WRYZ926

Trees are one of your worst enemy when it comes to UHF, especially cedar and pine trees. And it's not always possible to get an antenna above the local trees either. We look forward to updates.

As much as my wife likes to talk, I still can't get her to talk on the radio.

I kept my land line phone for a while since my youngest son was always misplacing his cell phone. He would use the land line to find his cell phone.

It looks like it depends on what state you live in. Most online vendors do collect Missouri sales tax but so far Giga Parts has not done so.

Here is a simple to understand description of IP ratings: https://www.iec.ch/ip-ratings The first numeral refers to the protection against solid objects and is rated on a scale from 0 (no protection) to 6 (no ingress of dust). The second numeral rates the enclosure’s protection against liquids and uses a scale from 0 (no protection) to 9 (high-pressure hot water from different angles).

@marcspaz thank you for the detailed information on tuning the duplexer. We are lucky in that one of our members retired from Sound Solutions and he still has access to all of their equipment. He has tuned all of our duplexers.

Nothing wrong with that plan at all.

The Wouxun KG-935G is a nice radio with plenty of bells and whistles. The Wouxun KG-805G and KG-905G are simpler without any buttons to mess with on the radio. And the Wouxun programming software, available from Buy Two Way Radios, is easy to use.

You are going to have tax and shipping pretty much anywhere you order from now days. Giga Parts is one of the few radio related venders that doesn't charge sales tax. And most places will wave shipping fees if your order is over a certain amount.

A magnet mount mobile antenna on a 9x13 baking sheet or a large pizza pan works well for a temporary setup. Another idea for mounting a base antenna is using a satellite dish mount also commonly called a j mount. I use a few j mounts for my different antennas. They have held up to 50-70 MPH winds just fine. The Antenna Farm has the Comet CA-712EFC for $124 and the Comet CA-GMRS for $80. The CA-712EFC is rated at 9 dBi and the CA-GMRS is rated at 5.5 dBi. There are other brands of antennas available too. I personally would go a little cheaper on the radio and spend my money on LRM400 or equivalent and a good antenna. Just try to avoid the cheap coax from Amazon and eBay.

I have to agree that a VR-N76 is not the radio for someone new to GMRS. I will suggest staying with an actual Part 95 certified GMRS only radio. There are plenty of options depending on how many bells and whistles you want. The Baofeng GMRS radios are cheap and they work. A step up will be one of the Wouxun radios. Some will state that you should not waste your money on cheap Chinese radios and they will suggest business band radios. Again I will suggest sticking with a Part 95 certified GMRS only radio. You can always get something different once you get comfortable with radios.

Outstanding! We look forward to your test results. As mentioned by many of us, a duplexer tuned for all of the GMRS repeater channels will not work as well as one tuned for just one channel.

This is a very useful calculator. You can try different types of coax along with different antennas. One thing to remember is that antenna manufacturers list gain in dBi while that calculator uses dBd. Subtract 2.15 from the dBi to get dBd. RG8 will have 67% loss per 100 feet and LMR400 has 48% loss per 100 feet. I know LMR 400 and equivalent coax is more expensive but it is worth the extra cost over RG8 for UHF/GMRS use.

Yes all APRS radios will send location data when operating in APRS mode.

Looking at the map on mygmrs, the only repeater I see that has coverage in your area is the Mesa Tumbleweed repeater. But you will have to either request permission and the PL tones or try to scan for them. And you might not even pick that one up depending on your exact location.