nokones

If you have any emergency who are you going to call? If the brown smelly stuff hits the fan, everybody else will also have the same emergency and everyone else will be trying to transmit at the same time and hopefully you know what happens when more than one person tries to key up when someone else is keying. There will be a gazillion people keying at the same and they won't care if you're transmitting or not and they will not be polite and ask for a break. It will be a total radio chaos and you won't be communicating with anyone. Public Safety Agencies have the same problem when an extreme life & death emergency happens, but most public safety radio systems these days have a feature to prevent more than one transmitter being keyed at the same time and jamming up the frequency. Also, public safety agencies usually have training for those situations and strict radio discipline. GMRS user don't have that training or any radio discipline for during emergencies. It would be best for you to have other contingency plans during those emergencies, the 9-1-1 and GMRS systems will not be the solution during those times for you. The GMRS is not an emergency radio system, but it "may" be a system for communication to use when the emergency subsides.

Essentially, with Windows 32-bit Operating Systemyou are dealing with the vintage Jedi Series radios like the MTS or MTX radio and the 900 Meg operating band range will not go down that far to the Amateur Radio Service 33 cm band unless you know how to hex edit the CPS. You might be better off looking at the XTS2500 900 MHz or XTL2500 900 Meg radios. The portables will run you about $175 - 250 and the mobiles will run you about $400-550. The CPS is easy to learn and use and with this CPS you will need a 64-bit Windows Operating System.

The Lairds, now T E Connectivity, look good and beefy and they appear to be a great NMO mag-mount, but for some reason, the Lairds will run a little higher VSWRs than the Midland mag-mounts.

Real radios have a monitor feature that when enabled, will defeat the PL (CTCSS) by disabling the decoder until the monitor feature is turned back off thus, reactivating the decoder, just by a push of a soft programmable button. The POS CCRs don't have this feature and if they have a monitor feature, it usually just blows squelch by a momentary push of a button.

If you're going to use a mag-mount, the Midland NMO mag-mount is practically the best one out there to use.

Well, the rules don't prohibit and some repeater owners use it for authenticating authorized users for their repeater. So, with that being said, with is the problem on this subject?

In Arizona, only Pinal at this time. There is also one site in New Mexico that requires PT-T ID, don't recall which one at this time.

650 is on Mt. Lemmon so that won't work for Pinal. You have to be a member with SWCRS and have a personal PT-T ID to get into Pinal

It is essentially the same way in the Phoenix Metro Region. As you drive throughout the Valley and you scan channels 1-7 and 15-22, you are always locked on a channel and when the channel releases, it is immediately locked on another channel. FRS traffic on channels 15-22 has picked up tremendously in the past year or so. As for the number of repeaters in the Valley Metro and surrounding areas it works out very well. The 550, 575, 600, 700, and 725 channel pairs are high level sites and the 625, 650, and 675 channel pairs are low level sites and so far no one has come along and put up a repeater on a channel pair currently being used for a low-level site, on a high-level site, probably because those low-level channel pairs are well spread out and reused many times. We are very fortunate with the 550, 575, and 600 channel pairs being on high-level sites (4,000+ for the 550 channel pair to 7,000+ for the 575 and 600 channel pairs in elevation) that we have very good extended range coverage throughout the hender-lands surrounding the Valley for Off-Road Trail Comm, and if need, for emergencies. Cellular coverage off-road is non-existent .

As I previously posted, I operate two base stations in addition to my repeater station. One of my base stations is connected to an antenna I placed in the attic above my shop/garage. The other base station is connected to another non-groundplane Laird B4502N and placed in the window of my shop. Both antennae work very well and will hit just about every repeater within a reasonable range that can see the other antenna. I have no complaints on the coverage. Oh, by the way, my roof comprises of metal roof tiles.

Tune the antenna for 465 Megs if you intend to transmit to repeaters and direct (simplex) to mobiles.

The FCC will find out when one of your friends end up dropping a dime on you. Keep your checkbook handy.

Radio devices transmitting on GMRS freqs must be in accordance with Part 95, Subparts A & E. More than likely, not legally.

Just curious. Why and what makes that radio so fantastic and why does that radio not have any FCC certification to operate in any of the radio services?

I'm running a non-ground Laird mobile antenna tuned for 465 Mhz that I placed in my attic and ran a LMR400 cable approx. 32 feet to one of my base station radios. I can hit all the repeaters that are within range of my location.

You need to have and use an assigned leading PT-T ID with MDC 1200 signalling for Pinal. The PT-T ID is assigned to members of the SWCRS.

I think a good Jeep Trail radio is the Midland MXT500. It is a simple radio to use for GMRS and has a 128 channel capacity. The radio is small, provides good RF power output, almost at 50 watts, but you should see about 45-49 with no problem. Also, the power draw is pretty decent at not more than 9 amps at the most. In addition, the Midland mobile antennae are decent GMRS antennae and have good VSWRs on the GMRS freqs. I would think that a 128 channel capacity radio is more than sufficient for the trail. The MXT575 is a decent radio but very very limited on channel capacity and and custom channel programming as opposed to the MXT500 radio. Thd MXT575 does have a handheld control unit for simplicity and convenience. The MXT500 radio can be programmed with CPS whereas, the MXT575 is only menu driven programming. The other Midland mobile radios are also good trail radios but they put out less RF power and in respect will draw less amps to power the radio. I'm not familiar with the channel capacities of the other Midland mobile radios and their drawbacks, if any.

For a non-CCR GMRS radio, Midland MXT500. Although, Motorola and Kenwood are not GMRS radios you can use them on GMRS freqs.

$349? Looks like the cost for the DTR700 has come down. I paid $424 for my DTR700 earlier this year and it is a great radio. The DTR700 is a great radio and there are plenty of accessories available for the DTR700. Thd best range I got with my radio is about a mile and a half in an open terrain. I strongly recommend that you buy the DTR700 from an authorized Motorola Dealer and not through a multi-product humongous warehouse retailer if you want the genuine product.

Got that solved. There's no bathtub in the shop/garaged although I do have a heat blower for heat shrink tubings.

My two Motorola XTL5000 Dashmount radios I use for my base units would pop the GFI circuit in my Shop/Garage. The electrical power part of the outlet is on a dedicated 20-Amp circuit and that GFI only affected two outlets on that grounding circuit. The other GFI was not affected. My repeater station did not affect the GFI circuit. My repeater antenna is obviously outside above the roof and my radio base station antennae are above in the attic. I had the GFI circuit outlet controlling that grounding system taken out and replaced with a non-GFI outlet.

The "Old People" community I live in should be Goblin and candy free which is a good thing because most of the residents shouldn't be eating the candy for various and obvious medical reasons. That should mean there will be no doorbell ringing thus waking people up.

You mean the Vibrasenders and Vibrasponders? The old Micors use to have a nice distinct hum on 192.8 Hz especially on a Lowband Simulcast System with Micor Stations using the Motorola HSOs. You can hear the reeds vibrate on the air when the system was keyed. That hum kinda went away with the eprom stations.

In the analog communication world; besides the term "PL" which is the term that Motorola marketed for CTCSS, the former GE (General Electric) Radio and also known as Tyco, Ericsson, now Harris, called their CTCSS "Channel Guard" (CG) and was referred as just "Tone". The CTCSS "Tone" is not audible per se, the "Tone" is sub-audible in the range of 67.0 Hz to 254.1 Hz and there are 42 industry standard CTCSS tones. Then there are/were audible tones used in two-way radio communications and they were known as "Single Tone" or "Burst Tone" which arrived from being transmitted for a duration of one second at the beginning of the transmission to signal the system to usually unlock a specific receiver. This type of function Tone is not use in modern radio systems. The single Tone frequencies were usually 1800 Hz, 2000 Hz, 2200 Hz, 2400 Hz, and 2552 Hz. Also, there is a 1000 Hz Tone that is normally used by radio technicians for performing radio equipment diagnostic procedures and this Tone is known as a "Test Tone". This Tone may be transmitted in a steady state for a duration at the Technician's discretion and is very seldom ever transmitted over the air and normally in a closed loop environment in order to not interfere with normal radio communication operations. Some Vehicular Repeater Systems (VRS or Radio Extenders) will use a 833 Hz Burst Tone in a one second duration to signal other VRS units when being enabled for the logic function of the VRS operation to prevent mulitple VRS transmitters from being transmitted at the same time from one operator source. Then there is "DTMF" (Dual Tone Multi Frequency) which is your normal telephone type keypad dialer that is used in two-way radio and telephone communications. A radio system may use a standard 12-button keypad or a 16-button keypad dialer. A 16-button dialer is used for special functions on a radio system that are beyond the signalling of a 12-button dialer. The 16-button dialer will have a 4th row of keys to the right of the standard 12-button dialer and the keys will be labeled "A", "B", "C", and "D" from top to bottom.

This is the antennae installation for both of my Motorola radios and the CB radio on my 21 Chevrolet Silverado 1 Ton Dually Diesel. The passenger side is my UHF antenna for the Motorola High Powered Remote Mount radio using a Laird B4502 2.4 dB Omni with a less than 1.1:1 VSWR, in the center is a K40 antenna for my Cobra 29 LTD Classic Nightwatch CB AM/FM radio with a VSWR about 1.17:1, and on the driver's side is my VHF Highband antenna for my Motorola XTL2500 Remote Mount radio using a Laird B1443S 2-3 dB omni with a 1.05:1 VSWR.