally got around to reading the posts in this tread. Yup, battery packs are ripe for fraud. I had my own experience. I purchased two new, non Kenwood, battery packs the seller said were compatible with a particular Kenwood part number. I tried to charge them in an official Kenwood charger and they failed with a blinking red light signaling a battery pack issue. After some investigation it turned out there is an internal wire connection between two of the external charge contacts was missing. This on BOTH battery packs. I confirmed it with a meter and a schematic for that battery pack in the service tech manual for the charger. When I externally soldered the wire on the back side of the pack it would charge as expected. I contacted the well known seller, on eBay, explained the issue and provided them with the details. I asked for a refund since the battery packs were NOT compatible as advertised. All I got were multiple excuses and was told it's the charger. I ended up filing a complaint with eBay, sent the two packs back and got a refund. I left negative feedback for the seller. They repeatedly contacted me later and more or less "begged" me to change the feedback. I said no and told them I'm sure they had others complain too, and knew there was a problem. What I think happened is they got a good deal on these Chinese manufactured battery packs because the manufacture likely sold them cheap rather than scrap them out as a total loss. The manufacture likely discovered the packs were missing the internal wire connection during the build process, crappy quality control. The eBay seller then sold them trying to make a quick fat profit from what they most likely knew were manufacturing defect battery packs. By lying to buyers it's their charger they wouldn't have to give refunds, and most people, unlike myself, have no way to check if that's really the case and quit asking for a refund. I did buy two more battery packs, non Kenwood, from another eBay seller for slightly more money. Those I had ZERO issues with.

this may be a first, but I agree with Mr WRKC935 - Unless you really know what you are doing and more importantly WHY you are doing it, I would recommend not taking the risk of upgrading the radio. Source: I own several XTL5000s, XTS5000s and XTS2500s - i've never put any through an upgrade because its too risky and I have too many friends that ended up with very expensive bricks - and they dont even know why they did it.

Need an inexpensive cup holder mount for your small GMRS mobile? Try a 3" plumbers test plug. I got mine at Menards.

Are there plans or people interested in expanding the Net to the Pacific Northwest? -Josh WROJ763

Just got my GMRS license and a 15w Midland Micro. Please rate my setup and any feedback appreciated. In all seriousness big thank you to everyone and all the info here. It's helped me navigate repeater setup and hardware choice for my needs.

You can listen to almost anything. Many of the tw way radios have very wide open receivers and limited transmitters. The exception is cellular. You won’t find any approved receivers for that.

Looks close to defamatory, to me...

I have the one above and my MXT500 is a bit much for it in a New Tundra cup holder. In my truck it needs 4 screw out tighteners instead of three, but it is holding up.

Ingener, Enjuneer, I math good...

You can run a straight piece of coax through several ferrite beads or you can make several loops of the coax through a ferrite toroid. I don't know that one is better than the other. If you're having difficulties looping the LMR=400 maybe you're trying to make the diameter of the loops too small. Every coax has a minimum bend radius which you should never go under. If you bend coax sharper than that the inner conductor and shield can migrate towards each other and even eventually short against each other. If you don't like the large loops you get with LMR-400, then the ferrite beads would seem to be preferable. The best thing I can tell you to do is to read and possibly re-read the document at Palomar Engineering that I linked above. I'll link it here again. Notice that unun type 2 is what we're talking about and the pictures that accompany this example show both ferrite beads and coax looped through a ferrite toroid: https://palomar-engineers.com/wp-content/uploads/Choosing-a-Feedline-Choke-RFI-Tip-Sheet-RC-1-by-AK6R.pdf

Yeah, unfortunately we don't have a good equivalent to the SWCRS here in CA. On the ham side, outside of CARLA, I don't know of any that have the same level and breadth of coverage. The WIN system covers more area, but not as thoroughly. N6LYE has some coverage into Sacramento, but not much north or into the bay that I know of. There's also WB6ECE and W6DXW (Salinas Valley Repeater Group) covering the bay area and down the central coast, and a bit of the valley...I know the SVRG Fremont Peak machine can be reached from a fair bit of the sierras, both east of Sacramento and down into central CA.

I’m an engineer too, but for some reason I got both the spelling gene and the pedantry gene.

5 points for using what you've got. ???

Another quick note. Having a later version of CPS and programming an earlier firmware is NOT going to cause any issues. I do it all the time and have never had issue unless the firmware is REALLY old, like version 5 and before using CPS20.05.01 which I believe is the latest version that was available.

LGR DUAL BAND MAGNET MOUNT ANTENNA W/SMA MALE 12' RG58 CABLE - $19.99 Set of 4 different BNC-SMA adapters - $7.00 (male/female permutations) Free shipping - LetsGetReady, Inc.

As for another good option for car antenna is the Nagoya UT-72G. $35 and comes with the magnetic base. I have one and it works really well. Also comes with a SMA adapter cable. But for your situation using BNC is a better way to go as suggested above. https://www.buytwowayradios.com/nagoya-ut-72g.html

I assumed he would eventually figure this out. He seems a bit challenged.

So, first question is why upgrade? This is not a Windows upgrade. Have you read through the release notes of the 20.01.01 firmware to see if ANY of the changes effect conventional analog and P25 operations of the radio. Second is you have to possess a flash key in order to apply the firmware upgrade in order for it to happen. The XTS / XTL family of radios were different in this regard from the APX radios that are now the standard. APX radios will directly upgrade without a flash key. The threat to doing irreversible damage to your radio is a VERY REAL possibility. You are rewriting the software that operates the radio. And while a failure of a cable getting kicked loose or a power failure with a computer would mean that you just boot from the media and attempt to reinstall the latest version of Windows or whatever having a similar failure with your radio during a copy operation will leave the radio in a state that by anyone outside of Motorola, unrecoverable. And in case you somehow feel I don't know what I am talking about, we sent a significant number of radios to Motorola during rebanding (probably 200 of the 15000 we upgraded). And since that was a supported platform at the time, they would fix them. You can't send that radio to Motorola any more, they will simply drop a letter in the box saying the model is no longer supported and charge you a fee to do so plus return shipping. Again, I work for a Motorola shop, Been through this a number of times. Lastly, I am not 100% sure you can go from 17 to 20 directly. At least not safely. You may need to goto 18 first before making that jump to 20. Also, you need to understand that a firmware upgrade will NOT add functionality to the radio. The flashcode of the radio sets the functionality and options in the radio, not the firmware version. Changing the options requires a different type of flash key that is also NLA from Motorola.

The post was from 2018… ?

The noise issue in in duplex applications. It has been discussed many times. Its worse if any water gets in it or the connectors. If your running a repeater fine a variant of LDF and it will resolve the noise issues and have better loss.

You (and everyone) is welcome to join our National Net via Zello, every Thursday night at 7PM (Pacific).. No Facebook, no dues, no fees, no mandatory meetings. See how here: https://www.notarubicon.com/zello-gmrs-repeater/

There is an anomaly when using the weather alert on the KG-935G and the KG-XS20G. When selected 'On' and scanning in area A, the scan will be continuously interrupted while it interrogates the NOAA weather channels for an alert tone. This is very distracting and inefficient. There are two ways to work around this "feature"; (1) Turn off weather alert or (2) Set your scan in area B where it will not be interrupted. The weather scan only occurs in area A. If you find your scan still being interrupted by the weather frequencies, no matter what you do, then set Scan Mode to 'CO'

I got my M1225 35 Watt Repeater setup for me. I'll get a link when I get home. It included: 2 Motorola M1225 Mobiles (20 channel version, 20 channels = 20 different tones for input and output.. ) Celwave Duplexer (tuned to GMRS) Power Supply (car charger or wall plug) All cables supplied It was put into a little tool box, plug and play operation, all I needed to get was a antenna. In terms of getting it to repeat he wired the back of them together, I bought online a plug you put into the back of each and it has a hang timer, although I'd rather get a real RICK to do some of the cool features. All for about $330 not including the antenna, but he did provide free programming.