Jones

Gman1971, just give it up already. Moderator's edit: "...I disagree" Sorry moderators, ...but someone had to say it.

Just buy an NMO mount with pre-installed RG-58u coax cable. You would be surprised at how much power you are losing in that cheap 1/8 inch coax from Midland. ...and as N4GIX just said, don't try to use a CB type SWR meter on UHF. 1/4 wave antennas and "ghost" style antennas aren't tunable anyway, so you won't need a meter.

The "NN" means "Normal/Normal" DCS polarity. If it were "IN" it would be "Inverted/Normal" - etc. Grendel6522: I assume you were just truncating the actual frequency, and that you aren't actually trying to use a repeater on 462.000 MHz, right? That's NOT a GMRS repeater.

gman's comment only applies if you are in a high-RF environment. Say you lived next to a tower that had a lot of other communications gear loaded up on it, particularly operating in the 450-470 MHz UHF band, such as a lot of police, fire, ambulance, taxi cabs, business band radios, etc... - When one of those repeaters is transmitting, say for instance at 462.950 (a medical paging channel) your radio tuned to 462.600 (GMRS 17) would be overloaded by the nearby strong signal, so it wouldn't hear anything on your desired frequency. Putting a high-gain antenna on a radio with this easy overload-state only makes it overload worse. This is VERY common in CCRs, which typically have no front-end filtering of any kind, and thus no selectivity. It doesn't have to be just a repeater interfering with a CCR either. My Baofeng's get overloaded when the police are using the radios in their cars 2 blocks away. Also, if you have a local TV station on UHF channels 14-21, you can just about forget using a Baofeng radio within 5-10 miles of its tower.

I hate those type of wire clamps. They work, but you must loosen the screw all the way up first, be sure the clamping plate is moved out of the way, then put the wire in the hole, then tighten the screw back down, which will activate the clamp to lock the wire in place. It is very easy to get the wire inserted on the wrong side of the clamping plate, and it will never work that way. Get the wire out of the way first, and tighten-loosen the screws until you figure out how it works. Make sure to get the wire on the correct side of the clamping plate. There are 2 connections for red, and 2 for black. You don't need to use all of them unless you are hooking up more than one radio. EDIT: It may take 20 or 30 turns to fully activate-deactivate the clamping mechanism. Look inside the wire hole as you run the screw. You'll figure it out.

...oh, and to answer your original question... You only need to fuse the positive wire on your base station. Adding a fuse to the negative only increases the resistance loss. The only reason to put a fuse in the negative lead is if you are going to hook a radio directly to a car's battery. (which is a bad idea) If the car loses its body ground, that negative wire fuse will prevent your engine's starter from finding ground via your antenna, back to the battery through your radio's negative wire. There are other discussions on this site about why NOT to hook up your radio straight to the battery on your car.

I find a lot of the plastic inline "spring loaded" fuse holders, or even worse, the "clam-shell" type fuse holders that come with radios are inferior. I also am not a fan of glass cartridge style fuses. When they go bad, or get lossy, I replace them with inline ATO/ATC style blade fuse holders. They are more modern, easy to find, and make much better contact with less loss. In my shack, none of my radios have fuse holders inline. They are all individually wired to a marine type fuse block, loaded with ATO/ATC type fuses of the appropriate size for each radio... Pink (4 Amp) for my CB Brown (7.5 Amp) for one of my UHF rigs Red (10 Amp) for my other UHF rig Blue (15 Amp) for my VHF radio, and Clear (25 Amp) for my HF rig. I have also put a similar setup in my work van. But hey, if you only have one radio, they do make single inline ATO/ATC fuse holders with wire sizes varying from 8 to 18 Gauge.

If you are trying to run a 45 Watt radio on a cigarette lighter plug, then there's your first problem.

I agree with WRAK968, and mbrun. I recommend people pausing between transmissions to give someone a chance to break in. When breaking in, you should just toss out your call sign, (which is required anyway) and wait to be acknowledged. In the Midwestern ham community, the term "Break" is only used to stop an ongoing conversation for urgent traffic, and a double "Break Break" is used for emergency traffic. The term "Contact" is used during nets by someone who would like to make a quick contact with someone else on the net. I NEVER want to hear Q codes used in voice communications, and many other hams feel the same way. Q codes are used as shortcuts in Morse Code. Using them in voice communications is just sloppy operating. ...and yes, there are a LOT of very sloppy old-timers out there teaching bad habits to new operators. I also hate the use of 10 codes, unless you are a police officer using your official radio.

Just a thought... See if there is any digital activity in the area on 154.240 MHz. My UV5-R generates its own 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion when it is in overload condition. (154.240 X 3 = 462.720)

You can't use 2 Btech radios or any other CCRs in the same room while trying to use a remote located repeater. The units are too close together, and transmitting on one of them will overload the receiver on the other one, so you will hear nothing. Get them 100 feet apart, and it will work.

I would guess that you are picking up interference from a nearby TDM digital repeater, or perhaps someone is illegally using TDM or DMR on the GMRS band.

I think he means can his family members create multiple accounts on this site all using the same call sign. - Good question.

I think perhaps he meant 151.625, which is the most used itinerant business frequency in the VHF band. Also Known As "The Red Dot Channel" and "The Weatherman Channel".

The standard Morse speed for commercial (Part-90) repeater controllers is 25 WPM. The maximum speed for amateur radio repeaters is 20 WPM, but amateur stations using commercial repeaters often use the 25 WPM setting, and I don't think anyone has ever been cited for it. The older Bridgecom repeaters can be set for 10, 20, or 25 WPM. I'm not sure about the newer Bridgecoms, but I would assume they are similar. I have heard faster Morse sent on some machines. There are some that I can't copy, and I can copy 20 WPM by ear. I had to record one ID, and open it up in audio editing software so I could slow it down to the point of readability. I calculated it at 60 WPM. It was as ID that would play every time a phone patch was dropped. I knew there weren't supposed to be phone patches on GMRS, but when I ran the ID, it turned out that it is an old business licensed repeater on a GMRS frequency pair that has been grandfathered in. That brings up a topic for another thread: Even though grandfathered, it is still a GMRS license, not Part-90... so should they be allowed to use a phone patch?