WRYZ926

Pretty much any and all federal regulations were written by lawyers for lawyers. None are easy for the average person to understand. And as we see with FCC regulations and NFA/GCA regulations, some portions can and do conflict with each other. I don't blame you for wanting clarification if the line A issue might affect you or not. I also would not take what is posted on any forum as 100% correct without first verifying the information. I dealt with enough conflicting and/or confusing regulations back when I had my FFL. And it has not gotten any easier when dealing with the NFA and GCA.

You will not see any loss or gain on 2m using 25 feet of RG8X. You will see a loss of 1-2 watts ERP (output at the antenna) using 25 feet of RG58. You would be okay with either coax as long as you stay at 35 feet or less. This was figured using an antenna with only 1 dB of gain. The more gain the antenna has the higher the ERP will be. The https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/ is an excellent source to figure out line loss with the different types of coax. Using any type of portable J pole or similar antenna up high will help extend your range when using a hand held radio. I have built a 2m j pole using faraday cloth and getting it up at 20-25 feet above the ground made a vast improvement. I can get into the local 2m repeater that's 22.5 miles away with a 5 watt HT but there is some noise on my transmission. I was told that I sounded like I was on my base radio when using the same HT connected to the faraday j pole.

Straight forward and/or simple to understand along with the federal government in the same sentence makes as much sense as military and intelligence used in the same sentence. This topic comes up regularly and the answers are always the same each time. I know my original official copy of my GMRS license issued in October 2023 had the line A restriction on it while a newer copy downloaded a few months ago does not have the line a restriction. I have driven myself batty trying to read, understand, and explain NFA and GCA regulations to people. I will let other members here explain the FCC regulations. PS: NFA and GCA makes as much sense as FCC regs do.

My Wouxun KG-Q10H came with two antennas. I hardly ever use the 1.25m/6m bands as I am lazy and don't want to swap antennas constantly.

My Wouxun KG-935H came with the single tri band antenna and it is 14 inches long.

I've tested a few Nagoya and Abbree antennas. I found that it really depends on the brand of radio. I've tried dual band and GMRS antennas. Here are my result with my limited testing of the Nagoya/Abbree 771 dual band or GMRS Baofeng GT-5R and UV-5r GMRS - 771 did better than the stock antennas. Icom IC-T10 - no difference between the 771 and stock antennas Explorer QRZ-1 (TYT UV-88) - 771 just slightly better than stock Several Wouxun radios - stock antennas di better than any of the 771 antennas. I made sure to use the GMRS only 771G with the GMRS radios and the dual band 771 with my dual band radios. I know this is a small sample. As you can see it really depends on the individual radio. You can chase this rabbit all over and spend lots of money and you may or may not see much of an improvement.

LEDs are known to cause interference. The cheaper ones are worse. I have some Amazon 4 foot LEDs along with some cheap screw in LEDs from Walmart in my garage. all of them cause a lot of interference on my dual band and GMRS radios when the lights are on and I have radios on inside the garage.

I definitely will start a new thread and post photos once I'm done putting it all together.

That is always an option. I would like to keep everything self contained into one case if all possible. I am also trying to avoid any unnecessary holes in the case if possible. I have enough room to mount a 15" portable monitor and the remote faceplate of my radio into the lid of the Apache 5800 case. The 5800 has standoffs in the lid for mounting stuff. I'm still in the planning stage right now with the setup. I did buy some 1/8" x 1" aluminum stock to mount the monitor and faceplate to the lid. I need to get the radio main unit and mini pc mounted and then see how much room I have left. The Beelink S13 runs off of 12v DC. PS; sorry for the thread drift.

You can still check the SWR on repeater channels even without actually connecting to a repeater. And you don't need to worry about tones when testing SWR. Just say your "call sign testing" just in case.

I would definitely go with a radio that has an IP rating for dust and water. Everything is going to get wet or dusty even with enclosed cabs.

Anything under 2.0 is okay. Definitely check the SWR on the repeater channels (467 MHz) as they will have a different SWR compared to the 462 simplex channels. As others have mentioned, there will be a curve to the SWR. Generally 467 will be higher or lower than 462 depending on if the antenna is short or long. The best I did was when tuning a Tram 1174 for GMRS. I got the SWR down to 1.4 on 467 and 1.2 on 462. Yes I could have kept trying for the perfect SWR but it wasn't worth the time and effort. My two Comet 2x4SR antennas are at 1.7-1.8 on 467 and 1.4-1.5 on 462. Again that is good especially considering the SWR is at 1.8 or less on the other bands that the 2x4SR works on. While a Surecom will work to tune antennas, you will have to check multiple times across the frequency/channel range to find where the SWR is high or low. This is where a NanoVNA or antenna analyzer comes in handy. They will do a sweep and show the high and low spots.

Radios are like guns or fishing poles, etc, etc, you can never have enough. I have two VHF/UHF radios in the shack, one is for daily use while the other is dedicated for WINLINK. I will be putting the second one along with a mini computer into a go box. I also have a 50 watt GMRS radio along with a spare 20 watt GMRS radio at home along with multiple amateur band and GMRS hand held radios. Plus I have dual band and GMRS radios in my Ford Escape, Ford F150 and my Honda Pioneer 500 SxS. I might end up putting one of the G90s into one of my vehicles. I haven't decided yet.

The main reason why I have two of them is that I bough one and then won the second G90 during Radioddity's 12th Anniversary drawing last year. And yes one stays in the shack while the other one is in my go box for portable use. I actually have more HF radios than I need. I have the two G90 radios along with an Ion IC-7300, Yaesu FTDX10 (with bad USB port) and a Xiegu X6200. The X6200 is nice for QRP ad keeping things small and light.

6M is still VHF, it's just low VHF 50.0 to 54.0 MHz. 6m is generally good for local communication but is definitely hit or miss when it comes to long distance coms. It isn't called the magic band for nothing. Too bad the Xiegu G90 does not have 6m capabilities. I have a couple G90s and they work great for a 20 watt radio. I get comments on how my audio sounds all of the time. And I have worked stations with it and good resonant antenna that guys running a 100 watt radio with a not so good antenna don't hear. My next project is to mount a 15" portable monitor, TYT TH-7800, mini PC, and a couple of 10 AH batteries into an Apache 5800 case for portable WINLINK.

There are a lot of variables to take into account. But it doesn't surprise me about you having a weak signal with an HT inside the house. Metal buildings, metal roofs, old wood lath and plaster walls with chicken wire, bad electric wiring, etc can play havoc on radio signals. And the cheap Amazon LED light bulbs can be very noisy too.

Yes that chart can definitely confuse people. It shows both 1.00 MHz and 1.6 MHz split for the 1.25m/220 MHz band.

Yes GMRS Live has been shut down and also why you can't download the software anymore. If you really do not care about the FCC rules then you can always try and get an Allstar node with a UHF SA818 radio to work for GMRS. But good luck with that one since Allstar Link and Allmon3 are written specifically for use on amateur bands. You are overcomplicating things and also are going to spend more money than needed. Just go with a single repeater along with a good commercial antenna. And get the antenna up as high as you can get it. Also make sure to use quality coax to connect the repeater and antenna.

I have to agree with @SteveShannon on this. You would be better off with a single repeater and use a good quality commercial antenna. The trick is getting the antenna(s) up as high as you can. You should be able to get a 30-50 mile radius of coverage if you can get the antenna(s) up high enough and if the repeater is located on one of the highest points in your area. Hilly terrain and forested areas will cut down on the range if the antennas are not high enough. I did a search and could not find anywhere to even download the GMRS Live software. So that looks like a bust. The only other option is finding someone that can rewrite the Allstar Link software to work on GMRS. Another issue is if the UHF SA818 module will work well enough on GMRS frequencies. I haven't looked into that myself. Again, best is to use a good quality commercial antenna up as high as you can get it with a single repeater.

I don't know if you can still download GMRS Live or not. I know the website is still up but for information only. It is basically a GMRS version of Allstar Link. GMRS Live pretty much shut everything down on their website when the FCC stated that linking GMRS repeaters was verboten. IF it was me, I would run both repeaters on a different channel if you plan on linking them.

We see temperature inversions more in the spring and fall here in Missouri. Though we have seen a few openings lately since the daily high temperatures have been in the upper 70s and low 80s. There have been a few openings on the 2m band lately and guys have been chasing long distance contacts on side band. And checking the NOAA channels is a good idea to see what propagation is doing.

No I do not get a commission from Icom or anyone else. The Icom IC-9700 IS the only new VHF/UHF radio available on the market that works on all modes. The only other options are to buy a shack in the box all band/all mode radio or search for a used all band/all mode radio. The issues with using a hand held for side band is the fact that most people using 2m SSSB will be using horizontally polarized antennas while HT antennas are vertically polarized. And this does make a big difference. You can get anywhere between a 15 to 40 dB loss when one person is using a vertical antenna and the other person is using a horizontal antenna. The signal loss will affect how well you hear the other person and also how far you can reach. Another issue is with using double side band. Most people using side band on 2m are going to be using upper side band only. You are splitting your single on both upper and lower side band with the Quansheng. This does have an effect on signal strength. Again I do have a Quansheng and have used it on DSB. But the difference in antenna polarization definitely hinders things.

I have the same radio and the same firmware installed. It does not work as a true single side band mode. It works in double side band mode. single side band is either upper or lower side band of the tiled frequency. Double side band uses both upper and lower side band. I've used the Quansheng on DSB mode and while it does wok, it is not the same as a radio with true single side band.

A big change in atmospheric temps like in spring and fall mornings can also cause ducting. Low cloud cover during storms is another example. I live in Mid Missouri about an hour east of Columbia and 1 1/2 hours west of St Louis. When atmospheric conditions are just right we can hear the Pacific. Mo GMRS repeater just as strong as our GMRS repeater. Both are on the same channel and use the same tones. There has also been times that I have talked on the GMRS repeater 50 miles west of me with a guy around Springfield Il. Conditions have to be just right for that to happen. And that usually happens in the spring and fall due to temperature inversions. Another example happened last week. My brother and I both have UHF Allstar nodes. We were using the same frequency and tones since we live 19 miles apart and never had an issue until then. We use no more than 5 watts when using our nodes. That day there was a heavy storm in between us which was bouncing our low power signals so that I could hear him at 1 watt and he could hear me at 5 watts. We couldn't hear each other once the storm moved out. And yes I changed the frequency my node uses after that.

I played with encryption enough while in the Army. We used both SINCGARS and commercial radios from Motorola. All permanent party units other than 11th ACR/OPFOR used the commercial radios when I was stationed at NTC/Ft Irwin.