Lscott
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Posts posted by Lscott
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48 minutes ago, Marius1195 said:
I just got a F250 that I am turning into a camper and hitting the road for a year or two. I plan on seeing alot of NA and most of the places will be remote. I understand GMRS is a sort of hit or miss type comms in every local area, however with that being said I would like to put a system together that allows me to take full advantage of the people out there in active areas. I need mobile and antenna advice. I would like to keep cost around $400-500. This can be flexible if the bump in performance is great enough to justify the additional money. As of now I have a Nagoya UT-72G antenna that I pulled off my Jeep and can use in the short term. All suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
I would very seriously consider getting your Ham license too if you don't have one already. The Tech class exam is easy. The point about getting your Ham license is due to more available repeaters to use and more people you can chat with while travailing around the country. The most popular bands are the VHF 2 meter band and the UHF 70 cm band. GMRS is on UHF a bit above the Ham 70 cm band.
There are radios available that will do the Ham 70 cm band and GMRS with some "creative" programming. If you want to stay legal some of the older commercial radios have Part 95 certification and are completely legal to use on GMRS and Ham frequencies. If you stay with just UHF you could find a single radio that will do both.
As far as antennas go there is a wide band mobile antenna that would work over the Ham and GMRS bands so you could get away with just one. Some people have had good luck using this one on GMRS. I think there are some other antennas that work over a wide band too others have mentioned in other threads.
https://cometantenna.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CA-2x4SR.pdf
GMRS only.
https://dpdproductions.com/products/gmrs-double-5-8-wave-mobile-antenna?_pos=2&_sid=bf9d19c6a&_ss=r
GMRS and MURS. Note that MURS is a license free VHF band with a limit of two watts of power.
https://dpdproductions.com/products/dual-band-gmrs-murs-mobile-antenna?_pos=1&_sid=bf9d19c6a&_ss=r
Some even use a different antenna depending on the location. A tall high gain antenna works well on flat/level ground. A short 1/4 wave would likely work better in very hilly or mountainous terrain.
https://www.americanradiosupply.com/laird-1-4-wave-nmo-mobile-radio-antenna-stainless-black/
https://dpdproductions.com/products/custom-1-4-wave-mobile-antenna
As far as mounting the antenna that depends if you want to drill holes in the body etc. There are a lot of options/ideas in this area to choose from.
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This is an off beat subject. I've researched this on different occasions and can't find and real data.
Apparently there are several different modes in use in the EU, European Union, for their FRS like service, PMR446.
There is narrow band FM, Tier 1 DMR and dPMR which is very similar to NXDN.
What I was trying to find out which one seems to be the more popular digital mode in use. These modes also appear to be used for commercial radio service as well at higher power.
I'm not aware of any dPMR mode radios being used in the US for commercial applications.
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11 hours ago, JimInHelotes said:
I wish there was a national 'road' channel, such as 19 or 22, or ANYthing.
The problem is so many people come here trying to drum up support for their favorite channel/frequency. All that does is confuse the crap out of people new to GMRS.There are endless threads on this topic. Just some samples below.
https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/3516-officialunofficial-gmrs-roadtravel-channel/
https://www.notarubicon.com/gmrs-road-travel-channel/
https://www.fordtremor.com/threads/gmrs-travel-channel.13437/
There is just one major complication with some of the proposals. The below appears on your license. The listed frequency pairs are for channels 19 and 21. For some people, like me living in the Detroit Mi area, Line A reaches well past some major metro areas making any proposal to use channel 19 useless.
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1 hour ago, marcspaz said:
This happens a lot in areas that have a high population or are heavily commercial. There are all kinds of crap electronics being used in private and commercial settings that emit spurious emissions on frequencies they are not intentionally transmitting on.
Good point.
1 hour ago, WRUX266 said:Thanks, Marc. It's as I suspected. And since it only affects one frequency for me, I've just locked it out from the scan. I was just curious if others had this issue in other areas of the country.
Also radios have what are commonly called "Birdies" which are internally generated signals that appear to real. All radios have them. The designers usually do a good job of making sure they don't show up in the intended operational frequency range of the radio.
Also when running a radio outside of it's designed frequency range you can get cross modulation interference. This is caused by two or more frequency sources mixing together in the radio's front end electronics where the results may be in the pass band. This also shows up as a phantom signal. I have my old Kenwood TH-G71A dual band shows an almost full scale signal on channel 7. Turning the radio horizontal and rotating around I can null out the signal. Also taking the antenna off does the same thing so the source is external. However using a different model radio to monitor the same exact frequency shows nothing there. I did what you have, just locked that channel out of the scan on the G71A.
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1 hour ago, NotaSAAB said:
Hmmm... are there affordable Ham or GMRS radios that would be worth considering for unencrypted P25 Phase I trunked?
I doubt you'll have much luck with that. The following is my understanding.
Typically the trunking systems requires the radios to register, or affiliate, with the system. The trunking systems are designed so any radio that accesses the system has to be preregistered on the system. The radio requires special programming using a system key file that is tied to the specific trunking system and has to be obtained from the system owner, which you most likely will never get. In fact the TK-5220/5320 Kenwood radios I have won't allow you to even edit the trunking system network info in the programming software without first loading the system key file. All you see it the default values which you can't change.
The radio when it receives a transmission it's coded such that the radio knows it's from a trunked system. Without the programming with the system key file the radio will not decode the audio. That's how they maintain security.
I have a buddy that purchased a used Motorola XTS-5000 on 800MHz. There was a hack he found so the radio could be spoofed in to doing what is called "non-affiliated" scanning. I haven't heard of others using different radios successfully.
Even if you did find a way to scan a P25 trunked system your efforts might still be wasted since more agencies are going encrypted.
Then there is P25 Phase 2 which is specific for trunking systems. Unless you pay BIG bucks for a newer P25 radio with Phase 2 you're dead in the water if that's what they are using. All my radios are Phase 1 since I use them for Ham and monitoring commercial conventional repeater systems. As far as I know Phase 2 is not used on the Ham bands.
The NXDN trunked systems work about the same. I did read someplace where it was claimed some of the Icom radios will do "non-affiliated" scanning. I know the Kenwood radios won't.
One other thing about the Kenwood NX-210 radios. I think there is railroad specific firmware for them too, so if you're looking to buy you might want to inquire with the seller if that the case. Since the NX-200's are basically the same radio I haven't been all the interested in getting one so I never worried about it or researched it.
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5 hours ago, NotaSAAB said:
I recently obtained my Technician's license so I could legally scan in my state (MN) and obtained a GMRS license at about the same time as it seems more aligned with my potential use doing non-radio hobby stuff.
Which handheld would be a good balance of scanning capability (sensitivity, speed of scanning, ability to select only certain frequencies for scanning) and GMRS functionality?
For background, I have an old 20-channel Radio Shack handheld that served me well for a long time for scanning railroad band + 457.9375 (end of train device freq). I usually only want to scan 20 or less channels depending upon my location (based on the railroads of interest and what channels they use in that location).
I now have a Radioddity GM-30, a BTech GMRS v2 and a Explorer QRZ-1 which I'm still learning. I also have a couple of Signal Stick antennas (SMA-M SMA-F).From my searches so far, I should be looking at setting up scan groups and enabling/disabling frequencies from scanning if my handhelds have those capabilities.
Would I see any noticeable improvement in scanning/receiving performance with something like a Wouxon KG-935 Plus, KG-UV8H or KG-UV9PX? Is there another deviceI should consider, such as Yaesu FT-70DR or VX-6R based on superior scanning capability?
If I have a good HT for my purpose, is there a mobile that would be similarly useful for my use case?
I'm not really interested in TX much unless it's with friends/family on GMRS most likely unless there's some other mode that seems useful. I already have enough hobbies.
Thank you!
The railroads use VHF while GMRS is on UHF. My understanding is various railroads were intending to switch over to digital voice using NXDN. Analog FM is still frequently used I believe.
There are no Ham specific radios that will do NXDN. Your only choice is one of the commercial radios. The two main manufacturers of NXDN radios is Kenwood and Icom. The one radio model I see mentioned frequently for railroad scanning is the Kenwood NX-210. The basically identical radio is the NX-200. These radios you can purchase used on some of the major auction sites.
https://pdfs.kenwoodproducts.com/2/NX-200&300Brochure.pdf
The UHF version, the 450-520 band split, works fine for GMRS and has the advantage it’s Part 95 certified so there is zero issue if it’s legal to use.
I have a code plug built for the NX-200 for all of the VHF railroad frequencies, analog and digital, along with MURS, some Ham simplex frequencies and the NOAA weather channels. If you go that route I can send you a copy.
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Not bad. That Ghost antenna transmits signals you can't hear without the help of a clairvoyant receiver. I can see military applications for the technology. It's right up there with fractal antennas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna
https://www.antenna-theory.com/antennas/fractal.php
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17 minutes ago, WRQK455 said:
Dayton700 repeater is open. Contact Gordon thru the site.
Miamisburg 675 is open w/permission from Drew thru site
Jamestown650 is open but not fully functioning yet. Waiting on a new duplexer. Contact Jason when you hear him.
Tipp City625 Contact Dave the owner thru the site
Wilmington550 Contact Kevin when you hear him.
Thanks for the info.
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4 minutes ago, kidphc said:
Contact the vendor to see if it can be disassembled for installation with instructions.
I looked at a photo of the mount. No obvious way to disassemble it. Your recommendation I think is the best way to go, cut off the connector then pass the cable through the firewall and install a new connector.
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Some of our group have digital radios for Ham. One member is GMRS only so it would be analog only for them.
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Thanks. I’ll look into that.
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10 hours ago, WRUU653 said:
Perhaps it does, at the very least it did back in the day. Complete with all 14 FRS channels this baby can be yours from eBay for $39.99. Just remember the radio is in the antenna so maybe don’t get this and put it on your car if you’re in a warm sunny climate. As a novelty it’s a tempting purchase.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/VTG-RadioShack-21-1850-14-Channel-Mobile-Marine-Personal-Radio-OPEN-BOX-Shrink-/144665973719?pageci=9091b0ac-2f59-4fe2-acbf-54bcce57b3d8&redirect=mobile
And at 0.5 watts, which was the power limit at the time on FRS, not terribly useful.
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I'm going to the Hamvention in Xenia Ohio next month. I was looking to see if there are any usable open GMRS repeaters in the area. The closet one seems to be in Tipp City. One of our potential members going to the event only has his GMRS license. The rest of use have our Ham licenses.
https://mygmrs.com/repeater/4895
The Hamvention site at the fairgrounds looks like it's right at the edge of the coverage zone. I was wondering if there are any unlisted ones that could be used with good coverage in the area.
If anyone is interested in meeting up there send me a PM and I'll let you know what frequency and tone we will likely be using on 70cm analog for group communications. We might even use digital, DMR or NXDN. Two of us have radios for those modes.
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3 hours ago, shevo7385 said:
Is there a simple, plug-and-play way to boost the power going to the antenna in terms of wattage? Perhaps something in the coax line running to the antenna such as a signal amplifier?
They do. However the ones I’ve seen are designed more for boosting the power output from a hand held radio in the 2 to 5 watt range. I have one myself since I have a rather large collection of handheld radios so it works for me.
As mentioned by others if you are using a real mobile radio your best bet is just get one with a 45 to 50 watt output and skip thinking about amps.
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22 minutes ago, kidphc said:
The older harris radios some could be reconfigured "opened up" to transmit outside of their original band, using "sc" files. Initial research is showing not possible with the XG-100M/P series.
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19 minutes ago, kidphc said:
Wonder if that repeater is as dead (little to no traffic) as a majority of the p25 repeaters in the area.
I don't know if that NXDN repeater is used much on digital. It's about 25 miles from my house and from what I've seen on the Internet it's not linked either.
There are a few P25 repeaters around Michigan. The closest to me is the K8FBI machine on 70cm, which is about 6 to 7 miles away. I monitor it and most of the traffic is analog.
US and Canada NXDN Repeaters - 20230113.pdf US and Canada DMR Repeaters - 20230119.pdf US and Canada D-Star Repeaters - 20230120.pdf US and Canada P25 Repeaters - 20230117.pdf
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11 hours ago, KAF6045 said:
I suspect most people are using hotspots (Pi-Star/OpenSpot) boxes, linked to cellphones for network connections, rather than trying to find compatible digital mode repeaters that permit linking to ad-hoc talk-groups (There are something like three repeater sites between Lowell and west Grand Rapids that are part of the CMEN/Mi5 DMR network -- but they ONLY permit Mi5 Statewide-1/-2 and Event 1-4; and the latter are reserved for special event usage at which time they request users stay off the corresponding Statewide group [odd/even time-slot]). I can just reach a D-Star repeater that is normally linked to REF030C.
I do consider using hotspots in a vehicle an RF risk. Many are using mobiles to access them, so which luck have a low power in the 1W range -- just to hit a box less than 6ft away. And that box is then using WiFi to reach the cellphone which is acting as an access point using cellular frequencies to reach internet. I just don't want to think about what intermodulation and heterodyning is going on inside the cabin of that vehicle.
I do have a hotspot -- on top of a china cabinet near the center of my house, and a Kenwood D-74 that run at less then 0.5W for access. My house is a Faraday cage (metal roof, aluminum siding); While I can break squelch on the Lowell repeater [<4 miles as Hugin&Munin fly] my audio has been reported as poor.
Yeah, I've noticed that frequently many of the commercial digital mode Ham repeaters are using the Mi5 network in Michigan.
There is nothing for NXDN on their network. In fact there are only two repeaters for the whole state listed in RepeaterBook.com that does NXDN.
There is a nice linked NXDN network in west central Florida however.
https://ni4ce.org/nxdn-digital-communications/
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Which band seems to have the most activity for digital voice modes? Just looking through the listings in RepeaterBook.com most of it appears to be on the 70cm band. There are some repeaters on VHF 2M and a few on UHF 33cm. I don't see any listed for VHF 1.25M. There are some radios out there that will work digital voice on 1.25M but it just doesn't seem to get any interest.
IMHO if anyone is looking at getting a radio for digital voice on the Ham bands your money would be better spent on a UHF 70cm radio.
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48 minutes ago, kidphc said:
Nice collection. So many dollars those Harris Prcs.. good god the prices that old Falcons still go for.
Bragging rights,unfortunately in the group I spend time with goes to the APX 8.5k xe boys. Yes they own them as well as have ones that are issued.. But they are mostly FEMA or local FD. Wish I could justify nearly 5-6k for an APX, entitlements plus software and accessories.
The XG100P is a nice radio, Fighting random reboots, but I think the battery might be done or has an internal short. I am going to be loaned another Harris Lithium battery and we shall see.
The receive on the XG100P is actually pretty awesome, its better then the XTS500 I have. Even though the filters are pretty tight and the front end is no slouch on the XTS.
I really like the radio and might actually end up replacing a bunch of hand helds. So much so I almost bit the bullet on an auction for one. But a buddy part of above said group. Coughed and said buy the XG100M(F) first while they are cheap. Welp... $440 dollars later and the XG100M is on its way with a CH721 head. Which means I will be ripping out my hacked XTL5000/05 that has been in the truck for less than a month. Would cost more to get the brick for the XTL5000 VHF hi-power. Really wish I could afford the CH100 head ($1900 still available new) touch screen and bluetooth would be awesome as well as a couple of the FPP features available.
For those unfamiliar with the XG100M (F). It is a full spectrum mobile from Harris. It was designed for interoperability between agencies. So it has low band VHF which I don't think the APX mobile has, sure it is older then the APX mobile, but a lot cheaper then the APX
XG100M
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VHF low band 30-50 MHz
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9 miliwatts
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Some agencies around DC suburbs still use VHF low
- Shenandoah PD
- Maryland state on the western handle of MD
- couple of others
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It CAN NOT transmit on the ham bands
- Filters are to tight
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Some agencies around DC suburbs still use VHF low
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9 miliwatts
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VHF High 136-174 Wide/narrow
- 5-50w
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UHF 380-520 MHz Wide/narrow
- 5-50w
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UHF 700-800 MHz
- 2-30 w 700 MHz
- 2-35 w 800 Mhz
- P25 Conv., Trunked,
- 12.5/20/25 kHz spacing
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Modulation
- Phase 1 TX: C4FM, RX: C4FM & WCQPSK
- Phase 2 TX: HCPM, RX: WCQPSK
- DVRS (digital vehicle repeater) available for 700/800 Mhz only
Are the filters too tight to try and get it on the Ham 33cm band?
At least the XPR6580's with a CPS in memory hack you can do it with no mod's to the radio.
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VHF low band 30-50 MHz
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48 minutes ago, Sshannon said:
Use a high quality inverter. Look at what’s available through a place like DXEngineering. Samlex is a decent brand with many different types and options.
https://samlexamerica.com/product-category/dc-dc-voltage-converters/If all he needs to do is simply boost the battery voltage the following item is what he's looking for.
https://mfjenterprises.com/products/mfj-4416c
For portable power where you need 120VAC I have one of the below 300 watt inverters. Some equipment will malfunction when you try to run them off one of the cheap modified sine-wave types. Mine is discontinued but there are newer models.
https://gopowersolar.com/products/300-watt-pure-sine-wave-inverter/
New models.
https://gopowersolar.com/product-category/inverters/pure-sine-wave-inverters/
How GMRS might better help travelers.
in National and Regional GMRS Nets
Posted
Nice history/background info.