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Copper J-Poles are pretty hard to build for UHF, you must get the precise measurements to a T for the frequencies and they extremely hard to tune SWR's. As others suggested the best way to tune them is via a NANO VNA. I came up with a sliding adjustment gimmick for tuning SWR that works well. Made with cooper compression splices you can get at home depot.

That doesn't matter. as long as you have 2-inches or so of metal on all sides around the bottom, and no metal is blocking the signal (ie; like if was mounted in the bed of a truck), you're fine.

From Bioenno Long story, you can but you probably shouldn't.

Get an antenna analyzer and check and see what the center resonance is then check the VSWRs with the radio in-line with the antenna transmission system. Check your station output power with a Load Terminator that measures at 50 ohms. Also, make sure that repeater you're trying to access is either a wideband operation or a narrowband operation and set your station accordingly.

WRUE951, thanks I ran it in admin mode and voila it worked. All installed and running like a champ. Something so easy to overlook, and it just takes a comment or a suggestion from somebody else to try, and the rest is history.

Ask away! Most of the knowledgeable people here are extremely helpful. There's no place on the internet which doesn't have some jerks, but there are fewer here than in most places.

CHIRP's idea of zones is very different from zoned Baofeng (and similar) brands. I think it may be based on some high-end radio. Anyway, to CHIRP, zones are a table where you can use a checkbox to put a channel into one (or more, or zero) zones. On the Baofeng radios, zone names are basically text strings that live in the settings menu and channels go into zones based on channel number as someone described above. Regarding your issues with the BTECH CPS, I'd be very interested in hearing about them, since I wrote that software. Assuming you are using CPS version 1.2.5l, can you give me more details (via DM if you like). In particular, were the unexpected channels created on the radio after a write, or did the duplicates appear in the programming software? If you have a .dat file that causes the problem, I'd like to see it. You can either DM me here or email BTECH support (not putting the email address here to foil spam crawlers) and just put "Terri asked me to have you forward this to her" near the top of your email if you don't want to reach out to me directly (just because I say I wrote it is no proof that I did, although the "About" box will provide a hint). Before we get that far, can you load your .dat file and just click "[Next]" at the bottom of the channel window to go through all 10 zones? You might get a message about corrupted data when moving to a new zone. The CPS assumes that if it's in a .dat file it can load, it's valid. But paging through each zone does additional checks to make sure all the settings are valid.

I'm using a 40 watt radio with 50 ft of RG 213. Moving my antenna high enough to get a clear line of sight made all the difference. Turns out, I was misreading the line of sight graph. Now, I can carry on clear conversations with all the repeaters within my local area.

I wouldn’t, but it’s up to you.

The problem was the antenna height. My SWR is really good and I'm using 50 ft of RG213. I moved the antenna up from around 9 feet to around 15 feet. Now, I'm reliably getting through the repeater around 30 miles away. There's a little static, but just enough to remind me that I'm on a radio.

As long as the center pin on the pl-259 is big enough to accept the center stranded conductor of the cable without a bird’s nest that shorts against the shield, you’ll be fine. You might want to tin the center conductor tip so it slides through the hollow center pin without any strands bunching up.

That's innovative. I went a different way with the tuning, though and got my right around 1.05. Today, I raised my antenna by about six feet, which greatly improved the situation. Turns out, the line of sight tool shows a green line of sight even if there's some topography in the way. The extra six feet cleared things up. Sometime over the next few weeks, I'm going to move it up another 10 or 15 feet. -Steve

A lot will depend on the gain of the antenna. According to the https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/; you will get an ERP of 1.9 watts when using a radio with 5 watts output, 100 ft of RG-213, and an antenna with 1 dBd of gain. As you can see the calculated ERP is 1.9 watts Now the ERP will go up as the antenna gain goes up. So if the antenna gain is 2 dBd then the ERP will be 2.4 watts. And if you jump up to a gain of 5 dBd then the ERP will be 4.7 watts One thing to keep in mind is that most antenna manufacturers list the gain in dBi while most loss calculators use dBd. Subtract 2.14 from the dBi value to get the dBd value. The kv5r coax loss calculator is not exact but it is close enough to see what the loss difference is between different types of coax and at different lengths.

So maybe our used UV-5Rs will be worth more. Maybe we can use a UV-5R or TD-H3 etc. as a basic unit of trade.

The site went through a stretch where repeaters were inadvertently being duplicated when people clicked on them and chose “My Repeater”. I suspect that is responsible for at least some of the duplication.

It's working now (state +freq, and state+type).

Try higher and better antenna. Go to doughnut shop, get maple bars. Works for me but I’m only five miles from repeater and the doughnut shop is even closer. Pro tip make sure to get what kind the spouse likes if you have one. I may be distracted this morning. Sorry. Doughnuts…

I also was going to ask if you did a factory reset, that and have you tried swapping the antenna back?

Ok, my not mean anything but I have seen some people who are trying to figure out what has cause some TD-H3s to fail and one theory is that when the battery is fully charged it might start outputting high voltage before the charger cable is unplugged. They are thinking that surge might be affecting the radio if it is attached at the time.

The bigger question is “why do you care?” Did someone prevent you from putting up a repeater of your own? With multiple channels and tones available, one can certainly own and operate a repeater if they desire. I can see the Bernie bumper sticker on your Prius from way over here…..

-Move the antenna higher - Use a better antenna - More power - Accept the fact that you get what you get and be happy with that

Contact their support and see what they say - if they give you the run-around, or dont help, just send it back and tell them to send you one that works or give you back your money. Amazon makes this VERY easy to do.

It doesn't mean it's real or correct.

There really isn’t, but there are enough new people here and hopefully kindly experienced people that you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable asking questions. Yeah, there are always some people who attempt to display how knowledgeable they are simply by emphasizing others’ lack of knowledge. Please don’t let them win. Ask whatever you want.

So, are you experiencing this issue with zero output when you’re trying to transmit on 325 MHz? What about when you try to transmit on other frequencies: 2 meter, 70 cm, or GMRS frequencies?

What does “duty cycle” mean? I bring up duty cycle every time I hear somebody talking about making a repeater out of cheap Chinese mobiles and worse any type of handhelds. Duty cycle is the maximum time an amplifier may transmit within a five minute interval, expressed as a percentage, to avoid overheating. Suppose a mobile amplifier is rated at 30% duty cycle. This means that it may transmit for no longer than 1.5 minutes and must remain off for not less than 3.5 minutes. Some people forget that a repeater is transmitting for 2 or more people, duty cycle will be reached quickly if you get into conversation. More people in the conversation just amplifies the issue. Once a radio reaches it's thermal design limits it will no longer be able to adequately cool the output transistors. Even if a radio is not hot to the touch the transistors are, in part because of the inefficient transfer of heat to the units housing or internal heat sink. The longer you exceed the duty cycle the more heat builds on the transistors, surrounding electronics and heat sink effecting it's ability to remain on frequency without spurious emissions. Exceed duty cycle long enough and you will need a new transmitter or radio. I have tested a few Baofang and TYT radios on my service monitor without great results. All of the radios started deviating outside of the allotted channel bandwidth after simulated conversation at 50% duty cycle, the longer I allowed this the worse if got. Testing was done using an Aeroflex 2975 IFR recently back from the calibration lab. GMRS is a tiny sliver of spectrum surrounded by the commercial land mobile part 90 service. It is important that any repeaters that are built or re-purposed are held to the highest standards and operated as to not cause any interference inside or outside of our allocated spectrum. I wont get into the part 90/95 debate but i do stand firm that non certified import equipment has no place on GMRS.

I got really curious how many GMRS repeaters are owned or licensed by a single license on the reported repeaters here on MyGMRS. So i put together a quick little (actually pretty large) report that shows just that. The parameters are 3 repeaters and above and identified by single call sign as reported. I really didn't expect to see some of the numbers some folks have in the number of repeaters. Holly Cow!. Can you imagine the investment some of these folks have made. So the next question,, Why?? does a single user need so many repeaters for a service meant for family and friends. Especially, after considering how the FCC has clarified its usage. I can see now why some folks in certain areas complain of no bandwidth. Certainly some areas in the mid west and east just have not room.. Just Trivia stuff and very interesting. MultibleRepeaters April2025.pdf

When you want to connect two or more LiFePO4 batteries together you top charge them individually and then when they are all fully charged you can put them in series or parallel. If you put two batteries together that are of unsimilar charged state they might discharge into one another but the protection circuits in each battery will shut it down if the current levels get excessive and out of the set spec of the BMS.

Outstanding that worked out for you.

If you're going to stay with Midland, I would recommend with the MXT500 for the 99 channel capacity. Another option would be used Kenwoods or Motorola radios like the Kenwood TK-880 or TK-8180. The TK-880 is a 250 channel radio and the TK-8180 is a 520 channel radio. For Motorola either the XTL2500 or XTL5000. The XTL2500 would be either the 520 or 840 channel radio, depending on the flashing, and the XTL5000 is a 1000 channel radio.

One of the things I mentioned when I started here was how tight my neighborhood is. I wondered about this very idea. But decided to get better educated before jumping in. Because of the fairly short distances I don't think any sort of repeater is needed. I'll continue to watch this thread for ideas.

I can think of one advantage of answering your phone home with your mic. Here using a handheld phone while driving illegally (never enforced but still technically against the law) but using a hand handheld microphone isn't.

You can pair with a speaker and it works, but anything with a mic no joy unless it is your phone. I still cannot see the benefit of answering my phone on my radio since if the radio is in range of my phone, I can just use the phone? It is dumb. Seems to me that they could make this a full-functioning TNC and corner the cheap market, at least on the ham side where you can do digital modes. Agreed on Chirp, not only is it a much better application and interface, I've found that some of the settings won't stick if I use ODMaster (such as channel display and dual watch) but will if I use Chirp. Since all my radios except one (5RH Pro GPS) are compatible with Chirp, I have basically one file that I can use for all my ham radios and one for GMRS radios. Honestly, this radio wasn't worth buying in my case as far as being a good addition to my collection, I have several others that work as well if not better that don't have the bugs and quirks this one does. It is small and light, I'll give it that, but that can be a con as well as a pro. At least if it does an Alice Cooper and goes under my wheels, I won't shed a tear. Then again, that fits for most of my radios as they were purchased with that possibility in mind .

I'm not sure "investment" is the word I'd use

As others have said many of the repeaters you have listed are bogus but everyone adds stuff to this site thinking its some way to "save" a channel or somthing. So going by the site list is really useless. As for why someone may have more repeaters, I'll use myself as an example. Also before you ask none of mine are listed anywhere as I dont feel I need to. They are my property and I maintaint them for my use. So back to my repeaters. I have 2 in my area for a north and south coverage footprint. Both can be accessed from me at home or my parents house. I also have 2 repeaters in another state. I use those when I am in that state as does my family and friends. I also have a repeater for my motorhome so it goes where I go. So I can see how some folks may have multiple. JMHO..

@UncleYoda, How about this. I did two different searches. Both for open repeaters in South Carolina. The screenshots are below. One saw 39 repeaters. The other returned none.

Take what's reported as repeaters with a grain of salt. One of the multi repeater sites you have on your list in my area is just plain fantasy. Your listing shows 9 repeaters for the call when there is actually only one low power network (maybe why it shows so many repeaters) hotspot that he runs on rare occasion. There is on the other hand another guy that your list shows has 4 but has 6 repeaters. All of them are stand alone (not linked), on different frequencies (but same tones) and cover most of the west coast of Florida from Bradenton to Naples (around 120 miles spaced around 20-25 miles apart) and a few of them are quite strong. It's kinda nice to be able to drive the I-75 route south of Tampa and have reliable repeaters along the way. At least that's what I know of in my area, others I'm sure are different.

I'm pretty sure I got the right one. If not, I'll have learned something and also have more parts in my box of trinkets that may be useful later (aka, stuff my kids will have to haul to the landfill when I die).

Just today, I heard a guy use his ham callsign on a GMRS repeater. I told him the FCC will take away his dessert tonight.

As a newbie here but an old fart who dates back to dialup and bulletin boards I can tell you anytime you are a newbie you need two assets. One, thick skin. There are always "individuals" who get off proving they are superior by belittling others. And two, a well developed BS meter that allows you to learn which sources provide good info and which supply BS by the truck load. I've found that the need to prove superiority and dispense BS tend to go hand in hand. Are there such "individuals" here. Of course, they tend to want folks to think a forum is their domain. They tend to repeat their "party line" over and over and over again. But once spotted simply ignore them and it will be a great resource. One way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to start a topic and ask a question. The mentoring type will answer with good info. The self appointed experts usually start with derision.

"He said Hymen..." -Butthead

My handshakes bring all the HAMS to the yard They're like, it's better than MURS Damn right, it's better than MURS You can key up, but we'll have to charge...

its fun and entertaining at first, then it just gets old.. I've found it more productive to add him to my block list.

You're not getting it right, get it right. You're just discrediting yourself and demonstrating that you are a perfect example of a certified genuine "Sad Ham".

By misquoting @H8SPVMT you very obviously define yourself.

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

Speaking of someone not having anything better to do…

I don't know to what extent any agency monitors radio traffic, but I know with absolute certainty that the US government has the capability to hear and talk to basically anything that puts out a signal. Many years ago, I was in an "off the road" village in central Alaska when an earthquake took out the phones for an area about the size of Colorado. There were quite a few isolated villages in that area. Within a few hours, there were aircraft in the air (E-3 AWACS would be my guess since they're stationed in Alaska) which could talk to literally anyone with a radio -- CB, marine, GMRS, Ham, you name it and they could talk to it. It was critical in knowing which villages had casualties, etc. You feel a lot less lonely just knowing you can get a message out. Satellite phones didn't exist yet. I suppose it would be different now. I once asked an AWAC crew member about their comms and he said, "If we want to, we can pick up the infrasound elephants communicate with."

Did you save the "factory fresh" image by reading the radio with CHIRP and saving it to a disk file and never changing it? If so, loading that image and writing it to the radio should fix things. Sometimes manufacturers change the firmware (and memory locations of "internal" settings) but don't bother to change the firmware version displayed or reported to CHIRP.