Lscott

That was the model I saw being recommended. I have some non display Kenwood radio models in my collection. Nice radios but not very convenient use. With up to 32 channels on some of them trying to remember what channel is programmed for what isn't easy if you don't use it very regularly. That's why my preference are the display models.

The attached paper was published in an engineering journal. It goes a bit more into the details of narrow verses wide band FM. The material isn't for the "casual" reader. Narrowband vs Wideband.pdf

Not specifically, but I think it was Amazon.

A buddy got one the other day. He said he still needed to install the software to program the radio. He did comment about the funky stud type antenna port.

Oh, if you want to find out what is on the various frequencies using the main digital modes, DMR - P25 - NXDN, this site linked below is a good source. https://digitalfrequencysearch.com/index.php

Now days most of the public safety stuff has moved to 700/800 MHz and typical is digital, P25, and maybe using encryption. You may find a few cities that have remained on 450 to 470 MHz narrow FM. There is a lot less to monitor. I have seen some movement where legislation is being proposed to at least prohibit encryption on the public safety frequencies. That's likely to go nowhere.

Those people were lucky. Several posts in other forum sites users reported noticeable reduction in range. I guess it all depended on the original system design before the changes.

Thanks. I found some info on those now that I have a name for it. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/content/dam/msi/docs/en-xw/static_files/Related_-_Vibrasender_and_Vibrasponder_devices.pdf

Antennas are symmetrical devices. They receive about the same as they transmit.

Yup. You "race" away as fast as you can from the black squirrel with the white strip on its back, not towards it.

Using a high gain antenna the radiation pattern tends to be flat like a pancake. This concentrates most of the power out horizontally at a 90 degree angle to the antenna. What I suspect is happening is most of the RF power is simply shooting over their heads or hitting the canyon walls. The HT antenna radiation pattern is more like a fat donut. A lot of the power is at much higher and lower angles relative to the 90 degree position. This allows you to get a signal to and from other stations at much different horizontal elevations. What some people do is carry several antennas then swap them out depending on local terrain. A high gain antenna is great for open flat country. A low gain, typically a 1/4 wave like what is commonly found on HT's, when in hilly or mountainous areas.

It doesn't really serve a useful purpose in GMRS without the special equipment, but does identify one as a Motorola radio user much like the white strip down the back of a sunk.

That's likely true. Myself I don't know of any. Those repeater owners that use MDC1200 tend to get labeled as Motorola snobs since that company originally had the patent on the signaling method. It mostly limited the repeater access to users with Motorola radios.

If the squelch tone was sent continuously during the transmission, reed stays sync'd, by inverting the signal at the end would generate a 180 phase shift bucking the original one. How it's done now I don't know. Everything is done by micro's now with the magic in the software.

Just as a side note I read why it's a reverse phase. The old equipment used a vibrating reed as a filter to open the squelch. This was a mechanical filter basically. The reed was "tuned" to the desired PL frequency. When the transmission stopped it took a bit of time for the reed to stop vibrating and the squelch to close. The reverse phase, same PL frequency, was sent at the end of the transmission which bucked the reed's vibration which quickly cased it to damp out and stop. Thus the squelch would close faster mostly eliminating the squelch tail.

A GMRS radio is "certified", the new term, under Part 95E. There are some older commercial radios that have Part 95 certification and are legal to use so long as they are programmed with the correct frequencies, bandwidth and power. One such example is attached. The radio is both analog FM and digital enabled for P25 Phase 1, however digital is not allowed under current FCC GMRS rules so that part can't be used. Other than that the analog section is just fine, and as you can see in the brochure it does MDC1200. You can verify the certification by looking at the bottom of the brochure for they type one UHF radio and referencing the FCC ID. Then compare it to the one in the FCC grant. Part 95A was the GMRS rules section before the FCC reorganized Part 95 in 2017. The radio still retains it's certification. I personally have a few of these radios in my collection. TK-5220_5320 Brochure - 1.pdf TK-5320 FCC Grant - 1.pdf

The narrow band won't help with spectrum efficiency unless the FCC was going to add more channels to GMRS, which likely won't happen. The channel interference part is beneficial. There are some interstitial channels that can cause interference to the adjacent main channels. If all of the channels were made narrow band the guard band between them would be greater. The down side to narrow band is the range reduction. Many Part 90 users found that out quickly when the FCC mandated narrow band for that service group. Be careful what you wish for.

Is that really a bad thing?

Or it could simply be a Ham who setup his own GMRS repeater, just like a bunch of other people ask to do. It seems to be a common topic on this forum.

I traveled with a buddy and his family to see the last one a few years ago. It was an awesome experience. Had some good QSO's with a few Hams on the air during the trip who also happened to be looking for a good place to view the eclipse. All-in-all it was about a 20 hour round trip. On the way back the traffic was very heavy on the expressways. Stopped for a bite to eat at a Tocco Bell. They were closed. Ran out of food was the note in the door! Really?!

I’m checking with some buddies to see who is interested in traveling to the Toledo/Lima Ohio area on April 8 to watch the total lunar eclipse. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/toledo?iso=20240408 Anybody around that area planing on going to watch?

https://www.wnd.com/2024/02/thieves-steal-200-foot-radio-tower-without-anyone-noticing/

Are both radios the same hardware revision's? If you used the wrong firmware for the hardware version that can bugger up the radio.

Same, and the license term and cost finally got reasonable too.