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Speaking of someone not having anything better to do…

WHY ARE YOU SUCH AN ASSHOLE ALL THE TIME ??? CAN'T YOU EVER MAKE A CIVIL COMMENT ???

They are typically a Points game. The contest over the weekend was to make as many contacts as possible, on a global scale. They were exchanging call signs, signal reports (which are always 59 in a contest, LoL) and a serial number. The serial number is typically the incremental number of contacts you've made, but some people use other methods. Yes the bands will get extremely crowded, sometimes they are 0.5KHz apart. That is just part of contesting. Pulling out the signal you want through all the noise... and being the person heard where there is nothing but noise. It's a great way to improve and prove your skills when it comes to filter technique and other methods to accomplish the contact.

I would only add to marcspaz's post that this past weekend's contest was about "working all prefixes" and the contesters' goals were to talk to as many different areas as possible. Contest traffic really can be a pain in the neck, but contests also offer great opportunity to talk to many relatively rare countries/DX entities that might not be on the air otherwise. This can be important to those who are trying to make contact with all of the possible DX entities and/or all states. I don't actually participate in the competitions, but do occasionally take the opportunity to make an unusual contact.

Line of site theoretical vs practical, in theory in space with nothing to attenuate the signal, very, very far. ISS contacts happen all the time with 5w or less. In practical application on earth, it boils down to terrain, geology, height above average terrain, occasionally ducting, and the equipment in use. There are simply too many variables in play to say it will go X miles. All transceivers and repeaters are not created equal. My Motorola's have the best receivers, my Baofeng's the worst. A repeaters performance varies greatly based on its antenna height above average terrain, antenna type, quality and gain, overall losses from feedline, duplexer and jumpers, if there is an RX pre amp, RF environment (other RF at repeater site) etc. I can have a conversation on my repeater at 30 miles from some locations with a 4 watt Motorola portable. Standing in that same spot, a 5 watt, $15 Baofeng sometimes works, sometimes does not. I can also move 10 feet and it will no longer work.

I'm personally not a fan of contesting. I can't keep up with writing down the call signs, signal reports and times to make it any fun. More power to those that do enjoy contesting. As mentioned, it is a good way to practice using your radio and learning how to filter signals out. I do work the occasional POTA as an activator, but I don't get into any kind of rush making contacts. As long as I make the minimum of 10 contacts for an activation then I'm happy. I usually stick to the WARC bands when working SSB or AM when there are contests going on. Contests are not allowed on any of the WARC bands. For voice that leaves the 12m and 17m bands. And you can work CW or digital modes on 30m.

Not very much; every user is still required to use the proper call sign (even though all of them are using the same call sign), but in this situation the repeater is not required to ID separately.

Just did a quick fixit for you. UHF actually starts at 300 mHz.

I synchronized your forum account with your myGMRS account, so now it shows you have the Premium Membership, and the ads should be gone.

Well every one that uses our GMRS repeater does use their actual GMRS call sign. They will use designators such as WRYZXXX Base, or WRYZXXX Unit 2, etc. And that has worked just fine for us. I would not want to try and remember a bunch of numbers either. And you still have to use your call signs when using open repeaters anyway. Now if the repeater is closed and ONLY used by immediate family then that's a different story. Correction. Call signs are still required even on private/closed repeaters. Though the repeater itself does not.

@WRPL700 Below is the ARRL Contest Calendar which, globally, leads to the heaviest use of the bands during contest days. All of the rules are posted in the individual event pages as well. If you want to try your hand with it or avoid those days, the calendar may help. https://www.arrl.org/contest-calendar

Agreed. That is a big plus. I don't have a very active log, but I have reached over 100 countries so far, with this weekend including places like Serbia and Jamaica. Though, Jamaica is a bit more common. Here are a list of countries I have had contacts with from the DC Metro area... mostly while mobile. I have also spoken to people in Alaska and Hawaii. Andorra Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Aruba Australia Austria Azores Bahamas Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Bermuda Bonaire Bosnia Brazil Bulgaria Canada Canary Islands Cape Verde Cayman Islands Ceuta and Melilla Chile Clipperton Island Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Curacao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador England Estonia Finland France French Guiana Germany Greece Guadeloupe Guyana Haiti Herzegovina Honduras Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Kaliningrad Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Madeira Island Malta Martinique Mexico Montserrat Morocco Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Northern Ireland Panama Paraguay Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia San Marino Sardinia Scotland Serbia Slovak Republic Slovenia South Africa South Cook Islands Spain St Helena Island St Kitts and Nevis St Lucia St Martin St. Maarten Suriname Svalbard Sweden Switzerland Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Islands Ukraine Uruguay US Virgin Islands Venezuela Wales

Just wait a little bit. I'm sure Negative Nancy/Nana NoNo will tell us how he talks 200 + miles on an HT.

He probably won't respond, since he Knows when he's been called out.

It was difficult for me too and I’m just one state to the west.

One of the hardest states for me to work on 10m was South Dakota. For whatever reason, SD can be hard to get at times from Missouri. I would like to get an antenna up for 30m and 60m. I don't have the room at all for a 160m antenna. I'm hoping that 6m opens up this summer like it did last summer. I'm sitting at 39 states worked on 6m.

Start playing with them cats using a laser pointer. My smallest cat is 6 pounds and she won't hesitate to take on the 96 pound dog. She is my ultra feather weight golden gloves champ. And she is vicious when it comes to lasers.

Impress me and tell me you've done Delaware

It's all good my friend

Ha! No problem. Sorry to be so OCD.

Yes, the Midland MXTA26 antenna will affix to any NMO mount. NMO stands for New Motorola. All NMO antenna bases will fit all NMO antenna mounts. The are two different size holes for the NMO mounts 3/8" and 3/4" and those are the different hole sizes through a body panel or a mounting bracket. The NMO part what the antenna base affixes to is the same size for all NMO based antennae.

Because you dont have the exact same equipment/antenna/power/whatever going both ways?

Because sometimes that's just how radio-waves work. Not sure what other answer your looking for.

@OffRoaderX: this is your stomping grounds. What’s your opinion?

Worked, thanks.

When the radio is set in VFO mode, and you turn the knob on the right, it will move up or down through its frequency range. Step is how far it jumps with each click. If you set up the radio for GMRS, you probably wouldn't use this setting much. But it's there in case you want to move around through the frequencies to listen to things, such as in the 70cm amateur band.

Two pack of the baofeng uv-5g plus have worked well for the wife and I, and the kid uses a btech FRS-A1. And it's nice the btechs came in a two pack, because she dropped hers in the lake this weekend.

Mark: This is very helpful Thank you. You may not realize it, but you are somewhat responsible for me being a ham now. About a year or so ago you and I talked about using a 102" whip for CB radio DX. I finally converted that into a horizontal dipole with a Procomm dipole mount and another 102" whip. I had to lengthen them a little. Since getting my ham license, I have cut the whips down a little and they work great for 10M and since my radio has a tuner, 12M. So thanks for all the help.

Step(KHz) stands for how much of a Step the radio takes when manually tuning to the next frequency. Ie; .5khz, 25khz, etc.. It does not really apply much to GMRS unless you are using your radio to manually tune-around to find non-GMRS frequencies to listen to. My guess is you will not need to change it.

Even with the repeater itself set to full 50 watts out, there will still be a loss of power output from the duplexer. There is no getting around that.

I know of one repeater that does have a better range of around 50-55 miles using a Quantar 125. We could benefit from going with 1 1/4" hardline versus the 7/8" hardline but again that is not in the budget for this year. We get 30-35 mile radius of coverage with our current GMRS setup. The funny thing is our 70cm repeater has the exact same range and the exact same dead spots.

240m at best, when it passes directly overhead at 17,000 miles per hour. With a decent antenna I start hearing it about 1100 miles away, a little above center frequency, and stop hearing it about 1000 miles away at a slightly lower than center frequency, due to the Doppler shift associated with its speed. It's pretty amazing, really. And it fades in and back out again not because of the miles but because of the curvature of the earth. Mariners have used line of sight formulas for centuries, of course. RF line of sight formulas are only slightly different from visual.

We do occasionally have more than two family members talking on the repeater along with others and it hasn't been an issue.

Steve Shannon put it in perspective.. The ISS is a mere 250 miles above earth, not thousands that many may think.. Still, 250 miles is quite a distance for a 5W HT to reach.. I'm sure there are other factors transmitting into space but i can tell you with certainty, i have never been able to talk 250 miles with a UHF HT on earth. The best i have done is roughly 80 miles hitting the El Paso repeater from Palmdale. A line of site shot with that repeater sitting on a 4500' mountain top. Has anyone really talked 250 miles on earth on UHF with a 4-5 watt HT? If so you are the King.

Why? Do you live in Crater Lake or the Grand Canyon, or are you using a POS Pandaland antenna and cable with poor VSWRs?

I find the Tram antennas pretty easy to tune following their instructions. I tuned my Tram 1174 for 467 and the SWR is a slightly lower on 462. I mostly use the local repeater at 467.600 and the SWR is 1.4 and it is 1.2 at 462.600. I could have kept messing with it but figured 1.2 and 1.4 was good enough. I have the luck of the Irish and stopped there so I didn't cut too much off.

I use mine for transmitting on both simplex and to repeaters, but it primarily functions as a repeater antenna, so I cut it for something like 464Mhz - but because of the design of the antenna the SWR is virtually the same on 462 as it is on 467, IIRC its something like 1.03:1 .. The antenna is very forgiving..

I’m fine with a few bucks more as a result of tariffs and hopefully they have the desired impact.

It never hurts to have multiple layers of security. But a determined thief will not be stopped if they want something bad enough. My home security is a little different. I have a big dog that is half Great Pyrenees and half lab mix along with several cats. I have red lasers that track movement. The lasers will get the cats attention and they will fiercely attack what ever the lasers are pointing at. And that noise will get the dog's attention. The dog will finish what the cats started. All of which gives me plenty of time to react if I am home.

I just visited the Flat Earth Society Discussion Board to see how they explain limits on radio propagation and me now stupider cuz it.

It can be done as a voting system which isn't cheap. The two repeaters listen to the incoming signal then the one with the better receive "score" triggers its transmitter. Yes, the repeaters are interconnected but it's for the purpose of control and not relaying messages.

I was told by a (former) Midland Marketing person that this is by design - the entire chassis is a heat sink so a fan is not needed, but yes, you feel the heat. Also, beware that "some people" are going to leave ssstupid comments in this thread declaring that this radio "sucks", "is junk", it's too expensive, it's gimmicky, etc, etc, because it does not have the features that THEY think are important. So bear in mind that Midland did not design this radio for them, they designed it for normal people such as yourself that just need to talk to people while driving. Midland did not design this radio for losers that sit in the basement searching for anonymous men to chat with over the radio to brag about how many buttons or knobs their radio has.

After absorbing the information you guys provided in this thread, I bought the Abbree 42" folding "tactical" antenna (BNC version because the radios I use most all have BNC connectors). This morning, I checked in to a 2 meter net 20+ miles away using that antenna and an AR-152 radio on 1 watt and was able to communicate. I had previously attempted it with HYS 771 and Nagoya 771 antennas and was unsuccessful. I think I've found my "behind the seat of the truck" antenna. I also got an Abbree 18" folding antenna (SMA version) as part of a package with a radio, and it seems about as good as the 771s, although I haven't actually done a comparison yet. In short, they seem as if they'll fit my needs nicely.

This is what I use for my UHF antenna. The antenna is a Larsen Glass-Mount with excellent VSWRs and performance.

Barring emergency situations, licensed amateur radio operators are only allowed to communicate with other licensed amateur radio operators. Additionally, licensed amateur radio operators are only allowed to communicate with other amateur radio operators on the frequencies allowed by their license. Licensed GMRS operators are allowed to communicate with either other licensed GMRS operators or with unlicensed folks on FRS radios. Just because amateur radio and GMRS are both licensed services doesn't mean you can talk between them, but no rule exists that says you can't have (and use) both amateur radios and GMRS radios in the same room or on the same belt. Don't read anything else into the rules, and don't get caught up in what you think the definition of a station is.

No, the station has nothing to do with the building your station is in. You can have a GMRS station placed right next to your ham station on the same desk, in the same jeep, or on the same belt. You simply use the other radio. But only if you have the appropriate license. I have both and as long as I remember to grab the right microphone and use the right call sign I can have a two way conversation to either service. But I agree with you that hams should not be lecturing GMRS licensees and vice versa. I don’t agree with your premise that amateur radio operators are necessarily more educated and experienced. They are more tested however.

I can't believe I'm defending this guy, but his questions are fair questions, and certainly not dumb. Why no UHF NOAA channels? For a variety of reasons, such as the reduced range of UHF over VHF, meaning more transmitters might be needed, costly infrastructure for new UHF transmitting equipment, no demand, and a variety of other reasons already put forth in this thread. Can we get the FCC and NOAA to add UHF weather channels? Probably not, because of the cost, complexity, bandwidth, and equipment required, among probably many other reasons, but if you feel strongly enough about it, contact them. What can they say? Yes, no, or maybe. Or maybe they won't respond at all. Like a boss of mine once said, if you don't ask, it's an automatic no.

I'm sure I could fine a local News/Talk FM Broadcast station to get local weather reports. My main question is WHY something as important as NOAA doesn't have at least a couple UHF channels? Not trying yo start a big debate over which radio to get or anything.

Notice I didn't say "transmit" on 400-470MHz, my KG-805g will RECEIVE on any 400-470MHz channel, I can only transmit on 462/467MHz. With NOAA I only care about receiving. I have radios I use for GMRS too that'll get NOAA, FM Broadcast, MURS and even one that gets Airband but most of those are unlocked HAM radios. With something like the 805g(which will get broadcast FM radio) or the 905g(which will only receive 400-470MHz) there's no NOAA channels that I can use.

I`m a Kenwood fan. Mobile wise, I started with the tk-863, its a good base choice for a mobile radio on the cheap but doesn't have the OST option. I still have two of them put up for potential future use. Depending on how you program it it's quite versatile. but I moved over to the tk-8180 k2 (the K2, 400-470mhz) and it's fantastic. its extremely versatile. OST, massive channel capacity (so far I have 7 states worth of specific repeaters programmed in and labeled by location and I`ve barely made a dent in its capacity), with a DTMF mic I have all my controls at my fingertips... all the standard pl tones in one selectable list (40 available)for oddball situations. hi/low power, wide and narrow band capability, and with the band limits, I can monitor 70CM and local business if I choose. And the software/cables are EASY to get/ Bluemax49er on Ebay sells the good/right stuff for 30 ish bucks, and I'll verify that the software for both listed radios runs on win 11. there is a learning cure, but there always is. mine are 30 watt, but if you get the HK versions you get 45 watts. but I tend to nerd out and it's a lot of fluff (in a good way). Anyhoo, just my 2 cents. best of luck to you! pic below 863 left 8180 right