WRWI368

Please tell me you continued that conversation for as many hours as possible, consistently using the beep!

I have no real preference concerning the roger beep but "some people" really get their panties in a wad over it. One morning on my way out of town at about 4:30am I was using a new UV-5R and the roger beep was on. Some guy came on and chewed me out for about 15 minutes. Some people really need to get a life.

Most modern radios have a green or blue light that illuminates while a transmission is being received and turns red when you hit the PTT. 
But I don’t mind a Roger beep. I can completely ignore it. 

I came here to read about Terry Sullivan, not some dumb question about a radio!  Clickbait!!!!1

Dealing with the Youtube overlord-bots is a PITA..  Its easier and less hassle to just spend 15 minutes re-editing the video, re-upload it, and get 2X as many views and get paid 2X as much, in addition to the payout from the first video.

Here's the issue with this.
We don't know what we don't know when it comes to an EMP.  And much of what we do know about it, or think we know comes from Hollywood where all the battery powered everything from automobiles to wrist watches are going to throw sparks all over the place and fry in a very dramatic manner.
Yet it's said that old tube gear will be fine.  Which honestly makes little sense. 
So here's what I know about it.  And this comes from being an R56 certified installer and digging deeper into the bonding and grounding aspect of it.
First thing is you can't 'prevent' lightning, you can only attempt to prepare for it and hope you have done all that is needed.  We all know some CB operator that disconnects his antenna cables in puts them in a glass jar.  News flash on that.  Lightning jumps up to 9 miles during a strike.  That little bit of glass, the 6 to 8 inches of rubber on a car tire or whatever is NOT going to stop the strike.  And in truth, disconnecting the antenna cable if the cable and antenna isn't grounded at all past the shield being connected to the chassis ground of the equipment actually increases the chance of a strike. Glass jar be damned.  The antenna has no where to bleed off the charge that builds up on it and it actually becomes a better path to ground because it's charged and other stuff isn't.  Less of a voltage difference.  Yeah, you may see some arcing on the connector in the jar, but that is an indication of the very thing I am talking about. 
You ground and bond everything to a common point to bleed off that charge.  But you also bond it all together for when it does get hit.  If you have a  couple radios, a computer, power supply and such all connected together as a station, and your your tower gets hit.  If EVERYTHING is bonded, then all that gear jumps to several thousand volts and then back to zero,,, but it all does it at once since it's bonded together.    If you remove that bonding.  Lets say on the computer you are using for HF packet and the power supply.  Now all of a sudden, there is several thousand volts of potential difference between the power supply the computer and the radio.  Guess what happens.  
So back to the EMP business.
An EMP is nothing more than a light lightning strike.  And if you think about that statement, think about lightning and the voltages and currents present you will realize that 10 million amps across a number 2 or even a 4/0 wire is going to be THOUSANDS of volts in the wire.  Yet, towers get hit all the time.  R56 is a standard used for 911 centers where they CAN'T unhook their antenna's and stop working during a storm.  And if there is a tower at the center with radios connected to it and the dispatch console, then there is a direct DC path (considering the voltage potential of lightning) from the top of that mast to the headset of the dispatcher. 
So what do we really know about an EMP?  Do we need to stick radios in Faraday cages to expect them to survive the pulse?  What happened to all the electronic equipment (yes it was tube back in the day) when the US and Russia would test nukes in Nevada and the island chains they were known for?  And when did the testing actually stop?  Well the US's last test was in 1992.  And the North Korean's was in 2017.  Yet there is no information available about peoples cars stopping, radios dying, or any of that.  So at what point would you need to store a radio in a Faraday Cage in order to protect it?  And the answer is striking.  If the EMP is that strong, the radio would need to be stored 30 to 50 feet below ground in a Faraday Cage to survive because you are close enough that the blast wave will destroy it at ground level.  Now of course connected to the grid, and an antenna that distance increases, but not if you have proper bonding and grounding and correct surge suppression on the equipment in question. 
Antenna size and type will also play a role in this.  A big HF antenna like a 40 meter dipole will take a bigger induced voltage than a UHF DC grounded folded dipole Like a DB-404 or other DB series base station antenna.  This is due to the design of the antenna.  Folded dipoles are closed loops with one end being grounded.  HF type dipoles are open ended and typically are NOT grounded.  In fact the standard half wave dipole is suppose to be a balanced design.  So in theory a balun of proper design can be used with an HF dipole to protect the antenna to some degree when coupled with a proper surge suppressor. 
A good reference for this stuff is the Military grounding and bonding manual that goes into not only lightning suppression but EMP mitigation.
 

Hey folks.  I have had a small group of people ask me about tones and GMRS/FRS basics in the past week.  I figured I would take one of the conversations here and share it for people new to the service.  Hopefully it will help you understand Private Lines, Privacy Tones, sub-channels, tones and squelching methods, in general.  I am only covering the two most popular in GMRS and FRS, but there are many others available as you move into different radio services and technology. 
 
Before we get into what all that stuff is, lets talk about why it exists.  Per NOAA and the US Census Bureau, the lower 48 states is approximately 3.1 million square miles.  Also, 83% of Americans live on 10% of the total available square miles and 40% of all US citizens live on the east and west coast in counties touching oceans.
 
Following this logic, about 500,000+ licensed and unlicensed operators (estimated by me) are sharing FRS and GMRS radio space, in roughly 310,000 square miles.  So, how does 500,000 people in close proximity, sharing 22 channels, all use their radios at the same time without interfering with each other?  Motorola brings you PL tones!
 
Lets get this out of the way...  regardless of what the manufacturers may tell you or how they label their products, there is no privacy.  Period.  Private Lines (PL), Privacy Tones, Sub-channels and any other name for the same service, does not stop people from hearing you, it stops you from hearing them.  I know... seems like a day in Opposite World, but that's how it works. 
 
I suppose the first thing to do is explain what the PL tones really are, what the more common types are and what each of them do.  A traditional squelch is a signal level squelch.  Meaning, no audio will come out of the speaker until a strong enough signal is received.  Then there are also user squelch types.  With analog radios, the most common type of user squelch uses encoding called Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS.  This feature is defined as being used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio channel.  So, as mentioned above, its not that you as a person speaking have any type of privacy, but rather you don't have to listen to everyone on the same frequency.  Hopefully the third time is a charm.
 
Many GMRS and FRS radios only have simple CTCSS functions called Tone Squelch, often displayed as TSQL on the screen when enabled.  This means two things.  One is, regardless of what you do with your squelch knob or set your RF squelch to, no audio will come out of the speaker unless the tone you selected is embedded in the signal you are receiving.  The other thing it does is, when you transmit, what ever tone frequency you have programed gets transmitted with/in your signal to unlock or open the squelch of other radios configured the same way.
 
There is another method of CTCSS called "split tone".  This means that you can use one tone when you transmit and another for your receive.  This comes in handy when repeater owners are trying to limit who can access the repeater, as higher cost radios typically have split tone capability, compared to poorly built and inexpensive radios that would be problematic on a repeater do not.  Also, this makes it a bit more difficult to "discover" the input tone by using scanning tools.
 
Another function of split tone CTCSS is that you can also set your radio to transmit a tone to unlock a repeater or other radio, but leave your receive tone set to null (nothing).  When this mode is enabled, there is typically a display on the radio that either reads TN or TONE.  That means you can bring up a repeater or unlock a radio squelch, but also hear everyone else regardless of what tones they are running, if any at all.  This is actually a great feature for GMRS radios since Repeater Channels share FRS frequencies and GMRS simplex frequencies.  So you can tell if the frequency is in use as well as being able to talk to others who many not be using the repeater.
 
CTCSS is an analog squelching system.  There is also a digital squelching system called Digital-Code Squelch or DCS.  It has similar use cases as CTCSS, but it is sending digitally embedded numeric codes instead of a sub-audible tone.
 
I apologize in advance, but this next portion may get a little confusing.  If you have questions, just ask and myself or one of the other knowledgeable members will be able to help.  All of the numbers below are simply random samples I selected for example.  Last I checked, there are 38 standard tones and an additional 13 expanded tones (not available on every radio) for a total possible 51 tones and 83 DCS codes.
 
Along with the use examples above, you can get creative with DCS, because we are dealing with binary numbers instead of a tone.  You can have the numbers used in a bunch of different combinations.  For example, the number 411 (or 4 1 1, three separate numbers) in binary would be transmitted as 100 001 001.  The reverse of this would be 011 110 110.  So we are swapping the meaning of a 1 and a 0.  So the combinations could be as follows:
Normal-Normal = Transmit sends 411 and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in the standard format 100 001 001.
Reverse-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 reversed (or bit swapped) and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 reversed, meaning 011 110 110.
Normal-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 standard binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a reversed binary format.
Reverse-Normal = Transmit sends 411 in a reversed binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a standard format.
Unfortunately, I am unaware of any radio's that have a DCS option to leave your user squelch open while transmitting a DCS code.  If DCS is enabled, you cannot hear anyone else unless they are using the same DCS number and binary combination.
 
CTCSS tones can also be "reversed".  CTCSS tones, since its analog, we have a phase reversal, often called "reverse burst" when it is only reversed at the end of the transmission.  (Something to Google in your spare time.)
 
On some high-end radios, squelching can get really exotic.  You may be able to create your own custom tone instead of using one of the standard tones.  You may also be able to combine CTCSS tones and DCS codes.  For example:
User-CTCSS = Transmit 2600Hz tone, squelch opens with 2600Hz tone. (random number example)
T-DCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 code.
DCS-T = Transmit 411 code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone.
T-rDCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 bit swapped code.
rDCS-T = Transmit 411 bit swapped code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone.
 
Now, here is the kind of disappointing part.  Some manufactures try to make their equipment sound like something its not.  They will use things like there own custom number code to identify a traditional CTCSS code.  For example, Midland uses code number 22 (also known as a sub-channel) to indicate the tone 141.3.  This makes coordination on tone selection a bit cumbersome between some brands.  It also means that if your radio doesn't display the actual CTCSS tone or DCS code, you need to keep your owner's manual handy for reference. 
 
So... I don't know if that explanation made things better or worse.  LOL  Anyway, some companies use verbiage like "Privacy Tones" which adds to the confusion for some people.  If you are using a true full CTCSS, it just means you are limited to whom you can hear, but everyone can still hear you.
 
The examples I provided above for DCS are not what actually gets transmitted, but rather a conceptual process to help understand at a very basic level of what occurs, simply to understand the difference.  DCS adds a 134.4 bps bitstream to the transmitted audio. To move past concept to the weeds, this video does a great job.

PL means Private Line which is a Motorola term for CTCSS which stands for Continuous Tone Code Squelch System. It is a function tone to squelch your receiver or open up a receiver and is analog in Hertz, i.e. 141.3 Hz which is the GMRS travel tone. DPL is also a Motorola term for Digital Private Line also known as DCS Digital code system which is a digital coded squelch system that sends a digital coded bit stream to do the same thing as the analog tone system. The first DPL code on the list is 023 and the last is somewhere in the mid to high 700s. By the way, Private does not mean your radio communication is Private. It just a nuisance eliminator function so you don't hear other radio traffic if you don't want to.
The cheap consumer radios don't use the actual tone frequencies or digital codes for the specific tones/codes. They use a programming number i.e. the programming number for the 67.0 Hz CTCSS is "1" and the programming number for the first DPL is also "1" for most of the cheap radios. Some cheap radios continue with the numbering scheme after the last analog tone.

There was a widespread tropospheric ducting event over the weekend.  I haven't looked into the details but it was covering areas of the northeast.
If you were not connecting to a linked repeater system, this is the likely source.

Awesome, hope to hear you out there soon. Also please be patient, that repeater owner works some crazy hours so please give him a week or two to reply to your request. 

Thanks Jay,
I've got a request in to be able to use this repeater.
Great info Jay, thank you!

Personally, I've found Repeaterbook to be one step above useless for GMRS repeaters. Filtering for California, it shows 38 repeaters. Compared to mygmrs, which when filtered for California shows over 100.

So you are hearing the Chain of lakes repeater which is a out 20 miles from you. A HT may be a stretch to reach it but a mobile or base unit would have no problem.  https://mygmrs.com/repeater/1710
 
It's part of a very large repeater link system. Most of the time it's just linked to other Wisconsin repeaters but a few times a week it links into Illinois, Indiana and Ohio with a few other repeater outside of those states. 
Also here's the linking map and if you click on the dots it will tell you which repeater it is. 
 
https://network.mygmrs.com/map
 

For the last two days there have been a bunch a metor showers that my amateur friends are bouncing signals off of to talk from Georgia to Alberta Canada using VHF and UHF signals. 
 
My money is on you hearing this propagation. 

And there we go, looks like I'm getting the Batavia repeater. I'm on the Northern edge of its estimated range. Yes, I can always hear it.
Thank you!

Not every repeater is in Repeaterbook.  Check the repeater database here to see if any appear within range of you.
Also, are you always able to hear it or does it come and go?
 

And there we go, looks like I'm getting the Batavia repeater. I'm on the Northern edge of its estimated range. Yes, I can always hear it.
Thank you!