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Tell this to the other person: Press the button... THEN talk.... This fixes the problem 99.998% of the time.. The other 0.002% the problem is because the person did not listen to what you told them to do.

You will get a baker's dozen if you can get all the radio manufacturers to start using N Type connectors on all HVF/UHF/GMRS radios.

Yes, using cross tones/codes will work that way. I don’t know of any benefits to doing that, but yes. Anybody nearby, listening on 462.550 with no tones or codes, can hear anything that is transmitted by either radio.

some 30 odd years ago i mounted a NMO UHF antenna in the center of a MasterCool Swamp Cooler sitting on top of a 3 story building... Worked good and the antenna is still mounted where i left it when i left that job.

Oh I can feel my blood sugar levels spike just looking at that photo. Why tease a diabetic like that. Outside of just stocking one type of connector and keeping the prices and inventory down, there is absolutely no reason to use PL-259/SO-239 connectors for any VHF/UHF radio when N Type connectors are better. While N Type connectors are definitely more weather resistant, I still wrap them just like I wrap PL-259 connectors out of habit.

If you can get me a baker's dozen of these magnificent French Crullers you got a deal!!! There's absolutely no legitimate use for the SO-239 and PL-259.

I just got my RepeaterID for the RT97L and they even emailed me the file I sent them for the announcement for free. https://www.repeaterid.com/store/p16/RepeaterID_RT97L.html# I got it in 3 days and very easy to use. It works great!

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.

Hi everyone! Recently I created a 3D printed Tabletop Cradle Mount for the OpenSPOT 3, 4, 4 Pro. Not everyone has access to a 3D printer, but I'm trying to make it as accessible as I can. I've placed the Cradle Mount on Etsy with a significant price discount, and free shipping! Price: $12.96 USD Shipping: Free Warranty: 1 year warranty with free shipping of replacement if the mount does not fit as desired, or breaks due to natural use. The openSPOT fits snugly into the mount by way of a friction device at the bottom, keeping it from moving loosely while standing upright. This cradle mount is ideal for ham radio enthusiasts who want a stable place to secure their device, while having the option to charge the device while in its mount. It stands upright, allowing for ease of use, while being able to monitor the LED display at the bottom of the device. It is customizeable with your CALL SIGN, up to eight characters! WHITE primary color, with BLUE call sign color, which makes the mount look FANTASTIC! We have customizable colors, so please inquire if you have a specific request. This design was created by That Medic Andrew, as seen on TikTok and MakerWorld, using 3D printers by Bambulab and FlashForge. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. I'm always looking for new ideas and quality input to improve my designs for those of us in the hobby. https://www.etsy.com/listing/4298063353/ 73 all, Andrew, N2AL / WRTD229

Here's a great example of using the proper connector for the the task at hand. One that is waterproof and can withstand the demands of being used on a motorcycle in all weather conditions. As you can see in the pic, no further waterproofing is needed other than heatshrink with hotglue protecting the LMR240 entering the N connector. I know, I should have used 1/2" Heliax for this extremely long run to minimize cable loss, but the bending radius was too large to get in those tight spots. Anyway, This has been on this motorcycle for close to 10-years and no water has entered the coax. Damn, sometimes I do a job so good I scare myself.

I haven’t successfully been able to change any privacy tones in channel mode on a uv5g pro. Hella frustrating. My uv5g’s won’t save anything I set into them from the keypad menu. I have heard deleting the channel, going to vfo, typing in the freq and entering the tones, then saving this vfo info into the save channel slot it can be done via radio keypad. . . Just heads up if maybe you’re trying to do it through the actual channel menu on the radio not in software.

My wife tolerates my radios and ham activity because her favorite uncle was a ham. Computer stuff and tools, any tools, on the other hand, are her favorite things in the world including stuff we aren't allowed to talk about here. I spend money on that stuff and she is happy.

That's one of my everyday radios.

We don't have roof rights to anything else. We had to pay a one-time charge for the run of the cables across the roof and the roof penetration, plus annual inspection and any necessary maintenance. It is also the highest elevation on the roof (unless we were to construct a tower, which a) isn't needed and b) would be prohibitively expensive). If this was for a GMRS project, then getting additional elevation would have been worthwhile. But for GPS we have a good view of the sky and the cellular extender antenna has line of sight to antennas of several carriers. The L-channel was already there and provided a convenient mounting point for the antenna brackets. The cellular antenna is actually between the two units, while the GPS antenna is attached to the piping side of the mini-split but it comes with an ultra-flex N pigtail which we then connect to the LMR600 and put thick heat shrink with adhesive on the inside over the connection (as we did with the connection on the bottom of the cellular antenna). The unit to the right is top-exhaust and apparently defunct, and our mini-split has the antennas mounted on the inlet side, not the exhaust side, of the coils so they're not getting baked.

It's always a trade off when determining what type of coax to use. For the average person setting up a base station where the coax run is 50 feet or less then LMR 400 and equivalent is fine. Just like every type of antenna is a compromise. Go with what works best for your situation and that also fits your budget. Not everyone can afford LMR 600 or 1/2" Heliax cable.

It's a trade-off between cost, ease of installation, performance during operation, and a bit of everyone's different opinions thrown in. At work, I ran two 200-foot runs of Times Microwave LMR600 between the roof and our basement office. One was for a cellular repeater antenna (this pre-dated the pre-registration requirement, by the way) and the other was for a GPS antenna. I had to put a 10dB attenuator between the indoor lightning arrestor and the Wilson cellular amplifier or I'd overload its front end. The General Dynamics box the GPS antenna went into was perfectly happy with the GPS signal level. All the connectors were ordered from Pasternack, as were the LMR600 stripper and crimper. I have a leftover piece of LMR600 with an N connector on the end that I use as a walking stick. OTOH, my entire (large) collection of home-use connector adapters cost less than two of the Pasternack LMR600 connectors. It's a trade-off between price, performance, and personal opinion. My repeater is currently using some no-name super-flex 400 (they can't call it LMR because that's a trademark of Times Microwave) to its temporary antenna. If the Commscope / Andrew fiasco ever starts producing antennas again, my DB420-B will be connected to the entry point lightning arrestor using 7/8" heliax with N connectors. My grounding consists of eight 8' long copper-clad steel grounding rods, 16' apart, with one end tied to the electrical service ground. The whole run from service ground to the antenna lightning arrestor is one continuous piece of #4 stranded copper with green insulation jacket except where the jacket was shaved to connect to the grounding post clamps, electrical ground, and lightning arrestor ground terminal. Forgive the non-GMRS pictures, but they do show good (to me, at least) cable installation practices... You can't see the outdoor lightning arrestors as they're at the point where the cables are about to go through the roof penetration.

Definitely, only if they are chocolate chip. Do I get two cookies if I get Amphenol to stop making PL-259s?

Evry one i have actually has worked great, but i wouldn't 100% rely on it. I mainly use mine to monitor local PD/FD, NOAA and Ham channels. I guess the H3 is a great creeper radio. lol

I don't know why it's so hard to teach people to do that. It drives me nuts. I tell them, "Push the button, THEN talk. Think of it like the second or so it takes your phone to dial a number. You're essentially doing the same thing." They smile and nod, then continue to start blowing from their pie-hole before they push the button.

I saw a lot of discussion on challenges loading airband channels and I thought I'd mention that there's some pre-programmed related frequencies in CHIRP. Go to File > Open Stock Config > US Aviation Frequencies.csv. Not sure if that helps anyone but thought I'd mention. They also have GMRS/FRS, Marine, etc. under there.

I'm glad to hear that you redid the connections and that improved things for you. While ABR makes excellent coax cables, their ABR240-UF is pretty much the same as RG-213. Line Loss per 100 Feet RG-213 - 5.28dB, 70% loss LMR240 (same as ABR240) - 5.40dB, 72% loss LMR400 - 2.87dB, 48% loss RG-58 - 9.16dB, 88% loss Again, The calculations were made using 50 watts in and an SWR of 1.5. I used the https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/ to get those numbers. Your numbers will be different depending on the actual gain of your antenna. Higher loss cable will actually show a lower SWR due to loss. Go with the best that you can afford along with the acceptable losses for your needs. I would go with the DX Engineering 400MAX or R&L Electronics Jetstream 400Flex before going with RG-213/ABR240/LMR240. ABR coax is good stuff and I use their cables for all of my portable/POTA setups. Check out the coax loss calculator I linked. It is very helpful.

Here's my experience with the subject. I'm a fan of DCS for all the reasons listed above. However, I have found that some radios take a slightly longer time to open with DCS than CTCSS. Not a problem for us "radio people", but I have a group of radios that I use with a local theater. Sometimes the users push and talk at the same time and the first syllable would be missed using DCS. I reprogrammed the radios for CTCSS and that solved the problem. Again, this might be a brand/model specific issue but something to take into consideration.

i think you wold be amazed at the number of repeaters someone sets up whom actually do not operate repeaters but do it because 'they can' This site is not a formal process. Anyone can set up a repeater here, even a Cave Man can do it.... Once someone set's up a repeater here, it's the responcibgly of that individual to maintain its status, not the site owner. If that person whom set it up died, moved on, or got bored and not having fun playing around,, oh well. it is what it is.

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.

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.

Exactly what I meant by intercom.

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”

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.

Implies a dedicated system is not just something I made up. Saying that a Fixed Station may only communicate with other Fixed Stations is the very meaning of the word “dedicated”. Then I said “such as” because I used two relatively easy to understand examples, but using the words such as also implies that there may be other uses. The regulations do say Digital Data is limited to handhelds, but analog data and controls have no such constraint and can be passed using tones, such as DTMF. Digital data. GMRS hand-held portable units may transmit digital data containing location information, or requesting location information from one or more other GMRS or FRS units, or containing a brief text message to another specific GMRS or FRS unit.

Giving it to GMRS doesn't really solve anything except the question of what to do with it, but it doesn't really make sense to create a new class of license for that band. I suspect that if it were given to GMRS, users would divide up into "VHF GMRS" and "UHF GMRS" folks depending upon their needs or whims. And, of course, the occasional oddball would "need" to have two radios just because. Yes, repeaters would be expensive to build and maintain, but 6m AM simplex would be great for some things, especially with 50-100 watts. A lot of folks who now need a repeater to talk to the spouse unit from office to home could probably just go to 6m simplex. Farms and ranches that now use repeaters might be able to get rid of them. The easiest solution for the FCC would be to set some basic rules, toss it into the GMRS category, and say, "You figure it out. Or don't. Whatever."

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

"SEO ACCY" refers to a specific fuse, likely within the vehicle's fuse box, that provides power to "Special Equipment Option" accessories. This often includes items like mobile radios for police vehicles or other aftermarket equipment. I have this slot. This slot gets no power when the key isn't in the run position. Trust me I don't doubt your method and I know its sound and proven. I'm learning so please be patient with me. The main issue would be testing to make sure that the circuit is not overloaded correct? Update: Thanks for the "why" question. It led me to do some more research. While theoretically the fuse tap would work it's likely for the radio to overload the circuit. Lesson learned and that came simply from you asking why. I appreciate your response. Feel free to add any nuggets that you think that might help further.

You left the "sh" off.

While a relay is not needed, some like to have one so that any accessory wired directly from the battery will not receive power until the vehicle is turned on. This is quite common when adding accessory lights to vehicles. And it keeps from killing the battery if you forget to turn the accessory off.

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.

Last time I checked the US military is still using 30 MHz to 70 MHz. I know we used that section all of the time when I was in. Low band was 30-50 MHz and high was 51-70 MHz. And the 6m band is not called the magic band for nothing. 6m is either open or it’s not. And it doesn’t matter if you are using FM AM or SSB. 6m FM won’t get much farther than 2m will

We have these problems with frs radios at work. The people using the radios don’t know how to properly key them up before they start talking. (And for the record I tried to talk them out of frs and into Murs so not to take up an frs frequency but they didn’t listen)

Speaking of Del Webb, I was always impressed with the commercial buildings his company built. They put brass plaques on them with things like the architect and project manager's names. They took pride in what they built. Sadly today most builders put up buildings that barely meet code and begin to fail as soon as the last nail is driven.

Nice. If it works there’s really no reason to do anything else.

Apparently, you've never been to Denali National Park or Wrangell-St Elias Alaska State Park (you should, BTW). For that matter, Black Mesa Oklahoma State Park would benefit from some boost if you're camping and day hiking. If I only went to Death Valley, I suppose I wouldn't need a repeater.

Been testing it with some of the other ranchers so far in heavy woods we have gotten 14 miles south and 12 miles north of me so far.

Good explanation Corey. Its also important to note that even repeaters have some form of duty cycle and that the duty cycle can change depending on output power. A great example is the motorola 1225 series repeater. At full power, 45 watts, the repeater is limited to a 50% duty cycle. In low power, 25 watts, they are 100% cycle. Luckily, good repeaters have protection in the form of a Time Out Timer (TOT) and usually a ReSet Timer (RST) When set up correctly, the TOT should cut off the TX BEFORE the duty cycle is reached, and the RST should prevent transmissions until the appropriate rest period has passed. This helps extend the life of the repeater even when your not there to monitor it. Almost ALL radios now-a-days have a TOT as well. Typically I set mine for 2 minutes which is more than I need to transmit for, but is less than the duty cycle permits thus protecting the transistors. I've had people tell me its dumb to do as no idiot would want to talk non-stop unless they are in a net or special operation. That's when I give them this story: A while back when I was on the first aid squad, I was getting ready to go to sleep. Turned out the lights, laid my head on the pillow, then came the sound of a soft moan from a woman. Now, this would have been great, if there had been a woman in bed with me. The moaning continued and a bit confused I began looking for the source. Didn't take long to find my squad radio was receiving, and after turning it up a little, yep you guessed it. Turns out, the LT's portable radio had fallen between the bed and the night stand and as they and their lover were going at it, it was all transmitted quite clearly to the repeater, then retransmitted for the ENTIRE COUNTY to listen to. To make matters worse, the radios all had ID numbers so we knew whos radio was transmitting, and even worse, the LT had shut their phone off, so calling them to tell them their private session was public was not doable. Finally, the radios did not have TOT's at the time and so for a good while (I just shut my radio off but a friend at the county said they heard every minute of the 15+ minute incident. When the portable finally cut out, either from overheating or a dead battery or from falling loose of the PTT button, there wee quite a few catcalls to let them know everything was public including a few repeats of nick-names used during the session. So folks, learn two things from this story. A: TOT's work, especially when a mistake is made or you don't realize the transmit button is pushed, it will work and save your radio from damage and possibly you from some embarrassment. B: Someone is always listening, so keep in mind what you say or do on the radio, especially if you work for a public safety organization because if you say the wrong things you could find yourself in quite a bit of trouble.