Lscott

You can conduct commercial activity on GMRS. On Ham it's strictly verboten except for very narrow exception like a talk in for a swap or announcing equipment for sale during a net. Oh, encryption is allowed on Ham under very limited conditions, such as a ground control station for a satellite.

A few do it because they like the prestige of being a repeater owner. Yeah, there are a few guys hung up on ego's out there.

Somebody once said " I might not be right, but I'm never wrong." Hang in there.

You can try counting them. It's like the old game guessing how many marbles are in the cookie jar. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/249-934916052_radiocollectionjpg/?context=new

Does your state sell lottery tickets?

Some of my radios have the OST feature programmed to a button on the radio. What sucks is the tone list is limited to 38. That’s enough for analog PL’s but sort of useless for digital squelch codes.

Way too many. I have so many I keep an inventory sheet to see which ones I have and the unit count.

I mentioned in a prior post I had a Kenwood TK-370 ratio with a stud type antenna port. The attached photos show the port and the adapter I found and modified to use on it. If you look carefully you'll see the brass outer ring on the port, ground side, is insulated from the center screw stud. The adapter is made the same way. The cheap Chinese radio's port doesn't look like it can use anything like it.

This might help. https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/using-technology/assistive-technology-products/braille-printers

Likely the same way I have to do it for my TK-D340U radios. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/291-tk-d340u-front-and-back-2jpg/?context=new The radio has 32 channels total split 16 between two zones. I printed out a cheat-sheet I created in Excel. It does have voice announcements, but only for changing zones and channels. Not really much help.

Some of those early Baofeng's were not Teir-2 compliant. They spammed both time slots on the repeater and were banned by DMR repeater owners to use on their machines.

I have the TDMA capable version of that amp. If you look at the FCC ID in the photo and check it out, the amp is only certified for Part 90! Oops. https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/tcb/reports/Tcb731GrantForm.cfm?mode=COPY&RequestTimeout=500&tcb_code=&application_id=6kbS5AHSSJk92fpjsS8zBw%3D%3D&fcc_id=2AGND-AMP-U

You would be surprised how much I have to struggle to digest some of the stuff too. Those standard documents I don't think were written for humans to read.

Knowing some of the stuff you have your pockets are deeper than mine.

Kenwood radios are known for their good audio quality.

Just about every DMR radio out there is a Tier-2, or Tier-3 if trunking is used. DMR is usually thought of as just TDMA. There is DMR Tier-1 which operates in FDMA mode, referred to as a continuous transmission mode. The only ones I know that do are the license free digital PMR446 radios in the EU. Anyone else know of a DMR Tier-1 radio? I'm curious about how a Tier-1 and Tier-2 radio would interoperate. Also is there really any difference between a Tier-1 radio and a Tier-2 radio when operating in simplex mode? I've read several different opinions about it. Some say it's single slot while other claim it's double slot. Then there is the issue of DCDM, Dual Capacity Direct Mode. And, apparently there are two flavors of that too. I've been digging through the technical documentation and it's sketchy what Tier-1 really does, and if its compatible with Tier-2. I found the attached in one of the ETSI DMR standards documents. In the documentation "BS" refers to a Base Station and "MS" refers to a Mobile Station.

As far as I know nobody makes an amplifier that's Part 95E certified. There are plenty of Part 90 stuff that could work.

Bummer. I have an old Kenwood HT, TK-370, with a stud type antenna port. At least that one has a ground ring for the coax shield insulated from the center stud recess on the port. I still had to grind down the stud on the adapter so the ground ring would make contact with the ground ring on the radio's antenna port. The adapter would allow the use of a standard BNC type connection.

Do they send it back if it does more?

Likely not. I could use one too. Stop before it gets too crazy. Trust me on that. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/249-934916052_radiocollectionjpg/?context=new

Actually it’s the TK-3170. Great HT for GMRS carry. Can push it out of band for use in the Ham 70cm band. It’s also Part 95 certified too. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/263-tk-3170jpg/?context=new If you don’t care about FCC certification there other Kenwood HT’s you can try. Mainly they are FM and some digital mode, the later usable on the Ham bands. The ones with DMR might be most attractive for Ham usage. I have all of the below FM/Digital models in the UHF and VHF versions except for the NX-1300 so far. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/290-nx-1300duk5/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/251-nx-300jpg/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/255-tk-d300e-fmdmr/?context=new http://comms.kenwood.com/common/pdf/download/TK-5220_5320_Specsheet.pdf I have a few of the TK-3180’s. Nice radio with good features and 512 channels. https://pdfs.kenwoodproducts.com/10/TK-2180&3180Brochure.pdf Even so I still have a preference for the TK-3170. The trunking version, TK-3173, is also very nice and uses the same software as the TK-3170. I have several of those. https://pdfs.kenwoodproducts.com/12/TK-3173BrochureRev.pdf

If the antenna port is one of those funky screw stud type my interest is sort of gone. It’s the same deal with the Motorola XPR-7550E HT. Super radio. The stud antenna port killed my interest in one. Also there is no decent adapter either that isn’t a mess to use. I’ve seen one but you have to run a ground strap from it to the chassis. I use my HT’s mobile and while out traveling. So having a way to use an external antenna is a primary requirement for me.