jsneezy

I was told figuring out the FCCs mess of a website and all the hoops to jump through in order to get the license was considered to be "the test" for GMRS.

My understanding was that magnetic mounts had some kind of capacitive grounding. Maybe that's just for the ground plane. The ground plane in my situation is another thing to deal with altogether. I have a 1/4 wave antenna, the Tram 1126-B. There's a 12' long piece of 1x1 square steel tubing that will be running next to the antenna, but I'm not certain I'll see a great SWR. Maybe I'll get lucky, maybe I'll end up ordering a different antenna. I just can't get away with a 1/2 wave or anything taller because of some of the places I have to go like parking garages.

They could also be the exact same antenna with a different label. I've seen that with quite a few different products from Amazon. Especially with ultrasonic cleaners, which I use for ammo reloading, but there were 5 different "brand names" for the same exact unit all being sold at different prices. I've also seen it with cheaper auto parts, LED bulbs, and who knows how many other products.

Exactly what El Rando said. This is something that happens with quite a few different radios. Chirp documentation probably also mentions it for a few.

The weather here in AZ is starting to tame down a little bit, so I'm finally getting ready to start my mobile install. I have a Midland "mirror and rollbar mount" for the NMO that I will be mounting to the side of a ladder rack I have on the truck. This mount from Midland has a pretty thick coating on it, which I'm not opposed to sanding down if need be, but I'm also not sure of how well the electrical ground between the ladder rack and the bed of the truck is. Does the NMO require an electrical connection to the vehicle ground through the mount, or is the ground through the cable to the radio sufficient? Every time I've tried googling the question, all I seem to come across is a bunch of answers about ground plane, which is obviously different.

If she hasn't started yelling about stopping to ask for directions, you're doing it wrong.

467.675/462.675 with a CTCSS of 141.3 I believe was considered to be the settings for what used to be known as the Open Repeater Initiative. That seems to have gone away in recent years, but there are quite a few repeater owners trying to keep it alive. If a repeater has a different tone set on the encode side, you won't be able to open squelch on it. Generally, it's a better idea to find repeaters that you will be near and using, and program those into the radio. I do believe the travel tone (141.3) is still pretty widely used, but if none of the repeaters in your area are using that tone or trying to keep the ORI alive, you are pretty unlikely to get anyone. Generally, for road trips, I will see what repeaters are available along the way and around the destination and get those programmed into the radio before leaving.

This site actually has the best list of repeaters around. There's also a map that will show you the repeaters all around you. If you go to the menu up at the top, click on map, it will pull the map right up for you.

I thought El Rando getting dressed up meant going out with a Boofwang with the wrist strap and belt clip.

I thought it was "YouTube Hobo"?

I would think the better answer here would be to tell said poster if they don't like the program, change the channel. Nobody is forcing them to listen to the repeater, by any means.

I buy ammo cans every now and then, but I also don't buy ammo any more. I pick up brass people leave behind and reload it. I also never pay more than $20 per can, and I hardly ever go for anything smaller than the 50 cal cans.

I'm not an expert on anything TSA, but I would think the use of Li-Ion batteries would require them to be carry on. I use an e-cigarette, since I gave up the normal cigarettes, and they told me the 18650 batteries for it had to be in one of my pockets, and couldn't even be kept in my carry on bag.

I believe this is the directions for adding channels without the CPS.

V/M and Main move the cursor and up and down change the selection of the field the cursor is at if I remember right. Though I don't think you can move to highlight the firmware version on that particular screen, but I also haven't tried.

I do have a mag mount, but I can also just connect that to one of the HTs for that purpose. I've already cut the lighter plug off the DB-20G and soldered the remaining leads to a relay. At this point, it's just a matter of mounting the radio, running a power wire from the battery to the relay, and connecting to a ground and a trigger for the relay, and then getting the antenna routed. I also came across a "pepper shaker" style antenna from Rugged Radios that looks to be about $35, and supposedly doesn't need a ground plane, so if I can't get a decent SWR from the Tram 1/4 wave I have now, I may try ordering that and see what happens.

I would definitely wait to see what Radioddity has to say on that. Sadly, I haven't had the chance to get mine installed yet, as I'm going for a bit more of a permanent install. The heat has been absolutely brutal for the last month and a half or so. It's supposed to be dipping down into the mid 90s this weekend, but I have plans to get away for the weekend and disappear into the woods with my wife and daughter, a tent, some fishing rods, and the HTs.

I think you're getting a little mixed up. The use of wrist straps and belt clips are to impress the chicks. I think the slow and deliberate speech is so that "some people" can also understand.

I have a couple ideas. It's just a question of how much the metal the antenna will be attached to will help to serve as part of a ground plane.

I don't think that mag mount would work for my situation. Between the way the ladder rack is framed up and the way it gets loaded, it would be unusable. There's too much obstruction with what gets loaded up there and the magnet might get drug around the roof while loading in the mornings. I actually have a Nagoya UT-72G that I decided not to use for that reason. I have a right angle mount for an NMO and a Tram 1126-B that I'm going to try out, mounted to the side of the ladder rack, but I also have to figure out the ground plane concern.

I believe my wife's desktop is Win10, but it's also an AMD processor. I don't think that's really going to help much in this instance. I do know that between the driver for the cable and the Radioddity software, it was plug and play in Windows 7 64 bit. I should be getting the radio installed in the truck next weekend, weather permitting. Some things have changed with work, so it turns out I'll still be using the truck for work so I do have to figure something different for an antenna. I do have an idea, but I will need the antenna to be pretty short, and looks like it will end up mounted on the side of a ladder rack. I'm just hoping I won't have ground plane issues.

Seeing this post come back up reminds me of a question I have, and the manual leaves a lot to be desired. I don't need dual monitoring, and it looks like the radio defaults to a frequency that I'm not likely to use on the secondary channel anyway. Is there a menu setting to disable the dual monitor?

I drive into a lot of low clearance areas, like parking garages and things like that. I typically only get enough clearance to get away with a 1/4 wave antenna in this situation. If it weren't for all the pipes and conduit on the ceilings, I could probably get by with a 1/2. I will be mounting to the side of the rack. I was considering taking off the shark fin on the front, since it's only for satellite radio, which I don't use, and putting an NMO there, but the rack and anything loaded on it would just be an obstruction. And it could potentially be broken off during loading.

Basically, what I'm looking at is something like in this screenshot. Mine is custom made for the truck, with rectangular tubing rather than the round tubing like the one in this pic. The red circle shows roughly about where the antenna would be mounted, with the cable run along the underside of the rail with coax clips like a cable TV installer would use, then down the vertical at the front of the bed, in through a grommet I'll add to the back wall of the cab, then forward under the carpet to the radio. The reason I chose this location is partly because I can get better antenna height, no tie downs ever go near that spot, and nothing ever goes over the edge of the rack there. As for terrain, it's mostly going to be around Phoenix, so some spots with hills, and some flat, but not a whole lot of trees. The plan is to use half of a mirror/roll bar mount with the NMO attached to it, so I can set it so the NMO is flush with the top of the rack. I'll try to get a better picture of it later, for a better reference as to what I'm trying to do.

I'm going to be adding a radio to a work truck, and because of the ladder rack, a roof mount won't work with the way the rack gets constantly loaded. I was thinking about doing a mount on the outside of the rack. I'm a little concerned about the lack of a good ground plane in that particular spot. I'm trying to keep the antenna as high as possible, without the possibility of signal being blocked by the cab or anything loaded up on top of the rack. At the same time, a 1/2 wave will be too tall. Would either the Tram or Midland antenna be better for this specific install, being that I do need it to be as low profile as possible, or am I better off looking for other options?