WRYZ926

I can give one example where 50 watts helped compared to 20 watts. Otherwise I have to agree with everyone that antenna height and quality coax makes more of a difference. My shack setup as far as the antenna goes is; Comet CA712-EFC with the base at 22 feet above the ground, 30 foot of LMR400 from antenna to the wall pass through and a 15 foot LMR400 jumper inside. There is a repeater that is 50-55 miles away. I can get into it with my Wouxun KG-XS20G but there is quite a bit of noise in my transmission. I get in to that repeater and am heard clearly with the extra 30 watts from my WOuxun KG-1000G. Going from 20 watts to 50 watts did not change how far I can talk but it did make it so that I am heard better at the longer distances. Now getting my antenna up another 10-20 feet and away from all the trees in my yard would make a big difference over actual output power of my radios. To answer the original question. YES you will see an improvement when going from a 5 watt radio to a 20 or 50 watt radio. You are quadrupling the power going from 5 watts to 20 watts. This is when everything else is equal such as connecting both radios to the same antenna and coax.

While I do not have a metal roof to deal with. I do have main power lines on three sides of my 1/2 acre lot along with two transformers. The neighbors power runs above ground on the fourth side. Granted the main power lines are across the streets from my property, but there are the phone and cable lines along my property line on one side. I do not have any noise/interference issues with my VHF/UHF radios. I occasionally will get some noise from one or both transformers during a heavy rain storm on HF.

I will agree with what he said. As long as the mast and antenna cannot come into contact with power lines then you will be fine. I am using 1 5/8" fence posts coupled together for a total of 22 feet. The bottom has a couple that fits on the old pipe from the TV antenna mast. I have a wall clamp at the peak of the gable along with a couple on the wall. I also ran three guy ropes from the mast right below the antenna. Two go to eye bolts in the gable and the third goes out to an extended fence post at the edge of the yard (15-20 feet from house). I also have a 10m inverted V dipole hung on the same mast a couple of feet under my vertical antenna. I haven't had any problems with snow, ice, or high winds. Yes I over did things with the three wall mounts and guy ropes. But it's better to overdo things than have the mast fall over..

But is the center conductor of the antenna making good contact with the center of the NMO mount?

The antenna should still screw on far enough that it seals completely against that rubber washer.

I grabbed the only NMO mount I had handy which is a Melowave magnet mount. Here is what they should look like. So far I have only used the Melowave and Midland NMO magnet mounts and I have not had any issues with my antennas fitting correctly.

Yes that is a problem. You want the antenna to sit down all the way onto the mount.

Reminds me of watching some of the Project Farm videos on YouTube. That guy talks fast.

I've tested hand held radios in different rooms that are next to each other without issues. Normally a wall is enough to keep two hand held from defensing each other. If not then get more distance between the two radios. If more distance between the radios and/or turning the RX tones off does not help, then you will want to double and triple check the settings on the two radios and on the repeater.

I agree.

There lies the problem. A lot of people now days do not have any respect for those that have different opinions. That seems to be a lost skill that left us years if not decades ago. I've seen too many people not wanting to hear the other side's opinion. The lack of listening, respect, and understanding leads to arguments. Politics and religion are two topics that will ruin a conversation quickly. I've had it happen in my own home with family. And to save me the heartburn and headaches, I do not allow politics to be discussed at the table since no one takes the time to listen to the other side nor do they want to hear opinions that are different. If family can't even be civil to each other, then how do you expect people to be civil to each other when they are not looking each other in the eyes such as on the internet or on the radio. I know most repeaters in my area do not allow politics or religion to be discussed and that goes for all of the 2m, 70cm, DMR, and GMRS repeaters. For those that want to allow any and all topics, then I suggest they setup and run their own repeaters.

This is very true and why politics are not allowed on our repeaters. And the name calling/anger/stupidity/ranting usually ends up involving foul language being used. It's easier to just ban certain topics versus having to play referee, shutting the repeater down, banning people, having others ran off from using the repeater, etc, etc.

The subject of politics has come up a time or two. But the decision is always the same. We are a 501-3C non profit that relies on donations. And the donors come from a diverse background with some donors being left leaning and other donors being right leaning. The decision was made years ago to just keep politics off the repeaters so that we don't take a chance of loosing donations that we need to maintain the repeaters. The choices are simple, abide by the rules if I want to use the repeaters or disagree and find other repeaters to use or stick to simplex. And I have found that the no politics rule is instituted by quite a few organizations/clubs that run repeaters in my area. And they state that it is for the same reasons as our BoD has stated. Discussions range over a wide variety of topics on our repeaters and no one complains as long as the conversations are clean and not political.

Well said @SteveShannon and @tcp2525.

The ban on talking about politics was a decision made by the board of directors years ago. I don't sit on the BoD so I can't even suggest making changes one way or another. And no I do not always agree with the organization's bylaws and rules. But I do have to abide by them if I want to use the repeaters.

Unfortunately there are no coordination efforts nor any repeater counsels for GMRS like there is for amateur band repeaters. Plus the fact that GMRS repeaters are limited to just eight channels doesn't help. I am glad that we are in the middle of the state which made it easier to pick a channel. There are quite a few GMRS repeaters in the St Louis and Kansas City areas.

Merry Christmas everyone.

It's a shame that happened like that. We decided right away not to even consider linking our GMRS repeater. We already have our 2m repeater linked to AllStar. We don't have many rules outside of following the FCC regulations on our repeater. The three big ones are: no foul language, no discussing politics, and no business uses. We are strict about no foul language since there are kids that use our repeater on a regular basis. And politics usually leads to arguments. After talking to another local GMRS repeater owner, we decided to follow his advice and not allow business use. He had a big problem with the big commercial farms wanting to tie up his repeater and we didn't want that to happen with ours. We checked Repeater Book and My GMRS along with listening on all of the repeater channels first. We then reached out to the other GMRS repeater owners within a 50 mile radius of our location. SO far we have not had any issues with unlisted repeaters. We do occasionally pick up a different repeater on the other side of the state when there is a band opening. Merry Christmas everyone.

Actually there is a version of the UV-5r that is Part 95 certified. BAOFENG UV-5R GMRS Handheld Radio

To answer the original question. It depends on the radio manufacturer on how they list the 8 repeater channels. Some manufacturers will list them as Channels 23 through 30 while others will list them as repeater channels 1 though 8 and will abbreviate repeater as RPT. so the radio screen will show RPT1 though RPT 8. No matter how each manufacturer labels the repeater channels, they are the same across the board. All GMRS radios will transmit on 467.XXX to the repeaters and will receive the repeaters' output on 462.XXX. And all GMRS repeater use a positive offset of 5 MHz. Again, I will leave the arguing about if it is okay to use the repeater input channels for simplex to others. The FCC regulations have been posted for those who care about following them.

Am I on the mygmrs forum or Facebook? And I agree with @SteveShannon, I can see where someone that is disabled or has a family member that is disabled would take offense to comments about being disabled. Myself and my wife are both disabled, though neither of us are wheelchair bound. I'll let others argue about using the repeater input frequencies for simplex outside of testing. I have done it for testing purposes only and will use them in an emergency if needed. Okay back to trying to get the excess blood out of my caffeine system.

I have two repeaters within 50 miles of me that are on the same channel. One is east of me and one is west of me. The east repeater does not use tones while the west repeater does use tones. Most of the time I don't hardly ever hear the east repeater due to terrain between us but I can easily get into the west repeater. At times I get both repeaters. When I am picking up the east repeater it is usually at an s4 or s5 on my radio's signal strength meter. And I normally get the west repeater at an s6 or s7. The east repeater without tones definitely interferes with my ability to talk on and hear the west repeater when I am receiving both at the same time. So yes two repeaters that are about 100 miles apart can and will cause issues with anyone in between the two trying to talk on just one of the repeaters. Conditions and locations will have an effect.

I get trouble about that too. One guys calls them Hop Sing radios. But the Wouxun radios work well. And just because a Radio says Icom on it doesn't mean it is a good radio. My Icom IC-T10 is no better than the UV-5R. @WSFW950 I have zero experience with the Wouxun UV-8H but have used the UV-9D Mate and own the KG-Q10H. Both of those are good to go. I also have the KG-935G Plus and it has been good to go. I know the menus are the same for the KG-935G and the KG-XS20G and easy to use.

I do have the instructions for setting up the Bridgecom to use an external controller along with a sheet showing the cable pinout for connecting the two. Our plans are to connect the Bridgecom GMRS repeater and one of our 70cm repeaters (Motorola) to an ARCOM RC-210 controller once it arrives. I forgot to add earlier that we bought our BCR-40U without the built in duplexer. We had a spare duplexer that is higher quality sitting around so decided to use it instead. My biggest gripes was the lack of customer support and the fact that they deleted any negative reviews on Facebook. I bet they do the same on their own website too. I figured I would post my review to help save people some headaches if they are looking to get a Bridgecom GMRS repeater and want the CW ID to work as expected without having to buy an additional controller.

I also found out that e-ham will delete any review that says anything negative about customer service. Shouldn't that be included in any review?