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Well, the install isn't done yet, but I am pretty excited. I figured I would share as I make some progress. I am at about 35%-40% complete after about 8.5-9 hours of labor. I guess over the next few weeks, I'll try to finish up, but it's going to be a lot of labor to finish running wires and to do some custom interior work.

Getting high-gain antennas would likely be cheaper and remain legal. {the typos make it a bit difficult to figure out your meaning: is "tike" supposed to be "hike" or "time"?). You mention using a radio as a "base station" and "roof antennas" -- to me this means fixed locations and non-mobile usage. Either install high-gain YAGI antennas (which will have to be pointed at each other as they are directional -- but easier to achieve the gain needed) or a (more costly) omni-directional vertical. A 10dB gain would make those 25W units transmit as 250W ERP. {note: a dipole measures 2.15dBi/0.0dBd, so if the antenna lists 10dBi gain, that would be 7.85dBd}

I will assume you're aware that you can't legally transmit with more than 50 watts on any GMRS frequency. Yes, you can get a higher ERP with a gain antenna, but the rules are pretty clear. I'd also question the benefit of a 100 watt mobile transmitter in anything other than a Simplex mode. If you're talking into a decently configured repeater, all you need is enough to get into the machine with a full quieting signal, and the rest is just wasted energy. Getting in at 50 watts when 15 would have done the job does not improve the signal out of the repeater. The difference between 100 watts and 50 watts is 3dB. Search up the inverse square law if you want to know what that means when it comes to actual RF coverage. Spoiler: 100 watts isn't giving you as much as you might be thinking. Theoretically

First off, solder VS not. If you use good quality caprive pin connectors and install them per the manufacture recommended manner, there is no benefit to soldering. And before you claim ANYTHING on this, remember that ALL splices in hardline up to 6 inch (largest made) are slip fit connections with flange connections for the outer shield. This is feed line that carries as much as 500KW for TV and radio broadcast. So, captive pin connectors, when used correctly are fine. Crimpers. Daniels HX-4 crimp bodies are the $500 option. But those crimper bodies are available used on ebay for significantly less money. Those crimper bodies are typically used for aircraft maintenance and have a wide variety of crimp dies for a multitude of different crimped wire terminations. I have seem a few times where the correct dies were with the bodies on ebay but you typically have to get them separate and put them together. These are the RIGHT way of doing the connectors. And use TM (Times Microwave) branded connectors when using TM LMR-400 cable. The cheap stuff from HRO and other places are just that, cheap. Yes, the connectors are 30ish bucks a piece, but once you have them in place you will never need to worry about them again. But the comments about the lesser crimpers are correct, you can use them for hobby work when you are not crimping 10 connectors a day twice a week. They will work fine. But use the good connectors anyway. The dies are labeled in crimp diameter. If you get the required diameter from teh manufacture paperwork and find a crimper that crimps that size, they will work

Yes yes but are they theoretical? ?

Lets see. 1. Motorola Astro Spectra High power 2. Motorola XTL5000 High power 3. Motorola MaraTrac high power (have a New in box model with the siren module in storage) 4. Motorola Mitrek High power (Crystal controlled) 5. Motorola Micor high power (crystal) 6. Motorola MoTrac High power (crystal, tube final) 7. Kenwood 890H 8. Kenwood 830H FORGOT ONE: Syntor X That's just the ones that immediately come to mind. I would do some research and get the correct part numbers for these radios and then head off to Hamvention in May to find one. These are all monoband radios, but most if not all have VHF high power counterparts that would also be available. All these radios are going to be remote mount with a control head separate of the radio body with a cable in between. As mentioned, I have a MaraTrac UHF 100 watt model sitting in storage that has never been out of the box. Should be a 99 channel control head and the module and extension head for the 100 watt siren unit. I also have a couple Astro Spectra's in my collection and actually going to pickup a high power XTL today to install in my personal vehicle. Stay away from the crystal controlled radios. They are also good radios but getting crystals for them would be expensive and they are not programmable, changing or adding frequencies requires new / additional crystals. ANd finding final tubes for MoTrac radios would also be difficult. If you are looking to setup a personal vehicle, I would look at the Astro Spectra's. I ran three in my durango with all the control heads in between the seats in a home build console setup with the radios mounted in the back of the truck. There are several different styles of control heads available for the Astro Spectra family of radios. These would be the W series heads and the System9000 head. So you have options if space is limited. Those also have 20 watt audio outputs so running one in a loud or open top vehicle like a jeep wouldn't be an issue.

My opinion, if you don't want to run the risk of finding trash or a gem on any given purchase, try Kemp Wireless. I got luck with friends in the industry, so I haven't purchased anything directly from them. However, I have several people in my life who have done a lot of business with Kemp Wireless who are very, very happy. Me personally, I got two XTL5000 radios, one UHF and one VHF. Both radios are rock stars, making over 110w and great audio. I have been using them at home for a couple of months, and I'm about to install them in my Jeep, today.

I'm looking at my data now for the Laird. Down at 440 MHz you could still use this antenna, as it's at 1.66:1. I could have left it about 1/4" - 3/8" longer and tuned it for 455-460 MHz instead, and it would have been about 1.5:1 for 70cm and about 1.35:1 for GMRS repeater inputs. I really am impressed with it.

Welcome, Henrique, As long as you got a decent quality GMRS handheld radio, the rule regarding bandwidth and power limits on individual channels are baked in. So, if you're going to talk to another member of your family, simply tune both of your radios to anything other than 23-30 (which are sometimes called RP15 - RP21). Then, the one who wants to talk pushes his or her PTT (push to talk) button and speaks. When you're done, you should identify yourself by saying your call sign, then let up on the PTT and let the other person talk.

It’s all a trick, go back before you buy many many radios. ? In all seriousness though listening is a good start. Welcome to the forum Henrique.

I’m kind of half joking. I actually like the idea, and the Klein quality is very good, but numerous times the square bit stuck a little too tightly in the heads of screws for an electrical breaker box that I was rearranging and pulled out of the shaft too easily. It was frustrating and eventually it fell to the floor, bouncing off several other things along the way, and became lost. Of course even though it was the middle of the day in a daylight basement I was using a flashlight and the room lights were all off because I had killed power outside at the service box, so I had no idea where it bounced! Then, I couldn’t find a way to order the same replacement bit that both would fit in the handle and had the same missing opposite end. When you lose a bit you lose two ends, right? ? Several months later I found it, right where I thought it should be that day, but I swear I moved furniture, swept the floor, and even aggressively went through the couch that normally sits there, including tipping it over. I feel better now. Thanks for letting me vent. ?

Gonna get into the weeds here with an explanation. First is antenna separation and attenuation. And an understanding that a duplexer will provide about 90dB of attenuation. Two UHF antenna's that are mounted VERTICALLY apart on the same tower leg, will provide about 20 dB of attenuation. Two UHF antenna's separated by 80 feet horizontally will provide the same 20 dB of attenuation. So if you had a 150 foot tower, and put the receive antenna at the top and the transmit antenna at about 10 feet you MIGHT get 60 dB of attenuation. Still not as good as a duplexer. Now, lets look at the dollars and cents of this. First off you will need some sort of hardline for an install like this. And it's gonna be two runs. Lets say the tower is 30 feet from the building and it's another 20 feet to the radio. So you will need an extra 50 feet of hard line at 4 bucks a foot. Four additional connectors at 25 bucks a piece, two for the ends and two for the additional 90 dollar surge suppressor for the feed line. Then you need two antenna's. A USED DB-408 is about 150. So lets do some math. 50 feet of cable and four 25 dollar connectors comes up to 300 bucks. Now the additional 150 for the antenna, that's 450 bucks plus the surge suppressor and the labor, so 600 bucks for that additional LOW MOUNTED antenna that is gonna talk like crap because it's 10 feet off the ground. To save you HOW MUCH for a duplexer? Hell a new pass notch set is 1300 and used they are around 500 or less. So it's actually CHEAPER to run the duplexer and do it right and have it perform in a manner that would be acceptable. Yeah, gonna go the route of the duplexer every time. Oh, and you say you are gonna cheap out and run RG-8 or 9913 and not hardline. Sure... you are gonna run the RX cable down past the TX antenna in the near field of said antenna and expect the shielding from a BRAIDED CABLE to block 100% of the signal in the near field of a transmit antenna. Sure... have fun with that too.

Well U653 I forgot the first part lol. I thank you for the Welcome now its time to dig into the system to see just how it works

Don't of any classes but there is a user here that has a youtube channel where he explains a lot about GMRS, using repeaters, programming and more. Search the tubes for Notarubicon and take your sense of humor with you or it could be a rough ride. I have never met Randy but he seems like a nice guy.

Started typing A post, but it looks like a few people beat me to mentioning looking at the antenna situation ahead of power increases. Sometimes just a little shift side to side or a little extra height can get you past an obstruction more effectively. Not only can that help the range to reach out, it also helps receiving as well, which more power does nothing for.

A comment: don't test SWR at full power unless you already know you are in a good (<3.0:1) range. Note your bottom line: 35W going out and 25W coming back in... That's putting 60W on the transmitter final/power transistors (unless that is a 50W rig and automatically rolled back the output power to compensate -- but that is still a rather high loading: 60W on 50W finals?) You'd be better off with an antenna analyzer or VNA that takes the transmitter out of the system and sends signals in the mW range (for one thing, you won't be annoying anyone listening on the frequency you are testing, and both make sweeping the frequencies easier). FYI: the Laird 4505 variant has a datasheet that shows the BEST SWR at 1.6:1, and that is just under the GMRS simplex frequencies; the antenna should have had enough "give" to be tuned without cutting the whip(s).

Just a friendly heads up @WRWQ761 because this is a public forum, mygmrs.com rules ask that you don’t post the tones of repeaters in your post, you need to be a member to access repeater tones. That said it looks like you got things correct. I don’t know what radio you are using but many will automatically put the +5 offset in when you set it for a tone on TX for repeaters. You can leave the RX tone off until you are sure you are hitting the repeater, this can help diagnose what is happening as you would be able to hear everything on that channel/frequency. If you are testing with two radios make sure they are not right next to each other as they may desense each other. You can use this tool to check line of site https://www.scadacore.com/tools/rf-path/rf-line-of-sight/. Is it possible you that you are out of range? Check your squelch. Is it possible that everything is right and good with your radio and there just isn’t anything to hear? I hope this helps and you succeed access to the repeater.

First, remove the RX CTCSS Code. Then see if you hear the repeater. Without a code you receive everything. You will need the right code to transmit, but solve one problem at a time. If you cannot hear the repeater, and you’re on the right frequency, then either it has no traffic or you’re out of range. Yes, PL is the same as CTCSS. You might hear a GMRS repeater ID itself using Morse code. That is allowed. If you hear Morse code right after you tried to hit the repeater, you might have succeeded. There are different LMR sizes, such as LMR 240, LMR 400, LMR 600. I’m just curious which you got. Also, I don’t know what you meant about using two mounts as a wind brace.

I searched eBay for Motorola 100 watt uhf. Here’s a starting point. Consult with the commercial radio guys on this forum if you want more info: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=motorola+100+watt+uhf&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&loc=9021317&mktype=&sitelnk=&poi=&cmpgn=18791967966&rlsatarget=dsa-1680301660446&geo_id=&network=g&mkscid=102&gclid=CjwKCAjwrJ-hBhB7EiwAuyBVXdBClxBs9xhu2a0-AnkHKV1O60k8uu8lsJSQRr5QaZZcKQ3D-0GmOBoCUWcQAvD_BwE&mkcid=2&_odkw=motorola+xpr+5550+e+uhf+403+470+mhz&norover=1&MT_ID=&adpos=&adgroupid=141477363565&matchtype=&abcId=&keyword=&mkrid=711-153677-346401-4&crlp=632513917133_&device=t

I don’t believe you can.

Or you can buy a Baofeng that's already setup for GMRS.

Other than some complaints of possible used items received from Amazon, I've seen nothing but good reviews for the mxta26. On the actual downside is the size, at close to 3 ft. If you need to go smaller for clearance, antenna farm has a good selection for gmrs (tuned for 450-470mhz), and Laird are usually a good bet, either the 12" 5/8 wave (I've had great results with the ham version of this) or the 15" no ground plane versions (whole category).

I really liked the 771G but for this reason I swapped it out for the 701G and have been very happy with the 701G. So much so that I now have four of them. It isn’t quite as good as the 771 but pretty darn close and close enough was good enough for me to not be smacking the computer screen every time I took it into my office or putting an eye out. I really found the 771 to be a pain to hike with too. I keep the 771 handy if I need it but it’s 701G for me.

Welcome! If I have correctly parsed your message, it sounds like maybe you would also like to get your ham license. It’s as easy as it ever has been. If you need any help with that I can recommend a good teaching tool.

Well i really like Chirp But I Also Get Why the Owner Dont want any Pay Wall BS In his software Open Source software and to be honest i dont blame him and HERE IS WHY It is very Easy to slip in/Sneek in about Any kind of spyware & malware & Even Viruses into the system But When its All Free & open source For any jo blow to just Download and look at the Code then ANY one that is slightly curious an a with a tad of knowledge can check the code for their self's an this Always Always Makes it Much Much Harder To Do ! So Stay Open Source and Always Just Say NO To ANY PAYWALL'S..That is How It Starts the World keeps trying to sell you a service of one kind or another JUST SAY NO Keep Your Hard Earned Money in your Pocket...Trust me when i say Big Tech Dont Need a Penny But Want it ALL ! You Can Research These Facts For Your Self you dont half to believe Me..Go Look!

You cannot accurately measure the SWR of an HT antenna with that setup. When you hold an HT in your hand and push the PTT button, the radio and your body are providing the ground plane for the antenna. Laying the HT on a table and inserting a power meter between it and the antenna removes the ground plane. You can measure *power* in that configuration, but the SWR readings aren't accurate. More reading here: