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I want to thank everyone for their help! I have not been on here for quite a while! I have stage four brain cancer and it has really taken a toll on me! I am feeling better for now thanks to the treatment! I still have difficulty with simple things, I am not sure I am putting my thanks in the correct place??? But everyone on here has very helpful with my questions and I see I have been on here for a year! Doesn’t seem like it!!! anyway my thanks to everyone!

My wife is heading up to NYs to babysit our 2 grandsons while my boy does his bowling tournament thing. I came home for lunch to see her off. After she got settled into the car I took off and by the time I got to the shop she's calling me on the radio. She doesn't have a radio in her car so she was in the house. Turns out she couldn't find her phone and radioed me to call it so she could hear where it was. I did, she found it LOL. And that's why a radio is better than a phone, in this case LOL.

I'm afraid that I am not familiar enough with that topic to make a video about it..

It stands for "Oh, Shit! Over!"

Thank God you have zero authority over who can or cannot use GMRS. There are many people who use it for many different reasons. Neither you nor I have the authority to say they don’t belong.

They released a press statement saying their engine failure was due to a stray radio transmission.

------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDIT #2 : Please be sure to get the latest results on the tuning of duplexer #3 on page 3. Had great test results both before and after tuning. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDIT #1 : It looks like the original 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 = > -86dB 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.

I dont publish the actual/*exact* elevation of my repeater antenna because its connected to my house and knowing its exact elevation would make it easier for all the mentally-ill people that send me threats to locate it.

They have a mental/emotional defect that makes them crave power and control - often because in their life, they have none.

What @SteveShannon said. However, Baofeng Tech has branched out in recent years and are having some equipment made to their specifications by other companies. That's probably why they have kind of backed away from Baofeng Tech in favor of BTech. As a general rule, the Baofeng products they sell are a bit more expensive than from other suppliers, but they often have a couple of extra features and they do back up their products and provide support for them.

It's Called Single Point Grounding. Reason - To Eliminate A Potential Difference Between Having (2) Separate Grounding Systems. Single Point Grounding Is Done On All Commercial Tower Sites.

Why do I catch this nonsense first thing in the morning and feel compelled to even bother to say something? First off WTF are you talking about? Are you referring to someone putting out there call sign on a repeater to see if others are also on the repeater? You answered that question in your own before anyone else ever could, THEY ARE BEING SOCIAL It's sort of HOW THEY CHOSE TO USE THE SERVICE. WTF do you care? You decided to post about it here so it must really effect you. Do you loose sleep at might over it? Does it plague your dreams? Is effecting your performance in the bedroom? The cure for any and all of that is tuning your radio to a channel without a repeater and turning off the scan function. Then you will NOT hear those pesky SOCIAL GMRS users calling out their ID's morning noon and night being social. And Randy, if you are looking for a topic for a video how about No being a TROLL

It kind of seems to me like so many GMRS users are eager to police what other people do on the air. Why?

No. Absolutely not. The inventor (Motorola) named the technology Private Line, aka privacy codes. It was done to provide the operators privacy, meaning a lack of interruption from unwanted signals. Its the same concept as a privacy sign at a home or a hotel... privacy and it's literal term means to be left alone. A lot of people misunderstand the definition of privacy, confusing it with secrecy.

My RV Friends are just now getting out of Bear Creek Texas, untouched by the floods because they were camped high enough.. They say the devastation is unmanageable and the amount of rain they got in short period was beyond belief.. They've been staying in touch with the world via their GMRS radios, which they say were very busy by both rescue groups and people in general. There cell service has been spotty and just now coming back, they even had a hard time senidng text, which i thought worked off satellites now.. I would have been on the trip with them but had last minute issues with my VGT Exhaust break and still in the shop for a $4,500 repair.. (3weeks latter)... Thank god they are all safe..

Terri, Again I want to express my appreciation for your calm and thoughtful comments and informative posts in response to curmudgeonliness. Happy Independence Day!

Because the reality of everyone being able to very quickly look-up where they live will hit them. and.. Because they would likely realize that anyone obsessive enough to look up their callsign, find their address, and write a letter for something so un-necessary is clearly a very socially unbalanced and possibly mentally-ill person.. that now knows where they sleep...

They are not the same company. Baofeng Tech is an American company formed to import and sell Baofeng radios. Their goal was to add value by providing on-shore service for the products they sell, unlike many of the other sellers of Baofeng.

I just came back from our club's Field Day exercise. I spent about an hour as a control operator with an unlicensed operator, showing him how to make contacts and a little bit on how to operate the radio (tuning, notch filtering, RF gain vs AF volume). He had 22 contacts on 40 meter phone (7.2-7.3 mHz) when I turned him over to another licensed operator, most across the country and a couple in Canada. He was very excited and was having a great time.

My granddaughter is at the age where she enjoys talking to me on GMRS using her parents radio or sometimes her grandmother's handheld. Good times.

I must admit I’m enjoying this thread—and a few years down the road, I look forward to the “kid misadventures of radio” all mentioned. I own 15 acres of woods on the side of a mountain, and my wife and I have taken to using HTs if I go for a walk and want to leave the cell phone (and the rest of the world) behind. But I totally see in the future, when we have a couple munchkins of our own, using said radios to call them when supper is ready…and all the fun that will come with little explorers chit-chatting through the woods…

Over the weekend my son’s phone was dead so he put in his Sonic order to me over the repeater. Oh well….

I doubt anyone in Iran would ever accept any wireless devices from any country allied with Israel.

Without knowing what frequencies are being used locally there I think that would be a dumb idea. There are warnings all the time against taking FRS, same frequencies as GMRS, radios on foreign vacations since the frequencies could be used by local fire, police etc. services.

The butt-prints smell fresh so your story checks out.

That is correct. There are several other threads that started with someone pontificating about how others use GMRS incorrectly. None of them settled anything. This is one place where GMRS is similar to ham radio; someone thinks their way is “the only right way” even though the regulations don’t support that.

WOW!!! Looks like some people could use a Snickers Bar about now. We can't blame it on people being cooped up in the house due to cold weather either. We aren't sticklers on the use of call signs on our repeater. You can either give your call sign at the beginning of your first transmission or at the end of your first transmission. I know the rules only state every 15 minutes and at the end of the conversation. But it's a curtesy to give it in the first transmission since we have a lot of people with the same names or they sound similar on the radio. It makes it easier to know who we are talking to. The only time we say anything about someone NOT using a call sign is if they are kerchunking the repeater. It' not hard to just say "your call sign testing". And if they want to give their call sign at the end of every transmission, we won't say much about that either. This is especially true if there are a few of us on the repeater talking as a group.. To each their own.

Why does it bother you?

Went on a road trip and my 6 year old rode with grandma. I gave him one of my radios and we kept the other. Thought it'd be a fun way to try to talk. In the 20-ish hours of driving: Kid turned off his radio "to save battery" Kid turned off his radio because he wanted to watch Minecraft videos on the iPad Kid dropped the radio and couldn't reach it Kid couldn't hear his radio over his headphones while watching a movie on the iPad Kid said "hi dad, I love you" and a construction worker on the same frequency responded "what?" and my kid went "what?" and the construction worker went "what?" and my kid panicked turned off the radio when he realized he wasn't talking to dad We talked about how big windmills actually are when we passed a blade being transported All in all, a fun experiment. He enjoyed using "dad's radios" and getting to use walkie-talkies somewhere other than the backyard (when it was turned on). Also, sorry, random Illinois DOT guy.

Getting back to the original post, it’s truly unimportant whether it was an original Baofeng box, an oversized shipping box, or something else entirely.. What’s important is that the OP must contact the vendor to get the antenna that was advertised.

Happy Independence Day!

RG400 is silver plated conductors, double shield and Teflon dielectric. It's what Motorola specifically uses for all their commercial radio jumpers up to 800 Mhz. If you are not familiar with putting connectors on cables, it's a better move to just buy premade jumpers that are pretested and verified to be good. The bit of extra money is worth the piece of mind you get in knowing they will work and are assembled correctly. For 50 or 100 watts, its fine, the losses are not that significant in the 24 inches of cable that going to a different cable would really make a difference in system performance. And the cable is flexible enough that you don't have to fight it like you would LMR400 or any other .429 diameter RG8 class cable. If you REALLY can't be convinced that it's the right stuff however and want that extra diameter, the go with RG393 jumpers. Same construction as RG400 / RG142 (142 is a solid center conductor) but it's the .429 diameter. Your looking at about 15 bucks a FOOT for 393 if it brand name like Belden. And if you ARE going to build your own cables, buy brand name connectors and not the crap on Amazon. There are good connectors on Amazon, but there is some really cheap stuff too that for a repeater, I just wouldn't bother. Remember that repeaters are a fixed station. Meaning once you install it at a location, it's just gonna be there. They don't get moved around like from place to place. Better 'stuff' being used to build it means less screwing with it and less problems down the road.

Then the stupid bastard should respond to their emails.

A Glad Ham!

When the first brick sized Cellphones came out, a buddy got one for work. He'd call us when he was down at the lake and ask us to call back in 5 minutes. He would walk by the sunbathing girls on the beach and take that call trying to impress them. Didn't really work...

The Midland is a solid unit for GMRS, but it’s quite expensive. It also ONLY does GMRS – no VHF/UHF scanning. That B-TECH is far less expensive, but I’ve read reports that it’s a bit quirky, sometimes noisy, and the volume is only accessible via menus. But it has fully integrated mic controls and can scan VHF/UHF. For my mobile station, I eventually settled on the AnyTone 778II (w VOX). It’s only 25W, but sounds amazing, scans VHF/UHF, and seems to have plenty of power to throw signal where I need it. AnyTone is also highly regarded in the budget mobile/base radio segment. See if they have a 50W radio that meets your needs, but I’m betting 25W would serve you well with the right antenna and mount location.

DPL 023 is not a CTCSS tone. CTCSS is an analog tone in hertz and DPL is a digital code. The lowest standard CTCSS freq (Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System) is 67.0 Hertz (cycles). DPL (Digital Private Line) or DCS (Digital Coded Squelch) lowest code is 023 and the highest code is 754. DCS/DPL may be either normal (D023N) or inverted (D023I) They both function the same in protecting or keeping the receiver squelched until the tone or coded is present on the frequency/channel carrier. When the tone or code is interrupted by unkeying, the tone/code will cease thus the receiver will squelched and prevent other carriers without a tone or the incorrect code from opening up the receiver. Essentially it is a Nuisance Eliminator. Motorola trade name "Private Line" is misunderstood by many because no frequency is Private unless it is encrypted. Other radio manufacturers use a different name for their CTCSS/DCS or no name at all.

My kid likes running around outside with an FRS radio and talking to me, which is fun for both of us. He also likes kerchunking and hitting the call/alarm button until I take the radio away, which is only fun for one of us. But we all start somewhere.

Here is a simple to understand description of IP ratings: https://www.iec.ch/ip-ratings The first numeral refers to the protection against solid objects and is rated on a scale from 0 (no protection) to 6 (no ingress of dust). The second numeral rates the enclosure’s protection against liquids and uses a scale from 0 (no protection) to 9 (high-pressure hot water from different angles).

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.

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.

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

I sign on and off with my callsign and use it frequently throughout the conversation. I don't know why people refuse to believe my callsign is BR549.

This doesn’t sound “utilitarian”. In fact it sounds pretty social. § 95.1731 Permissible GMRS uses. The operator of a GMRS station may use that station for two-way plain language voice communications with other GMRS stations and with FRS units concerning personal or business activities.

I've seen a couple of these style 'base station' kits that let you mount your radio into a housing containing the power supply to make for a nice clean setup. This one is for an ICOM radio but I've seen them for other brands too. Any mobile radio should fit as long as the dimensions are the same! https://www.buytwowayradios.com/ict-cs120-20ag-ic04.html Goodluck and happy radioing!

Nothing you said has been offensive but I don’t understand why you don’t want to be an eggplant.

I have bulkheads through the wall to bring the coax in. I also have a metal plate on each side of the wall with a piece of 1/4" 20 all thread through the wall that I use for my ground point. I have a ground rod right below the bulkheads and the all thread, plates, and lightning arrestors are all connected to that ground. That ground rod along with my masts and roof mounted antennas are all bonded to my service ground. I disconnect the coax from the bulkheads inside the house and put caps on them. I know the caps won't be much protection but hopefully they keep any charge coming down the coax and just shooting into the room. Nothing will protect from a direct lightning strike. All we can do is minimize the damage from near strikes.

It's a Smith Chart SWR Circle. It's a circle that is drawn centered at the origin frequency, passing through the plotted impedance point. This circle represents a constant SWR through the range. The value where the SWR circle intersects the positive real axis (right side) of the chart indicates the SWR. The closer the red dot is to one of the lines radiating from the right side, the closer to 1:1 the SWR is on that frequency. I tried the TinyVNA and it did not work. It was way off... very inaccurate. A friend of mine (who is a retired RF engineer) uses a SAA-2N VNA when he is in the field. He has great results with it, which is why I went with that specific VNA. It's "good enough" that I would not encourage people who are doing this as a mild hobby to buy a commercial Signal Analyzer. If professionals are using it, the SAA-2N VNA is good enough for me. I have not compared mine to a commercial grade SA, but I have tuned 5 duplexers (UHF and Commercial VHF) with the SAA-2N VNA since I bought it and have had amazing results. With a 2m repeater only having a 600KHz offset, accuracy is extremely critical. My 2m repeater is covering over 8 miles with 5w handheld radios and well over 25 miles with 50w mobiles, and the antenna is only 100' above the ground, 200 feet above average terrain. Those numbers are both further than the theoretical/calculated RF LOS. So, I personally have confidence in the SAA-2N VNA.

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.....