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An elderly lady phoned her telephone company to report that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called -- and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her pet dog always moaned right before the phone rang. The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile elderly lady. He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned loudly and the telephone began to ring. Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found..... 1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire via a steel chain and collar. 2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose. 3. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the phone number was called. 4. After a couple of such jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate on himself and the ground. 5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to ring. .....Which goes to show that some problems CAN be fixed by pissing and moaning.

When I got back into Amateur Radio after being out of it for about 10-12 years (always renewed my license even when off the air), one of my friends from back in the day steered me to try DMR. Recommended the TYT 380UV as it had a good price point, so if I didn't like it, I'd only be out $100 or so. I do use it on occasion on DMR, but like you, I get good audio reports on the analog side, so use it more there than on digital.

I gave up trying to use my Radioditty DB-20G in wide band. I tried all the settings with squelch tail and other settings. I just set all my channels to narrow band 12.5 and the radio does not hang anymore with squelch wide open(set it back to 2 not the 8 I had it). I have two DB-20G's that do this. I wish they would come up with some new firmware and address the open squelch with wide band annoyance. Otherwise my family and the people I talk to do not hear a difference in narrow band or wide band. Problem solved IMO . Jim

Yes, far more Fars so far!

We have migrated to this mount over time on our SAR team. Its held up the best out of anything we have used. Both in true NMO mount fasion (in a roof) as well as on fender mounts and other not normal installs. The enclosed cable on the bottom of the mount keeps water out and we found it worked better in fringe areas on simplex. I still use the standard NMO from MSI/Larsen/Laird/PCTel on our UHF TLMR stuff but anything VHF is the Larsen one now. When possible I use them on all mounts. My new work truck as 6 mounts and all are the same.

The Alinco MD5 is an 878 on the inside. That’s what I bought when I first got into DMR. It’s very slightly smaller and only has room for 500,000 contacts and 4000 channels, but if you can live with that it’s only $290 from the major ham radio companies. https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-018082

Propagation can definitely change between the different seasons. Location and local terrain factors in too. Basically the shorter the wave length is the more vegetation will affect signal propagation. Analog TV stations are another examples. the VHF channels will not be affected as much by foliage compared to the UHF channels. Same goes for two way radios. I have learned to despise cedar and pine trees. They definitely mess with UHF frequencies. I travel down two paved county roads to get to the closest VA hospital. There are plenty of valleys and forested areas. And is some places there are a lot of red cedar trees growing close to the road. I have quite a few spots where I have a hard time getting into the 70cm and GMRS repeaters while I have no problems getting into the 2m repeater.

I always respond to request to use our repeater within a day or two even though it is an open repeater. I haven't had a request go to my spam folder yet when coming from My GMRS. There are two repeaters east of me that are owned by the same person(s). I received permission for one repeater but nothing on the second repeater.

THATS IT. THAT FIXED IT! Thank you so much Ripper *fistbump

That's hard to say since I had the 935G for a while before getting the Q10H. The Q10H has the advantage of being quad band versus the 935H being tri band. Both can be unlocked for use on MURS and GMRS. The nice thing about the 935G is that I can give to a family member and not worry about them accidentally transmitting on the amateur bands. Remember that the 935G and Q10G are GMRS only radios and can't be unlocked. Yes I tried and the unlock password will not work on the GMRS only radios.

You don't have the dual watch on. Duel circular arrows. #9 D.Wait needs to be on. No Idea why they called it D.Wait

Definitely seem to be great choices either way for quality. I'm thinking of getting the 935, or another Q10. Both seem to be the best of the best and have all the features you could ever want.

If you go ht to mag mount for a vehicle make sure to get the proper sma to nmo or pl259 type connector adapters.

Yes a UV-5R works and everyone can afford it. But there are definitely better radios. I have a Baofeng GT-5R along with two UV-5R GMRS radios. I stated out with the GT-5R as my first radio. Now they are regulated to spares to to hand out to others to use. A lot of people have started out with a Baofeng radio and that is a good thing since it allows more to get involved in amateur radio or GMRS for little money. Most will upgrade to a better hand held though. The UV-5R is not the best and is veery susceptible to front end overload.

@WSGJ919 I would still send it back for repair or replacement. While you haven't seen much difference between being heard, you did not mention if that was on simplex or through a repeater. There can and will be a difference when using a repeater. We can always tell when someone talks on our repeater that is using narrow band because they are hard to hear and understand.

That radio is a clone of a Yaesu FT-8900r. It does 2m/70cm/6m/10m. Diamond made an antenna especially for the FT-8900r, call the CR8900A. I had the setup and the antenna worked great on all 4 bands. Th only thing I didn't like was that if you wanted to use the radio on the top end of 10m, you had to shorten the whip, and if you wanted to use the bottom end of 10m, you had to lengthen it. There was no such thing as putting the adjustment in the middle and getting a good match across the 2MHz range. Also, the whip wasn't long enough to cover 26MHz. So, even though it was a good radio/antenna combo, you either need to be flexible about tuning it manually or spend a few hundred $$$ on a 12v automatic tuner.

If you don't have any radio at all, I recommend you start with a good HT. I don't have any strong favorites -- anything reliable is fine. Then put a mag-mount antenna on your car and use the HT as a mobile until you decide what you want for the car. I got really good results with a Baofeng radio and Nagoya antenna, and they're kind of "entry level" items. If you already have an HT, I recommend you look for a mobile that will program in a similar way. For example, if your HT programs with CHIRP, it will significantly flatten the learning curve if your mobile programs with CHIRP as well.

I still have my two 380s in the drawer all charged and ready to go. Great little radios. They are my tower radios. If I drop one, I'll read a few scriptures from the good book, but other than that it's no big deal.

I was very happy with the TYT UV380. It was closer to $80-$90 but it was easy to convert. When I have used it on analog a friend tells me it’s the best sounding transmissions out of all my radios. It’s also available in a waterproof version for $10 more as the UV390.

Do you have a speaker mic you can try? Might be able to isolate where the issue is. Or just wipe it and send it back. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good recommendation, thanks!

if you have room, The newer Ram Trucks 2018 up do, i'd go with a Breedlove mount. You will pretty much have to remove your headliner to do a good mount job and thats the hardest part. Breedlove mounts are built like a tank and will not fail. Do your homework, not every NMO mount is equal, a lot are junk.. Here is a good read. https://www.hamradio.me/antennas/nmo-mobile-antenna-mount-options.html https://breedlovemounts.com/store/ols/products/nmo-roof-mount

You sure it doesn't come with a cigarette lighter plug already crimped on its tinned and stripped wires?!? hahaha

Maybe you are confusing Chinese "pot metal" with quality brass that is alloyed with zinc? I can assure those mounts are quality, definitely from a metallurgical perspective.

Larsen NMOKHFCX is probably the best mount out there right now. Any Larsen, Laird, PCTEL, Motorola mounts are good.

Yup. multipath reflections can really affect reception/transmission if you get your antenna in just the wrong position. In the house receiving a weak station moving the HT just a few inches can make or break the reception. Same exact thing for an outdoor antenna I would assume. All summer long I was receiving a repeater and the signal was great. I figured as winter approached and the leaves fell off it would only get better. Was really wrong about that. The signal degraded by a huge factor to the point where sometimes it was getting under the squelch and I had to lower it. Now that we are in full winter, all leaves that are going to fall have. The signal is better but nothing like it is in the summer. I assume it's just multipath interference and antenna position.

Hey! Stop giving Amazon a hard time!

Wouxun KG-905G $99. The only other accessory you will need will be a programming cable I'm not an affiliate but click on this link

Larsen or T E Connectivity (Laird) and buy them from a reputable professional radio electronics retailer like Talley Communications, Pasternack, Arcadian Antenna, Tessco, or Antenna Farm, and not from a cheap discount big warehouse operation that only specializes in shipping cheap junk sold by resellers that knows nothing about radio electronics.

Larson.

I just learned that my Dummy Load took a dump and I am wondering if they are repairable and worth repairing? The casing/housing appears to be assembled with two halves and the N Female fitting has 4 screws attaching the fitting to the housing. I didn't realize that the Dummy Load failed on me. At first, I thought that the three radios I was measuring the RF output with the Dummy Load was in a dire need of an alignment and tune since I was measuring only 7 watts of output power. I measured the three radios with three different in-line Watt meters and one of the meters and slugs were calibrated last year by Bird. So, I packed up the three radios and headed to a Motorola Service Shop in Tucson. As I was about to leave, the technician came out to my Jeep and told me the first radio is putting out 50 watts and is on freq. I said no way. He quickly checked the second radio with the same results, and the third radio was transmitting 40 Watt, but was a tad off freq and needed an alignment. I said do it. The first radio was Jeep radio so I put the radio back in my Jeep and remeasured the RF and it was at 48 watts. After the Tech tuned the third radio, I headed home and when I got home, my first task was to recheck the radios again. I checked two of three radios on the bench since they were loose, and they again only put out 7 watts. So, I started replacing cables, cords, adapter connectors, ensured the power supply was putting out 14 volts. I bypassed my Anderson Distribution Block and directly connected the radio and controlhead to the power supply, only 2 watts were drawn from the power supply. So, I tried another power supply and still only two watts being pulled from the second power supply. The only thing that I haven't changed was the Dummy load. My second Dummy load was only an UHF Dummy load and these three radios were VHF mobiles so I couldn't use the UHF Dummy load. However, I have NMO magmounts and a couple VHF mobile antennae so I hooked up the antenna to the radio in place of the dummy load. When I keyed the radio, 48 watts, hot damn. I reconnected the Dummy load, 7 watts, hooked the antenna back up, 48 watts. I decided to get out my ohm meter and check the Dummy load resistance and it measured "OL". Although, I wasted a whole day going to Tucson with two perfectly good working radios, I did get one radio aligned and I did discover that the Dummy load failed and my meters and radios were nof the cause of measuring 7 watts.

Why the Baofeng UV-5R of course! Everybody knows that!

Something that is commonly overlooked is many repeaters can use several different tones to open the repeater, and can transmit different tones based on what tone was received. For example, on one of my repeaters, there are two tones that can open the receive. Either 141.3 or 156.7. If 141.3 is heard on the input, the transmitter will encode the 141.3 tone. If 156.7 is heard on the input, the transmitter will encode the 156.7 tone. The 141.3 tone is for everybody to use, but if I want to chat with someone and not hear 141.3 traffic, me and the person I am chatting with will switch to the 156.7 tone (which isn't advertised for use). Some GMRS radios don't have the ability to only transmit a tone. So they are limited to a tone squelch that is both transmitting a tone AND requiring a tone to be heard before it opens the audio for the receiver. Still other people will program their radios with a tone squelch. What is likely happening is, if the GMRS repeater you are trying to use is setup the same way as my repeater, the one person who could hear you was probably operating in monitor mode (only transmitting a tone) and can hear everything, while everyone else was using tone squelch on a different tone. So, that one person hear everyone, but is the only person that can hear you.

$334.99 at Amazon and Bridgecom...

HT’s are fun since you just pick them up, turn them on and you’re ready to go. They fit in a pocket or briefcase easily too. With mobile radios you need to install them somewhere and require external power and antenna to use. I stumbled on the files for a 3D printed desktop stand for a Kenwood TH-D74A. My sister has a 3D printer and made one for me using the project files. She said according to Slicer it only cost $1.24 to make. Now I have to drive across town to pick it up soon. This is the link for the project files in case someone wants them. https://forums.mygmrs.com/discover/unread/?&stream_date_type=relative&stream_read=all&stream_date_relative_days[val]=365&stream_date_relative_days[unit]=d&view=condensed

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for you to be a pillar of your community and put up a repeater for you, and everyone to use.