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I’m going to hang on to it. It’s one of the smallest DC to daylight multi mode radios I’ve seen that can do 100 watts PEP on HF through 6M. It also has a remote face plate option too. It also has the optional high stability reference oscillator installed and I think the 1.8KHz SSB filter too. I’ve been thinking about just setting it up as a base radio

For the UV-9G the # key only changes power levels in frequency mode. In memory mode you have to use the menu button and go to menu 2.

I checked and there is more info for a Japanese specific frequency expansion mod for that model, IC-706MKIIG. One guy was nice enough to check the power output on his radio after doing the US version mod. While the radio will transmit way out of band the output filters really roll off the power past a point. There are another mod for the radio to increase power output. IC-706MKIIG Freqequency Mod Power Output.pdf IC-706MKIIG Transmit Power Mod.pdf IC-706MKIIG Japanese Version Frequency Mod.pdf

True. It certainly could be FRS. I looked at their website but of course nothing about their radios. The owner is British and one of the instructors we heard was British so I feel the origin of the coms was verified. I just thought the whole thing was cool… listening to people talk while falling out of the sky was not what I expected to hear when I turned on my HT in the backyard. I did catch them again yesterday around the same time but only briefly and only sounded like one person, he was saying what maneuver he was going to do before he did them but he didn’t sound like he was directing others.

Maybe this will help. There’s a ham in Poland who makes boards that accept the filters. See this article. The updated board is discussed near the bottom. https://qrper.com/2022/09/how-to-assemble-a-narrow-cw-filter-for-your-yaesu-ft-817-ft-818-ft-857-ft-897-an-affordable-yf-122c-equivalent/

Pure..Gold.... I cant thank you all enough.

What are you testing into, and what are you using for a meter? If you're using anything but a 50Ω dummy load for testing I wouldn't trust the output numbers. Also, need to make sure you have a good power source (like @gortex2 said). A continuous 13.8VDC is needed, and for a 50w transceiver it should be a constant 12-15A for the draw (the more the better). If you're using an inline meter while sitting in your vehicle and using an antenna, you're not going to get accurate power readings.

Hey guys just received my GMRS license and a wouxun kg-935g plus. Was hoping to test fire the new radio this weekend. Did pick up a Nagoya ut-72g for extra fars for convoys. Thanks!

Yesterday I picked up and listened to several jumps from a five person skydiving group on GMRS channel 10. They were about 26 miles away give or take a few thousand feet (height is might). My wife and I were able to deduce where they were by the landmarks they were calling out and confirming a skydiving business located near there. One person transmitting and directing the group in turns and formations, calling out altitude. “Jumper 4 you can close in on 3 but don’t pass him” “everyone turn left on my mark 3-2-1” that sort of thing. Some wind noise seeping in to the coms. I was a little surprised I guess something like this was on such an open frequency and not the AM air or a business band. I would guess they had ctcss set to keep outside interference out but I didn’t think to check and I sure wasn’t going to break in for a chat while they’re falling out of the sky. I’ll say it was a bit more entertaining than the kids on the street with their FRS radios. I’d be interested in what others have heard that surprised them.

Another advantage of the Xiegu is that it has a built in automatic antenna tuner (antenna match) and a prettier interface, but I agree that the FT-891 is a better radio.

No, it means that the front end of the receiver used a “software defined radio” IC, rather than a superheterodyne analog front end. Software, actually firmware, runs in computer chips to provide filtering or other signal processing. Basically the radio is a computer. However, you can connect a computer to it to get additional functionality or to work some of the digital modes.

When I went skydiving, the maneuver was "don't throw up"

Even if it didn't doing the MARS/CAP mod will fix that problem. IC-706MKIIG Frequency Expansion.pdf

I've purchased stuff on eBay from some Chinese sellers, a few from Canada and once from Ireland. In all cases the seller took care of the paperwork. The most frustrating thing is when the package sits in the foreign country's export house for days. Then when it arrives here it sits in a custom clearing house for a week or two, if you're lucky, before it clears. So far I haven't had to contact customs or pay any additional import duty on purchases outside of the US. I have seen several IC-706MKIIG's for sale at swaps. Most were really beat up but a few looked OK. If you go that route DON'T buy anything EXCEPT the 706MKIIG model! The older ones had various issues including poor sensitivity. I liked mine and the limited DSP features they had worked well for the era. The disappointing thing is the power on UHF was a max of 20 watts. However I didn't find that a huge issue. I had some mobile power amps, Mirage and RF Concepts, that did 10 watts in and 100 watts out if I ever needed more power. IC-706MKIIg.pdf RF_Concepts_RFC-4-110_RFC-4-310_user.pdf D-1010-N.pdf

There are some decent Chinese PCB houses out there that can manufacture the blank board for a cheap price. This is one we used at work here for making some quick prototype boards. https://www.pcbway.com/ You just need a PCB layout package that can generate standard Gerber files. A number of people have used KiCad to do their own boards. It's used for a number of public domain projects. https://www.kicad.org/ Before that the favorite was Eagle. However it has some significant limitations with the "free" version that KiCad doesn't. https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-eagle/all Were I work we use Altium Designer for schematic capture and PCB layout work. The projects and part libraries are cloud based. All you need is the software loaded on your PC and Internet access for the license server and the cloud server. Then you can work from anywhere as a team partner.

I second the Garmin Glo2. It is a small blu-tooth unit for gps only I use it on my Ipad and it improves the lag time for the gps to update.

Pretty much every FRS bubble pack unit is equipped for Kenwood (K-1?) compatible speaker/mic connections, and has a VOX capability.

The commercial digital radios have better frequency stability spec’s. It’s necessary due to the quad frequency modulation, 4 discrete frequency shifts, used. If the frequency drifts too far off the radio can’t detect the particular dibit, two bits encoded per frequency shift, being sent resulting in a higher bit error rate. That’s by the way why people have to tweak their hotspot frequency. The other reason if the frequency drifts too much the RX radio will loose sync with the data stream if the transmission lasts too long, mismatch between TX and RX data rates. Then the communication fails. The same frequency reference use for TX and RX is also used for the data stream bit timing. The various digital modes standards have spec’s for the above. I wouldn’t be surprised that the cheap Chinese digital radios have a tendency to experience drop outs due to the above. Some of those radios have crummy frequency stability specs to save money on a better reference oscillator. For amateur use the dropouts aren’t critical. However for first responders it could be life threatening.

Don’t overfly that road and land in the wrong “yard”.

GMRS is in the middle of business band, so the technical requirements are identical to Part 90. For example, stability must be 2.5ppm for 25KHz channels and 1.5ppm for 12.5KHz channels. Ham gear does not have such strict requirements. It is only recently (few years) when new ham HTs and mobiles started to satisfy that spec. Majority of older ham gear is drifty. This thread shows quite well, that when "I know what I'm doing" is uttered, it is a very strong signal that person has no clue. :rolleyes

Internet Troll A mythological internet being that lives under an internet bridge. Loves to hunt for innocent netizens. Common tactics: antagonizing other netizens by posting racist or offensive comments, or just plain rants. Weakness: being outwitted or unable to antagonize others The amusing thing is wondering what this pc fella's going to say next. I mean, obviously, we went well beyond a normal thread into the septic tank of the internet on about page three, and here we are on page five with no end in sight. We could all just ignore him, but my God this just keeps getting more entertaining. I feel like I'm playing with one of those Flat Earth folks.

Rosa Parks was sitting in seats marked for "colored" and not in seats for "whites." She refused to move from her seat when a white couldn't find another seat. Now, if you are going to make statements about historic events you need to verify your facts first.

Oh please… Such suffering you are enduring. Arguing the use of a “properly configured ham radio” for a service where certification is required doesn’t make technical sense. Being allowed to use a type 95E certified radio as a ham radio makes more sense (and is allowed, but not simultaneously), but still has nothing to do with civil rights and racism.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! To quote Mayor Vaughn... "as you see, it's a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time"

462 is always the output (your RX) and 467 is always the input (your TX). If you have a 'real' GMRS radio you dont need to worry about that, you just pick the correct repeater 'channel', which will already have the tx and rx setup.

Our Zello channel is linked to our Southern California repeater -both the Zello and the repeater are open for any licensed GMRS user to use.. Zello channel is named 'Notarubicon GMRS 700 Repeater' .. https://zello.com/NAR700 Almost 5,000 Zello users are approved/subscribed to use this channel but most are extremely shy and never talk/transmit. We also just changed frequencies on the repeater so its a bit quite right now while everyone figures out that its changed.