Jones

By studying the license for a while, I have also determined that this site (#2) was licensed for standby use. It was normally not in operation, but could be activated as a backup for site #4, which is the primary antenna covering Fresno.

That antenna is without question a Commscope/Andrew DB224-A. 150MHz VHF antenna. It may even still be in use today. Don't stir up any trouble, but a lot of businesses on the 150 MHz band, when told they had to replace all of their radios with narrow-band units by 2013, simply didn't. ...and didn't renew their license either. The FCC hasn't been doing any enforcement on the VHF business service unless there is an interference complaint. Even out here in rural Nebraska, there are dozens of no longer licensed VHF wideband-FM systems still in use daily. The license says it is for AAA, and that UHF frequency pair (452.6/457.6) was previously reserved for automotive towing and emergency services, so it is obviously owned by the AAA office at which it is sitting. Go in and ask them if they still use it, or if they have migrated their communications to the cellular services. By the way, on the wide shot you sent of the pole, the UHF link antenna is a 3-element UHF beam covered by a fiberglass radome. It is that small flag-looking thing about half-way up the pole, hanging off the left side. It is a UHF link to some other site.

You would lose, not gain signal by moving the antenna down 15 inches to that tool box. If you can't bring yourself to drill a hole for a proper antenna, then get a better mag mount than the stock Midland (which is junk) with a better coaxial cable, (not that ultra-thin 174 junk that Midland uses) and leave it on the roof. THAT is where you will get best results on UHF. Even just a better 6" quarter-wave with a good cable and lager, low capacitance mount will beat the Midland quarter wave.

Yes, it grounded through the antenna, and/or the mounting bracket of the radio. (Kenwood 880s are not floating case. the metal case and bracket IS negative ground.) That's another reason NOT to fuse the negative power lead of a mobile radio. If that negative fuse blows, you might not ever know until you burn up the shield on your coaxial cable by pulling 20 Amps of DC across it. Also, I don't know where you learned the bit about "Connecting positive first as always" ...but that only applies to replacing the battery. It is totally backwards with regard to hooking up accessories in a negative ground automotive situation. After everything is mounted and grounded, then and only then should you hook up the positive "Hot" wire,, and install its fuse LAST.

The only few times I have had that kind of a voltage loss, the problem was solved by replacing, or in one case, upgrading the stock battery cables. If you are grounding an amplifier system in the trunk of a vehicle, it is sometimes necessary to bond the rear ground bus to the front of vehicle ground bus with a copper strap or #8 wire. Some cars are not as conductive as others - too much aluminum and plastic these days. There have also been a few instances where I have had to run an additional ground strap from the body ground to the case of the alternator to get rid of "whine" because the factory engine block ground isn't low-impedance enough. ...again, particularly when there is a lot of aluminum and plastic involved on the engine. I guess every install is different, but just hooking accessories straight to the battery, while solving some problems, will create other potential problems....corrosion being #1.

I'm of the school of professional installers (MECP) who never fuse the negative side of electronics in a modern negative-ground vehicle, but then I also NEVER hook anything directly to the battery of any vehicle made after 1995 or so. That really old-school thought from the 60s and 70s needs to be re-educated. If you think you absolutely MUST hook the radio "straight to the battery", then I guess you should fuse both leads. If you want to do it right, the negative lead should be hooked directly to the body electronics common, or "Star" ground point of the vehicle, (the primary ground for body accessories, isolated from starter) and the positive should be hooked to the vehicle manufacturer's designated accessory power takeoff point with the proper sized fuse as close the the power takeoff point as possible. (Power takeoff point is usually located within 2 feet of the battery, fed with a LARGE red wire, and is normally a plastic-capped block with a large bolt that has everything else hooked to it.) If you install the accessories like the car manufacturer intends you to do, and you never hook anything straight to the battery, then you won't need to worry about the starter back-feeding through your antenna and blowing up your radio. Hooking a radio straight to the battery in any modern car is foolish, and can cause noise pickup from the car's other electronics.

Well, it won't cover 2 Meters, but if you want a good wide-band UHF antenna that will not be obtrusive, and very nicely cover both GMRS and the UHF 70cm ham band, then consider a quarter-wave on one of those Laird Ground plane kits that are being discussed in this forum on another thread. (I'll post the link shortly) - now is shortly - https://www.theantennafarm.com/catalog/laird-technologies-mbc-1649 Quarter-wave antennas have no gain, but they do have extremely wide bandwidth, and better coverage in hilly terrain. Since the antenna is very small and unobtrusive, you could mount it up higher on the top of the roof. The added height, and a good coax will certainly beat what you've got running right now.

You should be able to get full-scale copy at 3.5 miles on less than 2 watts. If you can't do it at 40 Watts, then lose those junk Midland antennas, and get a couple of decent UHF omni antennas mounted on the roofline. Also run a heavy, large gauge coax cable designed for UHF...such as LMR-400. If you have those Midlands with that thin RG-174 type coax, then that is exactly why you can't get 3 miles. If you need to extend the coax, note that the CB coax extenders you buy at the truck stop will not work at UHF.

No critique needed. This looks like a great solution for your particular installation. ...and even fairly in-expensive. As for the radials being longer than the calculated length, keep in mind that an NMO feed point is elevated up from the plane level, thus the plane surface area will need to be slightly longer. Follow Laird's directions.

Yep, you all use the same call-sign, and it is a 15 minute interval, unlike the 10 minute interval in ham radio. As Marc said, identifiers are up to you, not regulated or required. In my family, we use unit numbers. I'm unit 1, (ex) wife (was) unit 2, sons are units 3,4, and 5, cousin Mike is unit 6. Grandpa goes by a handle: "The Old Timer". Still same call.

I have to agree with you on the trunking radios. I have two TK-885 units that are the trunking version of the 880. They are a nasty radio to program into conventional mode, They do work, but I can't get them to scan. Also, the conventional mode is limited to 36 channels on the 885. I'm not sure on the 863. I have a couple of 862 units, which are conventional.

6 inches or more is a near perfect ground plane for UHF, so your proposed 8 inch plate would be great just as it is. You should get good results from that. Make sure your headache rack is grounded to the truck's frame and body to avoid static. as in, if it is mounted on rubber bushings, run ground straps or wires as needed.

Many of us here are hams. We have a ham radio section on this forum: https://forums.mygmrs.com/forum/10-amateur-radio-ham/ We will be happy to answer your questions. Some here will be happy to give you advice, even if you DON'T want it. hahaha Seriously, we are here to help.

Just another clarification for those not already in-the-know... TA stands for "Talk Around", which talks "around" the repeater, in other words, simplex on the repeater output frequency. If you set up channels 15-22 all as +5MHz repeater channels, then pushing the TA button makes them all simplex channels for talking radio-to-radio directly. Set up the 16th channel for whatever repeater you will normally be using that might have a non-standard tone set.

Kenwood has it's own quick connect on the radio, however many of us in GMRS, and almost everyone in ham is using the 15/30/45 Powerpole connectors from Anderson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Powerpole

Either one will be a great radio for you, and either will KILL a Midland micro-mobile. I think the 880 series is a few years newer than the 860 series. The 880 series had a better alpha-numeric display also. You really can't go wrong with either Kenwood option. Another difference between my 862s and my 880-885s... the 862s have a 6-pin mic connector and use the 6-pin programming cable. The 880 and 885s I have use an 8-pin mic and programming cable. -- Dirty Little Secret 1 -- The 880-885 Kenwoods use the same programming cable as the popular CCR called the VV-898. -- Dirty Little Secret 2 -- You can use the 6-pin Kenwood programming cable with the 880 and 885. Just center it up and plug it right in to the 8-pin socket. The middle pins are the same on the 6 and 8 pin plugs, and the outside 2 pins on the 880-885 are not used for programming.

Very true, but the OP was posted in the Amateur Radio (Ham) section of the forums.

The 431.0-433.0 MHz and 435.0-438.0 MHz segments are a NO-NO by FCC law for FM. (Part 97, subpart 39) Stay out of those areas. 420-432 and 438-442 is used for amateur television, so that's no good either. Ideally, you would want to be somewhere between 442.025 and 446.075 on an .025MHz step. Just listen first, research the repeaters in your area to make sure you are not close in frequency to any of them, and you'll be fine. For instance, for my cross-band at home, I use 443.325, with a DCS tone to keep others out. It crosses to my local 146.820 VHF machine about 20 miles away. Keep in mind that the national simplex calling frequency for 70cm FM is 446.000, so you'll want to stay clear of that also.

I hear DTMF tones all over Nebraska on MURS. I looked into it a year ago, and found out that several farms in the area use MURS for a remote monitoring and telemetry system for their crop irrigation systems and water wells. There is also at least one company making MURS remote alarm systems for farm buildings and gates. MURS is legal for all of those kinds of things, so that's likely what you're hearing. Most people using MURS for these types of operations do not even know what frequency or band they are using. All they know is that they purchased this wireless thing that lets them know back home when someone opens the pasture gate, and they have another wireless thing that tells them how many gallons per minute the pump is flowing.

I have a couple of 862G Kenwoods, and they are great. I assume the 863 is about the same, but 256 channels instead of just 8 like mine have.

I had good luck running a pre-amp on a repeater reciever until the VHF high-band TV station on the same tower went digital. ..so your mileage may vary. Also, when you say: "I already have two tuned cavities after the preamp", I assume you mean before the pre-amp? All filtering on the RX side should be done before it hits any amplification, so as not to amplify the noise and out-of-band stuff also. additional cavities - pre-amp - receiver. / Thus: Antenna feed - Duplexer - \ Power amp - exciter or Transmitter

My chrome colored pointed hat is on, and I have my noise toys. HONK!! HONK!! rattle-rattle-rattle-HONK!-rattle-rattle. Happy New Year! Oye Pablo! Mas Cerveza por favor!

I was thinking that was too big to fit anywhere in my car, but then I drive a Nissan Juke. I don't have room for a cigar box. Also, I wasn't thinking about the noise in between the GMRS split, but you're right. For instance, that MED-9 repeater that I had to fight with on the 444.475 tower. That is just above GMRS, at 462.950/467.950. I guess the only way to filter that might be with additional P/R cavity filters, and those add more loss per each can. These Olds filters could certainly be designed to block out all of the other business and public safety stuff in the 450-460 MHz and 470-512 MHz ranges, as well as all that UHF TV stuff near you. Once you lower that noise, the other stuff in-band around 463-465 might not bother you as much. Also, the fairly wide bandwidth is a feature of these Olds filters. The ham version allows you to work the whole 430-449 range without having to worry about re-tuning anything.

I don't see any reason why they wouldn't work in a mobile installation, other than size restraints. The UHF one is about as big as a cigar box, but if you have room to stow it, it should certainly work. Of course, you wouldn't want to use one of these on a dual-band radio, unless you have split UHF/VHF transmit ports, and split antennas. I think they would really shine in a mobile installation (or base station) where you had a 70cm Ham rig, and a separate GMRS rig, with close-mounted antennas. If you have one of these tuned filters on each radio, you should be able to transmit on GMRS without blanking out your 70cm rig, and vice-versa.

Hey Gman1971, If you need to clean up that RF overload issue at your site a bit, I have had great luck at my Ham club's repeater sites with Olds Communication Inc bandpass filters. We used to have issues at our 444.475 site with overload from the local ambulance paging service (on same tower) running 500 Watts on MED-9 (462.950). An Olds Ham UHF bandpass filter solved the problem. Likewise at one of our 2-Meter sites, 147.210, we had trouble with a NWS/NOAA station running 1KW on 162.550 that an Olds VHF filter helped out tremendously. I don't have any business interest in this company, and I am not being paid to advertise. I just use these products, and know they work as promised. https://www.ocicom.com/index.php Click on the "Commercial" tab, and you will get the number to talk to Ralph Olds directly, and you can tell him what bandpass and bandwidth you need.