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I appreciate the patience. Ok, I'll take out the RX tone on my radio of the known/programmed RPTs in my area and see what happens. Thanks

Hey folks, Mike has run into some unexpected expense with restoring service keeping the Bull Run Mountain repeater running. I am going to make a donation to the expense. I am reaching out to see if anyone else is interested in contributing some cash to Mike. He is providing an awesome service to the community. I hear a lot of people talk about how thankful they are to have access to that system and the rest of his network. Unlike other repeaters in the area, Mike's systems are 100% privately funded, rather than having a club or group contributing to operations. I hope many will be willing to help. Anyone who is willing to contribute, I would love to raise $700 between us. I will not be accepting anyone's money. I would like everyone who is willing to contribute to come to the next Meet N' Greet to present Mike with the donations directly. Please make a note here or PM me if you are interested in helping Mike out. I expect the next get-together to be scheduled for sometime in the next 2 to 3 weeks in the Gainesville area. If Gainesville is a hard location to reach, I may schedule 2 get-togethers back to back on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Thanks, Marc

"It's easy to become confused by these questions. Before we take action we need to talk about this some more at another time." ~ Ten Bears, Dances with Wolves

The official and unambiguous answer is: The FCC, based on their public record of enforcements clearly does not care, so why would I (or anyone with a life) care?

Here is before the duplexer. I'll test the meter on a different radio tomorrow to see if it's actually the meter going bad. The repeater itself is working good though. A Motorola T1504 duplexer and 1/2" hardline to the Commscope DB404 antenna

You may need to retest again...not sure.

It depends. You have to check the regulations for the frequency you’re curious about. Some frequencies are limited by ERP and some are simply measured power at the output. Unless otherwise specified, handheld radios are limited the same as mobile radios. § 95.1767 GMRS transmitting power limits. This section contains transmitting power limits for GMRS stations. The maximum transmitting power depends on which channels are being used and the type of station. (a) 462/467 MHz main channels. The limits in this paragraph apply to stations transmitting on any of the 462 MHz main channels or any of the 467 MHz main channels. Each GMRS transmitter type must be capable of operating within the allowable power range. GMRS licensees are responsible for ensuring that their GMRS stations operate in compliance with these limits. (1) The transmitter output power of mobile, repeater and base stations must not exceed 50 Watts. (2) The transmitter output power of fixed stations must not exceed 15 Watts. (b) 462 MHz interstitial channels. The effective radiated power (ERP) of mobile, hand-held portable and base stations transmitting on the 462 MHz interstitial channels must not exceed 5 Watts. (c) 467 MHz interstitial channels. The effective radiated power (ERP) of hand-held portable units transmitting on the 467 MHz interstitial channels must not exceed 0.5 Watt. Each GMRS transmitter type capable of transmitting on these channels must be designed such that the ERP does not exceed 0.5 Watt.

count me in, on both meet and greet and donation

It’s the exact radio. Yeah it’s ham. In use some ham equipment for my Gmrs base. I don’t tx on ham though. I just want the gps function for the handhelds. Some have Gmrs locked out. I saw that some have a software update that unlocks it.

Thanks go out to both of you!

Dave Casler touched on important point, the common mode current, which J-pole antennas are very susceptible to. But on UHF frequencies this cute (rather ugly) loop of coax is not going to stop your common mode current at all. Better, expensive chokes are needed with UHF J-poles. This is the reason why Ed Fong antennas do not work when mounted on metal masts.

I liked his videos better before he started trying to make one each day, but fortunately this video was from before then. I liked Stan Gibilisco’s videos too. I’m sorry he passed away. He has a good one about how J-poles work also. Unfortunately I lose focus trying to watch Ed Fong explain the same antenna. It looks like if you straighten out the J it looks just like an off center fed dipole with a delta match. Here’s Stan’s video:

It is a short circuit for DC, but this is ultra high frequency AC where you have waveforms and reactive impedance. Here’s a pretty good explanation:

I think it’s a great idea. We answer the same questions over and over. But it does no good to give them lip service in the forums. People who are willing to compile the questions and answers that already exist on this site should put something together and write to Rich, offering to maintain them. Or even start a new thread called FAQs.

I read on RepeaterBook that a guy was using GMRS Channel 16 north of Line A and he was fined $250k. But seriously, as pointed out, if you are north of "Line A", then i amend my response to "there may be restrictions on what pairs you can use".

No, that is not accurate, and all pairs are usable. To avoid interfering with any other repeaters, a good idea is to listen to all the repeater channels for a few days to see if there is any activity and check on the MyGMRS repeater map to see if there are any others listed in the area - then just pick a pair.

Maybe, but you weren’t specific enough. The repeater’s Output is its TX but is heard on your radio’s RX. Similarly, your radio’s TX frequency or TX tone, must match the repeater’s Input frequency and tone. Your radio transmits at 467.xxx MHz to the repeater. The repeater transmits at 462.xxx to anyone listening. There are only eight 467/462 repeater frequency pairs. Those frequencies are established by the FCC rules. Nearly all repeaters require a tone, otherwise they would be re-transmitting everything they receive. Your radio transmits a specific tone (CTCSS or PL, they’re two names for the same thing) or digital pattern (DTCSS or DCS or DPL) to open the repeater. That’s called the input or uplink or even receive tone for the repeater. The repeater usually sends a tone or digital pattern along with its transmissions. That’s the output or downlink or transmit tone of the repeater. Those terms are standardized so we can share information. The repeater output tone is for your convenience to lessen interruptions, but it doesn’t provide any kind of security. There are only eight frequencies that repeaters can receive on and only eight that they can transmit on. The frequencies that repeaters transmit on are the same as people use for simplex communications as well. If you are within range of a couple of repeaters that receive and transmit on the same frequencies, using different tones can ensure that your transmissions are being repeated by the correct one and that you’re hearing the correct one. So, for example, repeater Sandhawk and repeater Black Brant both receive on 467.550 MHz and transmit on 462.550 MHz. They’re far enough apart that they don’t usually bother each other, but you happen to live where you receive them both. Sandhawk uses an uplink or input tone of 67.5 Hz. That means that you MUST set your transmit or TX tone to 67.5 Hz or Sandhawk will just disregard your transmissions. Sandhawk uses a different tone, 100 Hz, for its output tone. Using two different tones for TX and RX is referred to as having a “split tone”. It’s usually done by repeater operators who want to protect against unauthorized access to their repeaters. Why? Because it’s easy to scan for the repeater output tone. It’s not as easy to scan for the input tone. The Black Brant repeater uses 103.5 Hz for both input and output. What a lot of people don’t initially understand is that these tones work like filters. If I set my handheld radio to a receive tone of 103.5 Hz my radio will only break squelch when it receives a transmission that incorporates that tone, which would be the Black Brant repeater. If I set my radio receive tone to 100 Hz it will only reproduce transmissions it receives which include a 100 Hz tone. But, if I don’t set a receive tone in my radio, it does no filtering. It literally reproduces everything that has a signal strength sufficient to break squelch. That’s useful, especially when trying to troubleshoot. Don’t fall into the trap of referring to a tone by a number or some other shorthand because not all radios number the codes the same. Always refer to the frequency of the tone, such as 103.5 Hz, or the DCS code. Not all radios include all the tones. Motorola and Midland include the standard tones, but fail to include some of the tones included in the overseas brands. Thus they might not be able to access some repeaters.

People started telling me about this a few months ago and I thought they were full of it, but I finally saw the listing on Amazon... My biggest issue I see is the confusion it will cause when telling "some people" that you're using a UV-5R on GMRS - "some people" wont know if they should report you to the FCC or not. Rumor has it that a very popular and beloved YouTuber will be making a video about this in the coming days.