Leaderboard

Wrong on both counts. GMRS is for whatever you want it to be used for. HAM is for whatever you want it to be used for. There are plenty of HAM's who use HAM while off-roading or hiking.There are plenty of GMRS users "making contacts" especially through repeaters. Who cares what they use it for. It's there to be used, for whatever someone wants to use it for. If someone wants to use a log book regardless of service, why would you even care?!

Not to mention that a H.A.M.s radios that has been unlocked to transmit on GMRS does not make it a "GMRS radio" .. You will have to do everything - ALL the programming, EVERYTHING manually, yourself.. For many people this is no big deal.. For many others, it is a dealbreaker.. With a real "GMRS Radio", you take it out of the box, turn it on, pick a channel and talk.. not so with a H.A.M.s radios that is made to transmit on GMRS frequencies..

I've been listening to the old dudes on the local GMRS repeater talk about french onion soup and basketball (separate conversations) for too long and decided I need different soup conversations*, so I took my technician exam today. Got 33/35. Thanks, hamstudy.org! The proctoring team told me I should study for the general while this test still fresh, so that's the next goal. I have a certification exam I need to study for at work, but... that's not as much fun. *the french onion soup conversation was the first thing I heard on the local repeater but the actual catalyst for getting an amateur radio license was I managed to catch some transmissions from the ISS a couple of nights ago. I was reading about how you could contact the ISS on 2m/70cm bands and then discovered the ISS was directly overhead. Ran outside with a HT and managed to catch what I assume were packet transmissions. Now I want to talk to a space station. 8 year old me would think it's the coolest thing ever. 42 year old me still thinks it's pretty rad. Maybe someone up there prefers broccoli cheddar soup.

I ended up going with an install on forward portion of the rear glass. It gets great reception and no complaints so far about my transmissions. Thank you all for the help in figuring out possible problems prior to installation.

And that is why I will always recommend a Part 95 certified GMRS radio for those new to radio. As you said, they work right out of the box and are easy to program.

The only GMRS radio with a removable face that comes to mind is the KG-1000G+ ... I have had several (one in each Jeep, one in the office.. 2 turned into a repeater).. and have many (manyy) friends with them, and they are all happy with it. The only thing I dont like is that the faceplate is really hard to get off because the connector/latch is so tight.. I guess that's a good thing, and if you just mount it and forget it, it's a non-issue.. But if you put in on/take it off every day, it's a thumbnail killer.

I'll believe you just as soon as you prove you actually found someone willing to talk to you.

I’m on DMR very frequently, because i have a blind deaf friend that I write code plugs for. He travels as president of the deaf/blind division of the National Federation of the Blind and wherever he goes he asks me to prepare a code plug that includes local DMR repeaters and talk groups. I just built him a hotspot also which is set up for both YSF and DMR, with both Brandmeister and TGIF network talk groups. So, I’m constantly aware of them as I am fiddling and trying new talk groups for him, but I don’t personally spend much time monitoring or chatting on them.

I ran two antennas on my pickup. One being a 5/8 wave on an Allen set screw affixed type nmo lip engine hood mount, and the other being a 5/8 wave mag mount in middle of my pickups cab. testing from a fixed location the mag mount out performed the lip mount considerably on receive. It kind of blew my mind how much better. I kept going back and forth between the two antennas and each time the mag on the roof would pickup a couple extra “bars of signal” and audibly bring in a clearer signal. I try to not use repeaters as much as possible and a slightly better RX is a huge benefit between my home base and my mobiles. Just thought I’d add my experience as it kinda pertained to this threads topic.

A good Weller or Hako soldering station with adjustable heat and different size tips is a must. I use the smallest tips possible with the heat turned up when soldering tiny wires to tiny solder pads and tiny components. I want to get the pads/wires/components up to temp quickly without heating up surrounding components or solder joints.

Keep this rule in mind: Users who continue to post inflammatory, abusive comments will be banned from the forum after two warnings are issued by moderators. It might make the forum safer if some of us UNblock anyone that might break this rule, and then report them every time they do.

Get a good temperature controlled soldering station. I like Weller, but lots of people use Hako also. Second, get someone who knows what they’re doing to show you the basics (or watch YouTube videos). Third, don’t be stingy on using flux.

Several years ago, I sent Radio Shack a proposal for something that I think, if approved by the FCC, would have returned some of the yesteryear excitement to visiting their stores. Their response was something about legal "rights" to the idea and me generating tons of legalese paperwork for them, something I had neither time, money, or resources for. In that day, before the current flood of CCJ (Cheap Chinese Junk) GMRS radios, the average Joe or Jane had two options; CB or ham, for off-grid or grid-down comms. GMRS was an option if you were wealthy enough to afford Moto, GE, or other Land Mobile gear. As we all know, most wives, children, and other family or friends refuse to be bothered with studying for and taking a Technician test, no matter how simple it is. CB is on a long wavelength which makes portable comms unwieldy at best and nearly impossible from inside some buildings and automobiles without an external outside antenna. Mobile and base range is crippled by a 4 Watt power limit and short channel spacing, as well as frequent skip. At that time, Homeland Security had PSA's on radio and TV urging citizens to contemplate preparing for unexpected disasters with food, water, and communications gear beyond landlines and cell phones. My proposal involved petitioning the FCC to carve out a portion of the VHF Low Band somewhere above 42 MHz for a "Homeland Security" band. My proposal would allow for 50W mobile and base radios. Portables would be a maximum of 6W. A minimum of 45 channels should be provided at 15 to 20 KHz spacing with narrowband analog FM being the only accepted mode. 5 channels would be set aside as ht transmit, base and mobile receive-only. These would be the highest frequency channels of the band/service. Bases and mobiles would be receive only and transmit only on a corresponding fixed lower frequency in the band. A Dual Receive Capability capable radio would allow simultaneous receive on the ht channel corresponding with a fixed lower transmit frequency for that ht channel. One such DRC channel (the highest) would be for emergencies, like old CB 9. The next would be for taking the emergency to for detailed or prolonged comms if necessary. The other three DRC capable channels would allow any user to monitor the higher (6W ht only) frequency and their fixed corresponding lower frequency and use them for any purpose the service allowed. The purpose of this would be to allow persons with only a ht to have a clearer shot at making contact with an emergency monitoring station, or their own home base without having to compete with 50W bases and mobiles. All radios would be required to have CTCSS/DCS encode/decode capability and a fixed tone (say 100.0) would be used on the two emergency channels for all comms. Since Radio Shack was the creator of FRS, by petitioning the FCC for such, I figured such a project would re-vitalize the waning interest in their once-vibrant stores. While skip would still occur at the higher end of VHF Low Band, it would be less frequent than on CB. Unlike CB, ht signals at those frequencies CAN get into and out of a closed automobile and many buildings that CB could never touch. Alas, it was not to be.

Sure it’s for 11 meter band (CB), but…. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-456A1.pdf Now you know.

On my 5888UV, i programed and (listened) to GMRS but loved to use it for my HAM contacts. Really great radio it was.

This enforcement has been going on for years - and my prediction is that he never pays a dime.. Just look up this guy's PREVIOUS fine of $14,000 issued by the FCC in 1999.. Which he has still not paid... BUT - you ARE correct.. that is ONE fine.. out of millions of violations every year... You literally have a greater chance of being hit by lighting .. but, it COULD happen... So.. act accordingly...

Oh my, mister stickler for the Rules is recommending a 100 Watt radio for GMRS when the power limit is 50 Watts???? I wonder if he actually read the regulations like he tells everyone else to do. And as @OffRoaderX stated, the Wouxun KG-1000G and KG-1000G Plus radios are the only Part 95 certified consumer grade radios with a removable face plate. And they work right out of the box and are easy to program through the radio or with the Wouxun CPS from Buy Two Way Radios. Yes you can buy an amateur band or commercial band radio and open them up to work on GMRS but then you get into the whole Part 95 Certification. And we will leave that argument for another time.

I'm not wishing it on you. I hope you never get it. I'm just saying, don't feel crapped on if it happens.

My lady was not exactly an enthusiastic radio user, until, I gave her kids and their partners a radio for the other car when we had to use two vehicles last year. I couldn't get the HT out of her hands after that. Now I have a semi permanent solution for her Subaru so we can pop a cheap DB20G in there when needed. A few years back, a group of us used to convoy in three to five different vehicles up to Whistler to go ski. We always had a few blister pack radios for inter-vehichle comms. We played road trip games for 'many' hours. It actually felt like a pretty short trip because of it. And if anyone is interested, I can share how I both, routed the antenna wire and how I made a temp mount for the radio without drilling holes or using the loom grommet on a 2020 Outback. (Like you see on all the youtube videos) Message me as I don't want to derail this thread.

well, it's been 69 years so, I think I'm in the clear there?

ARRL has log books. I have a mini one for the occasional portable no cell service ops. Never have I ever logged a GMRS or CBRS contact, but the fields in a log book can be modified to suit any radio service I would think.

I don't know radios but I do know software, so I'm gonna nerd out for a minute: No, as you noticed, sorting numbers stored in a text field does not always return useful results. Fields in a database have a specific type - numeric fields can only have numbers, text fields can only have text, then you've got stuff like dates, timestamps, booleans (true/false which is sometimes stored as 1 or 0). You can't have combinations of types in a column in most databases so if you have text and numbers in a list, everything is stored as text and the sorting has to go by character value, which is when you wind up with "111" coming before "9" just because of the first character in the string. And if you do manage to squash two lists together and end up with text and numeric values (like [67, 77, "Unlisted"]), the software is probably going to complain that your array can't be converted to a common type or it'll do something weird like calculate a numeric value for "Unlisted" based on the numeric value of each character or turn the numbers back into strings, and then you're back to a weird sort order. It's dumb sometimes and we know it's dumb, but that's how this stuff works. That said, there's three common ways to implement a sort that does what you want it to do: One way is to pad out your numbers so they're always a fixed number of digits ("77 Hz" becomes "077.0 Hz", "251.4 Hz" can stay as is) so that the hundreds digit is always there to be sorted first, making string sorting work correctly. This lets you use pull values straight out of the database without doing anything extra behind the scenes to sort it, but it's still a little janky because most people don't use leading zeroes when writing out numbers and you'll end up with DPL and CTCSS tones mixed in because "071 DPL" and "077.0 Hz" both come before "251.4 Hz". You could flip stuff around like 'DPL 071' and 'Hz 077.0' or put a prefix like 'CTCSS 077.0 Hz' to enforce grouping, but that doesn't always look right, either. Second way is to store your numeric values in separate fields - CTCSS becomes its own numeric column, DPL becomes its own column, and then you use something like 0 for "No Tone" and null for Unlisted. You can tack on ' Hz' or ' DPL' in the display. This works if you don't mind having multiple columns instead of a single one - would probably work for RX/TX tones as long as you don't mind having four columns instead of two (CTCSS Rx, CTCSS Tx, DPL Rx, DPL Tx instead of just Rx and Tx). Last way (and probably the best if you want a single display column) is having a hidden index for the values that is numeric, and then you sort by that index - you could map CTCSS frequencies directly ("77.0 Hz" becomes 77) and assign text values obviously high/low values to force them to be at the top or bottom of the list. Unlisted would end up as 999999 if you want it to be last when you sort by ascending, or -999999 if you want it to be first. That gets stored in a separate table and then you do a little magic behind the scenes to sort the list by index before being displayed. This also lets you do do stuff like grouping - you can stick a numeric prefix on things so they're always together. If you pad out all the numbers so they're 6 digits, you can make your CTCSS tones start with 100 (so "77.0 Hz" becomes 100077) and your DPL tones start with 500 ("071 DPL" becomes 500071), when you sort, your CTCSS and DPL tones will always be in their 100xxx and 500xxx groups. Plus you can do stuff like custom sort orders - giving "No Tone" an index of 0 and "Unlisted" an index of 999999 lets you put them at the start and end of the list, with all the numeric values in between. This looks a lot cleaner and you have more control over your sort order but now you have to maintain a table of index/display values, so if you have a column with values A, B, C and indexes of A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, and someone wants to add a record with value D, you have to remember to add D = 4 to the the index list or you'll end up with a null index value and it gets displayed in an unexpected spot in the list (usually first). No idea what the software currently supports, but implementing any of the solutions are going to have trade-offs. The good thing about GMRS tones is its a fixed list of values so there wouldn't be much maintenance of the index, but implementing it in the first place is probably a bit of a hassle. Dealing with this kind of stuff is why they pay me the big medium bucks. Anyway. That's a lot of text to say "yes, storing numbers in a text field gets weird when you sort them and we know it sucks and there are ways around it but it might not be worth dealing with it". Thank you for coming to my TED Talk and letting me rant about sorting instead of working.

Ok, that's Great !! I just graduated from my Skybridge Pi 4 to a Openspot pro4 and I'm much happier with it ! I'm typically lurking on TG3100 or on 91 Worldwide. I have my choices of my Rfinder B1+ or my Anytone 878 or my 578, or my xpr 6550 Maybe we'll yak sometime !

1. That looks like a capacitor, not a resistor. 2. This really isn’t an electronics lab kind of group, but many of us fiddle. You might get better results at one of the websites/forums dedicated to diy fixing consumer electronics. 3. Do you have a GMRS radio?

Steve, Are you active on Brandmeister Dmr talkgroups at all ?

Only the CTCSS tones are numeric values. Because that field also includes DTCSS values as well as words and abbreviations “Unlisted”, “No Tone”, “Hz”, “DPL”, etc, the field is alphabetical text field. But you could run a report and handle the extract however you wanted.

I ran out of these for today lol, but had to add one !

Look for these on Amazon. They really help when you make a boo-boo.

Neat! I've never been great at soldering, so I guess I'm going to have to learn. I've patched up some wiring harnesses but the few attempts I've made to fix small electronics usually ends up with the magic smoke escaping from the circuit boards. I'm more comfortable with macro level heat, like using a blowtorch to loosen a stuck bolt (and then shearing the head off it anyway).

SoCalGMRS should become an Amateur Radio Operator so he'll be a genuine "Sad HAM" and change his handle to SoCalHam and hang with his new hammers on the Radio Reference forum.

If Guest PG3 lives within 200 miles to SoCalGMRS it very well could be him. Don't forget, SoCalGMRS can talk up to 200 miles.

Hmmmm... It would be a shame if everyone reported certain user's that do this every day.. multiple times...

*Shakes fist in the air

As if Randy needs an evil alternate account. As much as I love Randy and sometimes making him reply on YT videos by making absolutely ridiculous statements (it's a hobby), he certainly doesn't need an evil alt. Randy is just evil enough to get by.

One of the best purchases I have made in the last few months was getting a digital microscope. Here is what I ordered: TOMLOV DM9 Max Digital Microscope: 20MP 10.1" 1500X HD IPS HDMI. And here is a photo of a digital command control board for n scale steam locomotives. Those are either 28 or 30 gauge wires that have to be soldered to the electric motor and lights. Here is a photo of the Arcom RC-210 board. \ I had to solder everything onto the board. At least there weren't any tiny toroids that I had to wrap like on my QRP EFHW antenna. As you can see, skills learned from other hobbies transfer over to amateur radio. There are many different facets to amateur radio that one can explore. Having your general license opens up so many doors compared to a technician license.

I was always interested in electronics but before going back to college to become an engineer I spent eight years as a retail jeweler. Soldering small components while wearing my eye loupe was part of the job. That worked well for me in my early engineering career because the company I worked for needed surface mount prototypes and I could do them in-house.

I forgot to mention that I was voluntold to assemble the controller board once the club realized that working with small components doesn't bother me. I learned my lesson not to talk about soldering tiny digital control boards to N Scale locomotives or showing off any radio/antenna/CW practice oscillators to club members

Nice clean install, good job. What matters in the end is that the setup meets your needs. The Tram antennas are nice and easy to tune. I use the Tram 1174 for GMRS on my Ford Escape. I stopped tuning/cutting once I get the SWR to 1.2 on 462 and 1.4 on 467

I did not study for or feel comfortable taking the general test when I took the technician test. I did pass the general test about two months later. It was pretty easy. And having your general definitely opens up more for you. I'm still trying to study for the Extra but I keep getting distracted and chasing other squirrels. Right now I am busy with an Arcom RC-210 repeater controller. assembling the board was the easy part, understanding the programming manual and actually getting the controller programmed is another story. Plans are to connect the main 70cm repeater, a 70cm Allstar node, and our GMRS repeater to the RC-210.

Hey Nokones, Thanks for the general heads up about dual band antennas. My dual band seems to be an okay compromise for 2m/70cm although the SWR is notably better on 2m than 70cm. I actually have 3 different antennas I can swap in/out as needed depending upon what I'm doing at the time. While SWR is certainly not the only measure of performance, on GMRS, the antenna that gives me the best SWR (1.0 @ 462Mhz & 1.12 @ 467Mhz) is this tiny little low profile 6" quarter wave Tram 1126-B. It works surprisingly well, and I love that most people don't even notice that it is up there....

Wouxun in the title...seems to be a trigger for him, was guaranteed a negative response from him.

Stop being such a looser. I doubt you even read it.

Thanks for this! I am sure a lot of people considering one of these will find it helpful.

It sounds like he forgot the baling wire and chewing gum. And he only got .5 mile away? Hmm, it appears that the two RA87s have more desense than two KG1000G Pluses. At least with the two Wouxuns you can get .75 mile with a portable and 1.25 mile with a 50 watt mobile. I believe there is one of those You Tube videos out there that will show the only way that this setup will work is you have to separate the receiving radio from the transmitting radio at a substantial distance or place the receiving radio in some type of a box that will totally shield the radio from RF signals in order to eliminate the RF interference affecting the receiving radio. If you are using a cheap POS Pandaland duplexer that cost about $150, another contributing factor could be that the plastic inserts in the duplexer RF ports could be burned out from the RF burn. I hope this is a good lesson learned and the OP got a lot of experience from this experiment. Marrying two mobile radios will somewhat work in some cases. You need to keep in mind that mobile radios were not designed to operate in a continuous duty cycle like a true repeater and may have some equipment reliability problems in the future. In order to save you time and money, and havd it work right, invest in a real repeater and a quality duplexer along with a commercial grade base station antenna and transmission system.

I don't often use Windows, but when I do (for codeplug CPS software programming), I drink lots of beer to get into the proper spirit!! ? Try following this link to the Miklor guide to USB Cable Drivers

Wow. Thats a load of useless info.