SvenMarbles

Thank you!

I got an easy one. How do you simply engage the scan? lol

That's literally my setup. 50 ft run of LMR400 on a mast very similar to that..

Thank you for doing that scan. It really informs what I might choose to do..

Oh that really isn’t bad at 151.94 (our neighborhood channel). I wonder if I’d actually get that after my install and coax though.. you know how it is..

Shortly after posting this I did find the GP9NCA. I’m considering it. My only hang up is that it’s a complete beast of an antenna. I’ll need to guy my mast if I stick that thing on top of it. Also I like to keep my antennas sort of discreet from the curb view as well. But the gain and dual banding that it does fits exactly what I am looking for. I guess that’s just what an antenna of those parameters needs to be lol. The GP6NC has that same issue with the VHF side being a bit above MURS. Maybe it’s still usable? IDK. Anyone ever put one on a VNA? Is the 151-154 still in the neighborhood of 1.5?

I'm curious if there is a good quality base antenna with high gain that is GMRS and dual bands with MURS? I've found LMR antennas but the VHF is a few MHZ high for the PS fire band. I'm trying to just have 1 antenna on my mast and I use both services regularly..

I've got channels programmed to 37. They load in and work on the radio.

Well I used to use it all the time, and I haven't made any changes on this end of things. Just one day I click play and get no audio despite having the traffic on the radio, and seeing the nodes go red.

I just have all of those slots skipped. First thing I did was wipe the default channel programing. Put my repeaters at the top few channels and then the rest of the GMRS band plan below skipping 8-15. It doesn't matter what the radio channel numbers are because I just alpha tag what the channels are anyway, and like you said the blanks just skip over when tuning the knob. I have the left and right side programmed the same way except for programming my "OFF" channel to #1 on the right side.

This is literally what I do. I load in an arbitrary FRS frequency and then set a high numbered iDCS tone, and then alpha tag that channel as "OFF". It's my saved channel #1 on the right side... Works as though it were a baked-in feature..

Am I having a browser compatibility issue or are the streams for the linked system streams not working?

Some people don't agree with how repeaters should be used. I actually don't really care for these linked repeaters that give a lot of traffic from 2 people 8 miles apart in Indianapolis. For some reason I have to listen to that in the Chicago area. I might be compelled to put a louder one over top of it if I were independently wealthy... There are only 8 repeater channels and they fill in metro areas.

Here’s a simple way to explain antenna gain to children. take a garden hose and turn it on upright in your fist. The water will gush out as you’d expect it to. That’s a zero gain scenario. Now put your thumb on it to spray it further. That’s antenna gain . There’s no net increase in water volume, you’ve just concentrated it in a direction, and in doing so it’s pretty effective.. ERP is a metric to assume how, that now more concentrated and directed water, is behaving supposing that you hypothetically accomplished that same “splash out” by increasing your net power instead of concentrating it…

Very interesting. It seems like most radios of Chinese origin seem to be pretty wide open radios by default, and only set “boundaries” with software. It wouldn’t surprise me if the 87 is perfectly capable of doing VHF as well and that Retevis would release a new variant of it, but it would just be the same radio with those code parameters changed up a bit.. There actually is an option on the Retevis software on the very first prompt that has a drop box to select UHF or VHF. I tried selecting VHF when I first started playing with it, but it just doesn’t work. It just won’t read the radio/programming cable anymore if you switch that. So that’s a bit of a give away right there that they intend on future expansion with this radio.. I didn’t do my little write up/review of the radio yet because I kind of struggle to really have a great deal to get into with it. It’s just kind of a very simple and straightforward GMRS radio. It’s a good radio that “radios good” . I’m told that I sound nice from others on the receiving side. Mic gain audio seems perfect out of the box. It definitely pumps out very near the 40 advertised watts. Mine is 39.3. It’s got a good and loud speaker. It’s a heavy and chunky steel radio that feels quality. The programming cable that is included works. I like that it can stay plugged into the radio and computer all the time because it’s a separate jack on the back. I can be in the middle of using it, open chirp, change something, and upload and the radio doesn’t even mute or anything while it happens. It’ll just power off and on again when finished and just right back to being used… It’s a nice feature for if you use it as a home/base radio on your desk right by your computer. So I mean, yeah.. It’s just kind of a simple and good radio. There isn’t really anything that I find to be a shortcoming. Maybe just that the radio face and menu logic/buttons aren’t that intuitive. I haven’t figured out how to make it scan . But I also don’t really need it to, so I haven’t spent much energy on looking into it. I wish the alpha tagging allowed more characters.

Pipe down you two…

1.01 on a perfectly impedance matched antenna.

I use this one. https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/ This one will take into account, all varieties of coax at different lengths, actual frequencies (467, not 450), input wattage, your SWR, and antenna gain. Don’t confuse DBI and DBD. Deduct 2.15 from your antenna’s dbi rating for the dbd.

For a while now, a repeater listed as "TORNADO 550: GREENWOOD, IN" is showing in the repeater listings for a far south/west suburb of Chicago. I know that this is an actual repeater down in Indy.. I don't know if this was a listing fudge or what, but it's bugging me a lot lol. I use the listings here frequently.

Mine makes 39.8 on the meter.

Oh really?! Maybe I gotta update my version. It wasn’t there when I scrolled the list! That’s a major win if it’s on there.. I’ll check it out. ::edit:: I see it listed there on the webpage list of radios.

Well I’m not even complaining about that really. I actually appreciate it when the “work around” of tyranny is plainly provided. In the CB days it was “as long as you don’t snip this arbitrarily provided jumper wire to convert this into a 10 meter radio ”. Look. We’re all pretty well filled-in radio people. If we’ve come this far we know where the PS frequencies are. As long as nobody is being silly there, we’re fine to just carry on with our hobby.. The FCC knows that… The surface level measures to stop the ACTUAL dum dums who just plug things in and yell are adequate.

I stand corrected. I was sure it was input power.

The rule isn’t ERP..

God damn I’m glad there’s someone following along…