Lscott
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Posts posted by Lscott
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6 hours ago, tcp2525 said:
Did you really say you have too many radios? Really? Is that even possible?
What do you think?
https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/249-my-radio-collection/?context=new
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4 minutes ago, WRUE951 said:
If you are interested, keep your eyes on Ebay, they come up used as Demo about mid year..
I'll keep an eye out for one, and if it's cheap enough I might go for it. I'm primarily a Kenwood guy. I do have a few Chinese radios, a few Motorola's and Icom's.
I just dropped $120 on a used Kenwood NX-320 off eBay. Got it yesterday. This one had the 400-470 band split. I have one already but it's the higher split range and won't run below about 443MHz. I wanted a version of that model that covers the Ham band.
https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/418-nx-320jpeg/?context=new
I have a bunch of DMR radios as it is now. In fact I have WAY too many radios.
The ones I have cover D-Star, dPMR, DMR, NXDN and P25 Phase 1 so far. Nothing for System Fusion yet.
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3 hours ago, WRUE951 said:
If it wasn't for all the programing options and ease of programing i get with my HP682
Looks like a nice radio. What did you pay for it?
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On 1/8/2025 at 5:00 PM, Davichko5650 said:
Two-way radio for the non-hobbyist or dedicated user seems to be a fad item, As the CB boom of the mid 70's came and went, it has died down; a small resurgence is occurring in that service as seen by the plethora of YT videos and FB groups. But F/GMRS is the current go to in the radio fad world. Prepper driven to some extent, but also the mass availiblity of the units (both FR and GMR) and the ease of use has made it the radio du jour!
It helps a lot when the GMRS radios are small enough to fit in your pocket. The huge silver telescope antenna on a hand held CB looks like some kind of exotic taser weapon to non technical people. Just holding on to the end of the antenna and swinging it around makes for a reasonably useful club too.
- AdmiralCochrane, WRUU653, SteveShannon and 2 others
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16 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:
Plus you will hear people on the repeater's output frequency when they are talking on the corresponding simplex channel. Now if you have receive tones set then you should not hear anyone talking that does not have the same tone set.
I will give a perfect example. Our repeater using the repeater channel 17 so the repeater input is 467.600 and the repeater output is 462.600. We have both TX and RX tones set on the repeater. The simplex channel 17 is also 462.600. A group of us were traveling in separate vehicles when one guy asked if the rest of us were hearing the kids on the repeater. The guy hearing the kids did not have the RX tone set on his radio. The kids were on simplex channel 17 and the reason he was hearing them and the rest of us weren't was because he did not have his RX tone turned on.
That's basically why I usually don't set RX tones. I want to monitor all traffic on the frequency. If somebody is close by on the repeater output frequency using simplex it could muck up the signal from the repeater depending on the relative strength of the two. It helps to figure out if the garbled reception is due to a repeater issue or someone else on the frequency. If I have the tone set and not watching the channel busy light I might miss what the cause might be since there would be no audio produced from the simplex traffic.
- GrouserPad and WRYZ926
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46 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:
The reason I ordered the UV380 was because I’d been programming code plugs for a blind/deaf (mostly) ham friend.
More people should take a few minutes out to help somebody in need. The world would be a more pleasant place to live in.
I spent half of my weekends for about a year or so along with my two sisters taking a shift to look after my Mom before she passed away. She had advance dementia and needed at home 24/7 care. The insurance only covered half of the cost of at home hospice care while the rest came out of their retirement savings and our volunteered help.
- SteveShannon and WRUU653
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40 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:
I agree, but recently I repleaced the firmware in a couple of TYT MD UV380 handhelds with OpenUV380. It is actually intuitive compared to the Anytone model which my Alinco radio used. You program repeaters, just the way you would an analog repeater, except of course you need to include color code and time slot. Then you group the talk groups into “talk group lists”. Finally you associate each repeater to a talk group lists. No more having to individually program every single talk group for every single repeater. It’s even easier and more intuitive than using the DMR calculator supplied by RT Systems.
That really sounds like a MUCH better way to program DMR. Cuts out a lot of stupid duplicate programming.
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15 minutes ago, 73blazer said:
Most GMRS radios are just HAM radios with different software on them. HAM's like their memory banks. On my handheld I have all the VHF Marine, MURS, GMRS, and various GMRS and HAM repeaters on UHF & VHF in three different states I visit regularly, as well as some "generic" ones like 525/141.3 550/141.3 575/141.3 etc..even though many of the other ones I have are the same freq/PL I like labels with locations because I don't remember "this city has a 525" etc...That said I only have a few hundred filled.
I've done the same.
It's even more fun doing a digital radio. In that case I've spent a day, or more, just building the "prototype" code plug for a few hundred channels. Then tying to get all of the options configured is even more work. The worst ones are the Anytone DMR ones. The number of options, many I don't need or use, to configure is just mind blowing.
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29 minutes ago, WRTC928 said:
There's no technical reason why FRS would be a better choice for family/friends traveling together or camping/whatever.
Except for the ridiculously huge antennas to get any kind of reasonable range out of a portable radio. Somehow a 102 inch quarter wave whip antenna on a hand held radio doesn't sound very convenient. Not to mention the size of the required ground plane to go with it.
At FRS/GMRS frequencies a quarter wave antenna is about 6 inches long. The metal chassis of your hand held radio is about that size making for a reasonable ground plane.
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5 hours ago, kirk5056 said:
We have 30 small, insignificant frequencies
Well when they get saturated with baby monitors, wireless intercoms etc. those radios you spent a good chunk of money on you’ll regret the purchase.
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You would be surprised just how well it works. The match is far better than the screw-on antennas you can buy. Look at the simulated SWR match and the measured results.
This shows a simple 1/4 wave ground plane has enough bandwidth to cover the typical usable range on the Ham 70cm band through the full GMRS range. That was the goal of the project. I’ve used this on a couple of trips to the Dayton Hamvention the past few years.
Running my NX-1300DUK5 DMR radio at the 1 watt setting, on simplex, results in solid communications while keeping the RF exposure to about 0.5 watts average due to the TDMA nature of DMR.
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On 1/6/2025 at 3:48 PM, 92U235 said:
that being said, that being said, that being said
The higher up you can get the antenna the better, even on a hand held radio. Just have to get a bit creative about how to do it.
It’s a 1/4 wave ground plane zip tied to a baseball type hat. The antenna is only a touch more than 6 inches tall for the top element. It’s made using nothing more than a cheap female PCB type BNC connector and 1/16 inch diameter buss wire. Then I used about a 3 foot adapter cable, BNC male to SMA male, with real skinny coax for flexibility and a 90 degree BNC male to female adapter.
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36 minutes ago, kirk5056 said:
The license gets you more allowable TX power, being able to improve antennas and use repeaters.
The FCC can just dispense with the license like they did years ago for CB 11M and just let people do whatever they want. The FCC screwed up when they allowed the sale of combo FRS/GMRS radios while requiring people to get a license to use the then at the time GMRS only channels. Almost everyone ignored that requirement so the FCC just changed the rules and gave FRS access to the GMRS channels with out the license requirement. As a reference point Australia has a UHF 80 channel license free CB radio service WITH repeater access. So it can be done.
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On 1/6/2025 at 10:02 AM, WRUE951 said:
only a small percentage of people manage to stick to their resolutions, with around 64% abandoning their goals by the second month of the year.
Thank GOD for that. The gym is way too crowded right now. It should thin out in a month or two.
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12 minutes ago, intermod said:
SteveSHannon is correct. All of them were approved under FRS rules. However, there is no restriction on "continuous carrier" modes under the 95.3 (general) area or the FRS rules. This is a problem that needs resolution. This can be resolved with one sentance in the rules.
We ordered several models of these to test a few years ago (thankfully Amazon has a Free Return policy...). At the time, we were searching for models operating on 467 MHz GMRS repeater uplink channels. There were some models that did this (we never found the model).
However, their operation on 462.725 MHz regularly interfere with reception of licensed GMRS direct and repeater communications. They seem to propgage well, assuming they comply with the 2-watt requirement.
I am going to look for a rule that restricts one-way communication in FRS.
However FRS is an UNLICENSED service which would be causing interference to a LICENSED service in this case GMRS. I would hope the FCC realizes GMRS users paid for the use of the spectrum and should have some reasonable protection from an UNLICENSED service interference.
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2 minutes ago, WSEM262 said:
I was recently on amazon looking at wireless home intercom systems. After finding one that looked viable... I was curious what frequencies it used.
Lo and behold... it ran on GMRS frequencies... and was obviously chinese-made.
That pi$$ed me off enough to not buy it.
Somebody else likely did, and your luck would be they live just down the street from you.
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2 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:
Calling it a “GMRS repeater frequency” implies more than actually exists. 22 isn’t dedicated to repeaters.
It's a repeater output frequency. Yes you do have to share the spectrum, however having a 24/7 signal doesn't qualify as "sharing" the frequency.
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On a GMRS repeater frequency? Well see how good a 50 watt radio does compared to a low power FRS signal. I'm sure when the new parents are getting quizzed on what the kids name is on the receiver end, reminding them it's due for a diaper change every 15 minutes and asking if they can repeat their credit card number with the pin since you missed it the last time they will likely turn the D**mn thing off and get rid of it. Nobody wants something in their house that lets the whole neighborhood spy on them.
From time to time this kind of crap gets imported and missed by the FCC. I remember when there was a rash of "high power" cordless phones showing up on the Ham 2 meter band. You could hear the things from several miles away.
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3 hours ago, WRTC928 said:
I can find plenty of adapters to convert the male SMA jack on a Baofeng radio to a female BNC connector, but for the life of me, I can't find an adapter to convert the SMA female jack on a Baofeng antenna to a male BNC connector. There are a few which will convert the SMA male jack on other (Retevis, etc.) radios' antennas to a male BNC connector, but I can't find one which will do the same for a Baofeng antenna. I don't want to buy new antennas, but I'd really like to convert my AR-5RM to a BNC antenna connection. I searched Amazon and even a Google search, but no luck. Has anyone found one and can point me in the right direction? (It doesn't help that different sellers name the adapter differently. Some name it according to the type of connection on the two ends of the device, others name it by what it converts from to what it converts to, and others name it according to the jacks on the radio and antenna respectively. It's maddening.)
All the BNC antennas I've ever seen use Male BNC connectors on the end, not Female types. The BNC adapter that screws into the radio uses a Female BNC connector as seen in the attached photos.
Many of the Chinese radios use the same format as the more expensive Kenwood commercial radios, reverse polarity Male SMA to a standard female BNC.
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8 hours ago, WQAI363 said:
There's a forum on RR on the exact same Topic. I say here what I have said over there, MDC has a purpose in the Business and Public Safey world, but it is unnecessary for Amateur Radio Service or the General Mobile Radio Service. I can certainly understand some folk's obsession with listening to the squawk coming from a radio, either before the user speaks or after they release the PTT. However, MDC signaling doesn't really have a purpose with most 2-way radio services available for average consumer and does not belong in the Amateur Radio Service.
Besides, with APRS / GPS Amateur Radios and GMRS, you can know who's speaking and where.
MDC is useful if you know how. The linked thread on another forum has some of the details.
https://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=41389
As a further note a number of my Kenwood HT’s have MDC built in, so it’s not limited to strictly Motorola radios.
For example my NX-1300’s support MDC1200.
https://comms.kenwood.com/common/pdf/download/NX1K_Specsheet_K.pdf
https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/290-nx-1300duk5/?context=new
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4 hours ago, SteveShannon said:
I would love to see the inside to see where the chips originate.
That would be interesting to see. I would guess some rather high gate count FPGA’s. They would be programmed to run DSP algorithms far faster than a micro could do it since the calculations could be done in parallel on the data.
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2 hours ago, WRUU653 said:
Wow that is a hefty price!
And you thought Motorola and Harris was expensive.
- WRUU653 and SteveShannon
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Unlocking the Baofeng GM15 Pro
in General Discussion
Posted
I’m working on it. I would like to find another IC-F3162DT with the dPMR firmware and a few reasonably priced NX-1200DV’s with display and limited keypad.