SvenMarbles

Regardless of what you decide to do for a permanent base antenna, I'd recommend also purchasing an N9TAX slim jim style antenna and just having it put away. With that, you can have something that is field deployable AFTER whatever type of problem rolls through and busts things up. Toss a line over a tree limb, or something high, or raise a painters pole, and get it up in the air. You can screw it into whatever handheld you have, or even your base radio if you can power it (I believe they're rated to handle 100 watts). Also consider, for a base radio, to instead of buying a power supply box, get a 30ah Lifepo battery, a charger for it, and perhaps even a little solar power setup (harbor freight). The battery accomplishes all of the day to day powering requirements, and instead of having a power supply box plugged in, just have the battery on the plug in trickle charger all the time. This when when things go down you' have some buffer back up power time for the radio. I tested mine, and it'll run my radio with pretty heavy use for about 8 days at high power. This could probably be improved by bumping the power level of the radio down to medium or low power.

Lately, my favorite has been a simple DB-20G (unlocked) I put out in my truck. I made a post about it a couple of weeks ago. It just works perfectly for it's use case.

Power and gain does not defeat a terrain dead zone. Having a central located repeater on a high spot is the correct solution.

It's not that it keeps me awake at night. But this larger invasive mentality that GMRS should be treated as a ham radio jr is a problem, and the little ham call field in the profile areas of this site is an artifact of that..

It’s not in any order of offense, because it technically isn’t even law. It’s FCC rules.

Are we worried about a field search of the FCC police? I wonder why so many people running LMR Motorola aren’t so skiddish,.. Or nearly EVERY gmrs repeater setup, running on Motorola. All type cert scofflaws.. If you have your Gemers license, and operate on the gemers frequencies, nobody cares….

There's not much of a controversy.. You can be a "good boy" for literally noones's sake, because nobody cares, FCC included. Or you can just get on with having a radio that services you better..

Unlock the radio and then you dont have to skip 8-14. plus you can add the ham repeaters as well as police and fire for monitor..

I figured out the eccentricities of Radioddity's own program. It actually works fine. When you set CTCSS/DCS tones, you also have to change the squelch method as well..

It's a little annoying that it even asks about a ham radio call. As if to imply some sort of relationship between GMRS and Amateur radio.

Why would it melt though? It draws roughly 6amps through a receptacle that can provide 10?

Tesla would've put electricity over the air and ruined all possibility of radio lol. Great guy,.. Not a friend of radio though...

Stick a penny in that fuse box and you can power a 100 watt radio with a cigarette lighter plug Just keep transmissions brief..

Yeah I don't really get why the cigarette lighter plug is a knock on the radio. I guess you're not a cool kid unless you splice up your dash wiring? lol The point is that the amp draw of the radio is such that the plug connection is sufficient.. My truck has a bonus auxiliary DC plug down on the middle console. So,.... yeah.. I just plug it in right there.. And now I can have the option of yanking the radio out and putting it somewhere else should I choose. And if you just really hate it, I'm pretty sure a pair of scissors and 10 seconds of time can solve that for you pretty decisively..

I like the cigarette lighter plug and I use it. It's actually part of what I like about it...

Man,.. If people are impressed by Midland IDK what the hells going on . Before GMRS got popular, Midland made $40 Walmart CB radios.. When did Midland become yaesu?

I mean.. It's a loaded question. I don't own "all of the radios" so I can't say for sure. Rubicon probably does lol. But what is "better" anyway? Specs? We're not supposed to be a nerd band theoretically. But I know that a lot of us are. So maybe you care about if the receiver is a superhet receiver. BUT, how does that weigh against the functional advantages of the radio I'm reviewing in this post? Size, the user interface, power draw, etc.. Maybe I can make the argument that this radio is "better" because those are the factors that matter to me for my use case..

I've been operating with a Radioddity DB20G in my truck since Christmas. I wasn't planning to make a fuss over it or type up a review or anything, because I felt like it was a pretty basic, standard, inexpensive, knock around mini-mobile GMRS radio. But after using it for these weeks, I've noticed that I just really like this radio a lot. It does all of the small things right. It may sound silly to some, but I just really appreciate that it uses a big switch on/off volume knob. For a radio that I operate in a vehicle, I appreciate it when a radio isn't "fiddly". I reach over blind, switch it on and set to a comfortable volume in one intuitive and effortless motion. The radio sits in a spot that is absolutely perfect in my truck (pictured in following post). Facing face-up below where my right arm would rest on the middle console. The speaker is powerful and can be cranked up adequately loud to hear comfortably above road noise. I also appreciate that this radio is 20 watts (and actually is) which means that it can safely be powered by a cigarette lighter plug. When you power on/unlock the radio, you have full freedom to program as many simplex and repeater channels as you'd like. I used the included bracket and some 3M hook and loop strips to make it so that I can simply pull the entire radio off to bring it inside for programming, or use it in another application. Reception is great, no breakthrough overload, and reports are that I sound nice talking on it as well. It just hits the sweet spot of preferences for me in a radio for how I want to be able to use a radio..

No, it's the common inexpensive Surecom 102. But, I do look at it with a Nano VNA when I put up new antennas. There's never that much of a discrepancy.. But assuming there was perhaps a .1 deviation in reflection, would that account for a 20% difference in output level? Because that's the sort of thing that I encounter..

Well I'll admit, this is something that kind of puzzles me and I'd like to understand why this happens. I've experienced many instances where your radio's output power seems to be influenced by different antennas on the other end. For example,.. You have a mobile/base radio, coax, in-line power meter, coax, antenna. It's a 1.1 SWR and it reads 40 watts output. You then don't change anything except for the antenna and the end of the line, but now you're getting a 1.1 SWR and 32 watts on your power meter. How does the power level between the radio and the power meter get influenced by the antenna at the end of the equation? No additional reflection shown on the meter... Does anyone else notice this happen?

Is that the case? You can operate a constant broadcast on FRS?

Just don't even worry about it. It's not really the issue I'm bringing forth in this post. The point is that there's an interfering signal parked right onto a GMRS channel.

It's exactly what I wish I had. I can't really swing that purchase. I'd love to just borrow one for a day! Or task someone who might own one local to me with the challenge..

That’s got to be what it is… Thanks! So if I key up on the correct DCS tone, maybe I can come through the intercom and make noises that might convince them to disconnect it