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When you say you "get nothing", are you saying it does not transmit, or you dont think you are hitting the repeater? What frequency are you entering when in Frequency mode - and are you saying you can hit the repeater in frequency mode, or you are just able to transmit?

Good info. I'm sure @marcspaz will see this.

Lead Acid batteries can still be unbalanced. The way the batteries, and cells in each one, are balanced is by over charging so the cells gas. That’s fine with liquid filled types. However you can’t do that with sealed types since you can’t add distilled water to bring the electrolyte level back up. If you let the sealed types gas they will eventually be destroyed. Also the charge voltage has to change with temperature. Good LA battery chargers have a temperature sensor you attach to the out side. https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-403-charging-lead-acid If you look at the data sheets for the sealed types you find there is a maximum charge rate specified which keeps the cells from gassing during charging. I’ve seen more than once people selling solar power generators at swaps with a 7 amp-hour gell cell, max charge current is typically 2 amps, in the box being charged by a 100 watt panel that outputs around 8 amps. Those batteries won’t last long.

There has been a ton. This week we had a station come in full quieting at just about 140-150 miles on 2 meters. I've also noticed receiving strong signals from adjacent coordinated repeaters (shared frequencies). This temperature swing has been something.

So here's the issue with using "battery chargers" referring to the normally available 12 volt car battery chargers that would be readily available. They are non-regulated and non-filtered. Due to that the an AC hum would be superimposed on the DC power and would show up it the audio signals of the radios. Proper way's. First is a site generator. Most current 48 volt rectifier systems are modular. Meaning they are not one huge DC supply but a number of independent supplied in parallel that charge the batteries and power the connected equipment. So a full failure of that equipment is very rare as opposed to a utility power fail that renders them inoperable due to no input power. Any properly constructed cell or communications site will have in place a manner to connect a large generator that will run the site during a grid down event. A medium sized (30 to 60KW) tow behind generator and the correct cable would be the correct way to run the site. ANd you are going to need something larger to run a bunch of 200 amp battery chargers anyway if you tried to do it the way shown here. Second way is a purpose built 48 volt generator. The phone company has had these for years. They look like a standard large portable generator with an 18 to 20 HP motor but the output is 48 volts and not 120 / 240 volts. They are built specifically to power a 48 volt battery plant during maintenance or replacement of a 48 volt battery plant rectifier. Something of this nature could be constructed with rewiring a couple alternators with external regulators and running them in parallel to produce the required current level needed for such a thing. Contact your local telephone company or industrial generator dealer for more information. Lastly, and the way to NOT do it unless the chips were down and there was no other way. Similar to the manner that was shown but with switching power supplies of a current rating that meet's or exceeds the load at the site, but with a clean output and not a bunch of noisy battery chargers. Still need a generator if the grid is down. But a better way is find a proper 48 volt rectifier and a generator, put it all in an enclosed trailer and drive the whole thing out to the site. Remember that you are going to need wire to get to the power distribution breakers to feed the system. SO if you are serious about doing all this, you need to prepare ahead of time and not think that you are just going to wing it during an actual event.

In my humble opinion, it's not an issue of ham vs GMRS. Or what ham has over GMRS. There are advantages to both. GMRS doesn't require a test, just your $35 and a promise to obey the FCC rules. And the license covers family members, up to a point. But the frequencies are limited, and channelized. Ham radio requires a test, the same $35, and only covers one person. There are many more frequencies available with UHF ham radio. Both ham and GMRS can operate simplex or through repeaters. You'll probably find more repeaters on ham radio. I use both, since I have ham radio friends who communicate with me, and I use GMRS to communicate with my non-ham wife through a repeater if I'm out somewhere with no cell coverage. My suggestion is to use both and don't fall into the "one is better than the other" trap. Also, there are a few mobile ham transceivers out there that do HF, VHF and UHF. They're not cheap, and you may end up rolling the dice in the used market to find them. The Icom IC-706MkIIG, IC-7000 and IC-7100, the Yaesu FT-857, and others.

Very much so, thank you. Both @markskjerve and yourself (with the digirig), have given me some good interface leads to follow up on! My wife will be thrilled...

Don't be ridiculous.. It's a LOT overpriced.

Hello and welcome! I'm sure someone will come along soon that can help with your question. However as has been said many many times GMRS is not the best place to try and make friends. Ham radio is more suited to reaching out to strangers. GMRS is a "bring your own contacts" radio service. It's mainly intended for families and groups of friends staying in touch. You can certainly try of course just don't be surprised if don't have much luck.

Hopefully I understand the problem correctly! I apologize if I didn’t. I would get a Digirig and connect it between the USB port on a raspberry pi controller and a “master” radio to send tones, alarm sounds, synthesized speech or whatever under program control. They have cables for many different radios. The cables connect to the microphone and speakers to serve up sounds. The DigiRig is tiny. I would have the master radio send DTMF tones to the “slaves” to control various outputs. That’s where you could use the DTMF output board, but now that I’m thinking of it you probably could do something smarter with a raspberry pi board. Those outputs could be used to turn on or off alarms or other simple devices. You could probably cobble up a way to do multiple bit outputs but very few of them. As far as controlling high current devices you use the low current outputs as interposing relays or pilot relays to control higher current relays. You definitely don’t want to turn off the slave radios because once you do that you have completely severed connections with no way to re-establish them. You might be able to send a specific command to lock or unlock the Sounds like a fun project. I hope I’ve helped.

The 3" antenna is pre-installed though, which may account for it costing what it does.

A SignalLink USB adapter perhaps? https://tigertronics.com/slusbmain.htm

I need to get the old 10m radio and antenna setup so I can at least use 28.3 to 28.5 while studying for my general.

It depends on your location within the US. Guys on the west coast will pick up the far east better while the east coast will pick up Europe better. Guys have been getting Argentina really well here in the midwest.

It is the GM30 software. I have the codes plugged in now and transferred to the radio..

Well, I was fortunate enough to have someone able to answer the question for me. Huge Thank You to Shitao "Ken" Zhou for helping me (and others, I'm sure) understand what this function is for. This is why I love the radio community. Link to original post from Ken... Content from his thread... Hi, BA7NFW here. Background infomation When I searched for "No-communication squelch" function, which you can find on most yaesu radios, I came across this post ('cause it shows up on google). Basically we can't make this function work, not even have an idea why this function exists when TONE Reversed mode already works fine. I had the same confusion, and the question wasl unresolved. (btw, can someone post under that question just to tell Marc I have an answer now? I'm not living in FCC regulated territory and don't have a GMRS call sign, hence not able to register here) tl;dr PR Frequency function is used for the Japanese railway radio repeaters. From the FT5DR/FT5DE Advance Manual, PR FREQ is a frequency of 300-3000Hz used for Reverse CTCSS Decoder: User Programmed Reverse CTCSS Decoder The tone signal frequency can be set at 100 Hz intervals between 300 Hz and 3000 Hz to mute the audio when receiving a signal containing a CTCSS tone matching the programmed tone. So it's natural to think, PR FREQ = user Programmed Reverse ctcss decoder FREQuency. And that's the tricky part. Took me about half-day researching until I checked the Japanese version of the manual. So, PR here actually means Private Railway(私鉄). The Japanese Railway (JR) and other railway companies (PR) use a system of radio repeaters. When the repeater is standby and no one is using it, it keeps sending a monotone of 2280Hz (for JR, PR may use other tone between 300-3000Hz) to represent that status. If not specially handled, this may keeps your squelch opened. And that makes sense, this function will cancel a certain tone carried in FM mode, and it's not a standard CTCSS tone signal, therefore a separate function was implemented. I highly suspect if this function is actually useful outside Japan. And the terrible translated manual just makes everything more confusing. That's all. Ken (BA7NFW)

Ken, this is awesome! Great find! I would have never though to do that. I very much appreciate the information. It makes a lot of sense. I will add this to the solution for the original post. 73, Marc / N1BED

TX = Encode, RX = Decode. You need to Encode, you don't have to Decode unless you want to filter out everything else but the repeater. It is recommended to leave the RX out until you have everything else working and then add it so you don't have to listing to all the extra stuff on the frequency. BTW: GMRS is not HAM.

I understand the lack of space. It is true for most cars today. For my mobile I opted for the Midland MXT575 and placed it under the passenger seat. I did have to use a microphone extension form Midland, but the unit itself is out of view.

The weather is definitely having something to do with it. I haven't noticed too much on 2m or GMRS but the guys on 10m are going crazy right now.

Oh, BTW. If you decide to try independant supplies. You need to verify that the ground is ISOLATED. Meaning the battery side output is NOT connected tot he ground pin on he power cord. If it's connected on two or more of the chargers, the 12 volt power in the batteries will back flow from the adjacent battery back through the power cord, into the building ground and then into the ground of a battery effectively creating a dead short. With a set of even partly charged batteries, you will cause a fire at that point and things will get out of hand quickly.

Good article and I agree that a BMS is necessary for high energy density batteries like Li-ion, LiFePo, or Lipo batteries, but in my admittedly shallow experience (a customer of the utility telecommunications department and for my wife’s electric wheelchair), if the OP is charging lead acid batteries, a BMS is not necessary. For utility telecommunication sites (I was in a different department that depended on them, so again, I’m not an SME) they simply used strings of ten lead acid batteries in glass or plastic trays for a -125 vDC system. Hopefully, by now, the OP has already worked it out.

No. GMRS is not about that. Thats what Ham is for.

Spurious emissions are like farting on the airplane: benign to you but a discomfort for the neighbors. Studies aren't needed. Keying your Baofeng will not bring Airbus or Boeing or Embraer down, it will simply stink up the joint.

The problem with series connected batteries is “balancing” them. Slightly different battery voltages can indicate a difference in the state of charge. Good battery systems use a “BMS” to keep all of the batteries well balanced during charging. The article at this link goes into much more detail about the various issues. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/introduction-to-battery-management-systems/

@Tiercel After you download from the radio in chirp select settings (in the top center of the page next to memories). Different radios will give you different options in the settings portion but this one is there for your Baofeng UV-9G. You’ll also find things like the ability to put a name on the radio screen. I don’t have it in front of me right now or I’d do another screen shot for you. You may not need to mess with it but if you do it’s there and you can change the amount the squelch is set at. The 0-9 is the setting you can change from the front of the radio, the other numbers are the squelch setting for each of the 0-9. A little higher number and the squelch needs more signal to open. “0” is always the least which is open squelch so you hear all the noise. GMRS is the UHF settings. If you find you want to adjust your squelch settings I would start with what’s already programmed in the radio first. It may have come set at something like 6 so you likely have some room to play with before deciding to change it in chirp. I hope this helps.