LeoG

You always here that UHF is line of sight. If you can't see it, you can't talk to it. My experience has been otherwise. Granted if you have a 1000' mountain between you and the person you want to talk to it ain't happening simplex. I just upgraded my repeaters power. Same antenna at about 40' off the ground and surrounded by trees 270º around me. Today I took a ride with my 20 watt Wouxun KG-XS20G+ with an MXTA26 Midland magnetically mounted, basically straight north. I had my phone at my repeater as I called out to it recording with a voice activated app. My truck was moving on all of these, probably around 40mph +/- 3.85 miles out with Line Of Site Full Quieting Area.wav Going farther out, on a hill but behind one also 6.54 mi Top of hill past Randal Dr.wav And then down that hill 75 feet below the other peak and still in the shadow of the hill 7.0 mi Hickory St.wav Getting worse but still very readable 7.2 mi Entering Agawam.wav Unreadable at Shoemaker Ln 7.9 mi Shoemaker Ln.wav Sounded much worse on my end and I figured I was done but really it wasn't that bad 9.25 mi McDonalds.wav Cute little experiment. Shows line of sight doesn't mean you can't be heard. Obviously you lose quieting and sometime you lose readability. It was nice to find out I could insert audio.

I'm just shocked at how every single time I get into their area I hear them. Doesn't matter what day or time. Sounds like they are running VOX and just talk to each other like they were in the same room. No idea if that's true but you'd figure they'd eventually run out of things to say. Always with the cheap toy Roger beep.

Over hear in the NE the GMRS traffic is very low. Across the river from me their are 2 Spanish speaking guys who seem to never shutup. But I think they are on low power stuff, always on x.600MHz

So you're one of those huh. Thinking the govt is trying to restrict the people from communicating with each other in less than safe conditions. Welcome to the club!

I don't think so only because cell phones take care of most communication and 90% of the people don't think 2 days ahead to set up a backup plan when that system goes down.

Well if you don't license then the eff sea seas has to search you out with a signal finder before they can fine you. That makes them very angry. Especially if you license and all they have to do is send you a letter that says go to jail (from post above )

No thank you. Sending it to them is sending it to me.

But the rest of my family fits into that category, minus my BIL because he uses radio in his trade for pulling wires. I don't think any of them know how to set up the radio. I handed them preprogrammed radios and told them what stations to use and a basic use of the talkie. Not going to be my fault if they end up stranded because I tried to get them involved. I wanted to have a small monthly time to chat on them just so they'd be familiar. No one is interested because the world is a bowl of cherries and nothing will ever go wrong.

Ya, I can't even touch the repeater from inside my house (aluminum siding doesn't help) but step outside and it's a pretty good connection. No problem with the 20 watt base and antenna.

I have a plan with the family. We have the repeater that we would go through picked out and a simplex channel that we would use when closer. Plus when I get my repeater up to snuff the plan will change to that. I'm not worried about me or the wife at all. The rest of the family doesn't practice at all. My son and DIL told me to go to Lowes because I have the truck in the family. I brought a talkie and my mobile. I went into the store looking for them and no luck. I texted and got nothing. I called and it went to VM, meaning no signal for them. Mine was pretty poor. If they had the talkie it would have been simple. On the way back to their house I gave them the talkie so they could keep in contact and keep an eye out on the load in the truck as we went back to their place. She seemed to enjoy it. But she was the one who put them away immediately because they had no room to keep the 2 talkies out. Like anything, training is key.

I have two repeaters, 17 miles and 21 miles that I talk on. Usually the 21 mile repeater. We just had our net and I confirmed the base and it was R9 and then I confirmed the talkie and it was an R7 into the repeater. Both are up about 750' on mountains. Or big hills if you live in real mountain areas.

Praise Oh Xenu, for thou have thwarted thy torture of driver hell.... Amen.

You know. If I'm in a situation and the only thing around is a HAM station and I don't have a license for it guess what? I'm going to be calling out on that radio because at that point it was my only communication available. That's just real life.

I have 10. 1 was bad. It was the first batch I bought. Lowest output is 4.5 watts and highest is 4.7 Didn't have problems programming any of them using ODMaster or by keyboard. I like the radio. It's very compact and still has nice features. Battery life is 2 days for the most part. The bad one was replaced without a fight and instead of just giving a new radio they gave me the kit of 1. So extra battery, charger, cords and two more antennas. I say they compensated me for the bad talkie. And they didn't ask for the old one to be returned. I'm pretty happy with all of them.

It's what happens when you put yourself up on a pedestal to look down over the little people.

I'm betting they plan on doing that anyway.

But how would they charge you for each test then?

Because it's a great little radio. Sucks if you have to return one because of a defect, but such is life. The company responds quickly and replaces the defective radios without any issues. Quality control could be better, I agree with that.

Clone the good radio to the bad. Before you turn the radio on push the lower button below the 2 PTT buttons. It usually turns the light on. While holding this button turn the radio on. It will display "Wireless Copy" Do the same for the other radio. On the radio that works press the same button again and the cloning will begin. Takes about 30 seconds. Keep the radios about 1' apart with antennas attached. When it's complete you need to turn both radios back off, and then on again to complete the cloning process. This will copy the good radio to the bad. If it still doesn't work then the bad radio is indeed bad.

If they are setup the same you may have a bad radio. Try simplex between the two and separate them by about 1/3 mile. If one can contact the other and not vice versa then you have a bad transmitter.

Yup, great little radios until they go kaput. Then they are throw aways. Can't fathom in my mind how they can make it for so cheap. I guess $2/day for slave labor has it's advantages...

Contact the seller. It happens. Usually they respond by sending you a new single kit. I had a pair and my wife's radio could easily reach me and I couldn't reach her at about 1/4 mile. Sent the Amazon seller a note and they replaced it no questions asked. I checked it on my meter and I don't know how it transmitted that far. It read zero output. Not even 0.1 watts.

Sounds like a rough morning after a long weekend...

Or maybe the tow truck company owns the repeater.

Most repeater owners won't let you on them if you aren't licensed. It goes against them too. And why not? It's $35 for 10 years. It about the best license bargain the govt has. Lots of people running no license might actually be legally using FRS and since you are nearby you can hear them. But they have no real distance capabilities. Other than that, no real reason if you are operating an HT because it would be nearly impossible to track you down unless you never shut up.