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I have multiple repeaters. None are listed. I dont need or want them listed. Why should others list my repeater ?

There is no requirement that a GMRS repeater owner list their repeater information here on this website, or any other website. Why get fixated on finding out information that that repeater owner has not made public? Who cares??? What if the owner only puts it on the air when he knows that he will need to use it himself to communicate with those he has already shared the information with? I agree with @OffRoaderX, go outside and get some fresh air and sunshine. I would also recommend touching some grass as well. Just don't bring your radio with you!

Based on GrouserPad’s experience that’s not uncommon, unfortunately. There’s no reason to doubt your (or his) experience. TD H3s apparently arrive dead or die shortly after. Don’t waste time double checking yourself. Send it back, preferably for a different radio. You’re fine starting another thread but you would have been okay piggybacking on GrouserPad’s thread. Welcome to the forum!

The definition of an open repeater is one that has been deemed so by the owner. GMRS repeaters are privately owned. You don’t have the right to list them, only the owner does. Furthermore a repeater having a matching output does not make it open, in fact programming the output (receive) isn’t even need to operate a repeater or hear it.

Hello, I set up a quick and dirty base station antenna in my attic. It's a Midland MXTA26 antenna fed by a MXTA24 NMO cable. I put a 14" aluminum pizza pan under it as a ground plane. I have about $55 into this setup. The radio is a Wouxun KGSX20G+ fed by a Pyramid 12Amp power supply. So far I think it's working well. I guess I need some adapters to test this setup with my Surecom meter but no smoke yet. Any tips or critiques appreciated. I wanted to test the attic concept before committing to more expensive hardware.

Going to agree with Steve on this. Given everything other reply from OP it seems as though either the connector didn't go as well as thought (the multimeter test doesn't show as much as a VNA does) or something is wrong with the coax. Age of the coax? I may have missed this. How long has it been outside? Have you sealed the connectors against the weather? Almost sounds like the connectors are the source, but that is just from antenna building experience as when all else fails, it's almost always the connector.

At least it's not water infected like mine got. I went from a 1.15 to a 2.08 and reception and transmission were affected substantially. Under 26ºF everything went good. As soon as it went over freezing it went bad. After the cold weather went away so did my reception and transmission. Replaced the bad antenna and coax section got swapped over to Heliax. Great stuff. Good luck with solving your issue. It's never fun when it happens and you can't figure out why.

I love this bar.

Ahh... bummer.

I guess you can tell what was on my mind while typing that. It's been fixed.

Excellent Typo there. Touch what?

Geezus phorking Khriest ... dude... Go outside and get some fresh air and sunshine.

Just thrown on a fold down secretary desk. No real organization to it. Just made it fit. The new power supply and radio are bigger than the old so it's more cramped. The radio is just on it's mobile mount laying on the table, it has the angle adapter on the display as it comes from the factory.

Here's my little setup. Of course the KG1000G+ radio, then a Jesverty 30A switching power supply with a Surecom 102 SWR meter and my wife's trusty TD H3. The power supply is new. The old one was a Pyramid but lacked the amps to drive the radio. It was able to run my KC XS20G+ to 29 watts out but won't drive the KG1000G+ to 20 watts for whatever reason. The extra power pushed my SWR up from 1.01 to 1.03 on my Comet CA 712EFC antenna. Power seems spot on. On the repeater 467MHz channels it's pushing 49.x watts and on the lower 15-22 channels looks like it outputting a bit over 51 watts. Haven't tried into a dummy load yet. Looks like I'm stuck with my DMR noise, no real change unfortunately. The speaker output is much louder than the XS20G+. The fan coming on every time you transmit is annoying. Guess the silence of the XS20G+ has me spoiled. 3 power settings is really 4. The medium setting has a menu choice of 10 or 20 watts, I keep it at 20. Low outputs 4.8 watts, medium 20.5 watts and of course high 49 watts. We'll have to see about the sensitivity of the superheterodyne receiver as time moves on.

When I got my first pair of HTs they were the TDH3 but the HAM version. Shortly after I discovered they could be switched over to GMRS. I looked into it and discovered the licensing was just $35 and that covered the family. The process was a pain and by the time I had finished up I had 8 windows open that were required to obtain this license. Not really the surprise. After playing with these radios I was surprised to find out my wife didn't hate them. After a short while I ended up getting a mobile tranceiver that I put in the house as a base station. My wife didn't really care for talking on it but she did like to listen to the active repeater. Eventually I put up a good antenna and I got a mobile unit so I could keep in touch with my wife. She enjoyed being able to contact me. I put up a repeater at my shop and even though communication was difficult because of hills and trees she enjoyed contacting me by the radio over texting or phone unless she couldn't get me through the radio. Eventually I found out my antenna and/or coax was faulty and changed that out and now the connection is much better. My repeater is 50w and the mobile is 20w and the repeater can get to the house better than the house can get to the repeater. So I decided to get a 50w for the house. Ordered the power supply and the radio. The PS came today and my wife was excited. She knew nothing of what I had ordered. She thought I got a new radio. I was a bit shocked. The normal expectation when a husband spend money without the wife knowing about it on his hobby is to be frowned up or worse, being yelled at. She was disappointed that it was a power supply and not a radio. She still doesn't know I ordered the radio. I didn't want to take the surprise away from her when it does arrive. Can a guy be more lucky.

Use a Polyphaser arrestor with N connectors and grounded with least an 8 awg wire to the house earth ground. Don't screw around with cheap junk.

RG-213 has 5.28dB/70% loss at 100 feet and LMR-400 has 2.87dB/48% loss at 100 feet. The calculations were made using 50 watts in and an SWR of 1.5. You can get away with using RG-213 but LMR-400 will definitely work better. Cheaper alternatives to LMR-400 is DX Engineering 400MAX or R&L Electronics Jetstream 400Flex. As @nokones stated, stay away from the cheap stuff from Amazon and eBay. The cheaper stuff will have less ground shielding plus some use aluminum instead of copper shielding. You definitely won't get as good of a solder joint on your connectors with aluminum shielding, if you can even get the solder to stick to it.

LOL. Dear Sir, your contributions to this site more than make up for any beer deficit. Please consider the accounts balanced.

Agreed. I have mine hooked up to a DB-25G, but I've come to the same conclusion: Nice, cost-effective way to do GMRS. Simple, no holes to drill and highly portable (I move it inside atop a pizza pan when not in one of several vehicles). I'm a lightweight user and you are hard-core, but we both agree that the combo is a lot of GMRS for $150.

My 4 non transmitting tdh3’s all receive exceptionally well. They work great on receive. FWIW.

If the SWR doesn’t go back down when you remove the arrester, the problem isn’t the arrester. You either have a bad connector, cable, or antenna. Swap each piece out individually until you isolate the problem.

I have tried everything from firmware, to reset, to ptt+Star+power on reset, to using cps, and chirp, and copying the files from my only working tdh3. Nothing fixed my transmit issue. The dead or no output radios will work a few hundred feet apart but they all register no wattage on my meter. Learn from me!!! Don’t waste your time on trying to get them to work. You won’t. I’ve wasted HOURS messing with mine and still no joy.

I'd try the mag mount in the attic first, but hitting that distance with a handheld in an urban area is going to be a challenge.

Exactly what I meant by intercom.

Just wondering why you are hell bent on finding out the address of the owner of an unlisted repeater that the owner obviously has not listed and probably uses for his own communication needs.

I went from unlicensed to AE in one session, like Steve, and was issued a 2X2 callsign as well. Also, this is how the Sequential Call Sign System is currently structured, according to the FCC. https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/amateur-radio-service/amateur-call-sign-systems

Yep, I agree that fits - 2 base stations operating under the fixed station rules. [If you used 462 you'd be doing the same thing as a base station, but you'd potentially be fighting repeater output.] It's still not exactly clear why they felt it necessary to define a separate station type. But that's OK if we find a use for it.

Imagine I will. Let’s say you have a home and down the hill from this home you have a shop. You and the wife would like to have the ability to call each other on the radio however the shop is a big metal faraday cage of a building and your HT don’t make it. Also she prefers to just have coms with you and isn’t really into additional chatter. You set up external yagi antennas between the two buildings to remedy the metal building issue and point them to each other. Now you set up two mobile radios, one at the shop and one at the house and set them for 15 watts or less on output and program them for simplex on one of the 467 MHz main channels which you are allowed to do as a fixed station. Set some tones if you like, just make sure you aren’t setting them for a local repeater input tone. You now have yourself a pair of fixed stations with less chance of outside interference where you two can communicate. “Hey you better come up to the house and clean up. Your brother and sister-in-law are gonna be here for dinner in an hour. Over”

Picked up the KG 1000G Plus to use as my base station to complement the repeater I have at my shop. The repeater makes it fine into the house but sometimes the house has a hard time getting through the trees to the shop repeater. Going from 20 to 50 watts is only a bit more than 3dB, but it seems to work from the repeater to the house. I had already setup the CPS with my channels and only needed to read the radio and write back. The CPS doesn't cover the A,B,C,D buttons so I'll have to do those manually. Like the power button in that you don't need a long press to turn it on. People complain about the screen brightness. Not exactly screaming bright, but it's in a lighted shop and not in a dark vehicle. Since I already have a KG XS20G I'm already pretty familiar in the way it should work. Wife doesn't know yet. I'll probably install it after she goes to bed and she'll see the new radio when she gets up. LOL. Hoping it might get rid of some of the off center DMR that I have in my area. The XS20G lets it right through with the SOC receiver. Hoping the Super Het might limit or eliminate it.

Not exactly sure it'll help. I'm in a very noisy area. Lot of DMR chirping in. And the high gain antenna isn't helping. The KG1000G+ isn't helping out with knocking down the noise with it's better selectivity as I had hoped. The radio might end up in my truck and put the XS20G back. I'll have to see how the wife feels about it since it's primarily in her work space all day. Even with the tones on the DMR chirps through for a burst here and there and she's not happy about it. With the old radio it happened, but it's happening more with the 1000. Time will tell. Plus I need to hunt down that DMR source and see what the heck it is and if they are above board or not.

@SteveShannon Ah, beans. That's what I figured but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something simple. Thanks for your help! @Socalgmrs Interesting, I'll have to read up on that. What's not accurate about the SWR on a handheld and would they typically read high or low on an HT? I got the meter just make sure I didn't have anything Obviously Wrong (like low/no wattage or abnormally high SWR) even if it wasn't particularly accurate. Regarding the repeater, I'm about 25 miles out from it. Listening with a second radio, the repeater acts like like someone kerchunked it (I think that's the term). I'm not sure I have clear line of sight to the tower so I figured there's just too many obstructions for a 5W handheld to deal with. A little disappointing but I'm not too concerned. Gives me an excuse to build a base station sometime down the road.

I know. The XS20G had no fan, and is sealed IP66. Ya, it's 20 watts, I got a good one that does 26 watts. Never had an overheating issue and at times I blab.

i would give the AnyTone AT-D578UVIIIPRO a look at.. I gave my grandson one of these as a gift, its a great radio.. And they are unlock able

I need to get back to studying for AE. Same as last years study course, life got busy and I'm behind again.

I'm hoping that you're not really serious??

This is 100% correct. EVERY new licensee is issued the next sequential call sign for that zone. If you want a vanity call, you have to first get your license, then apply to change. What you were told is not fully correct. Yes, they stopped sequentially issuing call signs according to license grade years ago, but there have not been dedicated call signs "per license level" for many years. This means there is no such thing as an 'Advanced' or 'Novice' call sign format anymore. The current format for a new licensee, regardless of grade, is xxXxxx. There are certain call sign formats you need to be AE to apply for, but none of those are new calls and are recycled from dead people and people who failed to renew for 2 years, thus giving up their right to retain their call. Even at that, xXx, xXxx and xxXxx calls are very hard to find, in the sense that anything decent (easy to key, easy to say, cool, unique, etc.) is snapped up if/when it ever becomes available. There is also a preference system, in which you would get first dibs on your deceased father's call sign for example.

MyGMRS and repeater book are setup so that only the repeater owner or authorized representative are suppose to be able to add, edit, or delete repeaters from the lists. I know with how MYGMRS is setup, if you list someone else's repeater, you will be the one getting any and all requests for access. Both websites require you to acknowledge that you the repeater owner or an authorized representative when you list any repeaters. And yes we all know that anyone can scan and get the tones easily. That still doesn't make it right for someone other than the repeater owner or authorized representative to list said repeater. I know that I would nt care for anyone else listing my repeater on MYGMRS. The reason is that they would start getting all requests. Yes the repeater is open but it is still nice when people do take the time to request permission to use it. It's common courtesy.

And also there is the fact that dogs are shit producers.

Exactly! The rules limit certain aspects of the use, but leave it up to us to imagine how we might benefit from it.

No. You seem to be joking / playing dumb. A car that is stopped is still mobile. One I always wondered about is my car, parked at home - is that mobile enough? Or do I have to drive up and down the driveway while transmitting?

Welcome Seth! I'll start monitoring Murfreesboro a little more. I can RX it, but don't think i come through on TX.....not until I get my antenna up on the outside of the house. Same with Lebanon for me. I can communicate clearly through Brentwood and Grasslands though.

Because not all repeater owner's want their repeaters listed for what ever reasons. And it also keeps from have multiple listings for the same repeater on the website. Another thing is if someone besides the owner listed a repeater that requires permission, then the repeater owner will not get any requests at all through MyGMRS.

You had me at “When I got my first pair of radios,” but the ending was great!

Good evening everyone! My name is Seth and Im located in Murfreesboro. Currently I have a set of UV-5R handhelds and a pair of Radioditty DB20-G GMRS mobile radios for my family vehicles. Usually only on GMRS channel 20 using CTCSS 141.3 to hear everything go on around me. I will monitor RUTHERFORD 600 at CTCSS 114.8 and SMG1 at CTCSS 229.1 when Im trying to really reach out and contact others. I would love to start making contacts and learn more about the GMRS community and how to operate effectively. Please feel free to reach out at any time as I constantly monitor this account. Very Respectfully, WSCE776 (Seth)

Your attic antenna set up is almost exactly the same as mine. Ours is in our third story attic. I intended on replacing it with an external. But after doing some testing and realizing our topography meant an external antenna was not going to give us much benefit, I just stayed with the Midland / Pizza sheet set up. Low tech for sure, but it does exactly what we need it to do.

I feel like I am crazy.. and I only have three radios. Thanks for making me feel better about myself.

I personally would not try running anything more than a 25 watt radio from the cigarette lighter/accessory port. I would just run the positive wire to the battery and the ground wire to a good chassis ground. Anytime you power a transceiver through the vehicle wire harness you take a chance of getting RFI issues. Now if you are worried about a power drain, you can use a 12v relay that won't power the radio until the vehicle is started. Here is a diagram showing how to wire a relay. So you would run a wire from a power source that is only on when the vehicle is running to 86, that will only close the relay switch when the vehicle is started. And you can use a fuse tap for this. You still want to run the radio positive to the battery positive and the radio ground wire to a chassis ground. For the relay, to work, run the radio positive wire to the relay 87 pin and then another wire from the relay pin 30 to the battery.

If you are tracking your race cars on oval or typical road courses, a mobile radio is not the hot set up. You would be better off with a portable radio and an external antenna. If you were racing off-road or La Mans whereas there are miles between the driver and the crew/pit then a mobile radio would be the set up and the pit with a raised base station antenna and maybe a portable repeater at a higher elevation point. In the video, the radio was not installed in a good location. Reaching over to your side or behind you during a session on the track is not the ideal thing to do under those conditions. That would be a total distraction and may cause you to make a furtive movement in your driving. That installation was a very poor choice. The antenna mount should have been a NMO mount with either a Phantom, quarterwave, or a low profile blade antenna. The XPR mobile radio was also way overkill for several reasons. You don't need a 1,000 channels, maybe a radio with a channel capacity of not more than the total number of itinerant channels that would be licensed for would have been the smart choice. Maybe something like a Motorola CM200D or 300D or even a Kenwood would of been a better choice and a lot less money. He probably paid at least $1200 or $1300 for a radio that he didn't need. In my opinion, the video is a good example of how not to install radio communications in a racecar.

Oh. Sorry. I meant ohm my