Smitty74

If your repeater has a input tone, you need to be transmitting that tone in order to "wake up" (open squelch on) the repeater and use it. If your repeater has an output tone, what that does for you is if you set your radio up to require that tone, your radio will not wake up unless it hears that tone coming from the repeater. setting your radio up to require the tone is optional, but if there is another repeater using the same frequency anywhere even slightly near to your repeater, you might here static or bits of conversation coming in from far away. I personally find that annoying, and if the repeater offers an output tone, I definitely take advantage of it.

That was my thinking. Honestly When the SWR came back at a 1.15 with no ground plane of any kind (just sitting on the ground in my driveway) I was a little shocked. Thanks for all the suggestions to test it and see how it works out. Im encouraged.....

I have a dual band comet antenna meant for automotive use. Its like 4 foot tall. If I put it on a "lip mount" base on the edge of my car hood, is the fact that I dont have a good ground plane going to cause me problems? I tried hooking the antenna up to my SWR meter with it just sitting in the middle of my driveway by itself, and I was getting a 1.15 reading. How critical is a good ground plane? am I losing signal? am I going to damage my equipment? It seems like it doesnt need it, and I definitely see lots of other people using these kinds of mounts.

thank you for the replies. Im sure I bought the "G" version. The good news is we bought this antenna for a caravan we have coming up and we are using a simplex channel, and those work fine. It will work for my need, just grumpy that I cant use a repeater with it (I tried, i either dont break squelch on the repeater, or my signal is terrible). Moving on I guess.... Thank you all.

I bought a mag mount antenna thats supposed to be specifically tuned for GMRS. I was having issues hitting repeaters with it, so I got a SWR meter and gave it a test. It turns out that on the 2 meter ham band, its a perfect 1.0 to 1. On 462.600 mhz, its 1.5 and surprisingly on 467.600 its 4.0 Any advice on how to make this antenna work better on the repeaters, or an I stuck sending it back?