WRXB215

Easy, tiger.

Hey all, so in a moment of weakness, I snagged the hot new toy, a Talkpod a36 Plus.  The reviews are just about all spot on.  The menus are a goddamn nightmare without a real manual to explain them, but otherwise, it works about as well as several other GMRS HT's I have, but with a super-low price.  Some of the Baofeng options cost more!

I ran into one piece of weirdness, though.  I normally keep a UV-5R with a Nagoya 771G antenna scanning in my office at all times, just to know what's happening in my vicinity, so I thought I'd try using this for the same one afternoon.  It worked just fine, but had trouble picking up some of the more distant sources, so I figured I'd pop the 771G on it for a little boost.  What I discovered was that I couldn't receive anything at all outside of a quarter mile from my desk!
I immediately swapped back to the stock antenna, and it worked just as before.  I retested the 771G on a Baofeng, and *it* worked just fine.
So I guess Nagoya antennae and Talkpod a36 Plus radios are incompatible???

Amateur Radio. Available in three classes: entry level Technician (mostly VHF and UHF access), General (adds more >VHF bands, and most of HF), Amateur Extra (full privileges)

One nice feature for any radio you get is to be able to lock the keypad. We were using our radios earlier this year and I left my wife the KG-935G and I took the KG-S88G with me into the snow because of its IP67 rating. My wife was concerned she would mess something up on the 935. It has three different lock settings so I locked it so the only thing she could change was the volume. You might want to check what ever radio you decide on to see if has different lock settings.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough. 

Its true, the groundplane is much not optimal in that location.. But "some people" really seem to confuse "will not work" with "may not work 100% perfectly as it possibly can"

I've had the same conversation about my JK with some people around here. They must be right, though. I mean, William McKinley was their volunteer examiner when they took the ham test.

I use an MXTA26 mounted on the rear tailgate of my Jeep, which gives me a very poor groundplane, and all the of the experts tell me it wont work.. I've hit over 30miles with it on simplex and can hit a repeater 92 miles away, so it works good enough for me.

I think it’s a great idea. We answer the same questions over and over. 
But it does no good to give them lip service in the forums. People who are willing to compile the questions and answers that already exist on this site should put something together and write to Rich, offering to maintain them. 
Or even start a new thread called FAQs. 

Kenwood has released a new "Conceal Cary" radio. It's a little hard to hit the buttons and it doesn't have good range but it has USB charge and it fits nicely in a pocket. 😆

@Sshannon very informative and well said sir. The most detailed answer to the least detailed question. Above and beyond. 🙌

@Sshannon that’s something there! Very cool! 👍
I have to ask though, does it come with a lanyard? Asking for a friend. 😂

@Sshannon Very well said. You should expand that slightly and put it into a PDF. Is there an FAQ area on this forum?

@Sshannon Just when I think I'm joking. LOL! New technology never ceases to amaze me. 👍

Kenwood has released a new "Conceal Cary" radio. It's a little hard to hit the buttons and it doesn't have good range but it has USB charge and it fits nicely in a pocket. 😆

Nice, but this is real and does APRS:
 

Kenwood has released a new "Conceal Cary" radio. It's a little hard to hit the buttons and it doesn't have good range but it has USB charge and it fits nicely in a pocket. 😆

I agree, when you can afford the better items. Some of us can barely afford a UV-5R or an MP31. We do the best we can.

The range maps are estimated based on a percentage reliability scale. Some people draft the maps with a 70% reliability rate (looks larger) others use an 80% or 90% reliability rate, which makes it look much smaller.
 
If you move out of the mapped area, that doesn't necessarily mean the repeater isn't usable. It just means service will be spotty and weak. Possibly 50% reliability or less.

I haven’t heard of any mobiles that violate that particular rule. How would they be certified?

Maybe, but you weren’t specific enough.  The repeater’s Output is its TX but is heard on your radio’s RX.  
Similarly, your radio’s TX frequency or TX tone, must match the repeater’s Input frequency and tone.
Your radio transmits at 467.xxx MHz to the repeater.  The repeater transmits at 462.xxx to anyone listening. There are only eight 467/462 repeater frequency pairs. Those frequencies are established by the FCC rules.
Nearly all repeaters require a tone, otherwise they would be re-transmitting everything they receive.
Your radio transmits a specific tone (CTCSS or PL, they’re two names for the same thing) or digital pattern (DTCSS or DCS or DPL) to open the repeater.  That’s called the input or uplink or even receive tone for the repeater.  
The repeater usually sends a tone or digital pattern along with its transmissions. That’s the output or downlink or transmit tone of the repeater.  Those terms are standardized so we can share information. The repeater output tone is for your convenience to lessen interruptions, but it doesn’t provide any kind of security.  
There are only eight frequencies that repeaters can receive on and only eight that they can transmit on. The frequencies that repeaters transmit on are the same as people use for simplex communications as well. If you are within range of a couple of repeaters that receive and transmit on the same frequencies, using different tones can ensure that your transmissions are being repeated by the correct one and that you’re hearing the correct one.  
So, for example, repeater Sandhawk and repeater Black Brant both receive on 467.550 MHz and transmit on 462.550 MHz.  They’re far enough apart that they don’t usually bother each other, but you happen to live where you receive them both.
Sandhawk uses an uplink or input tone of 67.5 Hz.  That means that you MUST set your transmit or TX tone to 67.5 Hz or Sandhawk will just disregard your transmissions.
Sandhawk uses a different tone, 100 Hz, for its output tone.  Using two different tones for TX and RX is referred to as having a “split tone”.  It’s usually done by repeater operators who want to protect against unauthorized access to their repeaters.  Why? Because it’s easy to scan for the repeater output tone.  It’s not as easy to scan for the input tone.
The Black Brant repeater uses 103.5 Hz for both input and output.
What a lot of people don’t initially understand is that these tones work like filters.  If I set my handheld radio to a receive tone of 103.5 Hz my radio will only break squelch when it receives a transmission that incorporates that tone, which would be the Black Brant repeater.  If I set my radio receive tone to 100 Hz it will only reproduce transmissions it receives which include a 100 Hz tone.  But, if I don’t set a receive tone in my radio, it does no filtering.  It literally reproduces everything that has a signal strength sufficient to break squelch.  That’s useful, especially when trying to troubleshoot.
Don’t fall into the trap of referring to a tone by a number or some other shorthand because not all radios number the codes the same.  Always refer to the frequency of the tone, such as 103.5 Hz, or the DCS code.
Not all radios include all the tones.  Motorola and Midland include the standard tones, but fail to include some of the tones included in the overseas brands. Thus they might not be able to access some repeaters.

Your radios TX is transmit. Your radios RX is receive. The repeater is going to RX (recieve) your TX and TX (transmit to your receive) RX.  Yes it can be complicating. What you need to remember is the TX and RX listed is where you need to program those numbers for your radio.  Hope that helps. 

I'm no guru either but I recognize the value of real-world examples. 👍

I got my 50FT of LMR400, pre-cut with ends on it from Amazon.. Was delivered the next morning.

Let’s say you have 30 watts at the SO-239 on the radio. 
Then you have the impedance mismatch so a certain amount is reflected back into the radio. That leaves 20 watts going in the direction of the antenna. 
Then you have a loss of 1.7 dB, which is about 30% of the 20 watts that’s lost. So you’re down to about 12 watts. I’m estimating rather than calculating so these are pretty sloppy numbers. 
You don’t say whether the antenna gain is dBi or dBd. Assuming the best you’ll have about the same RF in certain directions as 25 watts in an isentropic antenna (it really is only 12 watts, but in some directions the RF field will be as strong as a 25 watt signal into an antenna with no gain.