amaff

Narrator: it did.

Yep, exactly. These days they're scientific curiosities to blow kids' (and dorky adults like myself) minds in museums (like round hallways where you can hear a whisper from the other side) or those little cones you stand under in front of a TV so that the TV isn't blaring out sound making noise through the rest of the museum, but underneath the cone you can hear the audio clear as a bell), but the concept is the same. Make all the sound bounce to the focus point of the 'mirror' and you can hear something from a lot further away than you could with the 'naked' ear.

I can't remember the last time I keyed down long enough to run out the transmission timeout haha That said, I've also never really screwed with it too much. Would it not come back after a few seconds? It shouldn't stop transmitting until the radio's reset, I imagine. Or @Elbowmac are you maybe resetting it before it's giving you 'permission' to transmit again?

Yup, this. And they tried lots of different designs. They're called "Acoustic Mirrors". Basically: point them in the general direction the Luftwaffe was likely coming from, and plonk some plucky private in the seat to yell out when they heard airplanes coming. The invention (and operational deployment) of radar made them obsolete pretty quickly. But it was a pretty good idea at the time.

Oh thank goodness some pioneering spirit came along and thought of this topic. It's about time! I'm shocked. SHOCKED. that no one's ever discussed this before! Now, I have some new and unique thoughts on Linked Repeaters I'd like to share with the class

lolwut

Remember that the repeater outputs are the same as simplex channels 15-22. If you have your radio set to, say, Repeater 16, and it's listening for tone 67.0. If someone is nearby is transmitting on simplex 16 and transmitting the same tone, your will hear that transmission. IE: they're almost certainly not actually using the repeater. (also, a side tone and privacy tones / codes are different things) (edited for clarity because even I couldn't figure out wtf I had written... I knew what I was trying to say, but what I wrote was nonsense )

I must not have had enough coffee yet. Is today April 1st?

The DB-20G and the DB-25G are different radios, FYI. Pretty different features sets and form factor. The 20G is based on the AnyTone AT779uv. The DB25G (and amateur DB25) seem to be their own thing.

North GA Repeater Network strikes again

100%. I don't know why it's not advertised (a lot of other radios will say "22 GMRS channels + 8 repeater channels + 8 (or however many) DIY channels". Which is just as annoying, but at least they say it up front. Not that I'm aware of. My KG-905Gs let you put whatever GRMS frequency you want in whatever memory slot you want, and the radios enforce the rules from there.

Ah. I'd forgotten about those. The only GMRS HTs with more disrespectful pricing than Midland So, 1 (very expensive) example.

Help me out here. On 1 hand, "one must only transmit on type accepted radios OR ELSE!" But on the other hand, chinese radios suck and are bad and no one should use them So...what GMRS radios are out there that are type accepted, and not Chinese? Because by your logic (CCRs bad, non-type-accepted bad), it sounds like no one should be using GMRS period.

That sounds like a problem on some of the other people's end. Bad position / line of site to the repeater, incorrect settings on their radios, etc. If you're hitting the repeater and it's re-transmitting it and others can hear you, your radio's doing what it's supposed to. Nothing on your radio that I'm aware of will make it only audible to some and not others on a GMRS repeater.

I'm not aware of any that *don't* have that ability.

Totally fair criticisms there. Not even being able to copy & paste lines like any other 'spreadsheet' type program is really dumb. The software is pretty clunky... it does the job, but there's no reason for it to be that annoying to use. I don't have a ton of experience with a lot of different "CCR" programming software, but in my two data points, it seems to be a thing. Wouxun's is equally bad for my 905Gs.

Disable the Rx tone is troubleshooting step #1. It's not necessary for using the repeater (but for filtering out, ideally, non-repeater traffic on your radio's end). But if it's set wrong for some reason, it'll also filter out your repeater.

It's known. And dumb, but it's how the radio is. You're only allowed that handful of 'DIY' GMRS channels.

I've used my BTech cable to program Wouxuns and TD-H3s. I've use my Wouxun cable to program Fengs... you get the idea. Unless it's a radio with a different port configuration, it'll probably work. The place you may have compatibility issues is the Windows driver more than on the radios. In my experience, the BTech tends to *just work* while others tend to have problems from time to time, depending on what computer they're plugged into.

I do.

....where?

Sounds like pretty normal narrowband vs wideband operations, honestly. If you're not up for changing to a radio that'll do wideband, next time you can ask your BTech friend to swap over to narrowband (since you can't switch to wide) and they'll play more nicely together.