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I shortened the antenna a couple of mm at a time until I got the SWR to settle between 1.4:1 and 1.6:1 on simplex channels, and around 2:1 on repeater channels. My last couple of cuts didn’t improve the readings beyond that so I figured that’s the best I’d get with that basic antenna. I may add an NMO ground cable and rely on the non-continuous 1 sq ft ground plane concept for this setup or try another antenna. Clear transmission confirmed on a local repeater 15 miles from my location so I’m just going to call it good with SWR readings that aren’t perfect but are at least not going to damage my radio. FYI the UHF stealth antenna from Rugged Radios that I had originally planned to use was showing SWR of 3.5 on simplex and greater than 5 on repeater freqs. So that’s basically just a paperweight at this point.

.....but. lots of us also DONT want them linked.. Believe it or not, there's lots of us out here who appreciate and find utility in a 30-50 mile radius repeater, knowing that the traffic on the repeater might actually be a real and useful person. So all of this "let's get signatures to allow linking!".. You're rallying only part of the GMRS user base. We're not all Team You on this... And, I mean as long as "linking anyway" is an acknowledgement that they're operating outside of what is allowed, there's lots of ways people who don't appreciate a linked system jamming up RPT channels can render their system unusable "by also doing things that aren't allowed", and with far less of an investment required.. Just don't do it... Go be ham radio people on 70 cems.. It's right there for ya. This thing is a utility service with wives, kids, groups doing recreation,.. Less as much for hobby radio, or radio for the sake of radio. Some people might once in a while want to erect small repeaters for temporary use and such. It's more in the spirit of what the RPT spots are for.. You all have been a much unwelcomed guest .

I have the KG-Q10H amateur quad band version. It is an excellent radio with a much better receiver than any Baofeng or other cheap radio. It even puts my Icom IC-T10 to shame. Yes the KG-Q10G will receive all of the frequencies /bands. The following is from Buy Two Way Radio's website. https://www.buytwowayradios.com/wouxun-kg-q10g.html?___SID=U 76-108 MHz (FM) RX Only 108-136 MHz (Airband, AM) RX Only 136-174 MHz (FM) RX Only 222-225 MHz (FM) RX Only 320-480 MHz (FM) RX Only 714-999 MHz (FM) RX Only Only you can decide if the extra cost is worth it to you. For me it was worth it since I got mine on sale and was the same price as the Icom IC-T10 and a much better radio. Granted you are asking about the KG-Q10G GMRS version which can not be unlocked for transmitting on other bands.

Its sad that so many on this forum are so predictable that this is necessary... Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call for "some people"....

I have one. I went through all of the menus and I didn’t see anyplace to inhibit transmit. Sorry. Thanks for trying to do the right thing.

........And The Best Part About The FCC Mobility Division Making A Clarification On GMRS Linking - Is That Several Repeater Owners Wether By Choice, Violation Threats Or Servers Shutting Down - Are No Longer Congesting GMRS Frequencies With Ridiculous & Non Essential NETS. I Have Never Seen Any Purpose In The Midwest Area, To Tie Up All 8 Repeater Frequencies, With 20 To 30 Repeaters, In 4 Or More States - Discussing How To Cook A Hot Dog Properly In The Event Of A Nuclear Attack. Glad That The Linking Issue Has Been Addressed With A Degree Of Modernization From The FCC. Some Folks Just Need To Move On & Get Over This........ My Name Is Bob Somers (WRXL702) & I Approved This Message.......

Another flat lander.

Mounted mine to a rubi-grid platform. Pretty sleek and keeps my eyes up when operating the radio.

A friend has purchased a couple of Baofeng UV5R radios for SHTF. He is not a radio person. He has entered a frequency he just wants to be able to listen to, however he can also can also TX on that frequency which would not be a good thing to do. Is there a way to save that frequency to a memory channel and then turn off TX from the radio's keypad? Let me get all of this out of the way so folks don't have to give me the standard responses: That radio is a CCP - Yes, I know. Get a different radio - Yes, I know. Use CHIRP to program it - Not going to happen. No computer. It is a piece of crap radio - Yes, I know. Use the Baofeng CPS - Not going to happen. No computer. Get a different radio - Yes, I know. Is he a licensed Amateur Operator - The regulations have been discussed with him. Baofengs suck and so do the people who buy them - OK Read the manual - I did. Can't find anything about that. It is a POS CCP, what do you expect - Yes, thank you Use the search function - I have. Both on this site and others. Now that we have all of that out of the way... I don't own one of these and I don't know anyone near me that does. This person lives over two hours from me and I can't just pop over to figure it out. The real answer may very well be "You can't get there from here", but I just don't know.

Menu 25 (SFT-D, ie: Offset) does have an "OFF" setting, but I'm pretty sure that just means no offset. I don't believe it has the same effect as setting the Duplex to Off through Chirp. Might have to play with that some tomorrow.

I do 21 miles to a repeater. It's about 1000' higher than me. We have nothing in the state higher than 2450 ft. I was playing with Radio Mobile and put a 50 watt repeater on top (Mt Frissel) with a 100' tower and because of all the other mountains in the general vicinity it had very poor performance for distance. Too many peaks that were close to the same height.

And then lick the residue off the wire.

Just string them up on an inconel wire during the fireball.

It might be your radio, but it might also be the radio transmitting on 462.700. Perhaps it’s slightly off frequency or transmitting wider than it should. I don’t know if setting your radio to narrow on 462.675 would help but I would be curious.

This ^ is actually the correct answer..

the lack of support signatures pretty much says it all.. The % supporting it is very very low..

I have 2 sets of these and they are great. My son and I can talk to each other at the range without shouting. I replaced the rubber pads with gel ones and they are much more comfortable and seals better around the ear.

I have the KG-Q10H version and unlocked for GMRS and I like it a lot. I really like the customizable display colors due to my color blindness. I also have a KG-UV9G and I like the Q10 better due to the display. I started with the cheap Baofengs and I have several different models to learn and discover what I like and don't like before I spent more on the Wouxuns. Now I keep the cheap Baofengs in each car for back up.

Well with the local repeater I have talked 50 Miles clear, no idea how much farther it will go. Tell me any 5 Watt handheld that is going to do in a city radio to radio with no repeater. Line of site I haven't tested yet as my buddy has been down sick for the last 2 weeks. If you just want to trash someones radio then just say nothing at all. As long as the person is happy with what they have that is all that matters. I bought cheap and got what I paid for cheap junk. I paid the price and it beats out the cheap by a long shot! I'm happy and that is all that matters. Have a nice day.

Yes, our beloved Queen's Jeep's license plate and his Business/Production name gave me the idea to come up with my license plate configuration.

Nevermind on this. I got a lot of it figured out. I think I was too eager to slow down and read a lot before playing with my new radios. A lot of YouTube, this forum, websites, and a couple of books. Very interesting stuff, should have gotten into this sooner. Thanks! CC

I briefly heard a very angry ham on 40 meters a few nights ago. Angry, threatening great violence, and very obscene. No ID so of course he’s not totally stupid. An equally idiotic person was baiting him by making kissing and cooing noises. He was almost funny to hear as the other guy got increasingly more angry. Perhaps they both had substance abuse issues. So, I changed frequency and heard nicer hams. Tried another frequency and heard more nice ones. I heard several nice ones and just the two acting out. They do exist, just as in every demographic; it’s up to us all to act better.

Difficult is a relative term. 1st of all the repeater I was talking about where you quoted me was an existing repeater on top of a mountain. But I do have my own and it started out in my shop with an RT97S 5watt repeater by Retevis. I bought their kit that came with some cable and an antenna. I used the antenna but not the cable. I got some LMR400 to connect things up. Antenna is up about 40ft off the ground and 140 ft above sea level. It's surrounded by trees which turned out to be a big issue. Now that the leaves are falling the signal is increasing but I've also swapped out the 5watt for a 50watt repeater. The big issue is the tree leaves. Just kills the signal. So that's where things get more involved. I'm starting to get setup to put up a 72' mast with another 10' pole and a Comet CA 712EFC antenna. That's turning into a project. I'm building a lot of the stuff. Made a mast out of Red Grandis which is a weather resistant wood and hard like hard maple. Making a hinge so it can be maintained or dropped during hurricanes of high winds. It'll have a battery winch to do that. I have the mast built in sections right now.. waiting for some metal plates to come in so I can get them water jetted and then welded. So call it a challenge, call it fun, call it what you will.

I had the same experience with a fairly expensive radio with pretty good filtering. I was only 200 - 300 feet from a local dispatch repeater. Apparently first harmonic of their UHF frequency was right in GMRS.

You can set the TX frequency to something that won't cause trouble. For non-hams, FRS ch. 1-7 are good choices on UHF and MURS is good for VHF. Either make sure offset is zero to manually enter TX freq or calculate offset to get desired TX freq. Also low power like someone already mentioned.

Yes, I am GMRS and HAM licensed. He is brand new to anything radio and just starting out thinking about emergency comms with his family. Thanks for the response.

Given your constraint of not being able to run Chirp nor the Baofeng software, no, the answer is that you cannot turn off transmitting on a given frequency from the keypad. The best you can do is set the power level to the lowest possible, so that in the event that you accidentally push the button, you're only outputting a half watt or so, which will still propagate much further than you expect when you don't want it to, and not nearly as far as you expect when you do want it to. You could zip-tie a 2L bottle cap over the PTT button. I can buy a set of scalpels on Amazon for $59, but in a SHTF situation I wouldn't be performing an emergency appendectomy without some practice and training. That's the luxury a license buys you; the ability to prepare not only in terms of equipment, but also in terms of experimentation, learning, knowledge. Update: I see that you are licensed for GMRS. I misinterpreted the remark about "Is he a licensed Amateur Operator." Apologies. I'll leave the comment here though because the sentiment remains; when people are preparing for the worst, practice in preparation is essential. That's why we have fire drills in schools and office buildings, it's why we test backup strategies in data centers, etc. Anyway, carry on. A cheap laptop would probably suffice for running Chirp; a used <$200 model even, but you would need the data cable. Unfortunately when listing a set of constraints, eventually it's possible to constrain oneself into an unsolvable problem.

I did try turning off duel watch, but it was still happening. With duel watch off I could not switch to cut out the interfering transmission. I would only hear the 700 signal until they stopped transmitting. So, I left it on duel watch and just kept switching to cut out the 700 signal when it happened. Not ideal, but it "worked".

oh.. yes. thanks... typo... should have said 20 (462.675)

Lower End $$ GMRS Transceivers Do Not Have The Front End Receiver Filtering As Do Commercial Grade Radio Receivers. Therefore, If In Close Proximity Of A 50 Watt Base Station With A High Gain Antenna - You Most Likely Can & Will Hear That Transmission Not On Your Selected Channel / Frequency. Lower End $$ Radios Work Fine When Not Close To Adjacent Channel Transmitters, But They Do Not Have The Selectivity / Sensitivity Available On A Commercial Grade Radio. This Most Likely Will Be A Common Occurrence Especially When The Frequencies Are So Close In MHz. Spacing (462.675 / 462.700.) The Only Major $$ Difference In Radio Types, Other Than Some Special Functions - Is The Receiver Front End Filtering.

No experience with the ghost type but I have the Midland MXTA26 mag mount and it helped quite a bit. And when I'm not using it on the car I have it on a cookie tin out on the balcony (2nd floor apartment) and I can pick up repeater 40 miles away.

Welcome! Gil (WSUU653) gave you some great tips.

We finally had a chance to put our Motorola Quantar repeater and Arcom RC-210 controller online yesterday. Man what a difference it made. This setup works a lot better than our older Motorola repeater using a Raspberry Pi as a controller. We still have a few bugs to work out and tweaks to make but overall I am highly impressed with the new setup. There is always a learning curve with any new setup and the hardest part was programming all of the extra features in the controller. One hint if using this setup. Make sure to shut the time out timer completely off in the Quantar if you are using a time out timer in a controller. We missed that and it did cause some issues last night until we shut the TOT off in the repeater.

It is probably just that as someone new to GMRS, Some People don't even know what questions to ask. It is true that the basics of GMRS are pretty short and simple once you understand them but some things like the blasted FCC website that is 25 years out of date, and basics of Repeaters (and even what they are and for if you don't know) can be very confusing to new people. When I bought my first GMRS radio 12 something years ago I didn't know that repeater existed. I bought one of the older GMRS bubblepack radios they used to sell that was not even repeater capable. Then I found out about repeaters and returned the radios and bought another pair that were repeater capible but were still very under-powered and basic (and didn't even have removable antennas -yeah they used to sell GMRS HTs with built in antennas like FRS radios!) Then I had to grasp how to use CTCSS codes to activate the repeaters... all this before there even was a Queen of all GMRS. now things are pretty clear and I have no real issues getting all the things to work that I want to do.. but there is a learning curve out there for new people.

I talked from Houston to Beaumont one morning on 2M. So far that has been my longest on 2M.

Yes, they are called SDR (Software Defined Radios) and interface to your computer.

I’m tempted to give you a different answer here than I did the other thread you started. Go see it please. Welcome to the forum!

I'm literally doing this right now for my whole town. So far 100 members are involved in the Facebook group for it. Monthly radio checks on a certain day and time..

Cycle through the menu choices. See Basic Use below:

thanks for your comments, i will take it into consideration

Well, you need to remember that HAM operations for EMCOMM are done for a served agency. And ARES is a 'by request only' group. Meaning if the local authorities / EMA doesn't request their services, they aren't required or wanted. Driving around after a tornado or other significant event isn't really the safest thing to be doing. Especially if you aren't fully trained for doing it. Downed lines, tree's in the road, flooding, or other issues can possibly strand or injure you and then all of a sudden you are a victim in need of emergency services for rescue. The situation is created by someone's personal need to go out into an area with damage and assess that damage. So are you trained in damage assessment? Are you part of Public safety? Have you even been to a CERT training? Who are you reporting the damage to? Have they requested damage reports? I understand the want, need and desire to be able to contact family in a time of crisis. The knowledge they are ok, and all is well can be important for your mental well being. GMRS will do you well for accomplishing that goal. If there is either LOS between your houses, or there is a repeater / repeaters that you both have access to that will bridge that gap. Remember that if you are using another owners repeater that others may well be trying to do the same thing. So keep communications brief. Establish the health and welfare of all parties. Make plans to communicate again at a specific time and clear the airways for others to use the repeater. Try to have multiple paths of communication available, and TEST those paths at least monthly.

@Crosswire3 thanks, ill reach out to you this week

I see you are in Brunswick where you could probably reach a half dozen repeaters. I run a repeater out of North Canton that covers most of NE Ohio and would be up for chatting. I have considered organizing nets to get a bit more organization going. NorthCantonGMRS@Gmail.com

There is already a GMRS repeater in Brunswick. Also look into Medina County ARES https://ohioares10.ad8g.net/medina/. It would probably be a good idea to not duplicate efforts/protocols to increase the chance of making meaningful contact. Perhaps reach out to see about including GMRS as a secondary line of communication.

I'm waiting on a delivery of a mount that will let me mount my new QT-80 next to my right leg on my center console. I will post pictures when everything gets installed.

Since I'm a gadget addict I got a NanoVNA a few days ago, for about $59 through Amazon. It came with two SMA-Male to SMA-Male cables, an SMA Female to SMC Female adapter, and three "standards" (open, short, and 50 ohm load), as well as a little stylus, and a lanyard with a guitar pick on it (presumably to use in place of the stylus). I wasn't expecting a lot, but I have to say, this thing is pretty cool, for the price. It's not professional-quality analysis gear, but for a hobbiest it's great. The first thing you should do when putting it to use is to calibrate it for the band you wish to analyze. You use the "standards" that it comes with to perform the calibration. I followed that up by putting an antenna on it, and on my RTL-SDRv4, and verifying its signal generation was accurate. It was close enough without any tweaking. Next, I used it to test some antennas. At first I just confirmed that the MXTA26 is very well tuned, out of the box, centered on 465MHz. And then I put the NA771G on it: In that graph, you can see that I have it configured to scan the range from 420MHz to 480MHz. I've set a marker at 462.2MHz just by dragging it into place with the stylus. I could have set it more precisely through the menu. The S11 LOGMAG represents return loss. The lower the dip on the graph, the better (less reflection/return means more signal is radiating, which is what an antenna is supposed to do). The blue line here indicates SWR. And as you can see for the NA771G, it is 1.055:1 at 460.2MHz. At 480MHz (I don't have a marker set there), it was about 1.27:1. The green curve is the Smith diagram. And the purplse is the |Z|, coming in at 52.2 ohms at 460.2MHz. There are many graph views, I selected four of them. But they include logmag, phase, delay, smith, swr, resistance, reactance, |Z|, polar, linear, real, imaginary, Q factor, conductivity, susceptivity, |Y|, series C, series L, Parallel R, Parallel X, Parallel C, Parallel L ... most of which I don't comprehend. One thing that I learned was how great it is to be able to look in realtime at the various curves. It made it really easy to observe changes as I added and removed the ground plane rods from my Nagoya GPK-01 (Ground plane kit) when the antennas were mounted on a camera tripod where there's no good inherent ground plane. And it was really useful to be able to observe what happens when I take a half centimeter off of an antenna. In the case of the NA771G, if one were wanting to tune it (which you can't), you might decide to subtract a fraction of a centimeter from its length, and you can see that on the chart. I used the SWR and Logmag curves to tune my Laird TE B4505CN antenna, for example, as I recognized its SWR dipped a little further to the left of the GMRS band. By trimming its base element down to about 10" (taking about 2cm off), I moved the dip to 465MHz. And knowing which direction to go was really only possible by looking at these curves and observing what they do as I move the element in and out a little with its set screws. I also tested the pass-through mode using a VHF/UHF diplexer, verifying the cutoff ranges for each of the diplexer's ports. A good feature is the ability to plug it into a computer and command the device, and observe its graphs, right on the larger screen of a computer. On my Linux laptop the NanoVNASaver application was already available for Ubuntu install through the apt and apt-get package manager tools without having to compile from source (one dot-release behind the Git repository). With the free NanoVNASaver software I can specify a scan range and set up multi-pass averaging. And the software can step through a scan range to achieve much finer resolution than the device natively supports. For example, if I use the native 101 data points the device supports to scan from 144-480MHz, that's one sample every 324kHz. Not very good resolution. But if I tell the external software to take 3240 samples, it will step through the range 100 samples at a time, and get me resolution finer than I can reasonably use on a full size monitor. Another interesting option, through the NanoVNCSaver software, I'm able to see feed line length and attenuation. I can test a 50 foot run of LMR400, and a 50 foot run of RG58, and see loss per frequency. That's really interesting information for a hobbiest. Some negatives: If you're completely in standalone mode (no computer), it's only got 100 sample points in a given scan. So if you're trying to optimize a dual-band antenna, you would want to concentrate on 2m, and then on 70cm, going back and forth one at a time, rather than trying to show both on the screen while tuning an antenna. This is where using a computer with a much higher sampling rate is important. Its screen it pretty tiny, too. Having spent the $59, I kind of am on the fence as to whether I should have spent $89 to get the larger screen. On the other hand, adding a computer to the mix, even an inexpensive low-powered laptop, the screen becomes irrelevant, and sample-points become virtually infinite. Another negative is the lack of instructions. It comes with a single page showing where to find the various menu options, but no other explanation. It took some youtube videos and online reading to figure it out. And without a microSD card you're missing out on being able to save screenshots (though you can take a screenshot through the computer's software), and limited on number of calibration configurations you can store. But most of those shortcomings can be overcome with an external computer and/or a cheap microSD card. For my purposes this device is fantastic. With the Surecom SR102, I could see the SWR of a given antenna setup. With this device, I can see which direction things need to go in tuning antenna setups. And I can verify a diplexer is working as intended.

I picked up a Rocky Talkie 5W radio. Some peculiarities: All channels are set to narrowband by default. You can however go through a process to change each (high power) channel to wideband, and the change persists across power cycles. Channel 22 had a CTCSS tone configured out of the box. Its "TX beep" is local only, meaning when the beep's enabled it doesn't transmit the beep. It is not a roger beep. When setting CTCSS/DCS tones you can only see a slot number, not the frequency itself. Set your repeater tones with manual in-hand before you head out! The scan feature only offers CO mode, continuing scanning a few seconds after carrier drops. You have to enable repeater channels with a special power-on sequence. Once enabled, they stay enabled across power cycles. What I like about it: USB-C charging. Solid feel in hand. Battery life should be great, I haven't tested it. Simple enough for any family member to use. Relatively small size. The clip actually is a set of jaws with teeth for traction, unlike most clips that are a single blade that just presses against the battery with a bottom lip. Honestly I didn't buy this to use it, but I make accessories for HTs and needed this for that purpose. I thought some of you may benefit from these observations.

I know people that conduct official back country (access by ski, snowshoe and/or helicopter) snow surveys in the Sierras. Their appeal for this brand is its alleged ability to function at very low temperatures.

Well it is "one of the most powerful handheld GMRS radios on the market" An unheard of 5 full watts! And an industry leading 1800 mAh battery. That must account for the price.