WRYZ926

Yes it is. I searched for a bit looking for videos on programming the BDR50 but didn't find much. And the manual for the BCR40 isn't all that good either.

This is spot on! I would hear all kinds of FRS traffic on channel 17 if I did not have tones set for our repeater. It gets a lot worse during deer season around here. I live in a very rural area with lots of farm ground and two conservation areas. A lot of deer hunters use FRS which again shares all the same simplex channels as GMRS. Harvest and planting times aren't much better with all of the farmers that use FRS. setting tones on RX helps block out most of that.

Asking local public safety where they get their radios worked on is a good idea. We are lucky in that one of our club members retired from Sound Solutions Inc. and is still able to go in and use their equipment. Any business that deals with commercial radios and/or drive through systems, etc. should be able to help. It never hurts to ask.

Sorry about that, too much blood in the caffeine system today. And so are their videos for setting up the BDR50. Setting up the BDR50 for analog use should be the same as the BCR-40. The only decent video I could find for the BDR-50 is this one: DMR MADE EASY! | The Fastest Way to Get on the Air | Step-by-Step Digital Radio Workshop Be warned, that video is an hour long.

Let us know what works best for your situation. Each vehicle install will be different.

I want to learn CW but I also want to start studying for my Extra test too. And I have radio projects in the shack going on too. Decisions decisions.

Running coax inside at the bottom of the rear hatch was the best solution for me. The door openings put too much of a bend in the coax for my liking.

Look at running the cable in through the back hatch if the coax is long enough. I know there was plenty of room at the bottom of the rear hatch on my 2023 Ford Escape so there is no pinching of the coax.

Luckily I don't have to worry about solar arrays. I do have power lines and transformers on three sides of my property. I sometimes get interference from the transformers, especially after a really hard rain with high winds.

You will have to setup a SYS-OP user and use DTMF tones for remote control. The SYS-OP user is only used for remote control of the repeater. I found the manual somewhat lacking in areas. Here is a good video that helped me out. How to Program the BCR Repeater And another good video: How to Program a BCR Repeater System. This video gives more details about installing the program and getting ports configured.

I agree that it depends on the door and shape of the opening. I had no issues run-in the coax through the top of the door opening on my 2016 Jeep Cherokee. I had to run the coax down and around the rear hatch on my 2023 Ford Escape. @TrikeRadio see what works best for you and your vehicle. And you would have to really smash the coax dielectric before you would notice any effects.

I use several satellite dish mounts. The j mounts make good mounts for light weight radio antennas. Another nice thing is that most j mounts use a 1 5/8' diameter pipe which is the same size as 1 5/8" fence posts. You can find 1 5/8" fence post couplers on amazon to extend the mast higher. I will suggest that you use UV resistant guy rope if you extend it though. I can't get above the trees in my yard without going with a 40 foot or taller tower. My Comet CA-712EFC is actually under a big tree branch. I am using a j mount at the peak of my roof with the Comet and have no problems getting out.

I always forget about that since there is no code requirement to pass the tests and I don't use CW at all.

I just replaced my Yaesu FTDX10 with an Icom IC-7300. I personally prefer the IC-7300.

Are you wanting something for a base station, mobile or portable (parks on the air)? Yeast has the FTDX10 and FT-710. Icom has the IC-7300 and IC-7100. They all make good base stations and some people use all of them for POTA/portable setups. Though the FTDX10, FT-710, and IC-7300 are a bit big for portable work in my opinion. The IC-7100 does HF, VHF, and UHF. It is also smaller so works well as a mobile or portable setup. There is also the Yaesu FT-891 which is great for mobile/portable use. The down side to the FT-891 and IC-7100 is neither has an internal antenna tuner. You would have to use a resonant antenna for each band or an external tuner with both radios. Then there is QRP - low power operations. Most of the time they are 10 watts or less. There is also the Xiegu G90 HF radio that is 20 watts. The low power radios are good for portable work since thy won't drain a battery as quick as a 100 watt radio. Now if you want to get into digital modes like FT8, then the FTDX10, FT-710, IC-7300, and IC-7100 work right out of the box. The technician license only allows you privileges on a portion of the 10m band while a general license allows one to use all of the HF bands. I suggest studying for both at the same time and then take both tests at the same time.

Computer monitors are notorious for causing RF interference.

Coffee is no fun to clean from a keyboard or monitor, especially if one uses any cream or sweetener. I've learned to set the coffee down before reading.

For what Baofeng wants for their repeater, I would just go with the Bridgecom repeater. We are using a Bridgecom and haven't had any issues with it. Or you can always go with a used Motorola and have it reprogrammed for GMRS.

My club fits most of that. We are a non profit organization. The local radio station was kind enough to let us put our equipment up on their 900 foot tall tower. We had to pay for the antennas, hard line coax, and repeaters ourself and we had a few members that do tower work as their profession that volunteered their time. We got lucky when we put up our GMRS repeater. There were abandoned antennas and hardline already in place. All we had to do was purchase the repeater and hook it up. We have one member that retired from doing commercial communication work and he still has access to the shop with all of the equipment. He tunes all of our duplexers for the club. I doubt that we would have as nice of a setup without all of that. A lot of people overlook the cost of overhead when seeing what shop rates are. I retired in 2005 as a tool and die maker. Our shop rate was right around $100/hour but we only got paid around $22 per hour. And we would hear the argument from the shipping clerks about how a loaf of bread costs them the same amount as us. We would remind them the cost of our tools, cost of 2 years of school plus two more years of an apprenticeship program. Where the shipping guys didn't need any schooling and they had minimum cost in tools.

I will agree with everyone, get a good antenna along with the adaptor to go from the antenna coax to the radio will be fine. A lot of people have ran that way for a mobile setup without issues. Yes your range won't be quite as good with a 5 watt radio versus a 50 watt radio, but you will still get out just fine. A lot of times I don't even run my 50 watt dual band and 50 watt GMRS radios on high power. I also would not worry about getting an amp for a hand held radio either. Put the money towards a mobile radio of your choice instead. Yes having a 50 watt radio is nice when you need the extra power but a 20-25 watt radio will suit your needs most of the time.

My Comet CA-2s4SR stays on the rear rack my SxS due to the length of it. There is no way I could run that and still pull into the garage at home. I agree that it is an excellent all around antenna. The highest SWR I get is on the GMRS repeater channels (467 MHz) at 1.7.

@SteveShannon hit submit quicker than I did. I would love to have the IC-7100 if I can just figure out a good solution for an antenna that I won't tear up by forgetting to fold down or remove.

There is also the Icom IC-7100 which is 100 watts on HF, 50 watts on VHF, and 35 watts on UHF. And it can be Mars Modded. I would love to have an HF rig in my Ford Escape but I am veery limited to antenna height since I park in the garage. I'm running a Comet dual band SBB1 in the middle of the roof and it barely clears the 7 foot garage door.

This is going to happen since there are only a handful of repeater channels available for GMRS. And you can't always go by the mygmrs repeater map or repeaterbook.com either. Not everyone lists on either website or they don't keep things updated. We looked here and on repeaterbook.com when our club first looked into setting up a GMRS repeater. Repeaterbook.com was outdated and the two closest repeaters to us were not listed on mygmrs.com. Several of us listened to all the repeater channels for a while before deciding what channel to use for our repeater. We did talk to the owner of the two closest GMRS repeaters to let him know that we were setting up a GMRS repeater. He then updated the map here to show his to repeaters. Missouri is pretty rural outside of the 5-6 big metro areas so we don't have too much conflict with GMRS repeaters. I know that the Kansas City area has more repeaters than the St Louis area and there aren't any problems. And it doesn't help that people don't bother to check either website before setting up their own repeaters. There is the repeater counsel for amateur radio repeaters that takes care of keeping repeaters from operating on the same frequencies if they are too close and/or in the same state. This doesn't always help though. There is a 2m repeater right across the river from St Louis in Illinois that uses the same frequency tones as our 2m repeater. Normally there isn't any issues but sometimes we do have issues when propagation is just right.

There is no stuffing that cat back into a bag. And don't forget about all of the GMRS blister pack radios sold prior to 2017 that people never read the instructions where it stated a GMRS license was required.