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This may actually cause damage... but, how about transmitting on high power too close to another radio will break the other radio's receiver. My radio has the pre-amp enabled. A buddy of mine started talking to me while stopped at a light. Our antennas were less than 2 feet apart. My receiver had an epic melt-down after just a few seconds. Everything i received after that sounded like it was under water and on fire at the same time. After power cycling the radio a few times and leaving it off for a few hours, if seems to have fully recovered. Depending on the radios used... I may be willing to fund this experiment.

The so-called "privacy channels" are just CTCSS/DCS tones being transmitted. Tune to the frequency (channel 7), remove all tones on receive, and you will hear everything being transmitted on this channel. There is no privacy in "privacy tones". In order to transmit with the correct tone, to be heard on this "7.11 channel", you need to find out what CTCSS or DCS tone is used by this FRS radio. Find out what tone corresponds to ".11". The mapping table should be somewhere in the manual for the FRS radio. And the term sideband has a meaning that has nothing to do with tones or channels. It's not applicable to the situation we are talking about.

Go under the Help menu to About... What version are you using? You should be using version 2.06, available here: https://www.radioddity.com/pages/radioddity-download The earlier version had the problem of the wrong transmission frequencies on transmit on some channels and was fixed on the updated version.

Well, the truth is the antenna system more than ANYTHING else. You can have the most expensive repeater on the planet with an antenna at 50 feet and I can out distance you with a couple garage sale M120 radius radio's and a repeater link cable and an antenna that's 400 feet in the air. And you have to understand there are three measurements of height when it comes to all this out. First measurement is AGL. That means Above Ground level. If the antenna is on a 300 foot tower but mounted at 200 feet the antenna is 200 feet AGL. Then there is AMSL or Above Mean Sea Level. That is the height at the ground where the tower is above sea level PLUS the AGL level of the antenna. Then the most important one that is really important. That one is HAAT. Height Above Average Terrain. Now this one you are not going to measure with a tape measure. It's a multipoint averaging calculation. To figure this out, you create a circle around a tower out to some distance. I believe the FCC uses 20 miles but it could be more. Then you draw circles within that circle, typically 5 that are equally spaced. Then you draw a cross and an X through the circles to create the points of reference. The lines can vary from every 22.5 degrees to every 5 degrees depending on the type of calculation you want to do. You then get a topographical map of the area in the circle and document the ground level heights at every one of the intersecting points on the map. Add all those together, divide by the number of readings and then subtract the number from your AMSL. That will give you HAAT. The FCC website will do this for you, so don't think you need to do it manually. This is why an antenna on a 500 foot tower that sit's in a 1500 foot deep valley can be out talked by an antenna on a 10 foot mast pipe on any top ridge of the peaks above that valley. Sure the 500 foot antenna will talk gangbusters in that valley, but not at all outside it. And the 10 foot one will talk then entire valley plus down into all the neighboring valleys. We have one repeater on the MidWest system (Crete600) that talks 120 miles across it's coverage area. I have personally verified this by starting in Chicago and driving over half way to Indy before I fell out of the coverage area of that repeater. And it all has to do with the height of the antenna. Interesting EXTREME example of this. Ham radio has satellites that are repeaters. The repeaters are limited at 2 to 4 watts. They are 200 plus miles above the earth and you can hear them on a portable radio (HT) with a meager beam antenna. And you can also talk on them with the same portable radio and beam antenna.

If you have ever been told lies or heard myths about radios that you would like to see tested, please post it in this thread. Good/common ones will be featured on the interwebz largest and most beloved GMRS Related YouTube channel. Some examples that have already been debunked are: If you transmit on any radio, for any length of time without an antenna, your radio will vaporize If you coil your coax you will get a high SWR and your radio will vaporize If your SWR is higher than 1.x:1, nobody will hear you...and your radio will vaporize Ghost antennas do not work and are nothing more than a dummy load Any radio not costing $300+ and not made in 'Merica or Japan is "junk" If you press the PTT button without a license the FCC will fine you or put you in jail "Sad Hams" do not exist Feel free to keep this thread going as long as necessary. I will not rest until all myths/lies have either been debunked or proven true.

The Bird shows 2 tenths of a watt being reflected back into the radio because the antenna and transmission line is almost gnats-ass bitchin.

Done that one! With a 5W handheld and 50W mobile! (spoiler: after several minutes of TXing, nothing happened to either other than getting hot)

On GMRS all phonetics are funny because they aren't necessary and many people laugh at them.

Is the other end still connected to the tv?

My assumption is that they’re just using it like a base station, transmitting and receiving in simplex on the 462 frequency.

I’m gonna go do this today as well! Hope it works! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My repeater puts 37 watts into a dummy thus would be the same into the duplexer

My reflected power with a 10 Watt slug

And those many factors will affect all radios operating within the same parameters. That means if the CCRs are transmitting at the same power level as a real radio, will have just about the same amount of farz. I believe one of the video stars proved that in one of his videos.

Probably something digital being transmitted.

I don't want to tell you what to get, just some options of what's out there. I don't want to spend other peoples money. Hell it's far to easy to spend my own. In the end you'll likely find yourself getting other radios down the line as you figure out what things are important and not to you so that's why I say jump in and get a cheaper radio and you'll discover things as you go. You mentioned fishing so maybe a radio that has an IP67 rating is important. Perhaps a Baofeng UV-9G? A warning though buying radios can be habit forming. You asked for wisdom, that's as close as I got. The radios I mentioned are locked for GMRS on TX. As for Supper heterodyne vs direct conversion, I have both and a with a good direct conversion like the KG-935G plus it would be hard to tell the difference. If you haven't yet you may find watching some videos help. Randy aka @OffRoaderX is on the forum here and has some videos on GMRS radios at Notarubicon, his own brand of humor included at no extra charge. Since you mentioned getting your Ham license I like Josh's videos with Ham Radio Crash Course.

I have to say when he posted that I was wondering how it got so messed up. This makes sense.

The emissions around 450-470 MHz will directly mess with the receiver (if talking about GMRS). They will be making Signal-to-Noise ratio worse. The higher frequency emissions, when strong enough, may have an effect on internal electronics of the radio. The lower frequency emissions unlikely to cause problems, but there are cases when they have an effect because close enough to intermediate frequency or any harmonic of it. Radios are constructed to be protected from the off-band interference, but if signal is strong enough, or/and radio is cheap enough, you will have an adverse effect. Biggest problem is always the in-band interference, 450-470 MHz for the GMRS.

All the above.

The 10 AH LiFePo4 battery will run the radio for several hours with 80% of the time listening. It could stretch up to 24 hours depending on how much time is spent transmitting. A better choice for a battery is this one from Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/XZNY-LiFePO4-Rechargeable-Suitable-Emergency/dp/B09QPX38GG/ref=sr_1_12?crid=PZ83AN1KXVYM&keywords=16ah%2Bbattery&qid=1697761072&s=electronics&sprefix=16ah%2Celectronics%2C145&sr=1-12&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.18ed3cb5-28d5-4975-8bc7-93deae8f9840&th=1. It has twice the capacity at about 2/3rds the cost of the Dakota battery you chose. The Woxun radio you like is out of stock and a better choice (IMO) is the Radioddity DB-25G with slightly more power but many more empty channels to store repeater configurations in. The complete radio package from Amazon is $210 including antenna and mag mount. Add a lithium charger https://www.expertpower.us/products/epc125-5a and you are set. The only thing missing are the connectors for the battery to the radio. You'll need 2 1/4 inch quick disconnect spade connectors crimped to the radio's power cable.

Just google “Midland GMRS repeater”. Honestly the Midland looks like it was built by the same manufacturer as the Retevis. Midland just had a big sale but I think it is over now.

I believe it is the Ultraflex. Whichever Mr. Grindr recommend on his affiliate link.

That is definitely crossing the line. On subject. I like seeing different tests being done. I for one would like to see just how much damage transmitting on high power with no antenna will actually do to a radio.

Last week it was around 48 hrs to get the callsign email and another 48 for it to populate the servers to log onto various online things.

Will transmitting using tv coax hurt my radio or my fars?

I will recommend the Baofeng GT-5R for a cheap dual band radio. I've seen enough videos and did some testing of my own and the GT-5R is better than the standard UV-5R. And the GT-5R is $26.99. At that price, they do work and you won't cry much if one gets lost or broken. Ham Radio Crash Course did a good comparison of the GT-5R versus others. Keep a good HT for yourself and hand out the cheaper ones to others. There is a very high 2 meter repeater 20 miles away from me and I can use the GT-5 when outside my house to make contact with others on the repeater. It isn't the best signal since the radio is only 5 watts but it will work.

@Tiercel it sounds like you are in an ideal location if you are at even a bit higher elevation than everyone else. You may find an HT does rather well and anything more will just be icing on the cake when at home using GMRS. A ham version of the Baofeng UV-9G is the GT-3WP. I have both of these and they both work really good. I get being obsessive in doing comparisons. Hell I made a spread sheet before buying my first radio. Embarrassingly I have purchased quite a few more radios since, both GMRS and Ham radios. It's far to easy to do.

Still playing around with it and figuring out, there is a good bit of features to work through. One feature I wish was customizable is the backlighting on the screen, it would be great to be able to change the colors. the ability to set-up zones and scan lists is a definite plus!

Myth: Hams are the only ones that can be considered sad...

I was going to get a Wouxun KG-1000G but everywhere I looked is out of stock. I ended up getting a Midland MTX500 instead. The MTX500 arrives today and I still have to run cables to my outdoor antennas. I have a Comet CA-712EFC on one end of the house for GMRS. The base of the antenna is 17 feet above ground. If you happen to be a military veteran or otherwise qualify for membership at govx.com, then go through them for a discount. GovX has a 10% discount code for use on the MyGMRS web store. So the Midland MTX500 was actually cheaper than the normal price for the Wouxun KG-1000G. As far as hand held radios (HT's) go, I went cheap and bought a pair of Baofeng UV-5R GMRS radios. The pair is $51 on Amazon. For HAM, I have a Comet GP9 that is going on the opposite end of the house from my GMRS antenna and the antenna base will be 24 feet above the ground. I bought a Baofeng GT-5R to play with and it works fine. I am borrowing an older Icom IC-208H mobile dual band radio for now. I am just using a mobile antenna on a cookie sheet outside my window with the IC-208H. I decided to just start out with my technician license for now and the test is pretty easy as long as you study for it. I suggest taking one of the free practice exams online until you can pass with at least 85% before taking the real exam.

Aha moment. Thanks.

When you have the TX and RX frequencies set the same, is the repeater disabled from repeating?

No, I would feel too guilty putting it up before I get the cabin main floor finished. Yesterday was a good day though. I made headway on the bathroom. I don’t see myself putting up the tower until next year sometime.

Hehe, yep. That explains it.

Thought I would check back and see how you like it so far.

The radios will work as well as any for distance but actual distance depends on many factors. How high are the antennas? GMRS is mostly a line of sight reception. Are there buildings or other obstacles in the path? You will likely have to test to see if you can reach. This line of sight tool may help give an idea of what you are looking at.

Although I don't like mag mounts as a long-term solution, I have used them, and to prevent scratching I've placed a cheap plastic (not glass) tablet screen protector on the roof.

Better to get a 3”x3” square of helicopter tape and put that down on the roof first. It won’t let the mag mount scratch the paint and is easily removed when desired.

YOU'LL HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.

Oh nooooo ! WRUU653. Press your monitor button !