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I got sick of all my radios and batteries falling over every time someone sneezed nearby, so I did some light CAD work and 3D printing this afternoon. I think I might re-do this one to have antenna storage on board as well...

Spent a little time last night making a better solution looking for a problem

I created and 3d printed a holder to go on the vertical bar on my ride... also made a wooden box to keep some of my radios, antennas, and other junk in.

Lscott is correct. Yes RG58 has high losses on UHF. But most vehicle installations will only use an average of 12 feet of coax. You can easily make up for any loss with a good well tuned antenna with some gain. I did the calculations for 12 feet of RG58 and antenna with 2 dBd of gain and an SWR of 1.8. You will be pretty much break even on power output. I used both 20 watt and 50 watt output for the calculations. 12 feet of RG58 with a 2 dBd gain antenna with SWR of 1.8 output power is ERP (effective radiating power) 50 watt radio = 53.7 watts ERP 20 watt radio = 21.5 watts ERP As you can see, as long as your antenna has an SWR of 1.8 or less and at least 2 dBd of gain then you will be fine using 12 feet of RG58. I used 12 feet since most magnet mounts come with 12 feet of coax. Most manufacturers list the gain in dBi and most loss calculators use dBd. Subtract 2.14 from the dBi value to get the dBd value. https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/

Well, After studying my butt off for several weeks, I took the test Saturday for General class and passed (35 out of 35). I do have to say thanks to the guy who gave me the link to hamexam.org where you can do flash cards of the questions, it really helped!!! Now on to new bands... maybe I will try out 17 meters or 20 meters in the coming weeks.

Yes.. that's how it works.. I found this random video on youtube that explains it very well. The guy is kind of a jerk, and I heard he only says what his sponsors tell him to say, but the info you want is in there:

I found this on-line and had my sister print it up for me. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2884874/files

That was the biggest driver of this project for me, honestly. The batteries were friggin impossible to stack neatly without coming down like the end of a Jenga game every couple hours haha I'm really happy with how I was able to 'nest' the radio bodies & batteries for the TD-H3. Unfortunately that wasn't really a viable option for the KG-905Gs because the belt clip is on the body of the radio. In practice, I like that mounting of the belt clip better than it being on the battery, but for storage, it's fractionally more difficult.

Some folks are as predictable as the sunrise

Nice job @amaff It's always nice to see what people come up with using 3D printers. And who cares what Negative Nancy thinks.

That is for sure. I am all about home made as much as possible. Attached are a couple of pictures of my 10 meter antenna on a 30' pole. Made from two 102" SS whips cut 2" inches shorter and attached to a Procomm DP4MFPL dipole mount. I have been able to talk to guys in Italy and Germany, all with 20 watts out. This is a great hobby.....

You bet. One other thing to be careful of is that the cable that’s used must have a solid dielectric rather than foam in order to withstand the typical stresses. Commercial mounts with cable already fitted typically use RG-58, which does have a solid dielectric. It’s lossy though at GMRS frequencies. Some people might be tempted to use something less lossy, but most cables with less loss use foam dielectric. So it’s really important to understand what you’ve got. To make things worse there are some brands of rig-58 that have foam dielectric.

Often you can lift the edge of the weatherstripping and fit the cable in under it. Follow it to the bottom of the door and then sometimes you can squeeze it into the recess next to the end of the rocker panel to get into the vehicle.

I agree in principle but very slightly disagree in practice. Instead of buying that adapter I would recommend cutting the cable between the radio and the cigarette lighter plug and installing a pair of PowerPoles. The only reason I suggest that this is better is because the PowerPoles are much less current limiting than the cigarette lighter plug and can be mated directly to almost any kind of power storage device. Your way is easier. My way is a slightly better long term solution (in my opinion ) and less expensive if you have the tool and PowerPoles.

You need the specific tone required for the specific repeater you are trying to use, and you have to enter that in the correct channel (presumably CH20). Without that you will not be able to use the repeater - you can hear them, they will not hear you.

I scan while mobile, and talk to complete strangers, riding off road with my very expensive Midland MXT400. Just bouncing along hardly ever using call signs on the FRS channels like a bunch of rich kids with no regard for authority. But on the open road, yea we follow the rules as best we can talking to people we "think" we know but haven't met yet!

3D Printers are a must have..

Nice! I made something similar for the 905G a little while back.

Well, I got up and running with my new antenna, a $40 “uayosek”(whopping 2.5db) off Amazon and 25 ft of DXEng RG8X connected the BF UV5G Plus. At 16’ in the air with my handheld, it got 4.84 watts on high @1.04 swr. Worked well enough I bumped it down to medium and got 3.42w, and 1.62w at low. I was able to hit the big repeater on Sunday full quiet at high, and a little scratchy on medium. Having listened to suggestions made, and the Euro being about even with the dollar, I ordered 25 feet of MP Ultraflex 7 Sahara, which arrived today. Preliminary test shows 7.94w, 4.95w, and 2.61w, a significant improvement. SWR appears a tiny bit higher, but it is coiled and only tested on the antenna down so that will probably change. Price wasn’t too crazy for the Ultraflex, about $65 assembled and shipped. It definitely fits the bill though, lighter than LMR400, only .28 thick, the BNC connectors they put on it look like they were straight up machined out of bar stock, and its db loss is only a touch higher(.1 or .2 db) than LMR400UF. I am gonna try to get it all put up tomorrow night for the local net, but so far it looks like it will work well.

I like how you have the batteries stored right there but not connected to the radios.

To be honest, other than price compared to other brands that have a few more features, these Samcom's have worked pretty well for my purposes. I'm still considering returning them since I can get something better for around the same price, but the performance and audio quality has been pretty decent. Long term reliability I don't know since I've had them only a few weeks and I'd prefer something I can charge with USB.

Very nice!

My first HF antenna as a new tech was a home made 10m dipole. I hung it as an inverted v and have worked stations all over the world with it. I still have that antenna up. It works well for 10m and 11mm/CB. Mine also has good/useable SWR for most of the 2m band. Too bad I don't have a 2m radio with SSB capabilities. I mostly use my Icom IC-7300 for HF but I do find it fun to use my 20 watt Xiegu G90 on occasion. The farthest I have worked using the G90 and 10m dipole on SSB has been Ireland. It was hard getting through the pile up with only 20 watts but rewarding when I did make the contact.

Anyway, got it working. Turns out two of the K-12 radios were defective. There are two others that are working fine. The K-12s I didn't buy, nor would I. My grandkids got them for Christmas from someone I don't know on their father's side.

That’s a nice series of pictures and a nice job of routing.

Yup. Good enough!

The best way is anyway that works, doesn't damage the coax cable and doesn't let water leak into the vehicle. You can look at other installations to get some ideas. The links below are for my CX-5. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/471-mobile-mount-with-antenna-rear-view/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/473-close-up-of-mobile-mount/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/474-mobile-mount-coax-routing/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/472-mobile-antenna-install-side-view/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/476-mobile-mount-drip-loop/?context=new Some people will tell you that RG-58 has high losses at UHF, it does, but one has to look at the total system and make a judgement call to see what works the best. In my case I ended up using two types of coax, a very thin type to get inside and a lower loss type, better than RG-58, for the rest of the run. This might be over the top but I did the analysis for several installation cases. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/483-cx-5-antenna-system-analysisjpg/?context=new

I think he was attempting to type “The only reason…”

Best way is not to. Drill a hole.

What is the correct way?

k

Agreed. Could definitely be a battery monitoring system that shuts things down before it gets too low if it's a newer car, or it could be a battery on the way out.

Congrats x 2!

If I recall from when I was looking this up a few hours ago, neither of this person's radios were CHIRP compatible. But the advice is solid otherwise; since the Samcom isn't marketed as a GMRS radio, nor type approved for GMRS, it probably comes with programming that all over the spectrum.

Congratulations!

Update: I did not succeed

I would rather spend more money on a better quality built radio one time than some POS cheap radio from Pandaland many times over time. I refuse to buy or give into buying inferior cheap products. There is a reason why low cost products are cheap and POS junk. Buying cheap is not saving money or even your personal time in the longrun. I own a lot of Motorola mobile (12 various models) and portable (47 various models) radios, and that count does not include my one Midland and 4 Kenwoods model radios. A few of my portable radios are 35 years old and still in almost brand new condition and have been used a lot over time in a harsh environment and still check out very well. I doubt that any POS Pandaland radio would even stand up to any of my Motorola radios and there is a valid reason my Motorola radios cost a lot of money and we'll worth the cost. None of my Motorola radios ever had a firmware upgrade, but my MXT500 did receive a firmware update about 2 years ago to expand the channel capacity from 30 to 128 programmable channels. I have owned a MXT500 radio for about 3 years, but it is not my everyday radio now because my everyday radios are Motorola. I keep my Midland as a Loaner Radio for my radioless Jeep Creep friends for Trail runs. I did start out using the Midland MXT 400 many years ago and eventually upgraded to a MXT 500, but my radio needs out grew the Midland capabilities. My radio needs have grown to the use of 43 separate radio zones, over a total of 800 programmed channels, and several radio features that consumer radios do not offer. My Midland still puts out about 48-49 watts today as measured with a calibrated Bird 43 watt meter.

@OffRoaderX We don't know how the OP plans to mount the antenna for his proposed repeater. He may very well be within one of the propagation nodes for whatever antenna he chooses, and then, he may not be. Your testing of HH with your repeater's antenna above you has you within an area of very low propagation for your antenna and therefore, your results are applicable only to you. As to suggesting amateur radio, this is an option just as using GMRS, MURS or FRS are options. GMRS and amateur radio services are the only services having repeaters available for use by other licensed users and therefore fill the requirement for repeater availability. It is well known you are a vehement adversary of ham radio preferring to classify all amateurs as sad hams. Does that make you a sad GMRS user? l believe you need to be more moderate with your tar brush remembering when you point your finger, three are pointing back at you.

I'm with you brotha! I use it primarily for off-roading and on the trip to get TO off-roading and it busts my britches every time i hear the H.A.M.s radios wanna-be's long-talking on the repeaters.

Also 95.377 specifically says tones or other signals: § 95.377 Tones and signals. Personal Radio Service stations that transmit voice emissions may also transmit audible or subaudible tones or other signals for the purpose of selective calling and/or receiver squelch activation. These tones and signals are ancillary to voice communications and are considered to be included within the voice emission types, e.g., A3E, F3E, and G3E. (a) Tones that are audible (having a frequency higher than 300 Hertz), must last no longer than 15 seconds at one time. (b) Tones that are subaudible (having a frequency of 300 Hertz or less), may be transmitted continuously during a communication session.

Our Delta repeater in Southern California easily gets farz of 60+ miles, with the record so far being 120 miles from its location near Mt. Baldy California to Chiriaco Summit east of Palm Springs.