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You haev to first go to the REPEATERS section of the website (for whatever reason the shared user account is kind of - separated between the forums area and the repeaters section) Click the Repeaters menu at the top menu. find the Edit Profile menu on the right under your profile log in (if you are not logged in in the repeaters area .. log in first.) In that Edit Profile edit screen you can change your username and then hit the Save Profile button at the bottom of the screen.

GMRS is not a “public service”. It is a Personal Radio Service. You’re right that people shouldn’t be making a profit from charging to use their repeaters. The regulations allow recovering expenses only.

Hey, that did it! Thanks!!!

I use a Signal Stick which is only 2m/70cm but it glows in the dark (though they say it will "probably work" on GMRS/MURS). I bought it because the Signal Stick guys run hamstudy.org and I wanted to support them. Also it glows in the dark, which amuses me.

I, unfortunately or otherwise, do not have a castle atop a golden hillside. It's a split level in a depression, surrounded by foothills. I can hit their repeater to get over the hills but within the bowl, my friends and I are trying to put something up to link us all without having to simplex around the bowl, relaying messages. We wouldn't and couldn't compete with this other local group. Our thought is, though, if we can take our traffic off the mountaintop and keep it in the bowl, it's a win-win for everyone. We don't have to pay and they have more bandwidth to talk about smoking meat, going to Wally World, eating at Sonics, and talking about the good old days of CB and sending postcards. Or whatever it is they talk about. But your point is well made about the rent/lease of a repeater. I had no idea it could be that expensive. Dues, at that point, make sense. Like I said before, go easy on me. I'm new.

Irregardless of where you live, GMRS frequencies are set by the FCCs and have not been changed in forever. TL;dr: NO

I've tested a few Nagoya and Abbree antennas. I found that it really depends on the brand of radio. I've tried dual band and GMRS antennas. Here are my result with my limited testing of the Nagoya/Abbree 771 dual band or GMRS Baofeng GT-5R and UV-5r GMRS - 771 did better than the stock antennas. Icom IC-T10 - no difference between the 771 and stock antennas Explorer QRZ-1 (TYT UV-88) - 771 just slightly better than stock Several Wouxun radios - stock antennas di better than any of the 771 antennas. I made sure to use the GMRS only 771G with the GMRS radios and the dual band 771 with my dual band radios. I know this is a small sample. As you can see it really depends on the individual radio. You can chase this rabbit all over and spend lots of money and you may or may not see much of an improvement.

It wasn't a tri-band. It was 2 meters/1.25 meters. I doubt a good tri-band could be made that short. Sometimes I'd like to be able to use 1.25 meters without that 18" antenna flopping around.

200 watts isn't QRP.

That's my go-to for my tri-band radios. As far as I know, there's no tri-band antenna that isn't 15-18 inches long. I think it was on Amazon that I saw a tri-band radio that was sold with a 771-style antenna and a 2m/1.25m antenna that was about 8" long, but I haven't been able to find the antenna by itself. I'd like to have a couple of those on hand.

Each frequency is its own tuning so if you are looking for the best you can do it will depend on what you are doing. I generally use the stock antenna on my HT radios. If you are trying for more, something like a signal stick is going to help and mono band if you want the best out of one band. I just use dual band mostly as for me good is good enough and I prefer to use more bands over more distance. I have a tri band Nagoya NA-320A that works pretty good for 1.25m, 2m, 70cm, in fact it is better on 1.25 than the dual band stock antenna tuned at 1.25 and 2m. In the end you will have more antennas than radios. Josh’s video that @SteveShannon posted is a good one.

I actually use my ham knowledge working on HVAC controls. Sometimes a sensor with a particular value needs to be simulated or corrected. I carry a signal generator, a decade box and a box of assorted resistors on my service truck. A megger that can read a gig and a Fluke 87 (which can also read nanosiemens if you know how to do the conversion). Guess who gets sent to the freak jobs.

I removed the callsign from the other account, so you should be able to register now, Ken.

I donated my GMRS 50Pro to someone that has no business using a radio like this, and they've already screwed it up multiple times, not even knowing what/how they did it.. "the screen just got stuck like that by itself" So.. does the GMRS50 Pro radio have a Keypad-lock? I'm not finding any mention of being able to lock-out the keypad in the user-manual .

LOL, test questions, yep, I know. A lot of stuff I learned in Tech School at DeVry is coming in handy now. Also, that's one reason I'm sticking at 2M, it's the lowest my radio will do and there's quite a few repeaters here for 2M. I'll need to see just how far from the tripod I'll actually be and see how close I can cut the distance.

I am happy with the Nagoya 320A I have. Works well on all three bands

Getting their repeater up on the tower was probably a few thousand monies to get it installed and probably several hundred to $1k - $2k per month, every month, depending on the location. That's why they charge for people to use the "free public service" which is neither free nor a public service. When I put up MY repeater, open for everyone to use for free, the cost was around $1k .. $500 for the repeater (used Vertex 7000), the coax, mast/hardware, etc and paying a professional to climb on my dangerously sloped 3-story castle-roof to install it all.. (I got the antenna for free!).. But my advantage is that I live atop a golden hillside overlooking the slums below which is almost as good of a location as the very expensive towers very near me.. not quite, but close enough, so i have decent coverage. Sticking your pole in the ground with your RT97L would work, but would not have near the reach as their tower on the mountain.. unless you are like me and have a castle atop a golden hillside.

Forgive me, I misspoke. You are, as I presume is usually the case, correct. To the last part of your post, I think the issue that most of the people local to this group have is that the group doesn't publish any data regarding their intake and expenses. I'm too green to know if that's a requirement or not, but they hold Thursday night nets and do them live on YouTube and their production studio looks like it would put an NFL TV trailer to shame. People wonder where all that money is coming from. Not to mention one of their senior member started an online radio sales company and advertises for it over the net every week. It's...odd, to say the least.

This is what I've been using trying to figure out how much loss I'm going to deal with running a line out to my backyard: KV5R Coax Loss Calculator 144mhz with 25' of RG8X is probably going to be about a ~21% loss. 450mhz drops down to 38% loss. I actually don't know of anything short of like LMR-400 that doesn't have high loss with VHF/UHF, but now you're getting into stuff that's almost three bucks a foot. Edit: I have no idea where my mag mount base went, but I'm pretty sure it uses a 16' RG8X line and even with the loss, like 4W at 450mhz out on my porch is WAY better than 5W in this RF dead spot I've created in my office with all the monitors, computers, and metal peg boards. You may not notice the loss with a short run.

That’l learn ‘em!

You should teach them a lesson by putting up your own repeater and letting everyone use it.

Be sure you do the math to figure out the losses in 25 feet of RG8x for the highest frequencies you intend to use. It could be substantial. RG8x is fine for HF, but lossy for 70 cm.

What kind of connector does it have? The ad doesn't specify. From the picture, it looks like a BNC or SMA male. Edit: Never mind. I clicked on another tab and it says it's SMA female.

I didn't know we could change our user name. Nice, now I've got my YouTube name as my user name.

That's why Heinz' makes 57 varieties! I have a friend who is a ham radio enthusiast and an international diplomat. Once time when he went to Europe to consult for a foreign government, he brought his DMR HT with him and we were able to consistently have 100% clear communications during his time there. Could I do that with HF; of course not! It all depends upon whose ox is being gored...

Nice ducting this morning on GMRS. Had a Long Island repeater getting into the Baltimore/Annapolis area. I had a momentary "WOW" factor that I would never get with VOIP.

That's a really good point. And that's even a better one... it can be fun though chasing that rabbit.

I gotcha, I misunderstood. I think this is the antenna that Buytwowayradios was sending out with the KG-935H before they started shipping it with one tri-band instead of two antennas and yeah it's about 8". I have one and the 320A works better and is enough to help me get to a couple 1.25 repeaters from where I sit but it may work for your needs and I do like that it's shorter and will occasionally use it.

Will do, Gil. Of course everything multi-band is a compromise. I wouldn’t mind testing it with some single band whips.

Steve let me know if you find one you like or even one you’re thinking of. I’d like to get one as well for my KG-Q10H. I always have room for more antennas, maybe not as many as Josh.

I have a Diamond RH77CA with a BNC connector on my FT5DR. It works when shorter antennas just don’t, but I don’t have access to a large number of antennas like the HRCC video tested. https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dmn-rh77ca I wouldn’t mind picking up a different Tri-band antenna for my VX-6 and I’d really like to get a decent four band 6 m, 2 m, 1.25 m and 70 cm antenna for my VX-7.

I agree. VOIP is VOIP. QRP to the other side of the earth and impress me.

You don't want to meet my brother. He even makes me pull out the dictionary, but his friends call him "the guy who doesn't talk much"

Got all signed up, thanks!

No, not at all.

...Grid down you say wait, what? What are we even talking about? Grid down? MYGMRS WILL ALSO BE DOWN!!! So yeah we're back to putting the info on paper and not giving it to the "bad guys" who are all gonna be at the mall anyway looting beer and sneakers and worthless TVs because... ya the grid is down. Hello? I'll be hold up in a bunker with all the radios off! Off I say! because the aliens are gonna zero in on RF signals with the lasers! Lasers people! Everyone knows this. Everybody run for your lives! I might have gotten a little carried away, maybe.

Agree, to me. The point being is if you are talking to someone on the other side of the world over VOIP there's absolutely no reason to get yourself excited as you really accomplished nothing radio related. Do it over the air and see how challenging it can be. Then you will have real excitement.

Back in the day you had to build a lot of stuff to be an Amateur Radio Operator. Today the market is flooded with stuff so there's no longer a need to build stuff but you still need to know how to program it and what equipment is good and what's not so good. As someone with an Electronic Technician Degree from DeVry(class of '83, LOL) I know how to build stuff If I needed too but why. I just spend a few bucks and get something that works right out of the box. No need to fiddle with things.

@Northcutt114 I love your avatar.

23-30 transmit on 467 and receive on 462 to allow full duplex operation by the repeater.

Oh, ok, even my new (2 Years Old now) Cobra 29 LTD Classic AM/FM CB radios have the PA switch and jack port in the back of the radio.

Thanks, but apparently I didn’t explain my situation well. We are not trying to amplify the receiver audio. We already have a separate PA. I’d like to reduce the number of devices. Having a PA built into a mobile radio, like the old CB radios all seemed to have, would meet my needs well.

For our rocket launches I am the LCO (launch control officer) who announces the launch, counts down, and then presses the launch button. The LCO is required to be able to command the attention of the spectators. I’m also the guy who has his mobile GMRS station setup there with a battery so I can talk to the the rocketeers who have walked out on the range to recover their previously launched rockets. It would be great if I could use the GMRS station as a PA.

And Walmarts on the air!