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You shouldn’t let “one bad apple” ruin your enjoyment and if you enjoyed your sig, leave it.

I fabricated this setup for my 21 Silverado Diesel Dually. I hang it on the lip of the passenger side of the center console, close the lid, and angle the radio towards me. I hang a towel over the lip so the bracket won't scratch the console.

I have a Laird 5 dB Omni hanging on the side of my garage connected to a 50 Watt Repeater Station using LMR400 Coax with a lightning Arrestor grounded to earth ground at the electrical panel.

If you are trying to program that WPTU754-675 Repeater you have the WRONG tone...that's why your not getting into the repeater...This Repeater is part of the Club only SWOH-GMRS Club...check em out on Facebook ,Become part of the Club and have access to the Repeater. Hope to catch on the repeater WRMR358 clear...

Yes, but when you begin arguing the accuracy of another member’s signature line instead of simply ignoring it, it spoils enjoyment for many more than just you. Or is it all about you?

Get off my lawn! ?

When I was looking into buying mobile radios I came across both Part 90 and Part 95 mobile radios that would not accommodate wide band because they were manufactured after the refarming mandate. I believe Kenwood and Midland to name a couple were the ones that would not do wideband. I would need to retrace my steps on what I did several months ago to completely answer your question.

Hello All, Just joined the Club. Conner WRVL 467 let me know about the club. I didn't realize there was a place for GMRS clubs on the MyGMRS site. My not new to GMRS but always open to new information and ideas. There's always more to learn. I actually had a GMRS station in Kenai way back in the 1990's. It was pretty basic and there weren't any other users at that time. I then got into Amateur Radio. About 5 years ago I got back into GMRS while living in the Seattle area. There were quite a few repeaters in the area and were ECOM groups using those repeaters. The was a lot of activity on GMRS. One group was helping people study up (over the air) for the Amateur radio tests. I remember you could put out a call anytime of the day and you would likely receive a reply. I have some info on the repeater situation here in Anchorage. The repeater owned by WRCA670, to the best of my knowledge, is not on the air. However, there is a repeater on the same channel with a tone of 100. Since about Oct of 2021 I have been trying to find who owns the repeater. There is no IDer. It appears to work fairly well all over Anchorage. I have made my calls on the channel but have never received a reply. Well it's nice to know there is a group of GMRSers in the area. Hope to chat with all sometime on the air waves! Jim WQCG 563

Don't go buttering me up just yet MichaelLAX, Though I am not unreasonable, I don't make a habit of kowtowing to the perpetually-offended.

Out of all the masts we used, those were the ones a preferred. Lightweight, durable so they held up in high winds and easy to take down/put up for transportability. We would mount them on trailers and then just lower them for transport and raise them again at the new location.

My apologies if my signature struck a nerve MichaelLAX. I am not unreasonable, and since I value input from others I removed the offending signature in an effort to not be such a "bad apple".

Air is AM. I highly doubt that radio will do AM, even if "unlocked".

It is a bit more complicated that that, but in essence leave the Receive Tones turned off until such time as you are successfully completing contacts on that repeater. When your communications are successfully, and you are sure that the repeater is sending out a Tone for you to Receive; then if you turn on that Receive Tone, you will only hear the output of that Repeater. You will not hear anyone else on that frequency, such as simplex users and perhaps another repeater on that frequency. What happened to the Victor X-Ray? ?

Turn off Receive Tones, leave on Transmit Tones, take the cannoli! ?

Obviously Norton needs to relax.

Here is my goofy setup. The one radio on top of the power supply is my GMRS base station radio. The other two radios are for the GMRS repeater package. I am using a Laird 5dB Omni antenna with an EMR Duplexer using a LMR400 coax cable with a lightning Arrestor connected to earth ground at the electrical panel. I switched the Antenna between the Base Station Radio and the Repeater Package with an antenna switch. I have other radios for all my vehicles.

Sbb-1 is one one that's pretty much a rubber duck, and it's been the only one that clears the work garages on a mag mount on the roof...that couple inches difference from the sbb-2 (which is more of a classic whip with a phasing coil in the middle) is just enough to clear. (Previously ran a 1/4 wave signal stalk, that's also 18"...it hit every beam in the parking structure)

Notarubicon did a recent video which showed pretty surprising results for a Ghost antenna.

I absolutely hate these style antennas. Just person opinion. A 1/4 wave antenna is about the smallest pure mechanical antenna you can have and have it be reliable. Antennas like the one you linked are 1/8th wave antennas and have a capacitance hat to kind of 'fake it' for the other 1/8 wave required. My problem is, in my personal experience the design is way more susceptible to failure due to damage and aging due to weather, and even over-driving the antenna with too much power. Me and friends of mine have own many of them over the years and there has been a 100% failure rate among us. Sometimes they broke within weeks. The longest anyone I know personal who had one that worked was about 2 years. I also think they are ugly. For whatever that is worth. LOL A 1/4 wave is literally just a 6 to 7 inch piece of stainless spring steel. Unless you use tools to damage it, the 1/4 wave will last several lifetimes. One of my 1/4 wave antennas is older than I am, and I have 3 grandchildren. Still looks great and works perfectly. I have a 5/8 wave rubber ducky antenna fir when I'm wheeling and I don't want to risk breaking the mount or stripping the antenna off the mount.

Thanks for the replies. I'm leaning towards the 575 to help get through trees. Just wish for the price it had more channel storage options and listening for more frequencies.

You don’t have to read his sig. Turn off “View Signatures”.

I don't know why you @Sab02rwould put a socio-economic-political point of view in your "signature" on a radio Forum, but since I have to read it EVERY time you post: You are confusing Socialism with Communism!

Yes, you can put the vertical base antenna on the same pole as your TV antenna, especially if you have several vertical feet between them. Your TV antenna is probably a log periodic antenna, which is directional and covers a different band. I would try that first. If you don’t watch TV while you’re transmitting you probably won’t even know it. If you do transmit while someone is watching TV, run some tests to see if they get any interference. Make sure the mast is grounded. If the attic is much easier try that, but getting it higher makes more difference than having more power.

Newer MXT275 units with the USB-C port now come with wide band for the repeater channels, although some leftovers are still coming with narrow band. If a USB-C 275 has narrow band, you can mail it in and have them convert it to wide band. I did so and it works fine. If it's an older 275 without the USB-C port then it'll be narrow band only. (And I wish companies would change model numbers when they change major features.) The 50-watt 575 may be of some use if you have to push the transmission through a lot of trees or buildings, but you still cannot receive any better than the 275 with the same antenna. My 15-watt 275 hits a repeater 30 miles away through suburbia using a 6" quarter wave on the hood. The 575 may have a few more features such as wide/narrow selection. A 15-watt radio with a good antenna is much better than a 50-watt radio with a lousy antenna.

If you end up with the software and a cable let me know.... If you can read teh codeplug and email it to me I can set it up for teh first go around

And yet NO ONE actually answered this mans question. With most radios (non-motorola) you program them in one big spreadsheet looking thing where you name the channel, put in the frequencies and tones and then blow it into the radio. CDM software and Astro25 software are different and you need to understand how to use the software. With CDM software, you build all the channels independently and then once the channels are built, you go into the zone list, create the desired zones and set the channel configurations in the zones. This is done two different places in the software. Scan lists are also build elsewhere in the software and assigned to the channels. Of course, you can't add a channel to a scan list that doesn't exist so there is some back and forth that goes on. Astro25 software (XTS /XTL) software This is a bit more complicated as the radio has multiple transmit modes that are set in a 'conventional personality' that is assigned to the channels. It DOES however program more like the spreadsheet radios, but there is some prep work that has to be done. the XTS XTL stuff is P25 and analog. So the settings for the modulation are set in the personality, but not the frequency as in the CDM. You DON'T have to create a personality for each channel either. THe personalities can be shared across many channels. Be aware that the scan list is set in the personality and a scan list can only have 16 channels in it. So if you get crazy and program up zones by state, county or whatever, you will need to create a scan list and personality for each zone. Not hard once you understand it but really time consuming. Once you have the conventional personalities built, you then add zones and program the channel frequencies and tones in a spreadsheet format in the zone configuration area. Ask if you have questions. I have a bit of experience with Astro25 as I have been using it for about 15 years now.

Imagine living a life where you get so angry and butthurt over videos that nobody forces you to watch, that you then go around complaining and making up stories every chance you can.. We should all pray for sad people like this.

Contrary to common beliefs, once you step away from the keyboard and ignore the internet, you will find a vast number of Hams are GMRS operators and vice versa. In the hobby portions and in the community service areas, GMRS and Ham not only coexist, but work together with great success. At least when I have been for the last 20+ years. Now, there may be some individuals who don't play nice and use GMRS v Ham as an excuse to show their behinds... but that is a "them problem".

Welcome! 1) The Midland radios have the ability to enable the 8 extra channels for repeater use. These will transmit on 467.xxx MHz and receive on 462.xxx MHz, whereas the simplex (direct) channels will transmit and receive on the same 462.xxx MHz frequency. In addition to the frequency a repeater transmits, there is also the CTCSS tone (also known as PL tone) which allows a repeater to selectively repeat transmissions from one group of users when others may be on the same shared frequency. On more advanced radios, you would set up a channel for each repeater in the radio's memory, where they would each be one of the 8 repeater channels (i.e. 462.550 MHz), but the CTCSS tone would vary for each repeater. On the Midlands, you need to manually change the tone to use a different repeater. So in the example above, you'd tune to channel 15R (repeater channel) and set the tone in the menu to whatever the local repeater on Channel 15 (462.550) requires. If you go to a new area where there is another repeater also on 462.550, you would stay on Channel 15 but change the tone to whatever that new repeater uses. 2) A repeater will extend the range a single radios has by many miles, depending on the height of the repeater in elevation. If two radios are nearby but suddenly cannot communicate due to the terrain or distance, a nearby repeater located in a tall spot (a tower, a tall building, or a mountain top) will allow those radios to communicate by retransmitting the signal at higher power and at a higher location. UHF frequencies are almost line-of-sight, where two stations can communicate if there is an unobstructed view between antennas. By putting the repeater antenna high up, it will be able to "see" a much larger area and thus extend the mobile units' coverage over the greater area it can "see" from its height. So a radio with a 1 mile range can suddenly get 15-30 mile range if there is a repeater in a good spot high above the average terrain height by having the repeater retransmit its signal at a higher power and elevation. Repeaters have a limit to their range based on this elevation, as the visual horizon distance changes with regard to height above the ground. Since the Earth is curved (flat-earthers will be disappointed), the further away you go from a station, you begin to curve below the horizon and eventually the Earth itself will block the signal. The only way around that is more height, and that's how satellites can have such wide coverage. They are essentially a repeater at an extreme altitude and thus they have visual line-of-sight to a much, much larger area than a tower on the ground could ever have.