Lscott

If they can interface a cell phone to the screen in most new cars you would figure the radio manufactures would figure out a way to remote the front panel of a two way radio the same way. Then you can stuff the radio body out of the way, wherever it fits, and not have to run cables all over the place and find a spot to mount a remote head.

One reason why I , almost, never use a receive tone, just a transmit one when operating through a repeater. That way I don't have to fuss with even pressing a "monitor" button.

Not that shocking a result. At the frequencies used by GMRS,UHF band, the usual quarter wave rubber duck antenna is only about 6 inches long. A median sized HT's body is about that size and would provide a reasonably good ground plane, needs to be about a quarter wave in size, for the quarter wave rubber duck antenna typically used. On VHF I would expect to see some measurable improvement.

You would be surprised how many people get this point all wrong, repeater ID'ing. Where the mistake is usually made is in reading the rules and missing the two usage cases, the first where only users all operating under the repeater's owner's license, closed, and the second where the repeater is "open" for use by any licensed GMRS user. The first case is only users operating under the owner's license, and the only users allowed on it, closed, when they ID it is sufficient to ID the repeater. No self ID is required. The second requires the repeater to self ID using some kind of automated control using the repeater owner's id, either by voice using English, or by Morse code, at the intervals specified by the rules. It's not unusual to find general use, open, repeaters that fail to ID. Those are bad examples of what NOT to do, and are not operating per the FCC rules.

You shouldn't be. That's one of the points of this forum, to ask questions.

Don't worry. They're like rabbits. Before you know it there will be a lot more. Trust me. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/249-my-radio-collection/?context=new I just got my new arrival at the work office today. A new open box Kenwood TK-5230 UHF P25 radio. Do I need another one, no, but its fun to collect them, HT's. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/254-tk-5320-1jpg/?context=new

I assume that will all be on licensed commercial frequencies the club members have permission to use? If so that's not a bad way to go. You would also be allowed to use encryption I believe for more private communications.

The best radio, for your use, is the one you can afford. There are people on this forum who spent 4 figures on a hand held radio because it had the features they needed.

Not really, particularly on simplex. I have, and programmed, radios for dPMR, DMR, D-Star, NXDN and P25 Phase 1. I don’t currently have a radio for System Fusion yet so I can’t speak about that mode. You want simple stick with FM, trust me on that.

If anyone other than a family member operating under the repeater owners license the repeater must self ID using the repeater’s owners call sign.

I have this printed out as an “E” size mechanical engineering drawing and stuck to the wall in my office at work.

Learned something new today. Didn’t know such groups existed. Sounds interesting.

International Coverage of your GMRS Repeater This isn't going to happen simply due to the fact that the frequencies used by the GMRS service is specific to the USA only. Even the Canadians don't have access to repeaters, much less to the frequencies they use. Other areas of the world are covered by PMR446 or the various flavors of dPMR446. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMR446 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_private_mobile_radio And for places that doesn't apply you'll find things like UHF CB radio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UHF_CB There are a bunch of lesser known licensed/unlicensed radio service in other areas. For example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDR_444 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet_(radio)

No, but telling everyone you found a $100 bill under the driver's seat should motivate the minimum wage employees to do a better job of cleaning out the interior of the cars as an extra service.

Firmware E4B3 TK-280_380_780_880_980_981 V1.zip

See attached file for the V1 radio firmware. Firmware E4B3 TK-280_380_780_880_980_981 V1.zip

That's the point where I quit watching.

The manufactures of the commercial radios are rather secretive about their bug fixes. The bugs that got fixed are likely only available to dealers and service centers, but the rest of use are left in the dark. I've attached one for the last DMR firmware update I have saved for my NX-1200/1300 radios. It doesn't say much. I'm sure various bugs got fixed they just won't disclose. You want to see why updating firmware is required? Look at the horror show for the D878UV radios. Read the change logs. They can't simply just FIX what they have, but then add features while managing to fuck up other shit that use to work. Look at how many updates they've issued. That's been my experience for the past number of years having to deal with this Chinese radio. This is the worse radio I own for radio firmware and radio programming software reliability. http://www.wouxun.us/category.php?category_id=93 Their new D168UV seems to be following the same path. It was only released for sale a few months ago. https://www.wouxun.us/category.php?category_id=108 NX-1200D, NX-1200DV, NX-1300D, NX-1300DU, NX-1200A, NX-1200AV, NX-1300A, NX-1300AU DMR.rtf

I don't know about the other person but I'll update radio firmware just so I don't experience weird radio behavior at an inconvenient time. I've also had to do it on occasion when the radio programming software says some of it's features are NOT supported by the firmware revision in the radio. I get that message when trying to write a code plug to the offending radio.

I'm glad I don't have anything really pressing at the office to do today so I can spend my productive time reading this stuff.

I found this on-line and had my sister print it up for me. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2884874/files

Yup. Good enough!

The best way is anyway that works, doesn't damage the coax cable and doesn't let water leak into the vehicle. You can look at other installations to get some ideas. The links below are for my CX-5. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/471-mobile-mount-with-antenna-rear-view/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/473-close-up-of-mobile-mount/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/474-mobile-mount-coax-routing/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/472-mobile-antenna-install-side-view/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/476-mobile-mount-drip-loop/?context=new Some people will tell you that RG-58 has high losses at UHF, it does, but one has to look at the total system and make a judgement call to see what works the best. In my case I ended up using two types of coax, a very thin type to get inside and a lower loss type, better than RG-58, for the rest of the run. This might be over the top but I did the analysis for several installation cases. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/483-cx-5-antenna-system-analysisjpg/?context=new

You don’t need a fancy antenna for HF just to get on the bands. A lot of Hams just build simple horizontal dipoles.