Leaderboard

Almost everything about this post is wrong. Whether you like it or not your radio is connected to a ground. Lightning travels miles through the air to get to ground and your antenna and tower are just a convenient path for it. Current will follow your coax (either the shield or the center conductor or both) until it finds ground. That’s why you place surge arresters outside the house and connect them to your house ground system, to give static charge an easier path to ground. You don’t have to open the electrical panel or hire an electrician to do any of this.

Be careful of the trap of spending more and more money chasing traffic that just doesn’t exist. Ham radio might be a better service for you if you are interested in making contacts with others on the radio. Many of us here do both. I could leave my GMRS radio running all the time and pick up very little, but I can hear transmissions from both people near and far on ham radio.

The need to use plain language without attempts to decieve also goes for amateur radio too. And no new digital mode for amateur radio can be used without first making it public per the FCC. Business bands and public service band fall under different rules than amateur and GMRS bands.

I have created a custom "Learn GMRS With The NotARubcion" GPT on OpenAI. If you have access to ChatGPT4 / Are a ChatGPT Plus user you can access this custom GPT here: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-lltaQJ8ro-learn-gmrs-with-the-notarubicon The idea is that you can ask it any questions about GMRS and you will get the kind of answers that only The Notarubicon would give - so if you want to learn about GMRS, or if you just want a new buddy to chit-chat with, feel free to give it a try. If you run into any problems, or if the AI version of me gets something wrong, leave a comment here and let me know.

This is all covered by the NEC (national electric code). It is worth looking the regulations up and reading them. As mentioned your coax shield is grounded to your radio which in turn is grounded to the home ground at the outlet. That is why one should use lightning arrestors on the coax before it enters the structure and also to have everything grounded and also bonded to the service ground. That gives the electric a shorter path to ground. And the lightning arrestor should also keep the electricity overload from entering the structure. Grounding can be a touchy subject and people will always argue about it. I prefer to be safe than sorry and have ground rods at each antenna mast/tower along with a ground rod right at the wall passthrough where my coax cables enter my house. They are bonded together and to my service ground..

I just poked around on ebay for both P/N's but no luck. I have to agree with WRXP381.

Getting the offset wrong will drive one batty. You can't always go by what repeater book says either.

Yes, you have it right. Welcome here!

Yea I’m working on getting my Ham as well

It's also possible no one is talking. I live in the capitol city of my state and I never hear GMRS traffic.

I agree that antennas don’t create power and I understand gain. I use my radios with the antenna vertical. For me, having a spherical pattern, like an isentropic antenna, would be wasteful because I don’t typically communicate with something directly above or below me. But I understand your point that having a high gain antenna with the radiation directed in the wrong direction can be even worse. I also agree that a low efficiency antenna is a bad thing. Unfortunately most of us (definitely me) don’t have an easy way to assess efficiency. Real world testing like I conducted are the best I can do.

I am in the beginning stages of putting together a Connecticut GMRS club. You can learn more on our Facebook Page. kind regards, WRQF883 Steve

Maybe this would be an option (just picked one at random). I also did some digging around eBay and what not for the mic with no luck... though it might end up costing me, damn window shopping

Love it.

Agreed. We spent the weekend with friends who do a lot of FRS on RVing and backcountry/hunting trips. When the wife and I pullout out the GMRS HTs the questions started ("How come that antenna comes off?"). By the end of the conversation everyone was eager to upgrade. The biggest problem was licensing; not that it was costly, but that it was so cumbersome. "Well, first you need to establish an FRN, then you need to apply for a GMRS license..." I loved one response: "Amazon should sell the license." Which is not a bad idea.

Well you do you. I have had Midland and still have Baofeng radios and they do not compare with Wouxun radios when it comes to quality, performance, etc. The Midlands are all gone and while I will keep the Baofeng hand held radios around, I will not buy another Baofeng again. Sometimes it does good to head the old saying "buy once, cry once"

The NEC begs to differ, and this is just a small bit on what it has to say.

Great! But I'm confused. You said that the repeater was split tone: "where Tx is DCS and Rx is CTCSS." But now you say you're in D Code, which uses DCS for Tx and DCS for Rx. That's not split mode. What did I miss.

Living in a crowded area the frequency is too active and I like filtering the noise out.

Sshannon makes a good point. Your current set up should at least let you hear if there is much going on around you. Maybe just get the antenna up as high as you can with the stock cable.

Be sure and learn about the right kind of antenna's and cable. Proper cable and keeping it short is important with GMRS.

Welcome! Also elevating your antenna as high as possible will help. As a new to radio person one of the best lessons to learn is that antenna's work best when they are in the clear. Radio waves in the UHF/VHF range (GMRS is UHF) are line of sight mostly. Thus the less obstacles in the way the better. If you can get it up over the roof of the near by buildings it will make a big difference. Lots of good folks here to help.

Thank you, this was what I meant by top section but better said.

No chop-busting needed. Welcome here! Are you sure there’s anything to receive? In some places there’s just not a lot of traffic. Are you scanning? If you have any tones set on Receive get rid of them so you hear everything. Yes, it’s possible that your antenna isn’t optimum, but it should work well enough.

Could just be the 500 ft difference it height of the antenna's causing that difference. That is one tall tower! Is it on flat ground or a hill?

I don’t have the radio, so maybe this doesn’t help, but I looked up the radio out of curiosity. The frequencies advertised for this radio are as follows: 7-Band receive frequency range: 76-108 (FM Radio), 108-136 (AM), 136-180 (FM), 230-250 (FM), 350-400 (FM), 400-512 (FM), 700-823 (FM) If that is a literal representation of coverage limits baked into the firmware, then it would appear that you can only tune to AM frequencies from 108-136, but above 136 the radio only does FM. The airband extends from 108-137, so if the 108-136 MHz coverage listed above truly reflects firmware boundaries then you just can’t get there (136-137 MHz AM) from here.

Perhaps airband can only be entered in one side and not the other? For example, on my KG-UV9D Mate, I can only pick up 1.25m in Area A and not Area B.

It is simply because GMRS is a simple radio service for people who just need a simple means of communication. It is geared towards business, family, friends, where getting a business radio license is either not worth it or impossible to get. From observing people either online or locally getting into GMRS, many are not radio smart. They are utterly confused the second you say "repeater". Could you imagine if you added DMR or some other sort of whacky form of communicating? I know Extra class Hams who's brains explode if you even plant a DMR radio in their hands, never mind trying to get them to upload an already programmed codeplug. Adding other modes into GMRS would only confuse and degrade the service. GMRS is meant to be simple for simple radio communications. Analog with simplex and repeater capability is more than enough. I suggest if Hams want to experiment with frequency hopping, encryption and who knows what new secret service mode of communicating is out there, how about petitioning the FCC to take the Ham bands from 6 meters on up and either allow experimentation of any sort of mode of operation or petition the FCC to take the bands from 6 meters on up and split them off from Ham Radio and make a new service similar to Ham radio but that allows the commercial world to enter in with its radio technology therefore allowing more experimentation of radio and making it more friendly towards those like myself who's interests border more on the commercial end of radio rather than the traditional Ham contesting end of radio? I guarantee you, you would attract a lot more people to the group of radio operators. This way, people could leave GMRS alone and stop trying to turn it into something it is not meant to be. Ham Radio on the bands from 6 meters and above are actually very restrictive when it comes to what you can experiment with and what modes you can use. In general, either the rules restrict you from experimenting or the Ham community themselves restrict you (depending on your location). If you want to experiment - use Ham Radio If you want secure communications - use a cell phone.

@WSAA635, can you screenshot your Chirp settings for us? Maybe it will show something. Are the frequencies you’re trying to put in within the radio’s ability? Also depending on where you are and what you’re listening to maybe there isn’t much to hear? When you try to front panel program are you in the top section? Sorry if some of this sounds obvious, it’s difficult to know what is going on so I’m throwing out all I can think of. What antenna are you using? Is it a case of not being able to put the frequency in or it not receiving? It looks like you said you were able to program a couple.

New guy here. Always like to nerd out on this kind of stuff and have guys from work that want to go off-roading so I managed to convince them to get their licenses and radios. Now they're expecting me to get all the knowledge. Hah. I also travel from Arizona to San Diego every couple of months and want to be able to use the radio system in case of an emergency. Seems like there's a decent learning curve but I'm always down to learn this stuff especially if SHTF. Hope to learn some cool stuff here.

Damn Windows drivers issues!!

I have a few Abbree 771 and Nagoya 771 antennas for 2m/70cm and GMRS. The 771 antennas do make an improvement on my Baofeng and Explorer QRZ-1 (TYT UV-88). But I did not see any improvement with those antennas on my Wouxun KG935G or Icom IC-T10.

Can you say that one more time? I didn't quite catch that.

The KG935G is my favorite GMRS HT.

All it does is temporarily (while pressing the button usually) disable squelch for receiving. It does nothing to remove the tones for transmitting .

Actual measurements of signal strength performed by swapping between the OEM antenna on my UHF radio and a clone of the Nagoya (Tid Radio 771) dispute that. Sitting at my kitchen table I transmitted to a DMR repeater 16 miles away. I watched the signal reports using a Brandmeister connected dashboard. When I transmitted using the factory rubber duck the signal strength was reported as s6. Then I removed the factory antenna and replaced it with the clone 771 antenna. The signal varied between s7 and s8. Going back to the original antenna the signal strength went back down. Those are reproducible data. Since then I have replaced the original antennas on two of my best radios with Diamond 771 antennas. I consistently get good signal reports from other hams on both 2 meters and 70 cm when using these antennas. As an aside, I don’t know what the number 771 indicates.

There are 12 year olds with an Extra Class license. You would be in good company.

My GMRS and amateur radios are 99.99% used for listening to NOAA and local emergency services. I'm not a very social person

Exactly. The nature of its use defines its type. A flat head screwdriver is a craftsmans tool when it turns screws, and a burglary tool when used to steal a car.

I must be missing something. Where is that in the rules? I ask because how we use the radio defines what the radio is. For example, by definition a base station is a station at a fixed location that communicates directly with mobile stations and other base stations. However, the exact same radio can be a control station, as defined by use of a station at a fixed location that communicates with mobile stations and other control stations through repeater stations, and may also be used to control the operation of repeater stations.

Mine is as an alternative to cellular in the event that it goes down. I am part of an informal repeater group that meets monthly at varying restaurants for mutual help with radio stuff and for fellowship. I have ham too but was becoming disenchanted with some of the personalities and attitudes found there.

Being very new to GMRS, I can say my intended purpose is for use while traveling in groups camping. Having said that, I've set up a base station in my "radio shed" for the purpose of learning how to use the radio with repeater networks in my region. In the process of doing so, I've discovered numerous users that use the repeater network for social radio conversations. I don't personally know any of those that transmit regularly, but within a few weeks I recognize several dozen call signs and names that are on weekly or even several times daily. I'm beginning to feel at least in the Midwest, the GMRS network may end up working for me like CB radio did back in the 70s with developing social friendships that will likely include occasional meetups. Never expected that to be the case, but I'm kind of glad.

By rule, it is virtually impossible for a base station to use (transmit to) a repeater, there is no-way it can happen.