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While I don't know that I fully agree, I think the bigger issue is people with unmonitored repeaters. Guys will put up a repeater as a right of passage in both communities. They get a couple radios and lash them together with some sort of repeater controller and a duplexer and hang an antenna on their house. Then they find out about linking and add a node controller. At some point they find a decent location for it and pop the antenna up a 100 feet or so and then forget about it. They don't monitor it, or bother with it at all. Or they start linking it to every other repeater they can find will allow it. This can be good or bad. A group of linked repeaters just becomes a larger community. And therefore gives access to more people overall. This can be a good thing. The repeater community, if they behave and use proper etiquette on the repeater system, all goes good. But with the added community, you add folks that can destroy that community. And your odds of finding that person or persons increase with every repeater you add to the group. Then if you don't monitor the traffic on the repeater you are allowing it to go south. Just my personal opinion.

The lip mount (at least the ones with attachment screws) are grounded and would not require a 'no ground plane' type of antenna. Mounting an antenna on a car or truck is going to have the pattern effected by where it's mounted to some degree. The 'ground plane' of the antenna (car body) helps to bring in an or direct the signal out of an antenna. So if you have an antenna on the right side of a vehicle, the pattern will skew to the left to some degree. If it's not mounted at the highest point on the vehicle, some parts of the vehicle that are higher than the antenna will block some part of the signal to and from the antenna. But, eliminating all those things required a hole in your car for an antenna mount. And some folks can't bring themselves to drill that hole. Some are driving lease vehicles that they can't drill the hole. Others are limited by the fact they trade their car's in every 70,000 miles and feel that it brings down the value of the car. Then there is the 'wife' variable. The "You're not gonna put that shit on our car" which typically applies to ANY antenna on a vehicle (I know all about this one). But if you are running around in a vehicle that you are gonna keep until it's reached the 'beater with a heater' status and not traded in with the idea that if you keep it the value will go down, or any of that, I would say just drill that hole. Now what a 'no ground plane' antenna is good for is situations or vehicles that don't have a good ground plane to begin with. Vehicles with fiberglass roof's and panels that are not going to generate a good ground plane. Boats are another application for this type of antenna. But you need to understand that a no ground plane antenna has a significant limitation, that being gain. That type of antenna is designed to create a ground plane. This is done by the antenna being a dipole design. Meaning there is a bottom element and a top element. And that is where you loos the ability to have significant gain. Dipole antenna designs where one element is sort of positive and the other element is negative (the actual voltages change due to it being an AC voltage) stacking elements for the sake of more gain is not possible in a mobile antenna. Any 'gain' listed in the antenna spec will be dBi and not dBd. The dBi gain number is based on an isotropic radiator which is a 'paper' antenna that doesn't really exist. And dBd is gain over a dipole. Of course a dipole antenna can't have gain over that type of antenna. And ALL dipoles will exhibit some gain over an isotropic radiator due to the pattern difference in the antenna designs. I realize that is getting sort of technical. But it's something that you can google and research for a better understanding of what I am referring to, and you might even learn something about antenna's.

Yeah, I call that 'short keying' but it's the same thing. I don't think people realize that radio repeaters are a community. It's like having a meeting room that people randomly go into just to say hello, or see what the topic of the day is. When someone steps in the room and just begins chatting about the topic, or another topic (worse) and doesn't let others in the conversation, the people will leave the room and go on about their day. When that person or persons that seems to force themselves into the conversation and then derail it, people will refrain from even going into the room. You bring up 2 meter ham repeaters. And this area had someone show up on that repeater and would derail any conversation being had, bring it to something he wanted to know and would camp out on the repeater all day trying to discuss that topic. Of course this was the busiest repeater in the area with the best coverage footprint. The problem was the kid (under 15 kid) was on the spectrum. Now I am not trying to attack folks that are mentally challenged, but this kid had ZERO sense of what was polite, standard communication ability or a proper method of having a discussion. Adding to that, he would come up with the wildest crap to ask for help on. He sat one day asking everyone that got on the repeater why his home brew foot switch he made from a couple pieces of wood, a door hinge and a spring was constantly keying up his radio. Mind you he had one wire connected to one half of the metal hinge and the other wire connected to the other half of the METAL hinge. Of course this creates a short, the two hinge plates and electrically connected, and he was told that by EVERYONE that he ask. That was like 10 or 15 people. But he just kept asking the same question, thinking the answer might change or something. So everyone left the repeater and went to the UHF repeater since he didn't have a UHF radio. The 2 meter repeater went silent. The repeater owner went to the kids house to talk with his parents. They were understanding, we thought, so they decided to get him a different radio, that was DUAL BAND. And that was the end of ham repeaters in my area. He finally got bored or something and stopped talking on the radio. But the damage was done. Turns out he would talk on the radio for hours. His parents weren't really monitoring his conversations, and had no idea what was going on. They just knew he wasn't hounding them, so they weren't about to be involved. Point is that one person can ruin a repeater for everyone.

Radios such as professional series Motorola and Kenwood are programmed only by proprietary software would meet your requirement. These radios do not have any FPP capabilities.

With only 8 pairs, it can get crowded in some areas. It sounds like you are on the right track with the steps you have taken. Nothing is fool proof, but if you are really concerned, along with the monitoring you are doing, I would recommend publishing your repeater info. This way, if you end up causing interference with a previously existing repeater, the legacy repeater owner will have some way of contacting you. For what its worth, there are several repeaters around me on the same frequencies and overlapping coverage. The repeater owners have talked amongst themselves and agreed to leave every machine up, have their regular users operate with a custom tone, and all run 141.3 for travelers and emergencies. It has been working out very well for several years, with very limited interference. Just about everyone has been pretty happy with the coverage and availability.

The Bridgecom repeater is manufactured by Maxon, using two of their 50W UHF radios. www.maxonamerica.com

Honestly both. But I am of the opinion that was part of the reason the ham repeaters went quiet. Not being able to have a 3 or more person conversation becomes frustrating because of repeater hogs that can't seem to wait their turn, or will come in and derail a conversation. When that happens others will sign out and turn their radio off. The problem comes when it's consistent and the person who gets frustrated with that just doesn't turn their radio on it the morning. They become another silent license holder that doesn't bother.

The CTCSS and DCS only serve the purpose of "breaking things open". Both the repeaters and your radio. Once they have, traffic flows. Nothing is wrong with anything, aside from the poor coordination of the parties running those repeaters. We have a couple of repeaters doing that to eachother in my area as well. I think that the root of the problem is that when the FCC laid out the band plan for GMRS with the 8 repeater pairs, they didn't expect people to go "full ham radio club" and put things on towers that get out forever. So in some regions it's getting to be problematic.

Hello all, probably got a stupid question for y'all to make fun of. I am slightly new still to GMRS. I got my Callsign about 3 months ago now. I have a simple 20' flagpole antenna and get good (~15 miles) simplex range for my needs. I'm trying to figure out how to avoid causing any interference when choosing what channel to set on my new repeater. There's a lot of repeaters within my range and my thoughts were on RP22 or 462.725 . I have not received anything on this channel and on the map the closest repeater to me that's on the same channel is about 50 miles away. I have tried keying up using the ctcss tones and get nothing, which leads me to believe it is out of range. I want to avoid disruption as much as possible out of respect for other GMRS operators. What's a fool proof method of avoiding interference? Obviously I will use "privacy" tones but is there more I can do to keep the air waves clear. I am almost ready to turn on my repeater system, but just wanted to ask this before I do.

Yeah, it's showing correctly there

Appreciate it. It's obviously not a massive issue. It's just an odd thing I noticed, and wasn't sure if it was just me.

They are two related accounts. I have reported your issue to Rich. He can help.

I have 4 of them. They are very good radios, very clean send and recieve,. Unfortunately they don't put out a full 40 watts. I took 2 of them and used them as a repeater thru a duplexer and they worked well. I had to use an id box with them. They had a slight delay over my vertex vxr-7000.

Oh, I'm learnin' all right.

This place is a gold mine.

Try it. Have a friend give you reception reports. I think you’ll discover that being on the roof will work about the same as being on the roof rack.

Thanks, Amaff!! I’ll try that.

Looks to be Menu 6 on the radio:

I think you're looking at Channel Spacing (which is, for whatever reason, bandwidth). 12.5 is narrow, 25K is wide. Step size I think can go down to 2.5K.

Simple way is to leave a radio on the input frequency that you have chosen then let it run for 12hours. Same on the output. If nothing heard. Of course with low to no squelch and no tones. Then you should be good to go, assured that you probably aren't interfering, but it is hard to say with so many private repeaters. Just remeber enabling tones just has it so the repeater won't open unless the the tone matches. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Try lowering the step size.

Just got a Baofeng GM-15 pro from a friend this morning, since we both just recently got our GMRS licenses and set the pl on one of the repeater channels while it was in channel mode.... something that it looks like isn't supposed to be able to and had my first contact from inside my local McDonalds. got very good signal reports and the receive audio is awesome. Use Motorola equipment for my ham radio and P25 and I think the receive audio is just as good on this little baofeng. It also has the Abbree AR-771 GMRS antenna along with a shorter antenna. Using the Abbree AR-771 antenna on it and think probably keep using that antenna. SO far it seems to be a great little radio.

I firmly believe Echolink is a solution in search of a problem. Same with Allstar. That's just me though.

Or you get the fast "keyer's" that don't give others a chance to talk. I have seen a few guys that barely let the repeater drop out before they start talking. And we have one person that uses our 2m repeater that jumps into others conversations and derails things all of the time. That's when some of us will switch over to our 70cm or GMRS repeaters. That one person can't get into those two repeaters.

Been using a sheet of steel like that for my base as well for over 2 years now.

I didn't pay any attention to the FCC ID when we received our BCR-40U back in November. We did not get the internal duplexer since we had better ones already. The repeater has been running for 6 months now with zero issues. A few of us definitely tested the repeater's duty cycle before opening it up to the public. Time will tell how the Bridgecom holds up over the long term. We have the repeater setup at 40 watts without the duplexer. So it is putting out 20-25 watts after the duplexer. What helps is having the antennas at 400 foot above ground.

For this reason, echolink is the devil. It's a nice occasional alternative, but some people should be barred from it.

All antennas require a ground plane. It's the other half of the antenna in a mobile enviromment. It's the counterpoise for the element. To answer your question. Yes, a no ground plane antenna will work better in the situation you describe, were there is not much metal underneath to work with as a ground plane. It works even better with an adequate ground plane. Most no ground plane antennas ended up using the coax as the counterpoise. Just can't beat the laws of physics. Doesn't matter if it is UHF or HF. But the difference might be minimal to not noticable. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

All works. I got an email from 'support' saying everything should be ok now. I don't know what they did, but it works for me. My repeater is up and running.

@WRXI489 I don't know of any GMRS clubs in area but if you post your current settings we may be able to help. Just smear out the actual tones if they aren't posted publicly.

It's better to let those who know you defend/brag for you. That way you don't look egotistical. I should really follow his example... but sometimes I can't control myself. LoL

Yeah, a "Let's Bash Randy" thread isn't a good idea on a GMRS forum.

Don't know that abbreviation or acronym, please elucidate!

Based on all your multiple previous comments about how EVERY person you know dumps EVERY radio (Midland, Retevis, TidRadio, Wouxun) unless that radio happens to be the same brand of radios that you use, it is becoming clear that you don't actually know anyone. ... Or, you are just F.O.S. But either way, your mythomaniac comments are great for pointing at and laughing so keep up the good work!

I started getting junk mail from ARRL...

I do a lot of offroading and "sideroading" lol. New Hampshire has this weird thing called a "Class VI Road" which is a public highway that is unmaintained, which can range from a dirt/gravel track to a full on boulder-ridden wheeling trail. Dodge Nitro, 3 inch suspension lift, 31 inch tires, full skid plate on order and a custom front bumper in the plans. I usually stick to Channel 16. Started off with a couple Rugged GMR2s, and currently browsing mobile units that I can stick on the dashboard.

HamStudy is the way to go. It’s free to use, but I would encourage people to buy the app for their phone or tablet and study using it when they’ve got some time to kill. Much cheaper than the ARRL books and it changes when the questions change and it really allows a person to follow a subject to the level of detail that appeals to them. I used HamStudy to study successfully for all three tests without owning a single ARRL book (at the time anyway; I’ve picked up some since.) I really enjoyed using HamStudy (if it’s not apparent .)

@WSCA774 I used https://hamstudy.org/ mostly. They have a phone app as well. The explanations are good but don't hesitate to use google to find out more. I want to get the ARRL books some day for reference.

I've been looking into the amateur radio, and I'm very interested in going this route but for sure I have a lot to learn before I'm able to make this possible, especially with the addition to the house. If yall have any good resources for starting I'm all ears. I've had an interest in radio for a long time but only until recently have I ever been able to make it happen.

The Jeep got the Midland MTX575 that formerly lived in the 4R. It also has the LP450NMO antenna, this time mounted in the removable cowl area on passenger side. It’s nicely low profile, but has a surprisingly good signal. It blends in well, eliminates the need for accessory mounts, and I think looks great. Here’s the exterior of the Jeep antenna.

Thank you Sshannon. I believe you're correct. I think my radio is just fine.

It doesn’t matter that one is DCS and the other is CTCSS. In either case squelch is opened up and audio from any present signal is reproduced.

In the Toyota 4Runner: * Midland MTX575 * Until today I had the Midland “Ghost” 3db antenna mounted in the rear roof, but today I swapped it for the Larsen puck style NMO, which is shorter and seems to actually perform better here in the mountains. Model LP450NMO In my son’s Jeep JK (next weekend) * Midland MTX275 * Pulse-Larsen LP450NMO - mounted to the top of the central speaker bar. It will clear both hard & soft tops and work fine. Handhelds: I picked up the KG-UV9GX, but haven’t programmed it yet. It’s wearing the Smiley Slim Duck antenna We have maybe six or seven Baofeng UV-9G radios and the gang charger. A couple wear Smiley Slim Duck antennas, the rest have Nagoya 701 or 771.

And here I was thinking programming a GMRS radio for a repeater was a PITA. I clearly underestimated how complex radios could get.

It's not really difficult, but it is needlessly complex, mostly because of leftover commercial radio characteristics: First, you have to create a list of talkgroups. Then you have to create channels. A channel consists of a channel name, Brandmeister ID (or other digital ID), timeslot, color code, frequency, bandwidth, whether transmit is inhibited, whether it's an analog or digital channel, and if it's digital you need a talkgroup assigned. That's why you have to create the list of talkgroups first. There are other fields as well including encryption etc., but you get the idea. Then you have to create at least one zone and assign channels to the zone. You may (not mandatory) also populate a database of digital IDs which links the call sign, Brandmeister ID, and contact name. This can be downloaded. The newest DMR radios have room for 500,000 contacts. My radio handles 200,000 so I can only load most of North America. On your radio you select a zone and then select a channel within that zone.

There is. I’m still helping my blind friend with his DMR radio (as well as my own) and I wish I could get the ear of the firmware programmers for these Anytone and Alinco DMR radios. There’s absolutely no reason it has to be as difficult as it is. With simple changes in firmware a person could easily just create two channels for each repeater (one per timeslot) and then just input or select the talk group. DMR radios would only be slightly more complicated than analog.

It's time for me to switch things up again. Not sure what I'm switching to yet, but I pulled my XTL5000'S out of the Jeep today. I'm thinking of going back to a MXT500 or possibly an MXT575. I love the simplicity. Also, I removed the hi-lift from the hood and removed my light bar in preparation for some new Rigid cubes that are on the way. Of course I had to flex to showoff the clean, new look. LOL

Please elaborate, and also include technical service bulletins, anecdotal historical documents, and any FCC regulations you think might be of use.

OP here....GOOD NEWS! Under the "Tone" settings the Icom 2730a has several choices. According to the Icom manual - "DTC.OFF" is defined as: When you transmit, the selected DTCS code is superimposed on your normal signal. When you receive, the function is OFF. This setting does not show in the tone settings in CHIRP (??) but is in the Icom manual. I read it but thought "I need the tone for TX and RX" so I didn't try it. This morning I used the faceplate entry to try EVERY tone setting - even this "DTC.OFF". Result was VOILA! It worked! Backed the truck out and had a nice chat through the target repeater. Still a head-scratcher, though Good to know that it will now work...in case of emergency. Maybe this will help the next poor soul! Thanks for all the input! WRYD480 WR1Y

There is an unofficial, official national road channel - its Ch19.. Although "some people" will argue to the death that there isnt one, or that Ch19 is not to their liking (don't believe me? just watch this thread)