wilhelm

Well, just spent some time on youtube with NotaRubicon (forget what he calls himself on here), and now I know what a ground plane is! NMO? shucks, that was easy. and the Midland MXTA26, just great for GMRS! kidphc, the slim jim type antenna, does this need to be oriented vertical, or strung out horiz. do it? Thank you for your input, I do believe somewhere in the future I will get a higher wattage mobile, but will take baby steps for now. The reason is, my wife is very smart, loving, in great shape... but new technology and her are like oil and water. Just getting her to even carry the radio will be difficult. I'll try the cookie sheet, MXTA26 placed on top of the trailer and do some testing.

My thought was to have a handheld inside the trailer with an antenna on top, I would assume that a longer antenna would help, and I figured if it was on top of the trailer I'm getting an extra 10 foot elevation. I realize that it's still line of sight, but any advantage I could get. Even if I'm outside the trailer, I usually am no further than 10-15 feet away, so with volume up I would hear it. Why use a handheld? Because somehow I ended up with 3 of them, I'm basically cheap. And, the amount of time I would use the mobile in the trailer would only be to monitor her. I've looked for repeaters up there, nada. When we leave next month for NC, I will def be mapping them out for where we camp down there. One phone app I've found is alltrails dot com, very handy! You can do a search in the area you're going to be in, and it shows trails that others have already gps'd (is that a word?) and saved. Gives you distance, how hard a trail, elevation changes etc.. You can download the trail map that they saved to the phone, and then it will use your phone's gps to track you. Never thought about it, but even with no cell service, the gps is still working.

I've looked at other threads here about external antennas, I I just get more confused. My purpose of buying some 5R's was my wife. When we go camping up in the Adirondacks, many places have no cell service, and she like to take hikes by herself. ( My back limits the amount of walking I can do) I'd like to mount an antenna to the trailer roof so I can keep one of the HT's inside the trailer and have the best possible ability for her to tell me she's lost. Ok, not lost, just not willing to come back yet. On here I's seeing all these things that are way past my knowledge: ground plane, MRO (?) 1/4 wave, and several more. Then there's talk about trimming, cable length, tuning... Is there something out there that will do what i need, something to mount on the roof, some kind of cable that will allow me to pick up the radio, and a way to remind her to turn it on?

Thanks Marc!

It's probably right in front of me, but is there a way to know which topics have new posts on them? On another forum I belong to, when you hit "What's New?", it brings up any topics that have been added to since I last looked at them. I'm sure this is going to be a Doh moment.

On another thread I was reading," I can't seem to get two radios to communicate over the same repeater" the poster also couldn't get his two radios to communicate. Ended up he was too close together, I think he said he seperated about a 1/2 mile, and got voice. Give that a try.

Duh, that works! We'll just keep a dedicated radio for my wife, she will remember names MUCH easier than freq's!

Ah, is it as simple as choosing "name" in the A channel? That way my wife only has to look at the A channel and see something like "Erika 1"?

Yes Steve, that is correct.

Steve, thank you for confirming this for me! Now, if I can ask one more... Because my wife would have been a natural back in the 1840's, we need to make technology as simple as possible. I saw a youtube video that showed how you could make the "B" freq on the screen show the station name. Using the same spreadsheet, "Settings" tab, and choose "name" in "Display Mode (B)". I've done this, but after I upload it back on the radio, the lower line will show the name of the first row, but as I scroll thru the saved channels, the name still just shows the name for channel 1. Does anyone use this feature, and know what I'm doing wrong? Bill Baker WSAY247

Ok, another new user, just got GMRS license a couple of days ago. Have figured out how to use CHIRP some, on a UV-5R. I understand the freq offset and offset polarity, still not sure about the tones for repeaters. Looking at the column headings on the CHIRP spreadsheet, there is "Tone Mode" (tone, tsql, dtcs, cross); I see if I pick tone, then in the next column, "tone", it starts off with the pre loaded freqs I can pick from, and the couple of open repeaters I have looked at, this is what they are giving, a freq. I assume this is the tone that I would transmit, to open up the repeater, or is this column using the same tone for Tx and Rx? The next choice in the "Tone Mode" column is "TSQL", and if I select this, it automatically opens up freqs in the column called "Tone Squelch", from the discussion above, it seems this would be the tone the repeater would be transmitting? I'm still not getting how to use these columns. Back to the "tone" column, the third choice, DTCS, the next three columns are DTCS, RX DTCS, DTCS Polarity. These seem much easier, if I see a repeater giving a 3 digit number instead of a freq, I would be choosing from the pulldowns in these 3 columns. Do I also have the option of not using the RX DTCS if I want to hear ALL traffic on the repeater's output? Boy, I'm realizing I'm at that age where old dog/new tricks is a problem. Bill Baker WSAY247