Radioguy7268

Pretty good chance that the repeater owner knew about the issue that Midland users would have, and chose to purposefully split the codes anyway. It's considered to be a cheap and effective way to keep "lesser" radios off the system. I'd upgrade to a commercial radio, and sell off the Midland.

Those Dish TV antennas should have grounding on them (assuming they were professionally installed by a certified DISH installer). Check them out to see where they were grounded. Make sure you use a Polyphaser or similar surge protector down where your coaxial cable enters the building. You'll need to ground that also. The Laird FG series is a decent antenna for the money.

If you're just trying to hit a repeater, then you really don't need any more height than what you have. When you say that you want a "base antenna" - what do you intend to use it for? If you're in NYC, there's already quite a few GMRS repeaters already on the air with excellent coverage. If you're trying to put up your own repeater, I'd ask "Why?"

Better yet, look up "Kenwood mobile power cord" on EBay. Plenty available, most around $10 with cord & fuse.

In VERY general terms, more cavities = more isolation. Larger cavities generally have a better efficiency - ie: less loss through the duplexer for equivalent isolation achieved. As Berkinet mentioned, the higher quality duplexers involve a combination of bandpass and reject technology. Lower cost "notch" style duplexers are usually limited to 65 to 75 dB of isolation between transmit & receive. Notch duplexers suffer in high power use, and they won't filter out other nearby transmitters very well (They are designed to only "notch out" the transmit frequency of the machine they're used on). Good duplexers have high isolation, low loss, low noise, and can handle high power. They'll also use quality components, and will be built to handle large swings in temperature without de-tuning.

Quite honestly - this is the FCC's job, and they should be the ones enforcing the rules & cracking down on mass-marketers with misleading advertising. The FCC doesn't care, because if they did, they would have actually issued fines to some of the more blatant examples. When the FCC doesn't care, it kind of makes it pointless. What will you do? Threaten them with a non-existing enforcement action?

I'd agree - it sounds like morse code at a really fast word per minute rate, and set to a low deviation. If you play around with Audacity, you can probably slow it down & figure out the code. Are you hearing it at regular intervals?

Base stations transmit on the 462.xxx frequencies. Repeaters are just base stations that operate in duplex mode, simultaneously re-transmitting what they receive. Base stations transmitting on the 462.xxx main channels can transmit at 50 watts. A fixed station transmits most often through a repeater - and can transmit at 15 watts on a 467.xxx frequency (listening on the repeater's base output of 462.xxx) A fixed station can operate also on a 462.xxx frequency, but when it does that, it's more often referred to as a base station, and it is operating in simplex mode (not going through a repeater). When it transmits on the base 462.xxx frequency, then it can operate at 50 watts. I was always taught to call the lower side of a frequency pair the 'Base' frequency. The higher side of the frequency pair was referred to as the 'mobile transmit'. My understanding of the rules is mine, and mine alone. I'm not sure what the FCC means. I just know what seems to work.

The M1225 is a solid performer. If that price is for a complete working radio - with mic, bracket, and possibly even a power cord, you're doing all right. Pro's? Proven reliable, easy to program, simple interface. Good audio, 16 pin option connector (lots of standard accessories like external speakers, etc.) & Part 95 type accepted. Con's? The receiver can get overloaded in high RF environments (Mine used to break squelch on it's own if I drove up to a hillside transmitter we operated - near to 3 other towers loaded with transmitters). Only other con I can think of - Motorola stopped making them & they're no longer supported.

I wonder who gave them the "rights" to advertise it as a "Made in the USA" radio?? Seriously - just buy a used M1225 or TK-880 radio. Twice the performance at half the price.

If a Baofeng/Btech portable out-performed your $350 mobile setup, I think you're doing something seriously wrong. For less than $150 - you can buy a solid 40+ watt used mobile radio from one of the top 3 or 4 brands that will actually last, and it will sound good to boot. If you're really up against it - $25 and a cup of coffee will buy you basic GMRS programming at most any local radio shop if you supply them with your correct frequencies and codes. If you're putting a Baofeng mobile amp onto a Baofeng portable - you're using one noise generator to amplify another noise generator. It's really not good practice, not at all. There's plenty of viable Part 90 gear out there & available. Both portable & mobile units. Yes, if you do want "brand new" Part 95, you're going to be searching a long time, but open up your field of vision a little, and there's plenty of choices.

Spending the money to "meter" a mag mount antenna that you're going to use with a Midland GMRS radio is a waste of time, money & effort IMHO. Your problem is your gear. If you want to have success using a GMRS wide area repeater, you pretty much need to go with Wideband capable equipment. That rules out most of the Midland stuff. The good news is, for not much more than the cost of the MFJ883 meter, you can pick up a really nice used Motorola or Kenwood radio and have it custom programmed to the GMRS repeater(s) you want to work on. Good luck with it.

ORI = Open Repeater Initiative The idea that GMRS repeaters would be "Open" - and available for any licensed user. Usually goes hand in hand with the ubiquitous 141.3 Hz "Travel tone".

I'd say so. They realized that Cellular networks take weeks and months to repair, and the least populated areas are the last ones to have service restored. I had a guy who was buying up all the old UHF wideband radios I could find & shipping them down to Puerto Rico. He stopped buying stuff about 6 months ago, not sure if he found another source, or just saturated his market.

You also need to consider that even when a radio lists a valid Part 90/ Part 95 type acceptance number, once you go to look up that number, you find out that the type acceptance is for very odd emission designations, usually at a power level that is well below what the radio is capable of being programmed for. In short, if the radio is "type accepted" for Part 90 or 95 - but only for ultra narrow 4K0F1D emissions, with just 1.1 watts of power - is it still a type accepted radio when you program it for 25 kHz wideband at 4 watts?

Generally - a well designed (and implemented) system will use proper filtering and isolation, and won't have a problem playing nicely with other nearby transmitters. The farther away (in frequency) the two (three, or four, +) transmitters are, the less chance they'll cause any appreciable amount of intermod. There are intermod calculators available online - including one thru Radio Mobile. Plug in your frequencies, and they'll run the theoretical results. Any decent site manager will require that YOU mitigate any interference or intermod problems that your transmitter(s) create. Most operate on a "first in" basis - meaning the guy who was there first doesn't need to fix his system (assuming it was properly built), you need to fix yours so that it doesn't interfere with any other existing user. Once you're in and operating without causing problems, the onus shifts to the next guy coming in. If the site is owned by a company specializing in Vertical Real Estate, you're going to want to be sitting down before you get the price quote. A smaller company might be more willing to talk, but you're going to need to make a pretty strong case for what you plan to bring to the table that's a benefit to them (rather than just a benefit to you.)

That's about as close to a smoking gun as you're going to get from the FCC. They are aware that people are using surplus Part 90 equipment - and they don't intend to anything to stop that use. As others have mentioned, there's never been a single enforcement action by the FCC against anyone for using Part 90 equipment in Part 95. If you've been around the block with the FCC a few times, you begin to realize that many of the rules have been written after the fact.

Just a note on channel capacity with the M1225 series. They were touted as having a capability for 20 or 24 channels. You could squeeze in 24 channels if you deleted certain features/functions on the radio. It's been too long, but I seem to recall that you would lose simple things like the ability to change the display backlight from amber to green, certain button functions, etc. The reason that it sticks out in my mind, was that I do remember seeing problems as you would approach 20 channels and try to do things like priority scanning. It seems they were pushing the edge of the radio's capabilities to get to 20 + channels, especially if you had Alpha tags on each channel - and used all the characters on the display. On a side note, I used to mess around with LTR trunking systems on the 1225 series before they came out with the LS models (and later on the PM400) - and a company named Scholer-Johnson made a plug in option board that would allow all types of features - including the ability to do multiple zones of 16 (possibly more?) channels. The software wasn't user friendly - I remember that you did NOT want to Read radios with the option board - just Write properly defined setups. I stumbled across the 3.5" floppies with the install files the other day, probably what brought this to mind.

Some DPL codes can be "falsed" by tone codes on certain panels. I recall seeing DPL 125 being falsed by tone code 1A on a Zetron 38 panel years back. Drove me nuts, because the interfering signal originated almost 90 miles away. I was looking at reprogramming nearly 80 mobiles if I had to switch codes. A little experimentation on the bench led to us switching tone panels and reducing receive system sensitivity a few ticks. One trip to the tower site & 30 minutes later, problem resolved.

There's so much good stuff out there in the way of used Part90 Commercial gear.... I've got a couple PM400's, an XPR5550 (shop truck), an old TK-880, and an assortment of portables that run the range from Vertex through Motorola. I've always been a fan of the M1225 for starter gear. It's small enough, has decent specs, and the software is very easy to use. I've picked up units off eBay for under 25 bucks for low power (25 watt) 4 channel models. The 20 channel display units usually run higher, but almost always under $100 for clean working units. The M1225 series was also type accepted for Part 95, which calms some people's fears. I have to admit that having access to all the software and cables makes things pretty easy for me, but unless you're looking at current model top of the line stuff, the software is pretty easy to come by, and most of the mobile cables you can make yourself if you can follow a diagram on Batlabs or Repeater-builder.

411 is a Digital Private Line code. It is transmitted along with your voice on the frequency you operate on. Normal operation is that the radio would transmit and receive with the same DPL code. This acts as a "mask" or Filter - helping to reduce or eliminate unwanted noise on your channel. It is useful when other user groups are operating on the same frequency, and you don't want to hear their traffic. With a properly set up DPL code, your radios will only hear (and talk) to each other. If your radio operates without a DPL or Private Line code (Carrier Squelch mode) - then you will hear all traffic on the received frequency. However, if you transmit without the correct DPL code, then there's a pretty good chance that the other users in your fleet (which are all programmed to only open their audio circuits when code 411 is received) will not hear your transmission. That's the simple level explanation, there's more to it, but that's enough for now.

I agree with your comment about Digital emissions, the FCC has been pretty clear that GMRS is supposed to be analog voice in a clear & unencrypted state (foreign languages allowed - as long as your ID is in English or CWID). However, when it comes to Part 90, I'm pretty sure that an FB6 private carrier repeater license can be used any way that a paying customer chooses to use it. I've never seen a single action from the FCC since the deregulation in 1980 for "casual communication" on Part 90 frequencies. I've got more than one licensed FB6 (and FB8) system, and I've never cared what a customer talked about. I also don't think the FCC ever asked to look at my books and see how much I was charging those FB6 customers. I think the definition of "Private Carrier" is fairly loose. I just told the Frequency Coordinators that I was planning to offer airtime service to my customers.

I'm not aware of any current crystal manufacturers, and the pricing of crystals was pretty much making them obsolete even before you counted the cost of labor to install and tune. I've still got an old Micor station that's been modified for a CSi multi-tone panel, and it was rocked on a Biz band frequency of 462.175. I've kept it around with the idea of tweaking it over to GMRS, but I never got around to it. I've got enough projects I'm behind on already.

And the hits just keep coming.... Apparently, there was video of the collapse as it happened. The video is grainy, but apparently shows that the workers knew something was wrong. Shocking tower collapse video shows an erector just two seconds away from death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=88&v=oH-ER8yFJfs More video, along with the story: http://wirelessestimator.com/articles/2018/shocking-tower-collapse-video-shows-an-erector-just-two-seconds-away-from-death/

Update: Inside Towers has an update on the outcome of the OSHA ruling. https://insidetowers.com/cell-tower-news-contractors-error-caused-death-osha-reports/