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------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDIT: It looks like the duplexer is still failing. Another member pointed out another thread with a similar failure with the same make and model duplexer. While the owner was pushing 70w+ through this 50w duplexer, this may fall into the 'buyer beware' category. If you are going to try it, be sure you stay under the rated limit of 50w for longevity. BTech has it rated for a 50% duty cycle as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey folks! For people looking for an affordable duplexer that works well, I may have a solution for you. For those of you who have been following the thread, you may be aware that our friend @LeoG had a problem with a duplexer in his B-Tech repeater. They exchanged it for him, but I offered to take a look at the duplexer, hoping that we could get a spare available, or a second for another machine. I have to say, I am impressed. The duplexer is a SGQ-450D. It is a traditional six cavity mobile duplexer, made in China, and the cost is about $115-$120. When I first got the duplexer, I connected it to a VNA. The unit looked like it was tuned perfectly, the notch and SWR were great... it was just on the wrong frequency, preventing it from working on GMRS. I connected it to a radio and a dummy load, checking both sets of filters, and it worked perfectly. The downfall with duplexers setup like the ones installed in the B-Tech repeaters isn't the duplexer itself, but rather the tuning. What companies do to make these wideband (and what I found with this duplexer), they tune the 3 receive cavities to slightly overlap instead of perfectly align. Also, the 3 transmit cavities to slightly overlap instead of perfectly align. What you end up with is about 500KHz-700KHz of filtering at about 45dB-50dB on each side, for a max of about 100dB of isolation. While not terrible, it leaves a lot of room for improvement, which is easily accomplished if you align all 3 cavities to work on the same frequency. @LeoG asked to have the duplexer aligned to 462.600/467.600. On the high side, I was able to get a minimum of -85dB notch centered at 462.600MHz. On the low side, I was able to get a minimum of -87.4dB notch centered at 467.600MHz. That is better than -172dB of isolation... almost double what the previous tune was. Here are the final tune-up results. Isolation = > -172dB Transmit SWR = 1.08:1 Receive SWR = 1.18:1 Loss due to SWR = 0.0064dB Total Insertion Loss is <1dB For a test, I hooked it up to my portable repeater while at my house. I got the same range as with my personal duplexer. For comparison, these specs are on par with my SinTech/Sinclair duplexer, which is priced 4 times higher than the SGQ-450D. The duplexer will be shipped back to Leo next week. I am looking forward to his real-world feedback after the tune-up. Below are a few images of the duplexer and the tuning results.

Welcome! I haven’t used Chirp lately, but if I were you I would binge watch Notarubicon videos on YouTube. Starting with a Baofeng isn’t a bad idea.

No experience with that radio. That is a HAM radio that appears to be capable of transmitting on GMRS (otherwise may be known as a SHTF radio). It has a boatload of features that cater to HAM's and are not readily understandable on how to use/configure or even what they are for novice radio users. To transmit on GMRS you would have to manually program all the regular GMRS channels/frequencies. (of course adhering to power limits etc for those channels, if you care about conforming to rules). All the GMRS rules/frequencies are baked in on a true GMRS radio. It is also not CHIRP capable which was one of your listed requirements. (Vero N76=Radioddity GA-5WB also not CHIRP capable) More is needed to recommend anything, but just throwing out Mabey a Wouxun KG-805G ? It's a good true GMRS radio, very easy to use. And mid-price range..CHIRP capable. I prefer the 905G as it has a bit better IP rating but it is not CHIRP capable.

You bought the wrong radio. Because it is a H.A.M.s radio, it likely will not be able to transmit on GMRS frequencies. IF it does transmit on GMRS, or IF you can get it unlocked, it is going to take multiple semi-complicated steps to program a repeater.. Good luck. ..you really did buy the wrong radio... UNLESS you bought the GMRS version, in which case if you did, you dont need to enter any frequenices - just pick the repeater channel, enter the TX tone, and talk..

This is the correct answer.. and for clarification, because you are new, "Part 95 certified" means that it says "GMRS" on the box. .Any radio/box/advertisement that says "GMRS" on it is Part 95 certified, meaning it is a true "GMRS Radio".. if it does not say "GMRS", then it is a business radio, a H.A.M.s radios, or lord knows what else, and will be more complicated to use and may not transmit on GMRS frequencies.

Well, all depends on what YOU want in a radio. I take it this is a handheld given your previous '2 pack' purchase, as mobiles/bases are not usually sold in 2-packs. Waterproof/ruggedness? May be useful for hiking. Complex or simple interface? Lots of buttons or just simple channel display? Lots-o-buttons lets you program repeaters on the fly in the field. Simple is well...simple. Other listening bands like HAM/MARINE/MURS etc? SHTF capability/unlock (Tx on bands outside GMRS like HAM/MARINE/MURS etc)? GPS capable? Bluetooth/phone pairing capable? FM Radio capable? NOAA alerts NOAA weather channels USB C Chargable as opposed to cradle only charging emergency light? ...etc..etc..etc.... and the list goes on But I second @SteveShannon 's mention of watching some reviews, notarubicon on youtube ( @OffRoaderX here ) has reviewed every GMRS among a few other radios out there.

Yep, I can't wait to do a real world test when I put it back in the RPT50 Btech. Right now I have a wide band tuned duplexer in it that they sent as a replacement. And this duplexer worked much better than the one I gave Marc to tune. As soon as I swapped out I noticed a marked improvement in reception. Not sure how it's tuned, if it's the same tuning as the one I gave to Marc or something else. It's probably tuned better than the original just from the fact I could get better reception out of it. I've done a lot of real world testing with my current setup. I know where I can hit it and where I can't and where it's iffy. It's the iffy spots I'm hoping to see better results. And Marc I just want to say it so the people here see it too. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate your effort and I'm looking forward to putting it to good use. I know you just wanted to play with your toys, but it's hopefully going to be a real world difference for my repeater. This way we can both have our fun. And just think, now I'll have that other duplexer.....

Wait and save up some more money. $100 isn't going to get you a quality setup. It'll be more satisfying if you start off with a nice setup instead of replacing it a few time and buying the same thing more than once. I would start with an antenna with a 7.2dBi gain and some LMR400. Find out what it costs and save up for it. You'll also need a chimney mount or roof mount which is going to add to the price tag. Along with minor things like cable clips, water proofing, tools for installation etc. If you are insistent on getting something up now then go with some sort of a mobile antenna. Even something small mounted up high is going to be better than something inside the house on a lower floor.

That's what I meant

That's a good question, but not the way receivers get rated. The sensitivity is the 'receiver' sensitivity. A couple points about how the duplexer work and why the receive sensitivity isn't impacted. The duplexer filters out the receive frequency on the transmit side, and the transmit frequency on the receive side. There is no direct impact to the signal due to tuning. The only real 'reduction' would be the overall reduction in signal from insertion loss. However, you may see a difference/improvement due to the filtering for another reason. The cavity filters have a bit of a floating echo effect, with the dB of suppression wildly varying. Your duplexer, for example, floats between -85dB and -110dB per cavity pair. With a varying isolation of -170dB to -220dB. Prior to tuning, the duplexer isolation floated between about -45dB and -70dB. This can impact how much desense the receiver experiences, giving you the impression that receive sensitivity improved. To summarize, while the receive sensitivity doesn't improve with improved duplexer tuning, the improved filtering removing more of the transmitter signal and reducing desense, will allow the appearance of improved sensitivity.

The Wouxun KG-935G is a nice radio with plenty of bells and whistles. The Wouxun KG-805G and KG-905G are simpler without any buttons to mess with on the radio. And the Wouxun programming software, available from Buy Two Way Radios, is easy to use.

I have to agree that a VR-N76 is not the radio for someone new to GMRS. I will suggest staying with an actual Part 95 certified GMRS only radio. There are plenty of options depending on how many bells and whistles you want. The Baofeng GMRS radios are cheap and they work. A step up will be one of the Wouxun radios. Some will state that you should not waste your money on cheap Chinese radios and they will suggest business band radios. Again I will suggest sticking with a Part 95 certified GMRS only radio. You can always get something different once you get comfortable with radios.

He lied to you. He lied, right to your face.. That is not a GMRS radio and it is the LAST thing anyone with a brain would recommend to someone "new to GMRS" and looking for a GMRS radio. You should never listen to anything that idiot ever tells you again.

Same thing. Did either of you report it to Rich? I did anyway. I think he’ll forgive me if I’m duplicating your reporting.

Ya, 2 months ago.

@marcspaz Great Job! i know @LeoG will be excited!

More waterproof.

Yah, sounds like you bricked it.

Had that happen to my H3. Was in a building and wanted to see if I could hit my repeater. I couldn't. It was strange cause I was pretty close by. Then I drove by it and still couldn't hit it. Somehow my tones got changed and all I had to do is restore them and bingo, success. It can happen.

If they were working a few days ago, you changed nothing, and suddenly they aren't working, then you aren't missing anything - they have both gone defective.. OR .... You DID change something, you're on the wrong channels, or committing some other user-error.

I have the 805 and like it.

Are you entering an I (eye) or a 1? The correct format is four letters and three numbers.

I can suggest the Wouxun KG-935G Plus

A magnet mount mobile antenna on a 9x13 baking sheet or a large pizza pan works well for a temporary setup. Another idea for mounting a base antenna is using a satellite dish mount also commonly called a j mount. I use a few j mounts for my different antennas. They have held up to 50-70 MPH winds just fine. The Antenna Farm has the Comet CA-712EFC for $124 and the Comet CA-GMRS for $80. The CA-712EFC is rated at 9 dBi and the CA-GMRS is rated at 5.5 dBi. There are other brands of antennas available too. I personally would go a little cheaper on the radio and spend my money on LRM400 or equivalent and a good antenna. Just try to avoid the cheap coax from Amazon and eBay.

I don’t think Rich gets notified unless something is reported. Everything on the home page works fine for me now and has for a few hours.

Yes in many ways it buys much more than it used to. The abilities of a modern cell phone as a computer held in your hand are amazing compared to computers in 1974. That computer power of a cell phone was only available to governments and BIG research facilities back then. What a Boafeng HT can do now for less than $50 was easily $300 or more not that long ago.

As a very wise-man says in my videos all the time: You snooze, you miss out.

Too bad you missed it. It's a pretty good little repeater.

It’s working now. I didn’t reset my password.

The wife has already started quoting “If you give a mouse a cookie”.

Talking about it is legal Grasp you some of that

Here's my little setup. Nothing outrageous, but not necessarily simple. And the approx parts list, some smaller stuff not included.

Outstanding! We look forward to your test results. As mentioned by many of us, a duplexer tuned for all of the GMRS repeater channels will not work as well as one tuned for just one channel.

Also I got an “expired password” pop up when trying to access the repeater map. Anyone else? Or did I get taken by a hacker pop up?

@WSIK532 the entire process from setup and initial testing to the finalized range test and cleanup was about 2 hours. The actual tuning itself only takes a few minutes.

Well, define 'abandoned'. There are a number of towers that are owned by someone, all over the US that are not currently active, but are not by what I believe you are inferring, abandoned. Many are indeed owned by the major vertical real estate companies like Crown Castle or American Tower. Some are owned but private individuals or businesses that are not in the vertical real estate business, but do own the property a tower sits on. You are no doubt asking because you want to put up a repeater and think if you can find an abandoned tower, that you can just roll up in there and get to work putting up a repeater on it and no one will care. Well, good luck with that. First issue is there isn't a piece of property anywhere in the US that's not owned or claimed by someone else already. And if there is a tower on it, someone put that tower there. As a person that manages and maintains a tower. Like a real tower, not a 20 foot pipe on the end of my house, but a 240 foot microwave tower sitting on 1.3 acre's of land with a building. Here's what you face, IF you can find an abandoned tower or one that someone will allow you to have full access to. First is an electric bill. Because you simply are NOT going to find some rich benefactor that will not only allow you access to their tower, but pay your power bill as well. Second is the building condition. If it's truly abandoned, and unused, then it's not being maintained. So the roof will leak, the door may or may not even close. You may face it being full of animals, birds and lots of poop. Bird poop will give you an incurable disease. Don't remember what it's called, but look it up, it's a thing. So getting the building ready to put a repeater in might require a hazmat suit and respirator to just be in and out of the thing. And mold.... yeah, gonna be plenty of that too. Now, getting the power turned back on may well require permits, and civil engineering plans with PE stamps to obtain the permits. We had to do that too. More money. If the crack heads have been there stealing wire, then you are rewiring the building. Again, been there and done that. More money. Then there is the tower. What shape is it really in? Is it a guyed tower, or free standing? Is it rusted or in reasonable shape? Guyed towers will hide dangers. The anchor heads will rust just below the ground and you will not see that if you don't dig them up. Simply attempting to climb a tower with that issue may cause the tower to fall, with you on it. Then there is the base pier, the grouting and all that other stuff that since you are asking this question, you know nothing about. You don't posses the knowledge to even judge the structural integrity of the tower to begin with. This can create TWO issues. First is simple. If you are on the tower and it falls, you die. Second issue is you have someone else on the tower and it falls, they die, and you get sued by both the tower owner in front of 12 people that have equally no clue about a tower but know YOU were allowed to access it and it's down and someone died. And not only will the family of the dead guy be suing you, but so will the tower site owner to claim you were at fault, and responsible, but also to protect himself from that family from coming after him. Just depends on who gets to the court house first with the lawyers to file the suit. A friend told me once ' I can't afford free" and free towers typically very few can afford, and they don't figure that out until they have made some level of commitment to do something with a site that they have no business being involved with. But I will tell you this. There are NO FREE ABANDONED towers anywhere that you are gonna just walk into and put up a repeater at without significant cost. And remember that we haven't talked about repeaters, cable, antenna's or any of that yet.

All my contacts with customer support for Tidradio have been positive. They've never told me no we won't replace it. And they've never asked for the old one to be returned.

That sounds more like they were both set to narrow and the other radios were set to wide.

I think both radios need to be the same brand or use the same compander tech AND compander has to be enabled on all radios wishing to benefit from the tech. Otherwise, it sounds worse instead of better. It's been awhile since I read about it and I don't know anyone personally who uses it due to the compatibility issues.

This is not how we radio in a polite society.

Compander = Compression/Expander It's a method to re-constitute your voice after the insignificant audio has been squeezed out of it. Just like concentrated Orange Juice doesn't taste the same as fresh squeezed - Compandered audio isn't the same as the Original audio. For 12.5 narrowband, it was considered a win in the overall audio picture, but you gave up some tonal quality while it did reduce background noise and hiss. In 25 kHz wideband, I never really saw the benefit to using it. It's also a system wide setting, so if only one radio on your channel is using it, all the other units will not hear him clearly & vice/versa. Better to have everyone using the Compander feature, and not all radios offer the feature - and not all radios treat the compandered audio exactly the same during compression/expansion. It can lead to odd sounding audio. I've also seen some radios display a lack of sensitivity at the edge of coverage when using compandered audio. I played around with that a bit in the late 90's with the onset of narrowbanding. the TLDR was: use if it it works, but you're better off to implement it from the start. Migrating a user group over to it was a PITA - especially if they had a mix of radio models.

That is Cool !! Where did you come across that little gem ?

Well not exactly a haunted radio tower (although there is an early 1900's radio antenna on top of it), but the old Pacific Theaters building on Hollywood Blvd. is definitely haunted on the roof. Story is someone jumped off the buildings roof to commit suicide. I got the contract to take care of the cooling and heating systems located on the roof. Stuff happened. Things moved without obvious external effect. Sounds (including a scream) would burst forth without cause. Then there was the just freaky way you felt up there. Maybe if there are abandoned radio tower around, they are abandoned for good reason.

Duh! Obviously would be because its haunted!

By regulation, channel 6 is limited to a maximum of 5 watts. That doesn't necessarily mean someone isn't transmitting with more power than that.

Thanks to @OffRoaderX for the suggestion! Here are the steps necessary to add a user to your “ignored users” list. First, click your screen name in the upper right hand corner. A drop down dialogue appears. Right next to the bottom it says “Ignored Users”. Click on “Ignored Users”. You’ll see a dialogue asking you to enter a member’s name to your ignore list. Start typing the screen name they use. You’ll see a listing of usernames that match what you’ve typed. Select the name from the list for the user you wish to ignore. Select the check boxes that define what you wish to ignore. If you never want to see their posts, check “posts”. If you want to block messages from them check “messages”. If you don’t want to be notified when they mention you, check “mentions”. And finally, if you just don’t want to see their signature at the bottom of every one of their posts, check signature. For example it makes sense to check signature but not posts if their signature bugs you for some reason. It really doesn’t make sense to select signature when you’re going to be blocking their posts, but that’s the default. Then click the blue button that says “Add User”: You’ll get a quick confirmation message saying you added the user to your ignore list: It’s that easy.

I confirmed, Steve's step-by-step instruction's work. I no longer see SoCal ... Thanks Steve..

I'm recently new to GMRS and after several purchases of HT radios, I've decided to make the leap to getting a mobile radio for my Land Cruiser for my off roading adventures. After watching a couple YouTube videos, scrolling through the forums here on myGMRS.com and reading a couple Reddit posts. I've decided I want to go with a Kenwood mobile radio, specifically the TK-8180 line. I found two refurbished radios, the TK-8180 (30 watts) and the TK-8180H (45 watts). Like with most of my purchases I was going to full send on the 45 watts version till I came across a post where they stated that the 45 watts version only goes down to 10 watts on low, versus the 5 watts on low that the 30 watts version can do. Again I'm relatively new to the GMRS world so apologies if I get this wrong but seeing that the 45 watts version doesn't go down to 5 watts, that would mean I wouldn't be able to transmit on the channels 1 - 7 correct? Why is that an issue you ask? Well the group I usually go off roading with they like to stay on channel 5, they say that it's the channel that has the "least" amount of traffic on it. Despite my requests to move to a channel in the 15 - 22 channel range, I get out voted every time.. I know that there isn't a big difference from a transmitting and receiving standpoint between the 30 watts and 45 watts versions. I also know that the antenna and positioning of the antenna play a bigger role than the power levels. However is there any other differences between the two versions? Would I be missing anything if I went with the 30 watts version? The only reason I wanted the 45 watts version was for that extra bit of punching power if I ever needed it. Would I need to worry about heating issues with the 45 watts version? I plan to have it mounted on my dash since the previous owner already drilled holes for some type of radio or monitoring device. Seeing that the 8180 is a commercial radio, would I need to get my LMR license in order to legally use it? Even if I plan to use it only for GMRS purposes? I look forward to some of the answers I get and/or feedback. Either would be greatly appreciated.