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They make a waterproof mic that screws down to seal to the radio.

I don’t have one but this radio seems to check the waterproof box, ip55 with microphone and ip68 without: https://www.retevis.com/retevis-nr30s-gmrs-waterproof-walkie-talkie-for-long-distance-use-with-ip55-speaker-mic-2pcs-us

Also with the H3, if you switch startup-modes, IIRC, you will lose any custom programming.

If you have a multimeter, disconnect from the radio and antenna/mount and check continuity on the outer connectors end to end, the center pin end to end, and do the center to outer. First 2 should have continuity, 3rd should not. Same story connected to the mount...center pin on the mount to center on the cable, outer threaded to connector on cable. I tried one of those Nagoya ground planes and didn't see good results, but that 19.99 is saying a broken connection or short to me too

I was able to locate a local radio dealer (Adams Electronics 248 669 6800) who was kind enough to help me program the 462.600 MHz repeater frequency on my Maxon GMRS 210+3 radio. The steps involved are as below: Turn off the radio Open the back cover of the radio by removing four screws securing the back cover. Press the "tack switch" switch (see attached picture) once which is located toward the left side on the circuit board Turn on the radio Use the UP or DOWN button to go to a desired repeater channel (9 or 10) on the radio Press and hold the FUNCTION button on the radio and press the CONFIG button on the radio then release both buttons Turn the TUNE/M-CH button to the 462.600 MHz display Press the FUNTION button followed by the CLR button to save this setting You may want to program CTCSS tones for Receive or Transmit if required by the repeater Hope this helps anyone who might run into the same issue as mine. GMRS210+3 Tack Switch.pdf

I've had multiple requests pending for over a year. If the repeater is listed as open, and I've had no response to a request for access, I just use it. If the owner doesn't want me on it they'll let me know. I'd do the same if it were my repeater; i.e. just turn it on and let it go.

BKFD650 (BaKersFielD 650) is operated by WRJF803:

Unfortunately, you cannot transfer a configuration file from a radio with one frequency selection to a radio with another. Nor can you change the frequency selection on the radio you’re programming and then import a configuration file from the same radio when it had a different frequency selection, even if all of the frequencies are compatible. That’s the most aggravating thing I’ve found about this radio.

From the regulations: (b) 462 MHz interstitial channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable and base stations may transmit on these 7 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5625, 462.5875, 462.6125, 462.6375, 462.6625, 462.6875, and 462.7125 MHz. Not only that, but they are limited in power: (b) 462 MHz interstitial channels. The effective radiated power (ERP) of mobile, hand-held portable and base stations transmitting on the 462 MHz interstitial channels must not exceed 5 Watts. Also, for a repeater to function in fill duplex, they listen on one frequency and transmit on another. The offset is 5 MHz, so, your radio would have to transmit to the repeater on a 467 MHz channel. On 462.5625 MHz you’re only allowed half a watt: (c) 467 MHz interstitial channels. The effective radiated power (ERP) of hand-held portable units transmitting on the 467 MHz interstitial channels must not exceed 0.5 Watt. Each GMRS transmitter type capable of transmitting on these channels must be designed such that the ERP does not exceed 0.5 Watt. My suggestion again is to read and understand the regulations. The radio you have was programmed to follow the rules. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95/subpart-E

Your friend lied to you.

I wouldn't say the AR-5RM is the best radio for a newbie. A noob radio is a dedicated GMRS radio that you pick up, turn on, pick a channel, and start talking. The 5RM does require some programming, but it's a lot more versatile than a dedicated GMRS radio. There is a learning curve, and there are things I learned by trial and error, but I think most people can learn to use it. Like @RIPPER238's Tidradio H3, it has a lot of options, but you do have to exercise some restraint because you can do things with it that you definitely shouldn't do as a GMRS operator. An SSC Tuatara car can go 295 mph, and I'd kinda like to tool around in one to look cool, but it will absolutely do things that I have no business participating in.

So, just the power up screen? Maybe it is the meter. Try taking it all the way back to where you started. Do you have a local friend with a radio? I'm going to bed. Maybe someone else can think of something to try.

Yes, and your meter has two different ohms ranges - you’re in the x10 range which would appear to be open even if it’s not. I would test the circuits that should be closed using the x10 range and test the circuits that should be open using the x1k range. So now the SWR meter is blank or just doesn’t change? Also, I went back to the top. You thought you had a bad cable so you ordered another and it shows the same SWR of 19.99? I am sorry, but I doubt that two separate cables are bad. That leaves something else, the mount, the ground plane kit, or the antenna and I suspect the mount since you’ve tried it with and without the ground plane and with two different antennas. Or it’s the SWR meter. Honestly I’m just guessing but if I were there I would eliminate one thing after another.

Could you show us a picture of your multimeter. For an open circuit it should read something like OL. Of course if you’ve got a probe in each hand it’s measuring the conductivity of your body and all bets are off. For a continuous conductor it should read in some tenths of an ohm. End to end - shield: End to end - center: center to shield - open circuit (my probe slipped while I was trying to hold it one handed to take the picture but you get the idea). It shows that it’s an open circuit (OL) and it is on the Megohm range:

What range does your multimeter read? Some of my coworkers tell me that a circuit is open, then I find they are using meters that only read up to 6k ohms and the circuit was a 10K ... wasn't open, but their meter couldn't tell

Ok, that test passed.

Ok, Thanks!

The easiest way is to swap it out to another. Otherwise check for continuity from one end to the other on both the shield and the center conductor. But, the shield and center conductor must not be shorted to each other.

Did the repeaters change their PL tone? Did you play with the RX tone? With the H3 I know if you play with the RX it'll reset the TX tone. You have to either set the TX alone without doing anything to the RX. Or set the RX and the TX will be set also. It you reset the RX, the TX goes back to no tone.

Am i understanding that you have 3 radios, and all 3 stopped working as expected, at basically the same time? if so, then something is highly suspect.. How are you determining that they "no longer connect to repeaters"? Are you trying to connect to the same repeater? is that repeater up/online? have you tried getting closer to the repeater(s)? many questions, but something is not right...

I have two repeaters within 50 miles of me that are on the same channel. One is east of me and one is west of me. The east repeater does not use tones while the west repeater does use tones. Most of the time I don't hardly ever hear the east repeater due to terrain between us but I can easily get into the west repeater. At times I get both repeaters. When I am picking up the east repeater it is usually at an s4 or s5 on my radio's signal strength meter. And I normally get the west repeater at an s6 or s7. The east repeater without tones definitely interferes with my ability to talk on and hear the west repeater when I am receiving both at the same time. So yes two repeaters that are about 100 miles apart can and will cause issues with anyone in between the two trying to talk on just one of the repeaters. Conditions and locations will have an effect.

Although it’s possible to get a single radio that can tune almost everything from DC to daylight (cellular frequencies are blocked on receivers sold in the U.S.) and that functions well as a handheld radio for some of those frequencies, a scanner with a large discone would do a much better job as a home-rolled NSA listening post. It will scan the frequencies much faster. Even better would bet would be a bank of scanners, each covering a section of the spectrum. Understand that the RF spectrum is immense and there are many different types of modulation. My Yaesu FT5DR does a great job for a handheld that can still serve well as a 2 meter and 70 cm transceiver and listen to FM and AM from 1 MHz to 999 MHz (minus cellular). But there are several gigahertz of frequencies above that. But understand that antennas (or antennae for those who care) that are “more powerful” do so by focusing upon a smaller and smaller direction. And antennas are most efficient around a single frequency. It’s nice to have an antenna that can receive additional frequencies, but they do so at some cost: you have to include loading coils or traps or multiple elements that are tuned for different frequencies. I’m sorry, but I don’t know the difference between the AR5RM and the UV5RM, but here’s what an AI said:

The first thing you should do is familiarize yourself with the regulations. Repeaters may only transmit on eight frequencies and 462.5625 MHz is not one of them. (a) 462 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, repeater, base and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5500, 462.5750, 462.6000, 462.6250, 462.6500, 462.6750, 462.7000, and 462.7250 MHz.

I’d be curious to see what effect using pvc rather than fiberglass had on SWR. I know that placing the radiator inside of different materials can change the velocity factor, thus changing the wavelength of the antenna, but I don’t know what the difference will be between pvc and fiberglass. Also, unless you used UV resistant pvc, there’s a probability that the pvc radome will suffer solar embrittlement. UV resistant pvc is used for non-metallic electrical conduit.

My wife told me NOT TO speak to her in that tone. I switched and haven't heard from her since! What can I do?

The poor horse should have been beaten so much that it is nothing but liquid puree by now.

That machine is one of mine - it's not well documented, but if you use app_rpt (asterisk/allstar/hamvoip/etc.) as the repeater controller it supports MDC decoding and can be configured to behave accordingly. The software can map MDC to DTMF instructions and macros, and DTMF codes can be used to establish an access table (dtmfkey=yes), so that's how you get the two systems to work together. It can also do things like automatically link or reconfigure based on MDC statusing, so it has use cases outside of access control. Use of MDC was encouraged; the member website automatically generated random PTT ID codes for every member (existing and new), and automatically uploaded the keylist to the repeater system every 15 minutes. Users without MDC capable radios were able to use DTMF PTT-ID which worked too, just slower and not as reliable in noisier signals. The area that machine covers had a lot of issues with bad behavior on high-profile repeaters, so this was our way to send a message and clean things up fast; it worked very well for that. We had it on for about a year, and its since been disabled to make programming easier for new users, its stayed relatively clean since. Once you have it configured it's really easy to turn on-and off, literally one line of code, we had considered propagating to the rest of the repeaters on our system but haven't had a real need to just yet so make life easy for the non-problem areas it was kept off. The other benefit is that every user's keyup is logged; it made it really clear who some of the chronic kerchunkers were and they were contacted directly to knock it off (wait you can tell it was me?? :shockedpicachu:)

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.

The Club believes the jammer was not a club member and probably not aware that the PT-T ID is needed for access because the MDC squawk is not repeated and that information was only provided to members through the website members only portion of the website and only the member can view their respective PT-T ID number. There hasn't been a problem since or at least no one has said anything if it has continued.

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.

Echolink is pretty neat if you have internet data access. I have an old Sonim XP8 that I have dedicated as a ham radio toy and it is my go to echolink device. Has a built in PTT and everything, works great. You can even get a handheld speaker/mic for them. Echolink will let you talk and hear all across the world, but it does have its limitations. The app is sorta sluggish and cumbersome. It does work, though. But the greatest inconvenience is the hang time it has and the repeater has to be completely silent before echolink users will get the "Transmit" button available. It's greyed-out any time there is activity and most RF users can jump right in but echolink users have to wait. Works good on repeaters that are not busy but on a busy repeater you might have a hard time getting in. Unless they specifically remember to give extra time for echolink ppls

This is a good moment to discuss a sad reality about GMRS: This is why linking has been an issue. Too many people think about their repeater footprint and that's it - but forget that RF still travels outside the circle on their map just not in a way that would be considered reliable or even usable. Because of that, Part 90 services not only look at the height/power of the transmitter but plots it for a known service area and then adds a "protection zone" further around the coverage footprint to avoid interference when a frequency is reused too close to another transmitter location. VHF is terrible for this because of atmospheric phenomena, but UHF is not exempt from it either. This is why sites like this are critical for the GMRS community, because frequencies/locations should be listed somewhere unified BUT there is no current rule/procedure to prevent adjacent reuse of channels outside of "don't be a bad neighbor". Add linking and super-wide-area systems that are motivated to build out to recoup capital expense, and this turns into a cesspool quickly. GMRS never had these issues until the last several years because there was a higher barrier to entry that gets removed with each generation of rule change to the point that we are trying to talk about coordinating a community/family service in a way that won't devolve into CB radio. Hopefully this provides some insight because there's "some influencers" in this forum that do nothing to discuss these issues civilly, offer input, or do anything except widen the divide between people that just want to talk and the ones that want to protect their investment in the service for their use. Time for everyone to swallow some ego and talk like adults.

Incorrect. The Motorolas can do "ADP" encryption which does not require a key-loader.. ADP is not as strong as AES256 (which does require a key-loader), but it is MORE than good-enough for anyone not transmitting state-secrets or plotting another unplanned group-tour of The Capitol.

It has been my experience that P25 is much easier to setup/program than DMR.. ..it was like 6:20AM, I just dragged my body out of bed and had not yet ingested any caffeine!

It has been my experience that P25 is much easier to setup/program than DMR. Both can do a LOT, and neither are 'easy'.. But setting up standard (non-trunked) P25 on simplex or a repeater is very straight-forward and setting up encrypted P25 is also pretty easy AFTER you know what to do.

Park Ridge covers down to Bakersfield (at least) for base stations. It is at 7500' so a good mobile will probably make it also. I have HT coverage at 50+ miles, but not full quieting with 5W. Full quieting with vertical at 20'. Joaquin ridge is up and I suspect will cover there. It used to be linked to some other repeaters back east, but I think there were jamming issues and the link was shut down. Auberry may be stretching it to Delano. Not familiar with the repeater specifics, but that area is probably only 2-3000' peaks in the foothills. There is a private system on Mt. Bullion (Mariposa), that might reach that far, but I have not had any response to access requests. Haven't heard much activity on Joaquin or Auberry the last few weeks. Mariposa and Park ridge have the most activity.

There's a couple listed near Auberry, but you have to have the "show stale repeaters" toggle turned on (this is the case for the Park Ridge machines as well, which are both listed as open. Auberry 575 is listed as open, while Sierra 2 is listed as permission required. Both listings have the same frequency and tone, though, so I'm not sure if it changed hands and an old listing wasn't removed or what. I also found a new listing for the Joaquin Ridge machine with the "stale" option turned on.

Hey everyone. Mike asked me to pass on a very big THANK YOU to everyone for donating to the power bill. Donations reached just over $1,000. This was enough to cover expenses associated with getting the power turned back on, a few months of current and future power bills, and Mike is investing the remainder of the funds in a backup power system to keep the Bull Run repeater on the air during comercial power outages. We have an amazing group! You all are the best!

I wish you the best results possible with your chemo.