WRXN668

Replying to myself... oh oh oh-oh... I had cause to stop by an old department for an org where I used to work, among other things they do, they provision and manage the org's business-band radios for probably thousand staff and vehicles. The head of that department confirmed that commercial FM receive with a diplexer shouldn't be a problem, they've used diplexers for this sort of thing, and commercial FM is so tolerant that a coathanger could do the job. So it looks like if I were to go with a GMRS radio that only does GMRS and OOB Rx in its immediate vicinity, there would be no problem in doing this. If I can find a diplexer that makes that split above 108MHz but below 144 that would be absolutely ideal, but even if the split is less optimal I should still be able to monitor the ham bands and OOB around those bands with the ham radio with its own antenna, and use the GRMS antenna for commercial FM.

We went four-wheeling this weekend, went up to Sedona. On the trail itself the Tidradio TD-5R radios were quite helpful, but we were basically line of sight or not much past it. They were also helpful for the drive up from Phoenix and back down again, we were able to coordinate stops etc. In-town was another matter. I'll have to look up the band-plan or whatever the GMRS equivalent is, there must've been some kind of repeater on one of the channels because occasionally there was a morse-string transmitted, and there was a lot of other random chatter, some of which might have been FRS users. I haven't looked into what it takes to do CTCSS/DCS or equivalent, I will need to do so. Finding a clear channel was a bit of a pain but if we can use those features it might work better, presuming that others are also using those features. I'm now thinking about what I want to do for a mobile install on my truck. In a nutshell I have three services I would need to deal with... receiving commercial broadcast radio (ie, normal FM, possibly ability to receive AM and satellite radio, but the latter is less important to me), communicating on GMRS, and communicating on amateur radio on various bands that Technician allows. I'm toying with leveraging either the factory commercial radio broadcast receive antenna location and using a diplexer, or leveraging the existing hole in the roof of the truck where the satellite radio receiver sits in order to do either GMRS or amateur, or both depending on what I ultimately go with. The shorter wavelength of GMRS may work better with that roof location. This is an Australian D40 Navara antenna: This is what they went with instead of a cowl-mounted antenna like on the Frontier, where instead that hole is used for the satellite radio receiver. If I replace the satellite receiver with a GMRS-tuned antenna and go with a diplexer for the commercial broadcast receiver then this is a pretty good spot for it. Though I haven't decided on if I would like how it looks. I could then decide if the current cowl location gets an antenna that will do some of the ham bands. Or, I could replace the XM antenna with a sharkfin antenna for other Nissans that has AM/FM/XM on it, and then use the cowl position for other purposes, and possibly put a GMRS antenna on the cab further back. We'll see what go with. Been wanting to do something for amateur for a long time, this modern use of communications has given me the impetus to revisit.

If your interactions with hams are generally limited to their freebanding then likely you're only interacting with the subset of hams that are willing to freeband. This would be confirmation-bias. I wouldn't be surprised if there's significant overlap between licensed amateur radio operators freebanding and 'whackers', the wannabes that, once they have a license to operate a radio, end up buying an old Crown Vic or a cargo van, painting "REACT Team" or "Emergency Communications" on it. This sort likes to assert that they have some kind of authority, whether they're actually associated with the organization or not, and whether SAR or public safety officials want them there or not. Freebanders stand out because their behavior stands out, and whackers may be attempting to justify their unauthorized transmissions based on the the clauses about operating on frequencies one isn't licensed for during emergencies, disregarding that the rules are supposed to allow that only when other forms of communication are not available. Regardless, this isn't the majority. This is a very noisy group that stands out due to the high-profile nature of what they're doing. Regardless, this is not a majority of hams. In my experience the sin that hams are most guilty of is navel-gazing, using ham radio to talk about ham radio, rather than using ham radio simply as a medium to communicate about other things. The phenomenon is similar to so many silver-screen-era musicals about making a show or a musical, the novelty wears off quickly.

Hey all, I had purchased a pair of Bingfu mag-mount antennas with the typically long name in the Amazon listing for use with my GMRS radios. Amazon currently lists this as "Bingfu Dual Band VHF UHF 136-174MHz 400-470MHz Ham Radio Magnetic Base Antenna Handheld Two Way Radio SMA Male Antenna for Ham Radio Walkie Talkie Icom Yaesu Vertex Standard Horizon Marine VHF Radio", on that package as-delivered it was listed as "Bingfu Dual Band VHF UHF 136-174MHz 400-470" and it has a barcode X002PKBG57. The Amazon listing is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N9W5GPV Anyway, When I first got the radios and these antennas I did some testing, we managed 3200' in suburbia with the antennas that came with the HTs while sitting inside of the vehicles, but we only managed around 2000' with these mag-mounts. Subsequent to that test I've acquired an SWR meter and some miscellaneous connectors so I was finally able to hook a radio, meter, and antenna with as few adapters as possible. SWR on one antenna was 2.66, and on the other was 2.83. Suffice it to say, no good for GMRS, despite the frequencies advertised in the listing. Since I have a 2m HT I may test SWR with that, just to see if they're any good at all on 144MHz, but I do not have high hopes.

That's what I thought. I'm not sure why someone was concerned about programming for amateur radio this way.

There was some ambiguity when I inquired over on qrz about programming Part-90 devices for amateur radio bands, at least one response thought that it was an issue. I'm pretty sure that Part 97 rules allow it though, expressly because part of the purpose of the amateur bands is experimentation/hobbyist pursuits, not just talking on off-the-shelf radios...

Good point, I don't really know why I hadn't thought of that. We had some kids' unlicensed walkie-talkies when I was a child, Dad had a weird oversized handheld CB that was sort of shaped like a telephone handset that he would listen to on road trips to hear if the truckers were talking about any traffic issues. Beyond that we didn't really use communications radios much. There would have been plenty of times when they would have been convenient, but never really thought about it.

I look at the power levels for MURS being a bigger issue. One can crank-up the power on GMRS but MURS is limited to 2W and from what I've seen, it looks like it's fairly distance-limited on account of that. Still might acquire some MURS radios in the future, especially if the costs are low, but that would be hand-a-radio-to-unlicensed-friends sorts of scenario.

I am familiar with the channel. Your assertion makes one speculate on the opinions of those that aren't his favorite viewer.

I'll have to look out for those models. In theory I have an NMO-mag-mount around here somewhere, magnetizes to the roof and has NMO for whatever antenna I would choose. But I can't find either it or my longer 2m/70cm high-gain rubber-ducky. I guess this is what happens when you don't operate for nearly a decade and lose track of where you've put stuff. If I can make GMRS work better than it did this last test then I might buy some mobiles for the truck, travel trailer, and my wife's Jeep, and have the handhelds available for hiking or otherwise when the group separates from the vehicles. But I want to prove it out for my application before I commit to spending hundreds of dollars.

Hey all, I obtained a GMRS license so that my entire family can operate without everyone having to be independently licensed while out of town camping and four-wheeling where there's no cell service. I've had an amateur radio technician license for over 20 years but only operated from time to time, and frankly never for much more than talking to licensed friends on 2m on outings much the way GMRS is used these days. It seemed to follow that going GMRS with the family license and where friends could obtain inexpensive licenses without tests would make the most sense for casual use. To be honest once we tried operating I wasn't particularly impressed. I bought a pair of Tidradio TD-H5 radios (chosen because they were advertised as 5W and came with handmics) and I also bought a pair of mag-mount antennas that claimed 400-470MHz operation. We did some testing and found that the limit on range was shorter than expected, around 3200' in a suburban area generally lacking tall foliage, and was actually worse with the mag-mount antennas, working to only around 2000'. I had even tried working on the connectors on the antennas, the SMA connector on the factory rubber-ducky has a very long pin and looked like the internal barrel interfaced to the barrel on the radio more effectively than the mag-mounts, but even taking the connectors apart and trimming a little to make the pin-stickout and fitment better didn't help. The range with the rubber-ducky antennas was disappointing since I had experience talking several miles on 2m with 5W on simplex, and even had an experience talking the better part of 40 miles with a mag-mount on the roof of a cargo van once. I had expected to get a few miles even with the higher frequency being less useful for distance. And before anyone asks, I don't have an SWR meter. Digging through all my old radio/ham gear I have a watt-meter and a dummy load but I don't yet have the right connectors or plug-in modules for the sorts of power levels that a GMRS HT will transmit at. Will need to obtain some stuff. Back when I was operating ham almost everything was BNC or UHF connectors, and the switch to SMA was a bit of a surprise. The mag-mounts I had bought are admittedly predominately for VHF/UHF ham radio 2m and 70cm, which could explain why they made things worse and that the manufacturer was simply full of it when listing them. Anyone have suggestions for GRMS-tuned mag-mounts or NMO-mounts that perform well and are reasonably priced? I'd like to avoid further spending money on equipment that works worse than what came with the radios.