Leaderboard

Notice the word “dedicated” in my quote above. I think GMRS is great for regular community communications. But a repeater for the community is hard to dedicate to emergencies. People will use it to chat, kids will play with radios, and hobbyists will talk about antennas. The community has no legal way to reserve the frequency for emergencies. As a result some people will leave their radios off. How do you tell them to turn them back on? Remember, this is a ten mile radius community.

Most of the antennas mentioned are mobile; the OP specifically asked about tower/roof mount antennas. Most of those for the ham bands will have a higher SWR on the GMRS band. Just how high, and whether your radio will still operate safely is not certain. The only antenna I am aware of that is designed for use on all 3 bands is a mobile one, the Comet CA-2x4SR. My GP-3 has an SWR about 4:1 on the repeater freqs, with reduced power output. You would have to decide if that is OK.

My home made 70/65cm Slim Jim is below 1.6 swr about half way across both bands according to my nanoNVA. I really didn't expect it to be that good across that much. I have my GMRS radio attached to it.

I have seen quite a few "how to get started" and "GMRS for beginners" videos on Youtube.

I picked up a few of those a while back, and they had a variety of frequencies in them, but I didn't try them. I immediately wiped the radios and installed the higher-power FRS channels. I did confirm with my farz-o-meter that high power is 2 watts and low is 0.5, but I didn't try to enter any of the 8-14 channels, so I don't know if it would let me. Now I'm curious, so I'll probably give it a try. Edited to add: I just now tried it and was able to program in 3 of the low-power FRS channels and they Rx and Tx just fine. I don't know why yours won't. I think calling them "junky" is a bit unfair, though. I think they're now $10 each. Considering the price, I've been pretty impressed. I was able to easily communicate over a repeater 20 miles from my house and the signal report was "almost full quieting". I have very favorable topography, but still, that's not bad for 10 bucks. I don't know how much of a beating they will take before they fail, but I've handed them out at three horse events and none of them have quit yet. I put a drop of Gorilla Glue on all the antennas, so functionally they're the same as an FRS radio, albeit not type-accepted. I'm not really concerned that the FCC is going to raid a horse show and take me away in handcuffs, but if you give radios to non-radio people, it's probably best to minimize the number of things that can go wrong -- losing an antenna, for example. I programmed them with the 15 higher-power channels and the local weather frequency, since the weather is kind of important to event planners. TBH, I couldn't be happier with them.

What radio would you suggest that's better quality and has similar features?

I have a Comet 2x4SR and SBB1. Both are 1.8 or below for 2m, 70cm, and GMRS. I still run and operate GMRS only antenna on my Ford Escape since I like to use my dual band and GMRS radios at the same time. The same goes for my base station. I run the GP9 for dual band and the CA712EFC for GMRS. The 2x4SR is a good multi band mobile antenna and works well for 2m, 70cm, MURS, GMRS and VHF public safety frequencies.

Europe's GMRS / FRS equivalent is PMR446 (which uses 446 MHz...), and Australia's UHF CB uses 476-477 MHz, so it's not that either. That's a fun one. And they're all labeled "GMRS" as well haha

I think before that question it's important to understand what it is, and isn't. There is a good write-up at this link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-pole_antenna Most of the issues with the antenna stems from it's radiation pattern. Depending on construction and installation the antenna may present some noticeable asymmetric gain characteristics. One other important point is the antenna requires some kind of "decoupling" network for the connecting coax cable. That's typically done using some snap on ferrite cores very close to the feed point, or a coiled up section of the coax cable. If this isn't done then all sorts of weird highly asymmetric gain characteristics may occur along with high SWR readings, and even RF getting back into the radio causing distorted audio.

Yep. I have two, one for 2m and one for GMRS. They both work very well for my needs.

Well that didn't take long. I knew Negative Nancy would put his worthless half a pence in. The negative vibes need to go. Plenty of people use J pole antennas with great results. One of my friends has made several J poles for GMRS for other club members and they all work. He has also made a 6m j pole out of copper and a giant 11m/CB j pole out of aluminum tubing. It works well too. I have a 2m j pole made from 3/8" aluminum rod that works well and sometimes use it portable. I also made the faraday clothe j poles for portable work.

Well, If you knew anything about Midland you would know they have been in the radio business for 50 years. For decades they were a go to LMR radio for law enforcement, wildland and DNR applications. I still know agencies with Midland LMR gear in use. They also have had GMRS radios long before anyone you list on this site. My first Midland was a xstal radio and we had to wait over 2 months for the channel we got licensed to arrive. They were also the first FRS radio to the market when the FCC approved them. Yes part is marketing and they are the ONLY vendor I have ever seen at an offroad show or any event in that industry. Handheld CH. KISS. My parents are in their 70's. They want to pick up a MIC with no buttons and talk. The midland mobiles do that fine for them. For my Jeeps I have the MTX-275 (actually had another arrive yesterday..and wife wanted the Jeep one so it was $10 more than the standard). The HHCH is perfect for a vehicle such as the Jeep. We use one repeater that is mine so dont care about having 50 repeaters in the radio. The wife can jump in and it turns on and if someone say go to ch 4 she turns to CH4. Lastly 90% of the folks we wheel with run Midland as does JJUSA. For that fact its the same and anyone can jump in my rig or hers and know how to use the raidos. What many forgot on this site is we are a very very small user group that gets on a forum. Tons of folks out there use GMRS and have no interest in forums, repeaters, or being ham lite. They just use radios. I have farms all around me that use Midland gear and every tractor, combine, truck has one in it. If I want to play ham radio or outher service I just switch over the my APX8500.

On most radios you just plug it in. But be sure it’s plugged all the way in.

As far as a beep when changing channels, that’s probably the key tone, menu 1.9 according to the manual. Turn it on. It’s not surprising that updating the firmware would reset that. As far as losing communication you’ll have to explain that. Does the radio no longer transmit? Does it no longer receive? Maybe the tones were cleared (again, fully expected in a firmware upgrade). I have no clue what e1-e2 means; maybe nothing.

Thanks for your post. It's actually doing what it should. So its still very useful, but not in the way I thought it might be. I don't have a Midland, but if you can more than one scanlist there has to be a means to select which one will be used. If your radio is dual receive capability you might even have ability to select separate scan list numbers for the A & B channels. How its done on your Midland is likely most apparent in your factory programming software or CHIRP, if available for your radio model. Here's how it works on my Wouxun radios using the factory programming software. There are up two things that control which channels will be included in a scan. The first is a parameter included with each channel entry called "Scan Add". If Scan Add is "ON" the the channel can be scanned. If "OFF" then it will NOT be scanned even if included in the range of the selected scan list or when using scan list "ALL" The second thing are scan lists. The default scan list is "ALL" which includes all configured channels with "ScanAdd" of "ON". The user defined numbered scan lists each consist of a start channel number and an end channel number. Again, even if a channel is included in scan list range it will not be scanned until the channel's "Scan Add" is set to "ON" My radios are dual receive so I have two parameters I can use to select a scan group; For area "A" the parameter is "SCAN-GRP-A and "SCANGRP-B" for the "B" area. Each can be set either directly from the radio's menu or using the programming software to either "ALL" or one of the scan list numbers. Hope this helps.

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for drinks that might be spit onto screens and/or keyboards.

I think it's working the way it's meant to. Though I don't use priority scan myself. If I want to listen for a channel that's what I use the dual display for and I think my eyes would go buggy trying to read the scan display , I only care if it stops.

WOW Negative Nancy just can't help himself. So are we still at 999 reasons not to own a Chinese made radio or are we up to 1998 reasons now. On topic. I won't be any help since I hardly use scan let alone priority scan. Too many kids, farmers and drunk hunters (during deer season) to listen too.

Thanks for the question. It got me thinking so I did some testing with a Wouxun KG-XS20G+ configured with a scanlist of 15 channels and priority scanning of channel 2. I used a Wouxun KG-935G+ on channel 1 and another on channel two to key all the combinations with the KG-XS20G+ scanning using scan mode = CO. Initially I had the misunderstanding that Priority Scanning was something independent of manually initiated scanning and worked constantly in the background when enabled. I also assumed assumed it was preemptive. Testing my Wouxun KG-XS20G+ shows priority scan only works during a manually initiated scan effectively interleaving the scanning of the priority channel while stepping through the scan list channels. For large scan lists this noticeably improves how fast the radio detects the priority channel. Answer to your question: I found priority scanning is not preemptive. When I can lands on a channel in the scan list or on the priority channel it will stay on the channel base on the scan mode. So with my better understanding I've made my favorite repeater my priority channel so I'm less likely to miss the first the first part of of transmissions when I'm scanning.

Marine Band VHF is between 156 and 174 MHz, so not those either, and IIRC there's some HF frequencies as well for longer range comms.

I purchased a Comet CA-2X4SR & SBB-1NMO (Shorter option) for my handheld 2M 70CM/GMRS use on the roof of my truck even though they aren't specifically for GMRS. Installing a new mount, but have herd good things about both antennas as more versatile option for 2M 70CM/GMRS. I will note I also have a dedicated GMRS radio in my truck with a dedicated GMRS antenna for heavier use.

Short answer is yes. Longer answer is depends on each antenna's sweep and what you are comfortable with. I specifically choose antennas that meet my intended needs.

The Comet GP9 is a tall antenna and not everyone wants or can have an antenna that tall. Several of us in my local club use the GP9 and we tested all of them on the GMRS channels. The SWR on 467 MHz averages around 1.7 to 2.1 and the SWR on 462 MHz averages around 1.3 to 1.5 on all of the GP9 antennas we tested. I'll have to see if anyone local has the Comet GP6 to test.

Just got back to my desktop from a cruise. Here's a link to legacy licenses. It lists the license holder by zip, state and city. The list is a few years old but does give you the callsign and you can use the FCC license search to see if it's still valid or expired. I keep it bookmarked just in case. https://www.thepeters.org/grandfathered_gmrs.html

I have a Diamond Supergainer 7900 2m/70cm in my mobile setup when used in it's design range SWR is 1.2-1.3:1 . WHen used on 462/467 SWR is 1.4:1 still very acceptable for me. But the Supergainer 7500 2m/70cm does much better even though is slightly less spec'd gain in it's design bands. SWR of 1.2:1 on all design bands as well as on 462/467 with a KG-UV980P mobile radio (same as KG-1000G just not locked to GMRS) . Both tested using an NMO tri-mag base on the roof of my crew cab dodge.

I don't think a J-Pole is a "bad" antenna, but there are others that perform better. I think the performance niche for a J-pole is like Ed Fong's portable/roll-up, where it provides good performance with great portability. I have a rigid J-Pole made of copper pipe and tested it side by side with a 1/4 wave ground plane and the ground plane performed noticeably better.

I've had the Ed Fong GMRS J Pole for about a year now and have been very happy with it. I'm able to hit repeaters in the area, some as far as 45 miles away, or use it for local simplex communication. Of course, antenna height, line of sight from you to the repeater or station you're trying to reach will make all the difference. There are probably better options as far as base antennas for GMRS out there, but I choose mine for easy of mounting.

When I was creating my Modified CPS for the UV-17 Pro GPS and related radio models (and later the official BF-F8HP Pro CPS), one of the features is a "Voice Pack Editor" originally written by Sander van der Wel and enhanced by me. It allows changing the various spoken prompts in the radio, but doesn't touch the various other sound effects (although it could). Letting someone change the roger beep would probably make people's heads explode. For example, if someone changed it to the Road Runner cartoon's "Meep! Meep!".

Did you unlock the radio into "normal" mode? Hold ptt and # while powering on the radio. You will have to reload your channel programming. If it's in gmrs mode it may be power limited.

Based on what I’ve read, the ones made,of copper tubing are about equivalent to a dipole in performance, not high gain, but decent omnidirectional performance. I intend to build one this spring sometime. It’ll be single band, possibly 6 meters. That’s the only vhf band I don’t have an antenna for now.

I have a Comet GP-9 and the SWR is 1.8 on 467 MHz and 1.5 on 462 MHz. That being said, I still run a Comet CA-712EFC for my GMRS radio so that I can run my GMRS and dual band radios at the same time.

I thought so, I plan on buying a RT97 and buying the RepeaterID.com identifier but little out of the price range for a 15 year old..

No, the repeater is required to ID also, unless the only people using it are authorized to use the same call sign as the repeater and they correctly ID.

I thought that the repeater was supposed to ID aswell as the people using it aswell?

It’s menu #59 for the 935h:

Also, if a high tower must be erected that could cost a few thousand depending on how high, new or used, and who does the work.

Except for the tones.. You have to program your desired tone(s).

…hold on now let me double bag that for you, did you get everything?

There's hams here that are used to the normal answer, "it's complicated". It actually isn't. For a first mobile/base GMRS radio, the correct answer is the Radioddity DB-20G.

I do wish that Wouxun would have a mic gain setting on their radios. The KG-1000G mic is a bit hot. I haven't had any complaints when using the KG-935G or KG-Q10H. But then again I am not holding the radios too close to my face either.

I don’t understand your question. Are you looking for irregular guys?

A heavy forest and flat ground is almost the worst case for uhf. And although I’m one who over generalizes that a person will typically not notice the difference between 3 watts and 5 watts, that’s not in all instances. I could definitely see it making a difference getting through woods or other material that attenuates the signal rather than outright blocking them. If power were completely meaningless we could all get by with 100 milliwatts. I made a contact hundreds of miles away last night on ham radio. I was using 800 milliwatts on 10 meters when I did it. It was an accident and I was busy trying to figure out why my RF output was at 0.8 watts at the time. Of course conditions must have been just right and once I figured out my mistake and started operating at nearly 50 watts I was getting contacts faster than I could handle.