TrikeRadio

You were coming in on both west and charlie for me. Not a super strong signal (as expected with an HT) but very understandable on both, with just a bit of static but nothing too bad. I am also using a TD-H3 with a 771G whip antenna and was sitting in my car with the sunroof open... sticking the antenna out the roof when I called you a few minutes ago. Adding a different antenna should help but It seems to be working on both repeaters for you right now.

Ah ok.. yes I heard your radio check and heard that "Coach" responded to you. Yes you came in to the repeater very understandable with a little static but not bad. Im in Garden Grove.. heading out to run some errands... i might try giving you a shout out in hte next hour or less.

Seems to me that you are indeed hitting the repeater, your signal is just not strong enough to get a transmission of your voice thorugh, but the keyup is getting through for them to hear. Try a different location.. .closer too or in visible line of sight to the repeater location... or connect a larger and/or higher up antenna to your radio and try. Is the repeater on a mountain top? is it on a tower or tall building? do you know how high it's antenna is, and are you indoors or with any other obstructions between you and the repeater antenna?

Yeah I tried that too.. my TX frequency is correct in the radio and in chirp.. but when read it into ODmaster... it shows transmit frequencies as 462. instead of 467. Odmaster is buggy and weird. I don't use it and I would not recommend it. have you tried writing what it read back to the radio and does it make it so it will not transmit correctly? (I am 579 on the club repeaters)

Which radio are you trying to use it with? and are you reading it ito Odmaster from a radio where it is already setup properly and working? I can experiment a bit.. I have two H3s but I rarely use ODmaster... usually program from the keyboard or use CHIRP.

While it is possible to program all aspects of a repeater setup in every mobile GMRS unit I can think of... It is not usually easy to do on the fly (or especially while driving) which is why most radios have many more channel slots (as in hundreds of them) that they can program in various repeater setups on the eight repeater channels... with unique PL tones and names of the repeaters. Usually this is much easier and faster using programming tools like CHIRP or software provided by the radio maker. But yes, it is possible if you want to be reprogramming for repeaters every 20 to 50 miles down the road.

I personally have not done it but heard from others that they have. NORMAL mode unlocks all the GMRS or HAM frequency "Safeguards" and rules... which of course makes it non compliant. You just have to be careful and know what you are doing when programming in normal so you don't end up transmitting unintentionally on frequencies that could actually get you in trouble. and know the Wide/Narrow and lower wattage levels allowed on GMRS "channels" as well to stay in compliance. Especially in the GMRS channels 8-14 where the power is half a watt and narrow... otherwise you can potentially send interference to local repeaters on those channels.

It means the channel slots the radios has... (there 199 of them) will not transmit on channel above 54. You can only put in listen only there. So any custom legitimate GMRS frequencies can only be put in below 55. I found this out when I was starting to add a lot more repeaters into my radio. Only way around this... is to unlock it in NORMAL mode and be very careful how you program so you don't set something up that has you transmitting on non permitted frequencies.

radio image means a download of the data from the radio that matches your radio. I don't even see a UV-5RH on the read from radio list in my CHIRP.. maybe i need to update.. but is that you exact radio or did you choose the wrong one? possibly UV-5RH is a new radio for CHIRP and it is not working right yet?

That's like getting a ticket for not wearing your seat belt .... but only because you were speeding and running red lights.

I walked into the Ham Radio Outlet in Anaheim a few months ago. I was (and still am) pretty much a noob as far as radios… and I had my new H3… I just went in to browse since it was all new to me. I asked the sales guy a few questions here and there and he asked what I was using so I pulled my little H3 off my belt and showed him… his response “Yeah well those are not legal”… I showed him the certification under the battery and he says, “sometimes they just re use numbers from something else”. I went home and looked it up on the FCC site. The old sad ham was full of $h1t. Kinda turned me off to that place.

That sounds awesome!

I have had very good performance with my BTech Nagoya UT-72G. and much better than my HT inside the car!

So sad, another one bites the dust! (welcome to the cult)

What (specific) frequencies or GMRS Channels are you hearing them on? They may be using repeaters, and you are on a non-repeater channel and/or not setup with the proper tone to activate the repeater. or they might be using a tone to listen to only their own group and can't hear you because you are not on that tone either. You can check the repeater map on this site to see if there are repeater systems near you... if they are open they might list the tones to activate them... or you might need to join their club to get access to them.

Even though the app told me it was the latest and updated... I removed it from my phone... and re-downloaded it. Now it works. Go figure. Hope this helps someone else if they run across this problem

When I first got my TD-H3 radios I know I was able to connect to the radios with the OD Master phone app via bluetooth and read and update the radio, but I found I preferred CHIRP over ODmaster so I have not used it in a while. But I wanted to test and see if it was working because I wanted to instruct a friend on how to do it for their radio, and I wanted to review the process. I recently tried to open the app and read the radio settings in... but it is not reading. I have confirmed that bluetooth is on for both the radio and my iphone I have the latest version of the app it will see and connect to the radio in the app as I select it I have properly selected the radio as TD-H3 GMRS (which is what my radio is set up as) and it recognizes it But when I hit the button to READ from the radio... the progress bar appears (gray) but never moves... nothing happens. (several months back I did roll back my radio firmware to 240625 from the 240702 (when TIDRADIO recommended it) Could it no be breading because I need to update the firmware?) I can't seem to make it read the radio for programming. any thoughts? Ideas? Similar experiences? Solutions? thanks.

That sounds like a good solution to me.

When I got my Callsign back in June... it took two or three days before it showed on the myGMRS website.

I can't reproduce this. are you seeing the transmit bars go up when you do this? I never would have use for VOX anyway but... seems odd.

Really? Hmm... interesting. Will need to take a look at that. Does anyone know of mobile GMRS units that do that?

It would be nice if there was an indicator that would stay on after transmission, showing the last channel to receive activity while monitoring multiple channels. But I do not know of a radio that does that.

The TD-H3 also does this.

I have not tried the H8 ... and actually no other radio other than the TD-H3 I have, since I am new to GMRS too. I can say I have had these H3's for four months now and have been very happy with them, and surprised at their performance and options.

I've tried using the ODmaster app... have never had a lot of good luck with it. I much prefer using CHIRP to program with the usb cable. Never seen the memory slots load and read Null... can you post a screen shot? I am trying right now to load from my radio on odmaster app via bluetooth... and darned if I cant even get it to read the radio. I thoguht I had it at least do that before.