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One caution about hiring “handymen”, be sure they are licensed, bonded, and insured so that in the event of an accident they or their estate don’t sue you.

Antennas are funny things. I completely agree with @tweiss3 that what you're suggesting with running a ground wire wouldn't be the same as a ground plane. He's absolutely correct. But I'm not 100% certain that your bike rack wouldn't satisfy the need for a ground plane. There are many ways to satisfy the need, with a counterpoise, radials, or a sheet of RF conductive material. I would at least try it if you already have the parts. If you don't have the parts already then I would go with what's tried and true, which is what he suggested. But understand that I am a ham and I like trying different things with antennas even if they waste many hours.

Thus is my Larsen Glass'Mount antenna. The antenna performs better than I thought it would.

If you leave the tone out of the receiver side you’ll hear everything transmitted on 462.675, regardless of the tone they use to transmit. For that reason I recommend leaving it out for new users. The downside (if it is one) is that you hear everything on the channel. That’s useful though if you’re just learning. If the station you are transmitting to has programmed its receiver to require a tone you must transmit using the same tone.

Because I often have new model radios I would like to be able to send them to CHIRP developers so they can get them on the compatibility list - but I am not able to find how to get radios to them. If anybody knows how, or can read the CHIRP website better than I can, please share.

And at times money. Oh well, its a hobby.

No, RF ground and voltage ground are two different things. You can still use the mount, but use a 1/2 wave antenna, it will be about 12" in length. I am currently using this antenna on my car https://www.arcantenna.com/products/bmwu4002s

Some of the reasons I'm considering that CB you mentioned with the jumper for 10M. Edit: Whew! 667 posts. Nice to get off of that "666."

Just got one, in hi vis yellow-green. Cool little radio, does what I need it to. Easy program. I switched it to NORMAL mode, all open. It retained the GMRS program it shipped with, and I just added my HAM channels on the end, and locked out the FRS channels from scan. I am surprised how well it receives just riding around in the truck, much better than my UV5R I have had for a few years. For the money and performance, I can get behind these radios. Seems like a good unit.

This is an old photo, as I now have the 1/2 wave UHF 19" to the passenger side from this antenna, but I have my VHF antenna (Larsen NMO2/70SH) about 12" in front of the aluminum roof rack cross brace. I haven't noticed any issues since it's been there for 4 years. This is a great alternative. I've even seen a 56" x 36" rectangular plate, closer to the roof level, that could hold 2 antennas and a light. As long as it's 18-19" in all directions for VHF and 6-8" for UHF, it should be a sufficient ground plane. Antennas noted as no ground plane will work without one (such as 1/2 wave), but with a ground plane the work better. My UHF 1/2 wave is noted as omnidirectional without a ground plane but with a ground plane it adds 4db gain.

I was around back in the days when 462.675 was designated for emergency use only and for point-to-point communications for REACTS. My GMRS license back in that day stated that 462.675 MHz was for emergency use only. Orange County REACT was one of the licensees that had authorization to use a repeater on 462.675 MHz in the 70s and they had a repeater on Santiago Peak for all the REACT monitors to relay information. This repeater is still in existence today and still owned by Crest Communications and used by their Club members. In later years, the FCC deregulated the use of 462.675 MHz as an emergency only and the North Shore Emergency Association was instrumental in getting the acceptance of the 462.675 MHz GMRS as a highway calling channel with the 141.3 Hz as the national travel tone. Here is some info from the North Shore Emergency Association on the history of the National Travel Channel: This briefly discusses how the "travel tone" of 141.3 Hz and the national calling/emergency frequency of 462.675 MHz came to be. NSEA was one of the very first adopters of GMRS in the early 1970s, then the Class "A" Citizens Band. Here's a quick snippet from the link: NSEA members were instrumental in bringing UHF technology to other public service groups in CB, especially R.E.A.C.T. (Radio Emergency Associated Citizens Teams). Beginning in 1976 key NSEA members spent extensive time meeting with REACT teams in more than a dozen-and-a-half different states, bringing a portable repeater, together with a number of mobile and portable units for field demonstrations...As a result, over 200 personal use repeater systems (all on the same frequency [462.675 MHz]) were set up throughout the United States. In recognition of this trend of explosive growth the Federal Communications Commission formally recognized our frequency [462.675 MHz] as the national emergency and traveler's assistance channel in the Part 95A Rules and Regulations. Below is some info from Wikipedia on the National calling and highway channel; GMRS: 462.675 MHz is a UHF mobile distress and road information calling frequency allocated to the General Mobile Radio Service and used throughout Alaska and Canada for emergency communications; sometimes referred to as "Orange Dot" by some transceiver manufacturers who associated a frequency with a color-code for ease of channel coordination, until the creation of the Family Radio Service, in 1996, "GMRS 675" or Channel 6/20 on mobile radios today. It can have a repeater input frequency of 467.675 MHz, and a tone squelch of 141.3 Hz. The national calling channel is still recognized by some GMRS users and Clubs that are still alive and well but the channel may not be widely recognized by the newer GMRS users today.

The wife and I recently agreed that I'm at the age where it would be wise to pay someone else to fall off the roof, hence the search for an installer. After about ten minutes of research I think I'm looking for someone who is R-56 certified. Is that right? If so, how do I find them? We're talking a very simple installation atop a single story residence in a wooded, residential setting. Two chimneys and a DirecTV mast await. There is a budget, but I only want to do this once and do it right. It's a central Florida location. Thoughts? TIA.

I've used them before. I used them on two different C4 Corvettes. The ones I used before where the Antenna Specialist/Antenex Cellular Look-a-Likes. They were also great antennae and had the trimming adjustment Pot. I never had any difficulty in communicating with them at least I couldn't tell and was never disappointed in their performance.

The folks who say they don't work are the folks who have probably never tried them.

You mean mount them like this? This was a temp. install that I used on my 23 Wrangler 2Dr "IZARUBICON" while I was waiting for my Larsen Glas-Mount to be delivered.

I’ll be using a Signal stick Signal stalk 20inch 1/4 wave on 2m, 3/4 wave on 70cm. Thanks for your help Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fixed it for you.

Send an email suggesting the desire to donate a radio: chirp-vendors@danplanet.com And reference the manufacturer and model number in the reference line

Memorial Park repeater probably your best bet. Conroe gets sketchy around the Woodlands area FM242, and is gone by FM1960 and IH45. Magnolia is small foot print for just a neighborhood off Toll249, you cant even get it on Toll249 because of all the 80ft tall pines, I think its only 40ft tall. They are all linked however so you find one you can hear and you can hear them all. You do however need a Texas GMRS Network login which is free to access them. They are separate from myGMRS for some reason.

Hey, we're hear to serve. Others are not obligated to respond to your transmission, so the only thing you may get back is that hissing sound -- especially if you are the only one on the channel. Next time try something like, "WSAW335, radio check please." If anyone is listening there is a good chance they will respond. BTW, pushing PTT without saying anything is called "kerchunking"* and is considered bad form. Don't worry, it's happened to the best of us. * https://www.amateurradio.com/proper-kerchunking/

When the topic first came back up, I did some video watching on the YouTube and I found there are some interesting options. There are a handful of guys modding radios to do CB (10 & 11m) and doing a “peak & tune” with other options to make it perform better. The Stryker SR25 was the one I was considering, due to its very small footprint. After talking with (LesComm) “Lester’s Customs” he suggested the Anytone Apollo 2 with enhancements and MOSFET 5 & 6 finals. That would give you better power and stronger signal. Not cheap, but if I were to go down that road I’d want the power to get the job done. I was looking at that radio with a Larsen NMO antenna on a hood lip mount.

Two weeks ago I discovered that my RTS software corrupts memory when using the features that RTS built into the software. I was editing a DMR codeplug and I used the built-in editing functions to edit the order of channels. To its credit, when the corruption cause the editor to throw an error it offered to send in the stack dump. The next day I received an email that basically said they could see what I did that caused the error: I used the functionality in the editor. I truly appreciate the responsiveness of their customer support. I like their editors (I have six of them) when they work, but I lost a lot of confidence in using their editors for DMR.

^ Better said.

You need to transmit to the repeater on 467.675. Setting your radio to 462.675 allows you to receive from the repeater. All repeaters have an input frequency and an output frequency. Also, it looks like 146.2 is the tone you want.

So I bought this mount for the rack but could I just add a ground wire from the mount run it along the rail and ground it to the car somewhere

You are now the neighbor of the beast...

I was at my typical Thursday night radio coffee group get together last night. One of the guys had a good setup for a ground plane for a mobile antenna mounted on the rack behind the truck cab. I took a couple of photos to share on the group here. Might give a few people some ideas to try out.

Couple of options, local handy man, a electrician, or lookup one of the local radio shops that service the public safety guys, they can point you in the right direction to an antenna installer/tower climber. The handyman will be the most economical of the the lot.

This Motorola mic is a little over 30 years old and still in new like condition and I can still use it on my HT1000, MT2000/MTS2000, and my XTS series radios. It has had a lot of use over the years.

Since, I don't have a need or can I use a radio on 700/800 MHz, and I am not a HAM dude and never will be, and I don't intend to use MURS for anything, I don't think I would ever have a need for a multi-band APX radio. I thought about getting a single band APX radio for UHF just so I can learn about that series a little more but, I just haven't done that yet, maybe on a rainy day when I am bored and want to spend some money for the hell of it. Since, I've had my GMRS license(s) since the early 90s, I guess I am one of those GMRS old dogs and UHF suits me fine.

A lot of people on limited budgets or just dipping their toes into amateur radio and/or GMRS will use a hand held radio connected to a magnet mounted antenna in their vehicles. While a 5 or 8 watt hand held won't reach out as far as a 20 - 50 watt mobile, radio, it still works well with an external antenna. I ran a magnet mount antenna with my Baofeng GT-5R hooked to an external antenna in my car for a while and had no issues getting into the local repeaters. That allowed me to save up for and research what mobile radio I wanted.

Oops, I guess this is a Base Station antenna. I would look into a Laird FG4605 5 dB Omni antenna. No trimming required. If you use quality LMR400 cable and connectors, not that KMR400 crap from Amazon, and keep it around 30 something feet, you'll probably will see low 1 points on the VSWRs, if you only want to do it once and have it last for a long time.

That is the easiest and fasted way to correct the issue. It would not cost much at all in the cost of redesign or materials to do that.

It might not stick magnetically, but it certainly will capacitively couple. All that’s required for a capacitor is two conductors separated by a dielectric material and aluminum is a very good conductor. Stick-on steel disks are available to attach magnetic mount antenna mounts to aluminum bodies.

For my repeater antenna/mast install I called a local handyman that i have used in the past. He dont know nuthin bout no coax's so I had to know/explain everything to him, which, really wasnt much.. "dont kink it.. dont put any nails or staples through it".

I have bought new Motorola radios and accessories for several decades. I still have those radios and accessories, except for the batteries and the molded earpieces for my earwire kits, that are well over 30 years old and still in good working condition. My latest radios and the associated accessories are the XTL and XTS series. I haven't dived into the APX series yet and the main reason for not diving into the APX portables has to do with the APX series portable accessories are not compatible with my JEDI and Astro Digital Series radios. I am heavily invested in the JEDI and Astro Digital Series audio accessories which are compatible with each other. Also, I do have an investment in both my VISAR and Astro Saber series accessories unfortunately, they are not compatible with anything. I'm not sure if I will go the APX portable series route in the future. I maybe consider the APX mobiles since, I am somewhat there now with the later XTL 2500 and 5000 version mobiles. Since, I have 9 XTL and 1 MCS2000 series mobiles and at least 35 various Motorola model portables, I just don't have a need at the moment to jump into the APX series. And that doesn't include some Midland and one other brand stuff.

Thank you for the insight!

See if you can connect with a local ham club or other gmrs users via Facebook or club websites. With out hands on, trouble shooting is difficult. In the mean time, please try saving channel changes via VFO, settin sql to 1 and trying to hit the repeaters from different locations and heights. Do you receive any repeaters better when you hold the monitor button? It is possible some are down due to weather, maintenance etc. or have changed input tones. I usually leave the RX tone off when I program my ht.

Yah.. Sorry.. I'm just learning all this socially ree-tarhd-ed stuff.

Maybe you don’t, but it does seem to be a popular topic on this forum.

A lot of people have used cookie sheets under a mag mount mobile antenna for their base stations with good results. I did just that until I could get an actual base antenna installed.

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.

The fact that the OP, and a thousand others have to ask this question, prove that this is incorrect. It might be written down somewhere, but the fact that nobody knows and even less people abide by it shows that, in the real-world, this is incorrect. as @Sshannon said, there is no [widely-recognized] call channel IN USE - to refer to some outdated and UNUSED reference is disingenuous at best.

Channel 20, 462.675 MHz, has been designated as a Travel Channel with 141.3 Hz encoding only, as the Travel Tone, with CSQ on receive, for the last couple of decades.

Yes, you can do that, and nobody would care... But dont forget that the HAM version does not have "channels", so you would have to program them all as you mentioned, and also manually set & configure your repeater channels.. Not a big deal if you know/understand how to do that, but based on your question I am guessing that you may not know how. Also, as I'm sure you know, there is virtually 0 difference in farz between 8 watts and 10 watts - the only difference you will see is the battery draining faster.

I drove to the general location of the repeater and there was no acknowledgement from the repeater - I believe its called a Kerchunk? So unless the PL tones have changed it's offline at the moment/permanently. I took your advice and have requested access through this site and I'll see what happens. Thank you for not ignoring the questions of a newbie. I'm grateful.

Hi Marcus, Before I get into more details, since you did not mention which radio you have, the first thing to realize is that not all radios support GMRS repeater use or might do so only after performing extra steps. Your owner's manual will help you determine that. If you don't have a paper copy of the manual, try looking for it online on the web site you bought the radio from or the manufacturer's web site. You can also try online manual archives such as manualslib.com. If you've determined your radio can support GMRS operation, continue reading... In case it might help, here is some fundamental information about repeaters. Repeaters use two frequencies. The frequency that the repeater transmits on is the output frequency. Since that is the repeater's output freq, that is also the freq you'll monitor to hear what comes out of the repeater. A repeater also uses an input frequency. This is the frequency that the repeater monitors to hear your transmissions and rebroadcasts them basically simultaneously on the output freq. This is known as duplex operation and is fundamental to how duplex repeaters work. When you see a repeater frequency listed in mygmrs, that is the output frequency that the repeater transmits on and that you monitor. But what about the input frequency you need to use to transmit to the repeater? That is accomplished via an offset. Normally for amateur radio, a + or - 5 MHz offset is used for UHF operation. GMRS is also UHF, but it uses only a +5 MHz offset for repeater use. The +5 MHz offset means that for whatever output GMRS frequency is being used, the input frequency is 5 MHz higher. In your original posting, you mentioned 462.650 MHz. You can tell this is a GMRS output frequency because it is in the 462 MHz range. (Note that there are also 462.xxx simplex, non-repeater frequencies in FRS and GMRS. The 462.xxx freqs only represent a repeater output when we are discussing GMRS repeaters.) So, for a repeater output freq of 462.650, the input freq you'll need to access that particular repeater is 467.650 (notice the 467 instead of the 462) because we are offsetting by +5 MHz. So how is the +5 MHz offset accomplished? It depends on your radio. There may be dedicated memories which take care of the offset. Otherwise, you may need to take additional programming steps. If so, consult the manual. For my Wouxun KG-905G handheld radio, which has preprogrammed repeater memories, such memories show a "+" sign in the display to represent the +5 MHz offset. If your radio is capable of GMRS repeater operation and it is preprogrammed with the eight possible GMRS channels in memory, select the appropriate memory for use with the repeater you are trying to access. It's possible that your radio might display a repeater's freq info with a alphanumeric label such as "RPT-19." If you're not sure which GMRS output frequency that represents, consult your owner's manual. There is also a possibility that your radio has a menu selectable option that can display a memory's content as a frequency instead of the alphanumeric tag. Let's say you've determined that your radio is 1) GMRS capable, 2) has a memory assigned for the particular GMRS repeater you are interested in, and 3) you have selected that particular memory. What's next? Access tones, aka PL tones. Repeaters typically require analog (CTCSS) or digital (DCS) access tones. This is done for two reasons. First, since there are only eight GMRS pairs (input and output freq combinations), that means several repeaters you might be able to access locally may use the same repeater freq pairs. In that case, so that you access the repeater you're interested in, you may need to transmit the appropriate transmit tone to "open" that particular repeater. As such, if a repeater requires you to send a particular transmit access tone, that is the most important tone. But if a repeater database such as mygmrs also lists a receive tone, what about that tone? That tone only influences what you hear or if you hear anything at all. So what will you hear, if anything? Let's take the case of a repeater that does support your use of a receive tone because it transmits an embedded CTCSS tone of say 156.7 (for example). There are three possibilities: 1) if you set your receive tone to none, you will receive/hear the transmission from the repeater in all cases. By setting your radio's receive tone to none, you are instructing your radios receiver to send the message to the radio's speaker regardless of whether or not the received transmission has a tone embedded in it from the repeater. 2) if you set your radio's receive tone to say 156.7, you will hear a repeater's transmission only if the same 156.7 tone is embedded in the transmission from the repeater. By setting a receive tone, you are instructing the radio to send a message to its speaker only for transmissions that are received which have an embedded tone that matches the receive tone you specified. 3) if you set your radio's receive tone to say 156.7, if a repeater's transmission has a different embedded tone or no tone, you will not hear the transmission on your radio. As you can, in the case of GMRS repeater operation, your use of a transmit tone only matters when a repeater requires you to open it via a transmit tone so you can transmit to it. If you use a receive tone, that has nothing to do with opening a repeater to transmit to it. Your use of a receive tone determines only if you'll hear a message or not. So even if a repeater requires an access tone to open it for your transmission and you use the correct transmit access tone, if you utilize an incorrect receive tone, you will not hear any transmission from the repeater. Another thing to be aware of is that some repeater's require split tones. That is, different tones for transmit and receive. This can be either two different CTCSS tones, two different DCS tones, or a CTCSS tone and a DCS tone. If you're having trouble talking to and hearing from a repeater, split tone operation and whether your radio is capable of that might be the explanation. Earlier I mentioned there are two reasons repeaters typically use access tones. The first reason discussed earlier above was due to necessity. Since there are only eight repeater pair channels, access tones provide a way to distinguish between repeaters which share these eight channels. A second benefit of using access tones, especially transmit tones, is to try to lock out trolls/jammers. Of course, since they might discover the access tones, repeater owners occasionally change which transmit tone you'll need to access the repeater again. As such, if you were able to open a repeater previously but now can't, this is the first explanation to consider. If so, you'll need to find out what the new access tone is and update your radio. Do not share such info publicly in forums - otherwise you will let the trolls/jammers know about the new tone. Another thing to be aware of is how various radios are programmed differently. The most flexible radios allow for total programming via their keypads as well as via PC software and programming cables. The least flexible radios require most if not all of their programming to be done using PC software and a programming cable. Other radios fall somewhere in the middle. For example, to program frequencies in free memory slots in my KG-905G, I must program those freqs via a PC/cable. But once those freqs have been programmed in the memories, I can change the characteristics (e.g. high/low power, receive tone, transmit tone) of the freqs via the radio's keypad. I cannot stress enough how nice/important it is to be able to change such parameters in the field untethered to a PC and cable. Though it's not in the scope of my answer to the original question to go into purchase decisions, for anyone considering buying GMRS radios, do your homework regarding must-have/desirable features. Otherwise, in an attempt to "save money," you might find yourself buying multiple radios instead of the right one from the get go. Especially if all this is new to you, I know I've provided a lot of info. If needed, it might help to digest it in bite size pieces, a paragraph at a time. Hope that helps. Happy radioing.

NSEA's primary repeater is located in Parkridge, IL on top of the Lutheran General Hospital, and was the very first GMRS repeater in the nation. It's been around a very long time...

Thanks for the information - I'll check it out.

Good afternoon all - new to GMRS and the group. Lake County, IL here WRKQ862