WRXN668

Last time I saw a Sad Ham was when the vegetarian in a local social club volunteered to cook Christmas Dinner.

These folks can help you get started.

I've worked a career in the public sector. Without even seeing their purchase orders I can guarantee you that no public sector entity is paying list price. They're getting significant volume discounts if they're a large enough entity to make volume purchases, or they're buying on a cooperative contract with other smaller public-sector entities and are still getting a discount. And that's before considering what sort of grants may be available to them in the name of life-safety interoperability. These list prices are to prevent your average schmuck from buying those licenses. It's a form of security through obscurity since most hobbyists cannot justify such inflated prices.

I suspect that a fair number of licensed GMRS operators would actually be happier as hams. GMRS reminds me of two historical licenses, the old amateur radio novice license, and the original citizen's band license. The point of these licenses were to let radio operators get their feet wet, as users of radios, and principally for relatively short-range communications. These licenses were not about modding equipment, they were about just using off-the-shelf stuff. For CB this was the intended end-state, just reliable 2-way communication. For Amateur Novice, an introduction to see if there was further interest to level-up to more advanced aspects on higher privilege licenses for both more experimentation and longer ranges. With the hellscape that CB became, GMRS seems to be a retry. Buy a license, buy off-the-shelf part-certified equipment, and operate on a limited number of channels. But this time the FCC picked a bit of spectrum that doesn't lend itself to distance in the way that 11 meters does, so there's less incentive to try to run massive amplifiers or collinear arrays. But some of the intentions by some GMRS license holders to operate outside the bounds of what the Service permits seems like it's taking things back in the direction of CB again, when really those who do this would probably be much happier if they license as amateurs. The test is not that hard, and the threshold to pass is surprisingly low. I passed my no-code Tech in the early noughties using only then-freely-available information I found on the fledgling Internet and through just discussion with friends.

Digital modes on amateur radio are something that feels unsettled. I know of mutually-incompatible D-STAR, Fusion, and DMR, and I think there are others that I'm just not acquainted with. Last weekend I bought a Radio Shack HTX-242, a 2m 45W mobile, for short-term use in my truck. I went with it because I wanted to see what having a mobile would be like versus just using HTs. I went with with a radio that's a quarter-century old because technology-wise it's a lot like my Alinco DJ-195 that I bought as a brand new ham, and because it was cheap. I paid $60 for that working radio. I'll end up spending far more on just an antenna. I want the digital scene to settle out before I invest serious money in radios that do it. I definitely understand the advantages in eliminating any sort of background static so long as the receiving station picks up enough packets to reassemble the voice, and that the amount of bandwidth needed is much smaller than analog for the same sort, and that there are ancillary life-safety benefits like the ability to send GPS and to maintain some kind of carrier even when not talking, but until there's a dominant player it's difficult to justify spending upwards of four figures on radios when one's chosen system might go the way of CED, Betamax, or HD-DVD. It looks like there's no intention to allow digital modes on GMRS, which given the small number of channels and shared spectrum with FRS makes sense. If there is a desire for digital modes on this sort of license it would probably make sense for the FCC to carve out a new bit of spectrum to use for it that isn't shared with another service, and given that GMRS is not really intended for the sort of experimentation that amateur is, declare a codec for mandatory use so that radio manufacturers are all interoperable. In the meantime still looking at GMRS mobiles. I'm thinking remote-head, high power, closer to the 50W max than the 15W of some of the mobile Midlands. Anyone know of a good diplexer that can separate-out the GMRS band or even the entire 60-70cm band from the rest, or that would separate-out commercial FM 88MHz to 108MHz? I am looking at replacing the factory car radio mast with a communications antenna and using a diplexer to split off commercial broadcast radio from communications so that one antenna can do both. Even if the antenna is a poor match for commercial broadcast it would likely still be good enough.

I have some hobbies where I have an extreme excess of materiel or supplies. When I got into amateur radio 20+ years ago I decided that this was not going to be such a hobby. Don't get me wrong, I have more stuff than I routinely use, including commercial-grade test equipment like a Bird wattmeter and a Bird dummy load, but I haven't acquired radios in excess. If anything I have too few supplies, as I've had to order NMO/UHF/N/BNC/SMA adapters, mounts, cables, and some antenna parts. It helps that I can now afford this stuff much more than I could as a twenty-something. I guess I'm treating this hobby like I treat some of the more expensive or larger tools. I have just one each of tools like the table saw, the miter saw, the bandsaw, the MIG welder, the 2-post lift, that sort. Likewise I have one 2m HT, one 2m mobile, one 10m mobile, and the pair of these GMRS radios. I don't feel compelled to have many redundant radios in the same form factor and band as each other, and for what redundancies I would have, they're based on practical use like handing to family members that are entitled through my license to use them. I don't feel compelled to have them just to have them, they need to serve a purpose.

Surprisingly I couldn't readily find the manual online other than references to it at those places that only want to give you one page at a time. I hadn't sought-out the manual before buying, but attempting to use the manual yesterday to program memory slots it wasn't really all that helpful. It did not, for example, cover that slots above 54 are locked out from transmit, regardless if the config as written complies with Part 95 rules.

I've confirmed experimentally that memory slots above 54, ie ones not hard-set by the manufacturer, can be programmed, but one cannot transmit on them. At least not on 101, which I tried to set up as an anternate channel 1 with tones. It will listen, but PTT doesn't do anything. I suppose so. I'm wondering who actually manufactures the TD-H5. It appears that the identical design is sold branded as numerous GMRS radios, and is also sold as an entry-level ham radio sponsored by QRZ.com. Given that it can receive on both 2m and 70cm it makes one think that it was actually designed as a ham radio first, complete with the extended ranges on both bands and the large number of memory slots, but hobbled to turn it into a GMRS radio. It would have been nice if it had a few more features, and I don't mean a flashlight with a dedicated button or an FM radio or weather radio easy-access mode either. Will further keep an eye out for GMRS. I would rather not pay $150 per radio for HTs. Anyone know of any mobiles that have these sorts of selective calling and busy channel lockout that's actually easy to use?

So I have these Tidradio TD-H5 radios. They're OK when there's only one party or group on simplex, but if there are multiple groups or repeaters then they aren't so great. As seems common in this generic-frame-locked-for-GMRS model, the manufacturer seems to have defined channels by simply configuring memory slots for the 22, then defined eight memory slots for the standard repeaters/shift with no tone, then defined three sets of eight for those same standard repeaters/shift with the ability to configure tone. The problem is that in order to preconfigure the use of tones for simplex for selective calling I would have to overwrite the memory slot for the stock/toneless channel I'm configuring, because the three sets of eight memory slots I referred to have frequency-shift baked in where I cannot change them. While I have the ability to go into the menu for a given memory slot 1-22 for channel 1-22 to change tx and rx tone, I do not expect that a young or old family member will readily be able to do this. Meaning if we're convoying and not using tone, but find that channel use is heavy enough that we need to switch so tone squelch avoids us having to listen to other groups, I can't just tell the rest of the group to switch from Channel-X to DIY-X using the up/down keys. What ideally I'd like are mobile and HTs that can be programmed for both selective calling on simplex (ie CTCSS and/or DCS tone/tone-squelch) and busy channel lockout, without having to overwrite the default 22 channel memory slots. I would like the keep memory slots for channels 1-22 without any other programming intact, plus be able to save frequencies for channels 1-22 in higher-number slots with tone and busy-lockout without having to have repeater shift enabled. Any suggestions for radios that can do this would be appreciated. Unfortunately my e-mails to Tidradio to seek assistance with this have gone unanswered, I expect to be returning the TD-H5s shortly while I still can.

That's my goal. Set t-sql to avoid listening to other people. Tidradio replied to me but I think it was a canned answer from whatever flunky normally initially responds to e-mail. No acknowledgement of my desire to reconfigure the "DIY" channels to not be repeater-offsets. I replied again, we'll see if they actually include anyone who can provide relevant feedback. If not, I guess these will be going back and I'll pursue a different radio.

Amazon. It shouldn't be a problem.

We moved around a bit depending on how busy a given channel was. I was trying to avoid the especially low-power interstitial channels that are more intended for FRS. Still haven't heard a response from tidradio on removing the channel-offset from the DIY memory positions. I'm within my amazon return window still, these things might be going back if I don't hear from them.

I've e-mailed to Tidradio's support address, let's see if they route my inquiry properly or not, and if they are responsive.

Because I'm handing the other radio to a five year old child or to a 75 year old man who are part of my family, and they can scroll with the arrows from Memory 001 "CH.-1" up to Memory 031 "DIY-1" easily enough to switch between conventional transmit and receive and a tone-control-based Tx and Rx while we're out and about without any real need for explanation beyond my saying, "switch from Channel One to DIY One" and we're good to go. I don't expect my parents, who aren't radio hobbyists and have no interest other than the communications working, to reconfigure a memory channel on the radio. And I don't expect a five year old to do it either.

When we were driving around, our radios were occasionally receiving just enough to come off squelch, but not where we could hear others speaking. If I enable CTCSS on both transmit and receive or similar on simplex then our radios won't come off-squelch except when receiving. And while I cannot remember the name of the feature, I think there was a feature for detecting if someone else was transmitting (even when not on common CTCSS) and blocking the ability to key-up while receiving. There weren't all that many people on the GMRS channels, but there were enough moments where finding a clear channel was annoying even if it was only due to very intermittent receiving just enough to come off-squelch. Using channels so that I don't have to listen to others outside of my party would be convenient when used in tandem with not transmitting when others are.

That is rather disappointing. While I do expect the repeater-scene to be a thing, I was hoping to leave the original memory entries for the default GMRS channels alone entirely, and to use the DIY section for my own purposes since I'm looking to use these for point-to-point communication only. Hmmm... I wonder if I set offset to negative -5MHz if that would return it to transmitting on the same frequency as it's set for... I may have to try it today.

I'm attempting to reconfigure the DIY memory locations to set them up for simplex with CTCSS, but oddly despite 31/DIY-1 seemingly having no offset, it's transmitting 5MHz up like it's configured for repeater operations. Trying to modify the existing offset entry doesn't work if it's already set blank. I may try again later, delete the memory position entirely and then try recreating it, but apparently I can't write a text name from the radio directly, I'll have to use software to configure that. I'm not really interested in doing that but I may have to. It's a bit disappointing that this isn't working from the radio itself, I was hoping that if I found myself spontaneously joining a 4wd convoy that I could set a simple configuration on the radio keypad without requiring a computer or other programming software.