LeoG

My bench power supply's fan is not loud. Not like some of those jet engine cooling fans you hear about on some inverters and chargers. I've decided to take advantage of the sale and now have a total of 4 of the 100Ah batteries. Going to eventually set up a 48 volt inverter with solar charging. Gotta get another 600 watts of solar for a total of 1000. Even though I know 2KW is likely necessary.

Happy Thanksgiving to all

Both the same radio. I believe the only difference in the package is what antenna it comes with. GMRS tuned or Ham tuned. Both radios can be changed to either GMRS, Ham or Normal which is unlocked.

That's kind of the way I've read it too. I consider broadcasting like music or a show, not just sentences periodically. They ain't coming for you anyway. How do they know you aren't talking simplex and they just can't hear the other person?

As long as I keep the voltage proper it'll be just fine. I currently have it on constant voltage at 14.5v and the current will vary and get lower as it charges. The BMS will take care of it if something goes awry and shut the battery down.

Just picked up my first LiFePO4 100Ah battery. On sale from Amazon, pretty good reviews. Built in bluetooth to monitor the BMS. Never heard of the brand, but lots of people seem to like them so for $150 I'll give it a shot. Charging it with my variable bench power supply since I don't have a dedicated charger for it yet. Backup for my repeater.

Asphalt and 3 wood doors and one metal. I have another repeater that makes it into the house but I can't hit it from inside the house.

So I talk to you on a GMRS frequency. I am licensed to transmit on that frequency. You listen to me on your dual receive radio. You need no license to listen to any frequencies on radio. So we are legal there. Now you transmit on 2m, which you have a license for. I have my dual receive radio set to hear 2m band which I am fully allowed to do. So I can hear your conversation. Where is the law/regulation broken? There is nothing illegal about anything done. So in effect it is the message that is illegal because everything else is above board. I guess we can just say that we are just talking to ourselves over the air (I know someone who does this when no one answers him) and out of the magnitude of coincidences we just happen to answer each others queries.

Then I'm going to guess that I have a -105dBm to -100dBm signal in the house. Full aluminum siding, normal stick built with drywall and old single pain windows with no E coating. My son likely has a better signal inside his house since he's closer and has wood siding, no metal shield surrounding his house acting as a partial Faraday cage. So if your guess of -30dB to get through my siding and walls then likely I have a -75 to -70dBm signal outside my house, which is pretty strong. Let me throw that in the calculations and see if it makes any sense when I apply it to other situations.

That sounds like a really stupid unnecessary regulation if that's one of its real intentions. I'd tend to think it was more signal passing then message passing.

As you have pointed out the Tidradio is a pc of junk and you would never buy one. Well, they do have some lacking in the firmware and the company is actively working with the radios to improve them. And updating the firmware is the way they do this. Most of the radios you have from the 90s are only programmable by computer while the new radios are self contained for the most part and are much more complicated and coded than the radios from yesteryear. So glad to hear all the radios you've ever purchased in your life are perfect with zero defects. Congratulations.

Yes, you need to plug the cable in first before you'll get a com port. I've found that it's best to go into the device manager and assign the cable with com port #1 if possible. Good chance if you are assigned a double digit com port number it won't work properly. And like others have mentioned if there is a driver that needs loading you should do that before plugging the cable in. If you have already plugged the cable in, take it out and load the driver. Then use a different USB port to connect to the computer and that should allow it to work properly.

Here's another question I don't actually expect an answer to but figured I'd ask anyway. I have a repeater about 17 miles away from my house and it's 10 miles from my sons house. I was surprised that both of us can be inside our homes and talk somewhat reliably with 4.5 watt HTs. My house has aluminum siding, his doesn't. Anyone gander a guess at what the minimum signal might be to have this work? dBm or µV would be nice to know. I had one search produce a result of -70dbm which seems very strong, but I think they were talking about WiFi so in the GHz range. What I'm trying to do is calibrate (somewhat) Radio Mobile to what it's showing me and what I'm actually receiving. I know I'm not at the minimum because communication is fair to good, not sproratic or choppy. Anyone want to gander an educated guess?

Transistors and output devices are rated at 90-150ºC (200-300ºF). Not exactly advisable to run them at near max, but 106ºF is 8º above body temp. Transistor junction temperature, also known as operating temperature, is the maximum temperature at which a semiconductor in an electronic device can operate. It's higher than the temperature of the device's exterior and the case temperature. Junction temperature is a critical thermal parameter for semiconductors. If the junction temperature exceeds a specified limit, the device may destroy itself or its thermal protection circuits may shut it down. The maximum junction temperature for a semiconductor is usually around 150°C, but can sometimes be as high as 175°C.

No radio is fully reliable just like cell phones aren't. Just like anything it's technology and it works great until it doesn't.

Been picking up items for solar backup. This Amazon Black Friday has been good for that. Recently they had a lightning sale on some 100 watt panels I've had in my list and I picked up 2 of them for $110. And then again they had a black Friday sale on those same panels for the same price so I picked up another 2. And they had a 100Ah LiFePO4 in my list on sale for $150 so I picked that up. I have a setup in my truck with 200 watts of panels, a 125Ah AGM battery and a Victron MPPT solar charge controller. I have a small Victron charge controller but it maxes out at 10amps into a 12 volt battery so it's underrated for the 400 watts of panels but it'll still charge a battery. Trying to get 1KW worth of panels and eventually 4 batteries for a 48v (51.2v) system along with an inverter to run with it.

I missed nothing. Wasn't talking about only forum stuff.

A lot of people want to stop you from saying what you want to say instead of just leaving. AKA censorship on social media and by govt officials. Just the same with "some people" trying to take shows off TV instead of just switching the station and not watching it.

They are the same radio and can be switched between the 3 modes. It's not that hard, especially if you have a forum of informed individual. Your hatred of CCR is becoming droll.

By leaving, not by stopping the person from talking.

ODMASTER works fine on the H3. I'm surprised it doesn't work on the H8

With the radio off press the top PTT button along with the Star button and turn the radio on. The screen will come up with 1 HAM 2 GMRS 3 NORMAL Press the 2 button for a few seconds and it should reboot into GMRS mode. In VFO mode (orange button (every 3rd press)) you can listen to any frequency the radio is capable of receiving. In GMRS mode you can RX/TX only GMRS channels.

Even though my signature says I'm one of those. I'm not on of those

I have no one on ignore. I'll listen to all opinions. or not.

Is that why duplexers have those loops? So all the wires are the same length? Or is that just a change direction thing?