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Do they still offer free testing down at Our Lady of Perpetual Motion? I get 100's on all my practice exams, how do I get to take the Master exam, the one above Extra.

I was talking about amateur radio with a coworker and another coworker mentioned these classes of license, turns out he has one. Basically his is for maritime operations predominantly as he was living in a port city at the time he was in trade school. It's a perpetual license so never expires even if he hasn't used it. Ostensibly it's for things like ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore, that sort.

Correct.

If I had to guess CW-ID is enabled and it's sending out the CW-ID. Press the Repeater/Base button on the unit to disable repeater (LED turns off) and it shouldn't transmit while you are programming it.

I had the same issue at first (with Radioddity DG20 and Midland Hand Units) and discovered that Midland and Radioddity CTCSS charts are not exaclty the same, i.e. CTCSS 10 on Midland is not the same freq as CTCSS 10 on the Radioddity. But when I set them to same freq everything works fine (CTCSS 12 on DG-20 correlateds to CTCSS 10 on Midland.)

That's not correct. When transmitting in DMR both time slots are sent so the entire 12.5/25 kHz channel is used even if it is carrying only one timeslot.

That's what I get for pulling an image from Midland lol

DMR has some attractive features. 1. Being a TDMA, time division multiple access, mode the transmitter is only working half the time. For a handheld radio that works out to a significant increase in operating time on a battery pack. That's a huge consideration for those who want the radio to last all day while out hiking the tails. 2. DMR, along with other digital voice modes, provide clear noiseless audio out to near the limit of the range typical of an analog only radio. Where the analog radio starts breaking up and getting very difficult to copy the digital signal is still clear. 3. With the proper radios that can auto negotiate the slot timing among themselves, that's the main caveat, you get two voice paths on a single channel. 4. Finally there are radios that can operate in SFR mode, single frequency repeater, without the duplexer requirement typically necessary for an analog repeater. The SFR, as the name suggests, allows the equivalent of a full duplex analog repeater but using ONLY one frequency, no offsets required. The trick is allowing the use of ANY digital voice mode on GMRS. Some of the objections voiced by several other posters are legitimate. I would suggest you look at this post and read the attached file that goes into the issues a bit more. It's meant as nothing more than to get some ideas out there. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/5720-new-repeater-channels-for-gmrs-in-2024/page/2/#comment-57605

I bought mine a few weeks ago for one heck of a deal with the intention of giving it away to the guy here who runs my favorite repeater. The existing repeater antenna is up 400ft or so using two old Johnson mobiles linked together as a repeater. The repeater site is 30 miles from my house and is a bit noisy at about 1/2 to 3/4 scale on my S-Meter but usable. I'm just hoping the VXR-7000 makes it a bit more usable. I've got it all programmed to go in, gave it to the repeater site owner this week and he is planning on installing it sometime this weekend. If it works better great, if not it was a $100 gamble I lost.

That's normal. If there is nothing programmed on the channel (or it is disabled) the whole line is greyed out. Simply double click the channel number to enable it.

Mine lets me program all channels, so I'm not sure why yours would all be greyed out, but I only ever need/use one channel so if mine were greyed out i would have never noticed. Running the program in "Dealer Mode" will give you access to more options and features. To run in Dealer mode, add "-d" (without the quotation marks) to the end of the program name/path in the Target box of the shortcut that you use to run the program.

Bring radios and scanners, you are not that fa away! Free room and board for many here.

I understand his question as sort of open ended, wondering if someone has plans to make announcements on the repeater about changing local conditions related to the rally, such as traffic reports. I see nothing offensive about the question.

A lot of people seem to be attracted to those "Ghost" antennas due to their small size. IMHO I've never been impressed with their performance. Some may have had better luck with them. I picked one up at a Ham swap a while back since it was cheap to test out. The results weren't that good. If someone wants a small antenna I would just go with a simple 1/4 wave type, easy one is a magnet mount. It's only going to be about 6 to 7 inches tall anyway. These have a WIDE bandwidth so when trimmed right could be usable over the Ham 70cm band and the GMRS band too. At the frequencies used by GMRS the ground plane required is only about 6 inches in radius around the antenna base for uniform coverage. The magnet mount achieves the connection to the ground plane through the base using capacitive coupling. You don't need a solid connection. Antenna Scan Results (Stealth Dual Band VHF).pdf Antenna Scan Results (Stealth Dual Band UHF).pdf

Mine does this when it detects DTMF tones/IDs, by design.

A reason I started this thread, actual field use of the feature! Thanks for the feedback. Does your GMRS radio do SAME, or do you listen to all alerts on the local weather radio station? Just curious. If I had all alerts on today my radio would've gone off every 2 minutes! (central Maryland, so many strong storms in the region today)

I paid about $99 for my Tram 1486 which is on one section (9 feet) of a telescoping flagpole, attached to the chimney, no guy-wires. I get about 50 miles of farz and have not worried about it since I put it up 2 years ago, making it, by definition, a "worry free" base antenna. I use it as both a repeater antenna and as a base-station (simplex) antenna.

Well, it took a bit of work to finish installing my two XTL-5000 radios. A total of about 14 hours spread over a month. A big part of it was making it look as clean as I could. The transceivers are pretty well hidden under the front seats. I had to move them from under the rear seats because they took up too much space. I am much happier with this setup. From left to right: UHF XLT-5000, VHF XLT-5000, Yaesu FTM-300DR VHF/UHF w/Crossband Repeater & APRS, Yaesu FT-891 HF. It may seem odd to have 4 transceivers in 1 vehicle, but they all serve a specific purpose; each a role that none of the others can fill.

It's ham lower case. Amateur radio has more facets than most people can begin to imagine. My advice is to study for both Tech and General, it's not that much of a workload to bump up to General. #1 look for your local ham club, ask if you can go to a meeting and look at the club's equipment. Talk to members. #2 purchase a SDR radio and start listening before you buy any equipment.