LeoG

The Midland, like the Retevis is only about 5-6 watts out. It has a 10 watt transmitter before the duplexer. Duplexer loss is about 45%. If you have line of sight then the Retevis or the Midland will work well. Put the antenna up as high as possible

On an N connector I would likely just fill the internal cup with the dielectric and not the outer diameter where it would be in contact with the threads. On second thought... That would keep the water from penetrating in the 1st place.

Stuff I used was put inside the fitting to fill it up so what couldn't get in.

This looks appropriate.

Vaseline eh? I'm sure I can find that. Is there anything that is rated for this use? The stuff I used came in a tube and I doubt it was as simple as that. Ya, I know what I did (hangs head). It's SO239/PL239 for antenna and cable. The repeater has an N fitting that I had to get an adapter for. This was only a temp setup that is running long because of my failure when raising my tall mast. Decided to wait for warm weather to continue, plus work is very busy for me and I don't have time to "play".

And I'm pretty sure that it's water in my coax/fittings. We've been going through a cold spell and the repeater at my shop has been giving full quieting at my house. Something it's never done since I put it up in the summer. And the cold spell broke and next thing I know I can barely hear my wife when she tries to contact me. After a while I noticed a pattern that on above freezing days the signal was bad but when it was below freezing (for hours at least) the signal improved considerably. So I'm assuming I have water penetration in one of my systems. I figure it's the shop repeater because I didn't wrap the fitting on the antenna. It's up there and the only protection was the aluminum tube sleeve that came with the antenna. Originally thought that would be protection enough but now I'm questioning my (lack of) wisdom. The house antenna system was wrapped at the antenna and the lightning arrestor. The shop coax is continuous from the antenna to the repeater. How can I check to see which of the two is the culprit. SWR? Check it when frozen and then check it when thawed? Any other way to check it besides running new coax to see if the issue disappears? Also, is there a grease (for lack of a better word) that I can fill the fitting with before I make the connection to keep water out? When I was doing cableless TV installations we had something that I'd put in the fitting to ward off water penetration. No idea if there is something like that for UHF. Although it looks like WUTF in Mass is at 500MHz at 970,000 watts which would be UHF and pretty close to 462Mhz that we use. Thanks

I set 154.57125 in channel 53 in GMRS mode and for some reason it seems to transmit. Not sure if it actually does. But the red light comes on and there is no tone from the speaker like I usually hear when it tells you that the frequency is out of range. It's the channel WalMart uses in my area.

Usually when you have a 141.3Hz tone that means it's usually designated for travelers and an open repeater.

Just don't set the TX to any frequency.

I did this for myself. Used the BTECH 50w, 50' LMR400 with a 7.2dBi gain antenna about 40' up. I have it at my shop so I can contact my wife at home with an HT. My house is near the river, AKA in a hole. I have my antenna on the house about 40' up and it has LOS without not counting the trees in the way. The duplexer didn't exactly fail on the 1st one but they replaced it because of my complaints and the reception of the new duplexer is substantially better than the original. The BTECH seems to be operating well. I don't care for the way it reacts on digital tones, on analog ones it's perfect. They haven't got the morse code setting the way you would think it should work, every 15 minutes while the repeater is busy and quiet otherwise. Best thing about having the repeater at the shop (your home) is you get to have free range with an HT in the house or yard/neighborhood. I travel about a 5 mile circle and can still hit my shop. But I live in an area that is very hilly so unless the antenna is up 150'+ some areas will always be a challenge. If you are up high and contacting your family in a valley then it should work much better.

Probably because you aren't on GMRS mode.

Just upgraded to v250110 and still no joy on ch55 transmit

And using the APP from Tidradio I was also not able to program any transmit frequencies into channel 55, I assume and up even though I didn't try. I have AM stationed programmed into the radio and the APP won't read those from memory either. If I write back I lose my AM stations (Airport).

In GMRS mode using ODMaster I was not able to program a transmit frequency into the H3 with 460819 version.

Maybe they fixed it since version 702

It's not in the owners manual. Someone here discovered it.

I think the H3 has a limitation that you can only transmit on the 1st 54 programmable channels. After 54 they are receive only.

CH31 is a repeater frequency which will transmit at 467.xxx frequency and receive on 462.xxx frequency. You need to limit yourself to the lower 22 channels to stay in simplex, TX/RX on the same frequency..

Ok I came back to this radiation pattern and I think I'm understanding it a bit more. Basically you need to think of it as angle and not distance. So if you put the antenna at 20' and another antenna a mile away still at 20' then the gain is 9.77+/-. If you have that antenna on a mountain top at 400' and the same receive antenna at 20' the angle is going to be much greater and you follow that angle on the graph and where it connects with the blue line is the gain that you will have. Power received will be determined by the square of the distance. So from my shop to my house the angle is 0.52º so that keeps the gain pretty close to max. Probably drops it by .5db or something like that. Hard to even see it with the fat lines and the resolution of the graph.

Have you tried other channels besides those two? Odd it's displaying it two different ways.

It should have a dual watch. Mine works fine. Are you sure you don't have an RX tone on the receiver? Make sure the RX CTCSS and RX DCS are both set to off.

Yup. multipath reflections can really affect reception/transmission if you get your antenna in just the wrong position. In the house receiving a weak station moving the HT just a few inches can make or break the reception. Same exact thing for an outdoor antenna I would assume. All summer long I was receiving a repeater and the signal was great. I figured as winter approached and the leaves fell off it would only get better. Was really wrong about that. The signal degraded by a huge factor to the point where sometimes it was getting under the squelch and I had to lower it. Now that we are in full winter, all leaves that are going to fall have. The signal is better but nothing like it is in the summer. I assume it's just multipath interference and antenna position.

I know this is more about placing an antenna on a vehicle and having directional qualities because of where you place it but I have a weird dilemma with a base antenna I've had the same antenna on my small repeater at my shop and it has given me mediocre results ever since I put it up there. After we had some wind my cheap mount folded and the antenna leaned. I straightened it up and reinforced it best I could and life went on. Then another agressive wind came around for a solid week and the mount failed again. The antenna was at about a 15º lean and the repeater was contacting my house very well. Thought it was odd. So after the winds died down after a week I got a much sturdier replacement for my mount and got the antenna up vertical again. It's about 2' lower because I separated the mounting brackets more to take the leverage the wind produces on the mast. I could get to my house base station, the wife said I was coming in great. She on the other hand was barely making the repeater. And when she was it was horrible. So last night I started testing with a voice activated recorder. Driving away from the repeater toward the house calling out at different streets til I reached my driveway, tested there with an HT and then in the house testing the base station. I did this 4 times with not great results. Found that the HT I use normally in the shop wasn't doing a great job and swapped it out. Tested in the shop and then in the office. I went up on my ladder and loosened up the mount and turned the antenna about 10º and now it started to come in better. I still don't know as of yet if it'll work as good as the test I did last night. But that test was very good. It always comes in better later at night than in the normal work hour time. So I'm just wondering why my omnidirectional antenna seems to be far from omnidirectional. Seems like there is a distinct lobe that has a 20dB or more lack of power. The repeater is about 42 watts and the house base is 25 watts, both measured out the backside of the radio. House is 84' LMR400 and the shop is 50' LMR400. It's line of sight but heavily treed. More testing will be done today, this time not all by myself.

I would agree with this. I have mine set up for 4 seconds with a courtesy beep at one second after the last person has unkeyed.

Rather the hoards go to CB and leave the GMRS frequencies open.