Jones

Yes, you can use it as a base antenna. The GP-1 is a ham antenna, and won't work (as well) on GMRS.

Looking at the satellite view of your town, I would say that the North Valley Hospital roof would be the best candidate for a GMRS local area repeater, if they will let you put one up there. That should give you hand-held coverage throughout the whole town, and perhaps beyond.

Find the tallest building in town, and ask to put an antenna on top of it. Also ask to put a repeater inside the building somewhere, like in a elevator head-house or something like that.

If you can get a repeater onto one of those mountain tops, you could get 50-60 miles or even more with just a 25 Watt radio. UHF is very much line-of-sight communications. If you can see it, you can talk to it. If it is behind the hill, you cannot. You mentioned that you have a UV5R handheld, so I assume that you are also a licensed ham operator. GMRS will give you the exact same coverage as the 70cm (440) Ham band. It will give you just slightly less coverage than the 2 Meter ham band, given the same power level. One thing I would warn against in your area: do NOT use high gain antennas. Simple quarter-wave whips on vehicles, and at most a 6dB gain base station antenna will be great, since there will be many times when you will be broadcasting "straight up" to a repeater.

I wouldn't bother looking too far north, since you seem to be less than 10 miles from Canada. That will eliminate 2 of the available channels that you can use as well. Are you just wanting to cover your town, or a much larger area? Other towns to the south? ...and the most important question: Is there one high point that you are able to see from all of the points where you would like to be able to communicate from? If so, is there already a tower there? Phone? FM Radio? TV station?

Sure. Why not? GMRS at 462MHz is not going to cause any trouble with your 820-890MHz 4G antenna.

See page 18 of the owner's manual. Press the TS/DCS button on the front panel. It will toggle between CTCSS, DCS, and OFF modes.

That's real nice, but on this forum, we generally try not to recommend people doing illegal things. Keep in mind that Baofeng UV-5 series and F8 series radios are not type accepted for use on GMRS, thus, you are in fact breaking the law. If you were running a Part 95 accepted 25-40 Watt radio such as a Kenwood, Motorola, or even a Midland MXT400 with a quarter-wave antenna on your roof, you would be able to easily reach the back of your convoy at 3-5 Miles, legally.

"Quiet Codes" or "Private Codes" above 39 on your Midland will be DCS/DCG/DPL digital tone... whatever. Read your MXT400 owner's manual. There is a chart that will tell you which codes are what.

As for: "how to look up" tower sites, as you may know, every tower (or building) over 200 feet tall with antennas on it must have a registration number from the FCC. That number is required by law [47 CFR 17.4 (g)] to be posted at the base of the tower (or at the building's entrance). If you find a good site, look around for the Antenna Structure Registration number, or ASR. You can then look up the owner's information here: "https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/AsrSearch/asrRegistrationSearch.jsp"

You might want to contact Southern Stone Communications of Florida, LLC, and see if you could lease space at their tower farm just north of LPGA Blvd, between Wesley Street and Grand Preserve Way. That looks like a very nice location. It currently holds commercial FM stations WHOG "95.7 The Hog", as well as WVYB "103-3 The VIbe", and WLOV "99.5 Love FM". The satellite image also shows an AM 2-tower directional array on the property just south of the big FM stick, but I cannot find the info on the AM station right now.

...and the answer is: Don't worry about it. If you'll notice, the old FRS frequencies are in between the old GMRS frequencies - every-other-one. [they are technically one and the same now anyway. Depending on whether or not you are licensed determines how much power you are allowed to run, and how much bandwidth.] If anything, you should adjust for best SWR on the 462.6MHz (simplex) frequencies, but most antennas have a wide enough bandwidth to just set them for great response across the whole band, with the best peak at 465.1MHz, but still great response on 462.6 (1-7, 15-22) and 467.6 (8-14 [low-power channels], GMRS 15R-22R Repeater Inputs).

It could be the radio's IF and mixer picking up a shadow of a VLF beacon station. Is the beacon transmitting R O S in Morse? . - . - - - . . . If so, that is the airport beacon at Rush City on 282 Khz.

Not all of them, but I think they have over 30 different tones available. I do know the most common one is 141.3Hz, or Midland code 20. You don't need to program in all of the tones, just pick one, and use it. If it happens to be the same as another local repeater on channel 15, use a different code to prevent interference.

backwards. Radio simplex is transmit and receive on 462. When in repeater mode, the radio transmit is 467, still receives on 462. The repeater listens on 467, and transmits on 462. ...and don't forget to set a CTCSS tone on both transmit and receive of your repeater that is compatible with your Midlands, and also set up your repeater for narrow-band operation for best compatibility with narrow band Midland radios.

Now Mr. E., I am an advanced member that has been here for almost 4 years, and I am not able to 'block people' or 'remove posts' on this forum. Perhaps you are thinking of some other forum. ...or perhaps you are full of hot air, and/or being overly sensitive. That's as snarky as it is going to get around here.

RG58u... just no. That's OK for less than 15 feet in a mobile environment, but not for a base station. If you are going to be running down a tower, and into the house, and into the next room, you will have 60-100 feet before you know it, and that thin RG58u will have no more signal left at the end of the cable. It is WAY too lossy for long cable runs. Use LMR-400 at a minimum if you are planning a run of over 50 feet of cable.

Notice the plus/minus symbol right in front of that 12KHz rating... that means the bandwidth is +12 and - 12 from the center zero point of 450KHz. That's 24KHz total Bandwidth.

That look correct to me. ...and yes, with Tone Squelch you would be set to hear only traffic from the repeater, not everything on that frequency.

NO! ...do not use lightning rod cables to ground your antenna. Very bad idea. Where is the electrical service entrance to your home? Grounding to the electrical system's ground rod would be the much better place to ground your antenna system.

I'm not near Milwaukee, but I am sure enjoying this "Old Milwaukee".... and wishing you all the best time.

You don't want to hook your radio's negative direct to the battery, because your antenna is grounded to the body of the vehicle. If the ground safety cutoff device fails, or cuts off for some reason, you don't want the rest of your vehicle finding ground through your radio back to the battery.

The UV-5R is still widely available, and still cheap. https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-Dual-Radio-Black/dp/B007H4VT7A

No, that was LAST night. Sorry you missed it. -Jones

I have been on just one. Mine.