SvenMarbles

The best possible is a Yagi if you can run one.

Well superhet vs SOC matter a fair bit on the receive side. At any price point. A double or triple conversion superhet receiver is unquestionably superior. I have silicon labs chip radios that hear Noaa weather 8 harmonics away and break a 1 squelch.

I'd rather have the fruitiest 7 tone roger beep imagineable and then also insist that it was an Icom.

I absolutely hate the idea of living in an HOA as a radio hobbyist. But nothing thrills me more than the challenge of evading it with stealthy antennas and such . It reminds me of my younger days of living in apartments, and in one case lying to the manager that I was getting cable, gaining access to the roof, and creating a clandestine longwire for HF. No questions ensued about the newly stapled coax leading into apartment 3 west.. There's an actual whole market niche for "HOA stealth" ham radio antennas. Have a look at those and see if there's anything applicable for your use case.

That's what I suspected. I haven't owned a Midland GMRS radio, but I have owned their products in the past pre-GMRS. I didn't think much of it..

I'm not sure when Midland became Yaesu. I only remember that for the past 30 years they made what were considered the "cheapo" CB radios. Are the Midland GMRS radios superhet? I only ask because of a conversation between 4 guys on the repeater today. Slamming "the Chinese junk". As far as I know Wouxun is the only thing trying to do non homodyne radios for the GMRS space.

Oh good, because that's what I just ordered. Thanks

That's exactly the type of info I needed. Thanks. If I copy/paste that into amazon, does it show that exact product?

My principal home radio is a simple Tidradio TD-H8 handheld that's turned up on wattage a bit (11 watts). LMR-400 to a 9db gain rotatable yagi about 15 feet high. It does better than most people's 50 watters lol.

I notice that I have an issue during rain. I key up on my home radio and have an SWR of 2 when it's typically a 1.4 on a dry day. I don't have anything done to my so-239/pl-259 point on the antenna. It's just out there living in the weather. I suspect dampness might be making mild shorts on the center conductor/shielding side. I recognize that this was not good practice, but I wanted to get my antenna up in haste and figured i'd get back to it later. But before I get knee deep into the project of getting the mast back down, I'd like to have a plan for the weather proofing. What do you guys do that works well?

I think there may have been some variations of it, but as you can see on the VNA, this model lands nicely into GMRS. I’ve been talking on it very reliably and getting good reports.

Yes it is. Various brands/menus will say things a different way. Output (transmit). Use that for your outgoing tone/DCS.

As an exercise. Try turning down to medium and low and see if there's a difference to what you can do with your static station. I've found that the only variable that can be managed is antenna height. You can change what you can do by moving your antenna higher. But the result of each height increment between 20 and 50 watts will be exactly the same. If you can find time to test that, I'd be very appreciative.

Interesting. Well if that’s the case, and I’m in no position to tell you that your empirical experience is incorrect, I’ll concede on that. I’ve done my share of tooling around and doing all sorts of field testing and have never experienced the thing of 25 watts falling short (through a relatively open terrain path as you describe) and then 50 watts having another result. It just kind of seems to me like the elevations of the parties involved and the terrain in-between is what it is and is either going to allow readable contact, or not. It’s not been my experience that you can just plow through anything with a few more watts. 50 or 5,000. The hillside always wins. Again. For 4xx UHF. I recognize that other bands have other nuances..

I completely understand the logic of “it can do 50 watts, and it can do lower power as well” so why not? My question though, even with that being said, when would 50 watts on 462-467 be appropriate? When does 50 watts do a thing that 25 watts (or even less) didn’t? I’m not saying that there aren’t such circumstances, but speaking strictly anecdotally, I’ve never found an instance of it. The the limiting variables of the 4xx UHF band properties are going to be your barriers well before needing more power will. So when you’re setup with one of those 50 watt installs, I’m assuming you’re also going to have the supporting accoutrement to be able to supply that radio at maximum power level, even if you may opt to mainly run it lower.. But you’re geared up to be able to. So that was a cost.. Also, I’m just going to be straightforward. As far as what you said about using only the power needed to accomplish what you’re doing. I really don’t believe that’s standard practice. I’d bet everything that most people are just going full bore on high all day. All that the point of this post was attempting to get across is that I believe that there’s a great deal of GMRSers that are all about that 50 watt model. And I believe they run them that way, all day. And I don’t think very many people realize how much power draw they’re using all the time, for no practical benefit..

I frankly completely ignore the standard "baked in" weather functions on any of the radios that I have. If something was goofy about the way it's implemented, it would hardly move the needle on how I felt about the radio as a whole. It's likely I might not ever even discover it. Here's my weather mode. VFO, punch 162.whatever and it's always right there loud and proud.. I do that regardless of it there's a weather button on the radio or not lol. How's the radio? Does it radio well?

There are all varieties of use cases for antennas. Yes that Comet 712 is a prime antenna. It's also a massive beast! It's an 11 foot tall vertical. Some people might not be able, or want to have such a prominent antenna. There's also the matter of needing very robust mounting for it, wind load, etc.. A UHF yagi on the other hand, is a small and light thing that can squirt the RF just as far and as strong with equivalent decibels, just only in the desired direction at the time. And it's the size footprint as a shoe box. If you don't mind going and pointing it at the repeaters or direction of receiving party, I think it IS an option for some to consider, again, if they might not be able to mount up a big ole 11 foot tall monster antenna. In my case, I've already got other antennas for other bands and I was able to side-mount this one onto an existing mast in a way that it can swivel. I just take the parallel run of PVC pictured and give it a twist. It's super simple to construct something like this, I don't sweat a wind load on it, and it'll get into a repeater 30+ miles out as good if not better than a 712 if I've got it pointed at it. They're also excellent on the RX side of things.

It's what I do. 10 watts and 9db gain. for UHF it's all you need to be loud.

No, you don't need your own repeater. You may just want to make your station very good. I'd be curious to know where you are located geographically. You might think that 17 miles it too far to reach, but you'd be surprised. I routinely talk on repeaters over 20 miles away and sound good on them. With a handheld. There's just a handful of things to know and you can do it too. You don't need to spend thousands, or even hundreds to be able to shoot a signal pretty far off.

Well this topic sprung back to life... Here's another thing to consider. IDK about anyone else here, but sort of married to my interest in having domestic radio is a concept of preparedness. A 50 watt station needs quite an amperage draw. If you're not about "what happens when things go dark" and you're just a comfy radio desk plugged into mains power type guy. sure. Blow out 50 watts. Even if 70% of it is a waste. But is your station operable when that's not the case? When that supply needs to be plugged into something to give you 12 amps stable? I like a station that can run on batteries. With gain and directional antennas, I can be every bit as loud as anyone with 10 watts. And that can be fueled by the sun.

I've commented on your tube vids exactly twice. If those remarks impressed upon you, I can now check the box of "master communicator".

Hams are 100% the issue. And I completely recognize that I just tipped the gas can and lit a match by saying so. Your profile is only 50% complete on MYGMRS until you add you ham radio call sign, so I recognize that i'm about to be in a fist fight with an upset beehive. IDGAF I know what's right and what's not. Hams don't like to be told that they're out of line in the world of radio because they've been used to being the "radio dudes". In this case they're actually the away team. This is actually not a ham band. It's not for hams. I know it's crazy to imagine. But there do exist radio people, who know and do radio, who don't hold a ham ticket. I know,.. it's nuts. Can't even be bothered to take a day off of work to sit for an exam by some self serious medically retired guy in a library and get 26 right out of 35 multiple choice.. IDK,.. We just don't do it.. Our idea of applying radio as a hobby doesn't require it. But we do have wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sister, etc who we'd like to be on the radio with. ,....and we don't want to always be like "WHISKEY TANGO BRAVO ZULU 554!!" on the radio all the time just to get on.. We don't call out CQ to eachother.. And we don't say 73's! (yuck).. Some of the parties on the license might not even know what kind of radio they have when colostomy bag Larry asks, and I don't think they need to feel weird about that. They're just trying to relay a practical message to another party on the license when someone else in town hears traffic and thinks it's the 440 net.

I agree. I think there’s been this MASSIVE misunderstanding about what GMRS is for. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that GMRS is “family radio service adjacent” and that the licensing is “for a family”. I believe if we took the both of our disagreement here to the Supreme Court, we’d get a 9-0 in my favor . Saying “wow” is saying nothing at all.

Obviously we’re all spread apart across the country and every area isn’t going to be exactly like another. Anecdotally, I’ve had instances where my wife got on the mic from her car and tried to raise me on the radio at home and had her get chastised about “interrupting the current conversation” even though she said “691 traffic”. I heard the whole thing. She got a little bit bullied by the local circle of hams that like to be on GMRS for some reason. The point is. What we were doing is actually what THIS IS FOR. If you want to just be hobby radio guy, no problem, but YIELD. Ham radio is 22 megahertz south. Same properties as the 462 if you just like that band for some reason. Even though, frankly it sucks and VHF is better and I’m jealous of it. I’d do a goofy dance if the day came that the FCC announced that MURS spectrum became more channels on GMRS. Coax losses up here are brutal. Hams have nice little slices across all of the favorable bands. Just go there..

Are you confused about the broader point I was making? Or just the antenna part?