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Not that many would care and most likely not a big deal to most here but I got a 64" fiberglass antenna with the little 3 pole ground plane on it and stuck it outside on a 10' video light stand. Voila!!! Pinging two repeaters and even got a radio check through one of them. Sure beats my little 18" whip sitting on a shelf, lol. Will be nice when summer comes around and I can put the thing on a flag pole. It was a chilling experiment. Strung the coax out a sliding glass door and its about 19°F out there right now.

Hey everyone... I just want to take a moment to apologize to Ray @WRYS709 . He asked a genuine question about headphones vs. headsets and why I responded the way I did. I am pretty sure Steve was teasing him a bit and I piled on, just joking around and having fun... kind of like the "some people" jokes Randy blessed us with. I forget that we are not all friends in our personal life and that sometimes jokes come across as insults. Ray was kind enough and had the grace to reach out to me privately. With kindness, he let me know that he felt what I did was not very nice. While there was no ill intent on my end, what is important is the end result. With that said, Ray, I apologizes. I upset you publicly, and I am apologizing publicly. Thank you for showing me grace.

I bought some midland GMRS radios from Bass Pro and didn’t realize that they were not repeater capable or even know about repeaters. About 2 weeks later I’m in the cheap Chinese radio gang with a mobile mag antenna on a baking sheet talking to one of my son’s over some mountains. Down the rabbit hole .

Took my first General practice test tonight. 25/35 Soooooo close.

Ah.....that's what it is. I stand corrected and will annotate the original post. I do indeed have a tone on. Just turned it off and yep, there it is. Machine gun static. Thanks for pointing that out @OffRoaderX

Here’s what I hear if someone transmits DMR on our 70 cm repeater: Recording of DMR on analog with call sign..m4a

On (all) of my analog radios i hear DMR as a very loud and very annoying machine-gun-like digital noise.. very, VERY far from "wont hear anything".. But yah, no voices.

Technically I have 3 antennas up there. The GMRS, a cell phone booster and a UHF TV antenna. But that's in the attic and not on the roof. I have 3 mobile transceivers, one in my truck, one in the house hooked up to a power supply and another on standby just in case. I think I have 10 HTs. Along with that I have 2 repeaters, one at my shop with it's own antenna (of course) and a portable repeater in case SHTF. Beware, this can be you ....

Three hots and a cot. Good deal.

Only if you are willing to risk a $10,000 fine and stiff jail time! I know this will happen if you dont properly ID because a licensed ham radio operator for over 45 years posted it on this forum. He has a license, so it must be true, so dont risk it!

In a "field deployment" where you are likely working 10W, I wouldn't worry about the RF on the shield of the coax. In a permeant installation with higher power, yes you should use a common mode choke. I have a CMC from myantennas that I never installed, but I do have 10 clamp on that have greatly reduced the RF on the shield (you could definitely hear it on the surround sound when I was on HF).

If I were in the market for a $100 radio, I’d add $40 and get the Yaesu FT-60. It doesn’t have APRS, but it does have a metal chassis and a pretty decent reputation. I don’t have one but reviews are good.

PSK reporter is awesome, the list of digital modes you can be tracked in is huge. FT8/FT4 is reported very well, some of the other may not be reported in nearly as many places as others. All of these beacons/receivers are voluntary listening, so keep that in mind. You can also try http://websdr.org/ and see if you can actually hear yourself, but that is very limited on locations to "listen".

Here is some information from @Lscott. He likes commercial radios, as do I, especially Kenwood. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/263-tk-3170jpg/?context=new I found this on Ebay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/226190723292?epid=2256116195&itmmeta=01KF0RF0V9YWCN6SVSJTAZ2YFG&hash=item34aa0488dc:g:tUAAAOSwLRpmafA8 Hope this helps.

There are going to be many more ham radio towers and a lot of hams are interested and even knowledgeable about Meshtastic right now. But the basic steps to determine whom to contact is to either find a listing for a repeater on this site (MyGMRS) or Repeaterbook and then look up the licensee in the fcc database. Talk to them on the radio or drop them a snail mail letter and see where it leads.

It's what I figured. I am the repeater. At least by call sign. And I also know that saying it in Phonetic, Letters or Morse Code is acceptable by the eff sea seas.

No, but if you have tone squelch (TSQL) on receive turned on on the analog radio you might not hear the DMR.

you might ask yourself if GPS is important to you. I have 4 radios with GPS. I didn't buy them for the purpose of using the GPS function, it just came with the radio models I bought. I have never used the GPS functions on those radios. Also keep in mind, some of the GPS features require another 'like' radio for the GPS to function together.. In other words, your position information on Btech will only share that GPS Information on another BTECH radio with same features. Bluetooth is an option on radios that makes more sense and more universal.. I have Bluetooth on many of my radios and I do use it often.. Are you shopping for your first GMRS radios? If so you may look at the Baofeng UV-5G Plus, less than $30 on Amazon.. Nice entry GMRS radio to get your feet wet.. Personally, im not a fan of BTECH, I've never had luck with them other than target practice out in the desert.

Sometimes i feel like I'm listening to 10m. And I'm just over here going "His name is Tim. Yours is Bob. You live 5 miles from each other. Come on!"

LOL, you and me both. I worked for Honeywell IAC(Integrated Automated Control)wiring Controller Cabinets and they had to be Perfect. 90 degree bends, service loops, everything in the right place 100% perfect. My OCD Loved that job.

I appreciate the info. I'll check that website out but I am afraid that my OCD would never allow me to run something that looked like that. It's tidy and neat, but I'd obsess over the wire spacing and want to shrink wrap it and it would just be a magnet for my neurosis. Plus, I'm trying to keep the amount of connections to minimum which is why I think I'm just going to go the ferrite bead route.

My wife almost never IDs. I usually say the ID is for both of us when we stop communication. Whether within the regulation or not, it's what happens. Here's another questions sorta based on that. Both of us use my repeater which morse codes the ID after 25 seconds of silence. I rarely ID because my repeater is doing it for me. Should I be?

I have the MXTA26 and it has the little rubber cup that goes on the magnet. Even if it did collect dirt and rub the paint off no one is going to see it anyway. Plus my truck isn't as old as yours but at 18 years I think about it like you do.

Hey, great to hear that you connected to those repeaters! They can, and likely will, open up a whole new world.

Pretty soon you'll have 3 antennas up on the house and 15 HTs on a shelf along with the mobile unit hooked up to a power supply....

I’m just on my way out the door but there are a few different kinds of chokes, from adding ferrite slugs to your existing coax to looping your coax through a toroidal ferrite, to wrapping coax around a cylinder. The one you pictured is way overpriced in my opinion.

That's a transformer that matches a 2500 ohm antenna wire to 50 ohm coax. IIRC, only the center wire gets the full wraps around the toroid, unlike a choke where both the shield and center wire get wrapped equally. Edit: I'm late to the party

That is not a choke. That’s an impedance transformer that is at the heart of the balun. For most EFHW antennas it’s 49:1 but that one looks like it’s 64:1.

I DIY'd a choke with 3' of SO239/PL259 RG58, an FT-240-31, and a couple of zip ties. Was shooting for 12 turns but only got 11, which seems to still work okay for 20/40m. Should've bought longer coax. @Northcutt114 Check out https://www.karinya.net/g3txq/chokes/ for more info on building your own common mode choke. It's easy and only like $20-30 for the toroid and coax off amazon. @TNFrank I think that's the same 49:1 64:1 I use. I put the choke right at the unun.

I have a Tidradio H8 2nd Gen. I've been happy with it. * From what I've read, I would agree that it might be best to hold off on the H9 for a while.

That is a great idea, thank you. I'm fairly new here so still learning about a bunch, currently only GMRS licensed, but hoping to get my ham license at some point. I will try that, thank you!

For around $100.. you won't find any difference between a $100 radio's and a $30 Baofeng radio.. In fact you may find many of the $100 radios are rebranded Baofeng,s all made in the same china child labor camp..

This is my setup. Transformer is in the box, wire end goes in the master link, and eyelet goes on the stud with the wing nut. The wire is wound up in the chalk reel, attached to 40' of paracord. I just pull it all out, then toss the chalk reel over a branch and pull. The other side is just paracord, So I could get the other end up too, between two trees. Attach coax to the PL on the box and hook up the radio. It's been very effective in my testing, and worked better than the expensive Budipole.

How are you transmitting your call sign? PskReporter and WSPR both require that you send your call sign using a digital mode so it can spot you and report your propagation.

I hope your deference is not misplaced. I applaud your skepticism.

Thank you. The whole certification process looks like it’s limited only by the manufacturer’s honesty anyway! A five watt handheld really has just as much practical range as anything that a person could fit into a similar sized chassis anyway. Adding more power will only deplete the battery faster.

I've been hesitant to comment on this thread, especially given that the OP is three years old at this point, but secondarily because I feel like I'm just raining on someone's parade...but here I am. I just don't see how it would be done. As @WSHL413 has already said, just the additional data entry and agreement on which parks to add would create an exponential amount of work for the POTA volunteers. So adding anything other than agreed upon state and national parks is out of the question. Now, as to doing a GMRS version of it, I just don't see how that would work. All of your contacts would have to be within a few miles of each other. As I understand it, part of the gamesmanship behind POTA is that it is a challenge. Figuring out propagation, working different bands, measuring conditions, etc. If you did it on GMRS, all of that goes away and it becomes a local, simplex game...and finding more than 10 GMRS users in an area - at least where I live - wouldn't be possible. I will say, I'm surprised to know that people do POTA on VHF. I had no idea. I've only ever looked at spots on 10m, since that's my access level at the moment. I would imagine that's a tough activation to make.

This site has some good info on the old Motorola CDM radios. https://wiki.w9cr.net/index.php/Waris

Thanks for the tip: I am going to try glue. I also purchased the HF-009 on its own Black Friday Bundle and now, instead of using the ground spike, I can move the HF-008 PL259 base and triple mag-mount over to my 009 and use them there too!

Good afternoon!!! I just wanted to hop in and say thank you to everyone that has helped me along my journey in learning a thing or two. This community is great. Even though this is my first post, I have probably ready hundreds of posts in the forums. Aside from that, I would like to get a running list of users here in the Beaver State of Oregon. Lets connect!

@KBSherwood Thank you for the list. I have ran through and programmed a lot of the repeaters that I have found into my radios. I got lucky yesterday as I am normally monitoring Salem 675 and was able to hop in on their NET. @Santiam, We might get lucky one day while I'm down in that area to connect. I am about a 45 min drive north of you here in Salem and have the Brownsville / Central Valley repeater programmed in on my HT and Mobile. And thank you everyone for the warm welcome to the GMRS Community!!!

That, plus getting the antenna out of the big metal box.

Also, keep in mind you don’t need to ID each time you push the PTT. Once every 15 minutes and when you’re done talking is all that’s required.

Remember that 'ground plane' (a metal surface that will reflect radio waves from your antenna) and electrical 'grounding' (a return path for electric currents) are 2 very different things.

A friend of mine put the clear tape on his new truck’s roof to protect the finish. The tape doesn’t rub against the paint so the finish is protected. The rubber “protective” covers pick up dust and grit and vibrate against the paint like little sanders otherwise. My roof shows the marks but my truck is 28 years old.

The clear tape shouldn’t hurt anything. Magnetic NMO mounts don’t require electric conductivity to provide a good ground.

I really think it would be hard to determine. For example: a 2:1 SWR reduces power output by about 10=11% however the effect on the modulated information (voice) is less than 1db which is hardly perceivable. Add in all of the interference involved, atmospheric, RF, electrical, magnetic, and it's variance in time and it's anyone's guess what is causing what. Thinking a little further into scenario, how are your finals reacting? Where are the finals in regard to saturation? Every radio would react differently obviously depending on how much "headroom" has been engineered into it. Just where is the bios at any given time? Who knows. As is stated above, your body is part of the RF circuit and it is obviously not stable in it's reactance or impedance. Let's for fun add in the phenonium of the RF dead zone. I live in one. Cell, Wifi, CB, GMRS, GPS, I don't care. Have no idea if it's mineral deposits, surrounding infrastructure, or pesky poltergeist. If I take whatever I'm using a couple of blocks away my signal increases substantially. RF and higher frequencies are some crazy stuff. I've always been amazed at lightning strikes where the current will jump from this to that, fry this and leave that untouched, seemingly ignore the least resistance path to ground and shoot in an entirely different direction. Over my head for sure.

Agree with others about starting with some affordable Baofengs then go from there. Just get some better antennas to use instead of the ones that come with the radios.

Welcome @Maghunter Neither of you have to start with your call sign. You can just push the PTT and use each other’s names. “Hi Dennis, this is grandpa.” Every 15 minutes and when ending a transmission or series of transmissions you are also required to ID. You can include some other identifier, which could be a letter, number, name, or pretty much anything you want: “Wrom258 - grampa”, but you’re not required to. Exactly the same on a repeater.

To make that scheme work, you would need to obtain a GOOD duplexer (notch/bandpass) tuned properly to your desired frequency, then insert the linear amp before the duplexer.