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YOU are SUCH a DICK !! Just because you Don't own it, Doesn't mean nobody else can't like it !!! KEEPING Your mouth Shut would be the Best service you could provide !!

I have one of these 40Ah battery packs myself for emergency use. I also purchased the matching charger for it. https://www.bioennopower.com/products/12v-40ah-lfp-battery-pvc-blf-1240a The attached photo shows mine and the charger. The battery pack in the fanny pouch is a smaller LiFePO4 one and the matching charger to use when walking around. Remember with a LiFePO4 battery you might not really need a 100Ah battery pack. The typical Lead-Acid battery exhibits a "Peukert Effect", which is where the Lead Acid battery has lower usable capacity when discharged at high rates. https://battlebornbatteries.com/peukert-effect/?srsltid=AfmBOoqoAjoBFTa9CHSm0C6i9hwZ_TdVi0DgazQTAiQ5bTzVMyMOrxyX Further the voltage drops to 11.5 to 12 volts around 50 percent or so of remaining capacity. Most mobile radios are spec'd at 13.8 VDC +/- 15%, so the lower voltage limit is at 11.75 VDC. Look at the attached datasheet for a typical 12Ah sealed Lead Acid battery pack and check out the "Battery discharge characteristics" curves. With a LiFePO4 battery, which doesn't suffer from the "Peukert Effect", you can use anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of the capacity and still be at 12.8 volts, well above the lower limit for portable mobile type radios. That means you can expect to get nearly the same usable operating time out of a LiFePO4 battery that you would expect to get out of a Lead Acid type with nearly double the capacity rating. BP12-12.pdf

Line of sight does make more of a difference when using VHF and UHF. I'm glad to hear that you are getting into all of the repeaters now. A j pole antenna has zero gain when measured in dBd, which is the same as a dipole antenna. Using the kv5r loss calculator and your specs, you will have an ERP of 21.8 watts. As you see that will still work even though you are losing about half your power output. Switching to 50 feet of LMR400 will only gain you 6.9 more watts on ERP. I would not bother switching out the RG-213 to LMR400 for that little power gain. What will make a difference is going with an antenna with higher gain. But no need to change anything if it is working well for your needs.

Yes, PLEASE USE ITm, as often as you like. If you hear me in there, say hello. All are welcome to the machine. If you can get into the Columbus 575, again, use that one too. We want people to use these repeaters. And don't forget about the Morrow 550, it's open as well. I have put a good bit of time and effort into getting the repeater on the air, and really do what others to use it. That's why it got built. The comment about the folks that build 'big repeaters' wasn't a knock. I am one of those guys. The 675 talks from as far Northwest as Mechanicsburg, West to London, South to Lancaster and East to Zanesville. It's got a big footprint. Yeah, I have a couple radios at the house if the wife wants to get in contact, but she just always calls my phone. So please, feel free. And anyone else reading this in the Central Ohio area, get in there. You ARE certainly welcome. I got spooled up because we have people that want to do nothing but complain. And it drives off new guys, or makes them question if they should be using other peoples equipment. And the truth is that's why it's there to begin with. If I just wanted to chat with my wife, I have several other methods to do that with. First is the obvious cell phone. Everyone's got one of those. Then there is the IP phone system at the house that I have a softphone application on my phone for. Runs across an encrypted data link from my cell phone via a VPN tunnel to the house and then allows her to call me at my 'extension' number like calling another phone on a business phone system. Then there's email and text, and voice message texts, and CB radio and the list goes on. Now in truth. Having a repeater that has that sort of coverage, and not leaving it fully open to all licensed users, to me, that's BS. Make no mistake, it talks a long way, and it would be very difficult for someone else to use that pair. So if I built that out, and then denyed anyone else the ability to use that repeater, that would make me an A-hole in my eyes. That's the one thing about the garage repeaters, you can have one or two in every town, on the same pair, and they don't interfere with each other since the coverage is small. Mine ain't that at all.

AGREED !! I used to work with someone who acted like that ...

Just add him to your ignore list. His comments are not worth getting worked up about.

There shouldn't be any in the firmware. I hate release notes that say "here's 2 new features and we fixed some other stuff". If you look at the V33 release notes, it covers everything, including stuff most users will never see (like fixing the diagnostic screen you get if you hold "8" while powering-on). There are some manufacturing keypress combos, and I know some, but not all of them (and can't tell). In the CPS, what you see is what's there. The only "secret" (which I've previously mentioned) is that 1.2.5m will eventually (1-2 months after the BTECH release) become available in my "Modified UV-17 Pro GPS (and similar models)" CPS, and will include BF-F8HP Pro support along with all of the other models. It won't have the BTECH branding or the BTECH-exclusive features like the firmware update utility. The most recent UV-17/"Generic" release was 1.2.5k (1.25l was for the BF-F8HP Pro only) and you can get it here.

Be a gas to ragchew with U OM! I did some of the WPX last weekend. I know I'll never have a massive score, but mine do help the Club which consistently does very well in most. During the CQWW DX this last time, got to hear one of the premier contest station's operators say "shit, shit, shit..." on the air when his logging software took a dump on him mid pileup. I contest to help the club score big, work that rare DX, aometimes just to operate a mode I don't normally get a chance to. RTTY for one as it's been a favorite since my Army days, but no one wants to QSO on rtty anymore it seems!

And we are back to the "Guys that build BIG repeaters" want people to use them. I have banned exactly ONE person from my repeater. I did that because he got mad at ME for not banning someone else from my repeater. So since he didn't want to hear the guy on my repeater, I banned him. In this day and age, don't think your leaching off an open repeater owner. If he wanted money, or assistance with labor or anything like that, he would ask. Or he would close the repeater and start charging fee's for access. As a repeater owner, I can tell you this is true. We haven't invested the time and money into building out this stuff for it to sit dormant. If you have repeaters in your area that are OPEN, with posted PL/DPL codes, and they state they are open access repeaters. USE THEM. That is what they are there for. The owners WANT people to use them or they wouldn't be listed as open. Don't expect them to invite you yo them. Listing them as open and posting the codes or having the codes announced over the air in some cases, is all the invitation you are gonna get. But don't think you are leaching. You don't build a repeater system out that covers multiple counties for your own private use. It's done because they want to support the GMRS radio community. Because, not every GMRS user has the access to a tower or the ability to build out a big repeater. Those of us that do, to this to support others.

These and other fixes will be in 1.2.5m. Unfortunately, I can't make some changes to the CPS until I get firmware that's close to the release version, and then I deliver the CPS to BTECH and they validate it before releasing it. With the original V29 firmware and CPS 1.2.5l, new features in pre-release test firmware were pretty well set and the remaining firmware versions were bug fixes or UI improvements that didn't affect the CPS. Firmware V33 was released while I was out in the Mojave Desert - the reason that elevation now works properly instead of telling you you're at an altitude that requires supplemental oxygen is because I took a radio to Badwater Basin (282 feet below sea level) as well as other locations (see picture) to verify the accuracy of the reported altitude. The firmware change notes were written by me at my campsite and uploaded via satcom ($$$) to BTECH because I was in the middle of nowhere. The changes to enable SK1 and add NOAA were felt to be minor enough to wait for 1.2.5m. 1.2.5m should release either with or within a few weeks after the next firmware update is released. That isn't entirely under my control. It adds the SK1 and NOAA changes as well as many other changes - both bugfixes and improvements to the CPS and its manual, as well as support for the new features coming in the next firmware release. One complicating factor is that Baofeng won't give BTECH certain critical information I need to make some CPS updates until BTECH says "this firmware is good - put it in new radios". Then it's a mad scramble for me to finish the CPS and get it to BTECH for testing. I can't tell you about new features or other things in the upcoming firmware release, but I will say that 1.2.5l was my internal build number 290 (since 2023). The forthcoming 1.25m is now up to build number 319 and I still have 5 critical pending items and another 10 WIBNI (Wouldn't It Be Nice If...) feature requests that won't hold up the release of 1.2.5m if I don't get to them. 2 of the 5 critical ones can't be addressed until BTECH approves the next firmware release and I get the data I need from Baofeng.

I don't know how it got to this. I will tell you how it will end though. There seems to be an almost 'ham club' mentality about having a repeater. Long ago, someone told me if you found a town with 2 hams in it, there would be a minimum of 3 ham clubs. Because each one want's to have his own thing, and then the third club they are both members of. GMRS repeater ownership (and I use to see this a LOT in ham too) somehow is some status symbol, or just 'part of having the license'. People will stand up a medium to poor coverage repeater hanging an antenna at 20 feet in the air just so they can hear their call sign in CW on the air. Not that they know CW or know it's correct, but it's THEIR repeater. Never mind there is a monster coverage repeater or two in the area that everyone has access to, they need to do their own thing for whatever reason they have. SO here's the outcome. Guys that build monster coverage GMRS repeaters do it for others to enjoy and operate on. There is no other reason to build a repeater like that. It's far easier and cheaper to just build one with the antenna on the end of your garage and be done with it. This happens at a cost in time, money and labor. You don't park antenna's multiple hundreds of feet in the air using LMR400 or RG8. Antenna's that will put up with the wind at 200 feet do NOT come from Ed Fong, Retivis, or Comet. And they certainly aren't cheap. When the little play time repeaters start pulling the users away from the big repeaters, and it's not the asset that it was, or the owner doesn't see it that way, they will QUICKLY decide that it's not worth the effort to keep theirs on the air and the big repeaters will go away. You will go from being able to talk across an entire county on one repeater to hopscotching across a city from repeater to repeater trying to carry on a conversation that would have been no problem on the big repeater. And you can sit here and pontificate all you want about that not being the roll of GMRS. NO ONE care's. Figure it out. That's what it's being used for regardless of what you say, the regulations indicate, or the FCC has conveyed. It's a social gathering medium. Pure and simple. So while it may be meant for that use. It's what it's being used for. I just personally experienced a setback with a project at my site. We crested $400 A MONTH for the electric bill. I was looking to run an inverter to power part of the gear that will not power off DC any reasonable way. But converting 48 volts to 120 volts and the feeding servers don't make them draw less, the draw went up significantly. Which lead me to look at what I am sitting on. I have a bunch of good 75 and 105 Ah AGM batteries that would sell easily for 50 bucks a pop. Just the 48 volt plant batteries are worth a grand. Then there are another 12 divided between the 12 and 24 volt plants. So another thousand plus dollars. IN BATTERIES, sitting there so that others can use the repeaters I host for NO cost to them. SO yes, when it seems that Elvis as left the building and the repeaters aren't getting used, they will be shut off, sold off and I will NOT care in the slightest. I can't wrap my mind around why we are getting on here and COMPLAINING about the actions of others. Are these other repeaters interfering with YOUR repeater? Are you unable to put up you own 20 foot antenna for your own repeater that will equally not serve anyone, and have less coverage than two walkies on simplex? I fail to understand the issue here. Do you have thousands of dollars in equipment that the user base is slowly dwindling away because they put up their own repeaters and they choose to go hang out on them and talk to no one because no one is in the coverage footprint besides them?

Good news for those of us who have been waiting. I think the title about says it. Cheers and a thank you to Mel Terechenok at Chirp.

anyone have one of these stashed in their closet or attic

Nice! Glad yall are enjoying those UV5G+ radios! I hear those are awesome! Note that the Baofeng AR-5RM radio is basically a clone of the UV5G+/UV5RM, BUT is unlocked. So take that for what it's worth. I know that I love having more monitoring options (and transmitting options -- when properly licensed or in emergency situations). Either way, welcome to the GMRS radio world and I look forward to making contact with ya!

The Tid H8 is supposedly a 10w HT radio. I don't have equipment to measure that claim (I forget what that meter is called). But I will say that I get better "mileage" out of my h8 over my h3. What I mean by mileage is that the radio doesn't heat up as fast. And the difference is ABSOLUTELY noticeable. Even when transmitting on high power. That said, I don't have difference hitting my preferred repeaters (gallatin, brentwood, brentwood grasslands, & lebanon) with either the H3 or H8. But the H8 just seems to "go for longer" -- that's what she said -- before my signal starts to degrade. I'll say this. The tone of the speaker on the H8 is MUCH more pleasant than the H3 also, if that matters to you. It's a bit more full and not so thin and sharp. So there's that.

Look at the Kenwood TK-3170, but only 128 channels and 128 zones. It also has Part 95 certification. I carry one of these around for UHF Ham and GMRS. It uses the typical K1 type plug, like most or the Chinese radios use, for programming and speaker mic accessories. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/263-tk-3170jpg/?context=new

That is awesome to hear. Maybe I’ll use some gmrs repeaters more often hearing your pov and knowing you actually want to promote the use of the Johnstown one. I’ll see if I can hit it reliably on my drive home from work today!! And I wasn’t being rude about the “guys who build big repeaters comment”….. if it came across that way(?).

Anything commercial from Harris/Motorola/Kenwood TK-3140 has Part 95 approval and can do multiple zones up to 250 total channels. You likely won't find anything in the cheaper chinese radio market.

Stop fantasizing...

That left hand reveals the Alien inside...

Thanks for confirming this. The radio with out trying Bluetooth is junk but try to add Bluetooth and it’s a whole new level of trash can. 2 people I know purchased this radio and had the exact same findings. I messed with them for a few hours and this is exactly what happened to me. The very next day they got sent back. They instead picked up some uv9 radios for less money with all the accessories and 771 antennas. . Hooked them up to chirp and had them hitting repeaters 60miles away and 40mile simplex within 15min out of the box. Some times simple is best. Keep It Simple

Thanks. That's good to know.

You always have something sarcastic to say on peoples post stop being a lame troll

Now that I know such a thing exists, it appears they're not prohibitively expensive. here and here $50 seems cheap enough to avoid blowing up my house.

That's what I wanted to know. Thank you. Off-grid solar/battery arrays apparently typically have some sophisticated circuitry associated with them and it probably balances the voltages. 50 Ah will probably give me plenty of standby capability. Certainly enough to go swap the battery. I have damaged shoulders, and I prefer not to deal with the weight of a 100 Ah battery, especially if I want to take it somewhere else. I can always buy one later if I change my mind.

When you attempt to transmit, do you hear the repeater "squelch tail" (signal without modulation) for a few seconds after you release the PTT button?

100% agreement. I will continue to maintain the Retevis programming application on my computer--- but I don't use it. The Chirp program, in my opinion, is much easier to use for the RA87.

FWIW, I've never declined an access request to my repeater (detailed on the previous page). The only reason I don't publish the tones and label it as "open" is because word will get out (beyond the members here) and I'll have people on the repeater who won't respect either FCC regulations or my own rules. With request "by access request", I know that whoever is asking at least has a GMRS license and I have their contact info should I need to make operational changes to the repeater that need to be announced.

Let me know if my PM reply to your PM on this helped.. if so I can post it here to help ohters in the future.

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.

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.

That is the important part. I changed the Tx power calibrations on my radio by accident using the factory debug software (sorry, I can't share, please don't ask). A Surecom SW-102 hooked directly up to the radio didn't register any power or even the frequency I was "transmitting" on. However, another radio next to it could hear it and we could carry on a conversation in the same room, but not at any greater distance. If the OP can talk to the other radio at 1/4 mile in simplex, then I'd look to see that the Tx / Rx (if used) tones for accessing the repeater didn't get clobbered somehow.

I am considering the Wouxun KG-905G based on a test done recently by myself and a friend. His house is over 13 miles away from mine. While testing my 10-watt portable repeater he could receive on his various inexpensive handhelds but couldn't really make out any words. However, on his Wouxun KG-905G he could hear me clearly with little background noise. This may never be an issue for most folks (receiving while on the fringe of coverage) but it did show that there is a difference, at least on receiving. This is probably simply due to the Wouxun KG-905G being a super heterodyne radio.

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.

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.

You can safely connect LiPo4 batteries in series or parallel or both. LiPo4 batteries do have a BMS (battery control module) that protects them. Always use the exact same size and capacity batteries when connecting multiple LiPo4 batteries together. It is also advisable to make sure they are the same age. IE you don't want to connect a brand new inline with an old battery I run 4 10AH LiPo4 batteries hooked in parallel in my small battery box and two 50 AH LiPo4 batteries connected in parallel in my big go box. I also have an Apache case with two 10 AH LiPo4 batteries and a spot for my Xiegu G90. I can run those two batteries separately or in parallel if I want.

ODmaster is terrible imo. Am I the only one who dislikes that horrid app?

I recently got my first radio a TidRadio TD-H3 though now i want something for home use with a bit more power

IF you 'fried' your radio, it was not because it was connected to a Ghost antenna, unless that antenna or your wiring is defective/shorted. My guess is you've messed up a setting, which is statistically far, FAR more likely than any damage to the radio.

Use chirp, the retevis software is almost as as bad as trying to program the radio from the face. Took me about 15 mins with chirp to program 80 channels. On the "left" and "right" https://chirpmyradio.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home

No necessalry the 'rage'. Just something that got literally out of hand. Of course, i can see why someone like Cogent wants to keep the sharks flying. Big Money!

Works fine here. Must be user-error. Try again, but this time click the button harder!

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.

Step defines the spacing between frequencies when in VFO mode. Because GMRS has predetermined channels set in regulation it really doesn’t apply but if it’s set too high it can block entering an approved frequency from the front panel. Set it lower than 6 kHz.

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.

Follow the instructions when cutting and your antenna will work perfectly and yield great performance. I have one and it works great. And if you want to gain an extra 2db, polish the brass rods to a mirror finish with Brasso. This is an old RF engineer trick.

NaNa NoNo has spoken.

Just because he can hit the repeater does not mean anyone wants to talk to him.

Why are you here? We all already know what an A-hole is, there is no need to keep giving us an example. Shouldn't you be busy talking to all your friends on a repeater 200 miles away.

I have only seen new butter bars do something like that . I received a lot of good training while stationed at Ft Devens in 1991. I went through Jungle Warfare in Panama in 1989 and combat lifesaver course while stationed in Germany in 1993. Like a lot of skills, using military radios is a perishable skill after a while. I doubt that I could operate a SINGARS radio now days.