Leaderboard

couple years ago my grandson went on a week long fishing trip with us near and around Mammoth Lakes.. I always set up a portable GMRS repeater when we go camping and of course he ended up with one of my spare Baufangs.. Today he is 22 years old and now holds a General and studying for his Extra. He doesn't even mess with GMRS anymore,, He's into 80,40 & 30 meter stuff.. Occasionally he will ping into my GMRS repeater to say hi.. I'm proud to say, i gave him the bug

I'm really encouraged when I see young people showing up at Ham swaps. I would like to see more. It proves Ham radio isn't dead.

GMRS is a great way to get kids into radio. And that is one of the many reasons we installed a GMRS repeater. It is a good way to get new people into radio, and they might end up also getting their amateur radio licenses in the process. I doubt that a 9 year old would be bothered about talking on a repeater as long as he gets to talk to grampa. We have a 7 year old that gets on our GMRS repeater to talk to his papa and grammy all of the time. He also enjoys talking to others on the repeater. And the rest of us always smile when he gets on the air. Go ahead and try hand held radios. You both might get into a repeater just fine and even be able to talk to each other on simples. Or you can always setup mobile antennas (on cookie sheets) or base antennas and still be fine with HT's The 7 year old uses an HT with a home made j pole antenna inside his house that his papa built. They live both live about 7.5 miles away from the repeater. He gets into the repeater just fine with the j pole inside.

Hello Matt, you probably know that GMRS is line of sight so you likely will know better than anyone what that looks like between your place and your grandsons. This tool may help you see what that looks like. Power will help but more important is antenna height. I say give it a try. It looks like you have a couple repeaters near you listed as open so that’s pretty great. Good luck and 73s.

Standard UHF rules apply. Get it the antenna up high. 5 miles or so can be rough with HT due to terrain and obstructions. Base stations probably would be able to do it no problem with 20w. Fortunately these radios are under $100 usually. Unfortunately, the antenna and power supplies add to the cost. Plus your 9 year might be ptt shy on a repeater. Yes, most of the community is great but there are still a-holes out there. Gmrs was meant for exactly what you are trying to do. I would suggest looking at cheap ip ht radios as well. The conversation will be local to your group over an internet connection. Yes, it's not true rf to rf. But hey you are trying to fan a spark. I would also suggest looking at getting him on a Santa net. Dstar has one, requires a Dstar radio. If you are a general with a decent setup the wheelers have one on 80. You know where another ham relays to Santa, so the kids can talk to Santa at the North Pole [emoji6] Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

I am a Ham (AA5MP) and want to get my grandkids involved in radio. He is 9 and lives 5.2 miles away in Austin. I was hoping GMRS could be a fun way to start. I bought two Btech 5 watt units. I was hoping we could reach a repeater? I did not want to get two high watt base stations if he has no interest so it is sort of a chicken and egg. Any thoughts? I am not optimistic without the repeater it will work There are a few nearby and I have asked for permission If you can suggest other options ( do a I need 2 15 watt units with antenna outside his bedroom window?) thanks Matt P WSGE281

I actually have all three and the Alinco is the one that's in my shack ... the others are in their boxes. I really like it. It only has three reviews on e-ham (two 4 and one 5) so I think that's pretty good. As far as HTs go, Kenwood has a history of putting out tri-banders that do full power on 220 (TH-F6A, TH-D74A, TH-D75A) so I"m hopeful that the mobile will do that too. Pretty sure the TYT TH-350 does 5w on all three bands too. I had one and it's a decent radio, IMHO a notch above some of the other CCRs. The Yaesu VX-6R *does* fit into the "lower power on 220" category though, and that's kept me from buying one. So far.

This is true.. if they were smart/weren't losers, they would not be jamming...

Good luck!

I have an older mono 50 watt Alinco I bought used just because new 1.25's with decent power are hard to come by. Don't skip it just because you can't buy new

The problem with most 50 watt tri-band radios is that they will only do 5 watts max on 1.25m. And HT's will be more like 1 watt or 2 watts on 1.25m. That's why I will not buy a tri-band radio. And right now the only two mono band 50 watt 1.25m mobile radios available is the Alinco DR-CS25T or the TYT TH-9000. And there is the 30 watt Bridgecom BCM-220. But none of those three radios get the best reviews, especially on e-ham. It's a darn if you do and darn if you don't thing with 1.25m mono band radios. The big 3 manufacturers don't make them because there is not much of a demand. And no one wants to use 1.25m in most areas because no one makes a good 1.25m mobile. I would use a tri band if we could get at least 20 watts on 1.25m or even a mono band radio if a good quality one was available new.

Uncalled for!!!

Take one of the HT's there and test it. You NEVER know without trying. His location might be golden.

Perfect! That's what the service is intended for. Most expect to find contacts when they need them, rather than cultivate beforehand.

If it doesn't have 15w or more on 1.25m, it's just another meh

Removing Chevron deference limits the ability for regulatory agencies to reinterpret laws, but does not remove the ability for regulatory agencies to write regulations. Regulations have never been "Law", they have always been simply rules. Where "Chevron deference" caused problems when regulatory agencies chose to change the scope of laws by claiming broad powers to re-interpret what Congress meant when they wrote laws.

Fun! If you go with HTs, you'll likely need to coach him on how to orient the radio/antenna for maximum range. Perhaps even get a better antenna than stock and maybe need external antennas with some elevation unless using a repeater. I suggest you use this quandary to teach them the various considerations and why you chose whatever you try. That will be a fun learning experience!

Nobody is going to drive over and do it for you - you will have to invest at least a little effort. We assume you've read the user-manual and tried but you're stuck/its not working, so give us more info about what part you are getting stuck with and i'm sure we can help. AND, you should probably create a new forum post instead of dragging this one even further into the weeds.

You only date GMRS girls?

Larsen is the best commercial antenna now. Since ASP dropped the line thats our go to antenna for those applications.

So are they using an MDC control list, or a RAC (repeater access code) to open the repeater? Moto did support those on some of their repeaters. I am not so much interested in locking people out of my repeater at present, but If I could figure out an MDC switch that would turn on such a filter switching the repeater to 'private use' when needed that might be something.

I don't know those details. About a year ago when the PT-T ID was implemented, the repeater owner did change the input Tone and just recently, the input Tone was changed again. The MDC squawk does not repeat. I would think if the jammer wants to decipher a PT-T ID, he would need to be close or at a high elevation point to someone transmitting the ID. The repeater is not near a large population center but does have a large coverage area footprint.

The level of effort required to clone the ID of an authorized radio far outweighs the knowledge and stamina of the average jammer. LoL

The members with non-compatible radios had to buy a compatible radio in order to have access. The repeater owner was having a problem with a constant jammer so he took action to eliminate the problem by controlling who has access.

Dr Brothers? Well l don’t claim to be the brightest bulb in the pack but l’m guessing GMRSers. I know of 2 other operators on my street and maybe more further out. Thinking a repeater could come in handy for my fam and others when/if we lose power & cell service again in the future. I’m that guy who likes backups.

I meant physically measure the element and compare it to the length mentioned in the video.

Stopped in less than 5 minutes of his hour long video when he said power can overcome line of sight. If you want to be taken seriously you just CANNOT tell people this.

There are a few websites on this topic, but I just had a fun experience and thought I'd mention here what was involved. Background: The ISS operates an amateur repeater. The downlink for that repeater is at 437.8000 MHz. What you will hear on that repeater is mostly people trying to make DX contacts through the repeater. As an example, if I can hit the repeater 400 miles away, and someone else can respond back, from 400 miles away, we could have 800 miles between us (not counting the 260 mile trip to space and back). An 800 mile contact over VHF through a single repeater is kind of cool, so amateurs are working this repeater constantly as it passes near enough to reach. Today's pass, the one I heard, was never any closer than Calgary, Canada (I'm in Salt Lake City). The measuring tool on Google Earth put the land distance at about 850 miles. And if you calculate the hypotenuse of 850 miles base plus 260 miles elevation that's about 888 miles. Accounting for the curvature of the earth changes the angle of that 260 mile leg, changing the shape of the triangle, and making the hypotenuse (the distance from me to the ISS) closer to 950 miles. I wasn't trying for contact; I assumed it was too far away, which it probably was for my setup. But I started hearing it before it hit the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, and kept hearing it all the way to New Brunswick. That's well over 2400 miles maximum distance. How do you know you're hearing the ISS repeater? First, you'll hear it starting to show up at the approximate fly-by time here: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking_map.cfm Next, you'll notice that the transmission is coming in off-center from the downlink frequency. This is due to the Doppler effect of the ISS moving 17,000+ miles per hour. Today when I first started hearing it, it was coming in at 437.8065 MHz, and by the time it faded out, I was listening on 437.7935 MHz. That's a 13kHz Doppler shift (+6500Hz to -6500Hz). Sensing that Doppler shift pass from above the center frequency to below the published center frequency is a dead giveaway you're dealing with the ISS moving 17500MPH. But here's what's cool, in my mind. My setup wasn't extravagant: RTL-SDRv4 (<$40) with SDR++ software (free). Cheap no-name (<$20) inline linear amplifier powered by the Bias-T setting of the SDR. And the big massive antenna? Hold onto your britches: Comet CA2X4SR-NMO mobile antenna ($80) mounted on a Midland magnetic mount ($30) stuck to an old 16" square steel griddle. Laptop computer to run the SDR and its software. Total cost (excluding laptop): $170, all of which I have cobbled together already. My technique was just to look up the fly-over time, and set the SDR++ software to just a few kHz high, then start watching the waterfall and listening. When I started seeing the FM signal in the waterfall I centered on it and listened. And by watching the waterfall I was able to continually adjust the frequency center through the fly-over until it was out of range. It was amazing to me that I was able to follow it all the way from the west coast of Canada to the east coast, and that I did it with a simple mobile antenna just sitting on the window sill -- not even a yagi. I wasn't expecting to hear anything at this time since it never got closer than about 950 miles. The pile-up on the frequency was pretty heavy, so I imagine the people getting through are using good, directional antennas to transmit with. I don't expect to be able to get a contact out of it without a directional antenna. But it was impressive to me today to be able to hear it over such a great distance.

Yeah I'd heard of tropo before but never developed an great understanding of how it works or what causes it. But I guess I just had a first hand experience with it...

Tropospheric ducting.

I used to routinely do this with firearms.

Input is INto the repeater ... in other words, the tone your radio has to transmit to open the repeater. Output is OUT of the repeater. You can program this into your radio so you will only hear traffic from the repeater since the tone matches. You can also leave the output tone out (or CSQ) but if there is other traffic on that frequency (either another repeater or simplex) you'll hear it.