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O,K. The bag works fairly well, Put both cell phone and my Hytera HT in the bag. Tried calling my cell phone, no ring, straight to voice mail. So i'm assuming the cell phone is protected. The HT???,, Within a few feet of the bag i can break the squelch with another radio, 20-30 feet away, no go. My guess, the bag is supressing 50-60 dB of signal. Would be interesitng to take the bag with cell phone in close proximity of a cell tower to see what it does.. Maybe someday, but right now, gonna go grab some breakfast.

One of Chirp's quirks is that for DTCS, you only enter the code in the "DTCS" column and leave the "RX DTCS" blank and it sets both TX and RX to the same tone.

thanks

Both will work equally well. With Tone you’ll hear everything transmitted by the repeater, even if your TX tone is incorrect. That’s why I recommend starting with Tone. With TSQL you’ll only hear radios transmitting on that frequencies using that CTCSS tone.

Clarify, because while you understand your original post, I do not. You have two identical radios programmed and one does something the other doesn't? or you have two channels and one doesn't work. Tsquelch means it will only allow you to hear signals with a matching PL tone. So if you're wrong, you'll hear nothing. TONE is transmit, and if it's wrong you won't activate the repeater, but you'll hear it just fine because you have nothing filtering the receive.

Yes - All the newly manufactured ones destined for the U.S. are locked and cannot be unlocked.

Congrats to your mother! Being old is not for the weak.

if you are wanting to 'un-lock' a UV-5G you actually need a UV-5R

My Mom is 75 years young today.

No. As long as you do it right/dont screw it up, you lose nothing.. The SWR is a good indicator to let you know there are no shorts in your coax/connectors and the antenna is not way out of tune - but yes there is more: Does it actually work?.. and the answer is probably yes... You are already WAY over-thinking all of this. Just install everything, double-check with your SWR meter, then go enjoy your radios.

If you leave it at home you have an alibi also. I was home, check my ping...

If they understand how radios work and want a handheld, then this is probably true.. You can get 10X - 100x or more farz with an FRS radio than you can with an FM CB handheld with the same-size antenna..

As far as I can determine, exactly nobody in the US uses FM CB. I would think FM with PL tones would be very good for people traveling in a group. Perhaps they just get FRS radios.

Just program them in groups. 1-100 is GMRS and 101-200 is MURS or whatever. That way you don't need to remember a weird channel number. Always starts from 1 and goes to 100. Just ignore the 100 on the MURS.

I have done similar with our SAR repeaters. We use a different input PL on the repeaters but common transmit PL. That way ou can hear folks on both repeaters regardless which channel I have selected. In the old days this was considered poor man voting but worked well for many public safety agencies.

Probably. While everyone here knows that GMRS is not what the FCC refers to as "amateur radio," I'm betting the legislators, who probably don't know an anode from a cathode, intended to exempt anyone with an FCC license. That the text fails to do that is a matter of definition; the old intent-of-the-law vs letter-of-the-law thing. Same for law enforcement. I'll bring my GMRS license next time I'm in PA. "Look officer, here's my FCC license."

No. However, it only indicates that the operator has an amateur radio license, not that they are operating within amateur radio service. If one were to get pulled over the following apply: 1) There isn't any way for them to know what frequency/service you are using. Show them your amateur license from the FCC, that's the end of discussion as written. 2) It's probably going to take some overzealous cop 3 amateur radio licenses submitted during stops before they ignore radio usage all together. 3) It's pretty clear they are targeting cell phone/tablet/computer usages. They very clearly allow cell phones used for GPS navigation only, allow cell phones for calls/texts when integrated through apple play/android auto on the dash, as well as they recognize that e-logs are a thing for CDL drivers and they can't say a thing because the federal DOT is requiring their use. Don't be stupid, it will be fine. It also is a good call to just get your amateur tech license to maintain your exception status.

People really need to wake up and start checking our governments. Let me ask this,.. Was there some sort of insane uptick in ham radio related driving accidents? I'm going to speculate that there wasn't... So why is it that the state of Pennsylvania feels compelled to just decide to impose a seemingly punitive law upon the people? I feel like we're just too many generations of people removed from the times when people conceptualized and understood the proper dynamic of government and the citizenry who ALLOW it. We're not just supposed to be a ruled people. We're not supposed to just live and accept the rules that mom and dad politicians make for us. These sorts of laws for "the good of public safety" should generally be a consensus (more people than not) agreement by the citizenry and the governing bodies that we both fund and give/entrust the authority to govern with. Any time some thing of this type comes about, ask yourself this question. "If this issue went to referendum, would The People sign off and agree to this?'. If you really feel like that's a no, then the government are acting as criminals and intervention is necessary.

The same people tend to like ridiculous gun laws that don’t actually reduce crime. Those people likely don’t own radios or guns, so they don’t care. They want government to make it all better. Safer. They also lack enough intelligence to understand they are willfully and incrementally giving up their freedom.

OP here....GOOD NEWS! Under the "Tone" settings the Icom 2730a has several choices. According to the Icom manual - "DTC.OFF" is defined as: When you transmit, the selected DTCS code is superimposed on your normal signal. When you receive, the function is OFF. This setting does not show in the tone settings in CHIRP (??) but is in the Icom manual. I read it but thought "I need the tone for TX and RX" so I didn't try it. This morning I used the faceplate entry to try EVERY tone setting - even this "DTC.OFF". Result was VOILA! It worked! Backed the truck out and had a nice chat through the target repeater. Still a head-scratcher, though Good to know that it will now work...in case of emergency. Maybe this will help the next poor soul! Thanks for all the input! WRYD480 WR1Y