Lscott

No kidding. When I starting collecting my mostly Kenwood LMR gear, and got the programming software for them, my first impression was WTF is all this crap in the setup. The setup is even stranger for the digital stuff. It's a bit of a mind set change to get use to how commercial radio radios are setup verses ham gear. Ham gear you can program them on the fly. The commercial radios you program them once and then just turn on the radio and hit the PTT button.

I've used these charge controllers for the LFP batteries. They make charge controllers for different battery types and will even design one for a custom output voltage for you. https://sunforgellc.com/product/gv-5/

The above sounds right. I have another buddy that frequently volunteers for marathons, bike races etc. He either setups up his own portable repeater or the event communication's coordinator supplies some or most of the radio equipment.

Have you looked at the LFP, Lithium Iron Phosphate, battery types? The capacity is good and the chemistry is far more stable than just about any of the other Lithium types. This company is friendly to communication hobbyists and has a good selection. https://www.bioennopower.com/ I also found using these power meters is helpful to keep an eye on the power usage. https://powerwerx.com/watt-meter-analyzer-inline-dc-powerpole Everything I have is terminated in Anderson Power Poles. This makes it very easy to swap around equipment. I typically use the 15 amp and 30 amp connectors. I managed to salvage some of the larger 45 amp connectors off of dead lead acid batteries our IT department trashed from the server room UPS systems. https://powerwerx.com/anderson-power-powerpole-sb-connectors

I think the same logic works for private businesses. Each employee can have their own GMRS license and use the company owned repeater. The one caveat the repeater must be under the control of one of the licensed employees and ID as such.

Don't have to join a forum. If they don't have a license and using GMRS equipment don't talk to them. Enough people do that they will either quit using the radios or get licensed when they run out of people to talk too. Either way it's a win.

I have a number of commercial radios that are certified for both Part 90 and Part 95A, the later being the old part for GMRS. The radios haven't lost their certification. I have others as well like the NX-300(G), FM/NXDN, and the TK-5320, FM/P25, just have to restrict operation to FM until the FCC gets around to authorizing digital voice on GMRS. For example I routinely use my Kenwood TK-3170 for Ham and GMRS. It has both Part 90 and 95A certifications. While the programming software complains it will accept frequency entries down in to the ham band low enough to cover the repeater section just fine. So I have one radio where I can use it for either service without any hardware or software modifications. NX-200_300.pdf NX-300 FCC Grant - 1.pdf TK-2170_3170(K) Brochure.pdf TK-3170 Grant.pdf TK-5220_5320 Brochure - 2.pdf TK-5320 FCC Grant - 1.pdf

So what's you major malfunction with that?

If I can find this in less than 30 seconds I doubt anyone else will will have a problem either. https://fieldradio.org/unlock-baofeng-uv-5r-frequencies/

Yeah. If you have cash or a CC they'll sell you a radio. At least a few swaps I've been too, that give away radios for door prizes, will substitute a gift certificate equal to the cost of the radio if the winner is not licensed. At least on the way home they won't be talking to the local fire department, for example, on the new CCR they have no idea how to use other that turn it on and press the big button on the side to see what happens.

Correct. My buddy found out about it when reading the local news paper where the party involved used the interference to justify switching to a digital radio system. He showed me the news clipping. And no I'm not going to provide any details.

Some of my radios I've purchased new. Most were found at local Ham swaps or eBay auctions.

Point well taken. Before going off the rails assuming illegal operation one might have stumbled on a perfectly legal grandfathered system. If it bothers somebody do some research before jumping to conclusions. Even in the Ham world we have to be careful since Hams only have secondary status on the 70cm band, we share it with the primary user, government. I remember doing a frequency search a while back and stumbled across some public safety frequencies between 420 MHz and 430 MHz. The US Ham band officially runs from 420 MHz to 450 MHz depending on how close you are to Canada, Line-A. The 70cm band is a mine field of various users, technical requirements and restrictions. https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/compendium/0420.00-0450.00_01MAR14.pdf https://www.chp.ca.gov/find-an-office/central-division/offices/(420)-bakersfield https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf00049.html

The part that's sad is when people act like it's OK. That's how non compliance starts and grows. It can simply start with those that are licensed simply refusing to communicate with those who are not and using GMRS radios. I had a buddy that thought the same thing messing around with his UV-5R unlicensed. I finally got him to get his Ham Tech license and then he got his GMRS some months back on his own. He later found out the FCC was looking for the source of the unlicensed operations and interference. He realized he was lucky he quit when he did, had no idea about the complaints made, and got legal. The reasons why people don't bother, they think nobody gives a crap, nothing is going to happen me, and finally just being lazy and cheap.

So what else are people going to excuse because the rules are inconvenient?

And FRS is stuck with narrow band FM only and limited to a max of 2 watts.

I have several of those NX-300's. They are very nice radios. Might be a bit on the heavy side and a little bit too bulky for shirt pocket carry. The very narrow 6.25KHz NXDN mode would be a great fit to use on the nearly useless FRS/GMRS interstitial channels that are limited to 0.5 watts and 12.5 KHz bandwidth. The guard band between the repeater channels is 5 KHz and the FCC emission for the very narrow NXDN mode is 4K00, which fits in there with no adjacent channel overlap compared to the narrow band FM currently allowed at 11K0. Now all we have to do is get the FCC to change their mind.

A little sagging but still looks good.

They were both involved with a person with the last name of Fieger. However one is a well known lawyer (Geoffrey Fieger) and the other (Doug Fieger) is a musician.

And maybe visit from Jack Kevorkian, then a ride in his van afterwards.

These guys might be sort of busy. There is a large NXDN digital voice linked repeater network right in that area. If you have a hotspot or an NXDN radio with access to a local networked NXDN repeater you could monitor the activity. Checkout the map further down the page for the covered zones. https://ni4ce.org/nxdn-digital-communications/

I think my collection is around that too. Mine are mostly Kenwood. I have a few Motorola's and some Chinese ones. I've been looking at getting more digital radios. I have way too many FM ones as it is. I don't have anything for YSF yet, all the other main stream stuff I have, D-Star, DMR, P25 Phase 1, NXDN, in both VHF and UHF models. I've been looking for some dPMR radios but they are almost non existent in North America and are mostly a European thing.

https://www.naic.edu/ao/repairs-update

The antenna needs a ground plane, or the equivalent, to work. I've tested a lot of hand held radio antennas with and without a ground plane. Just about everyone resulted in a crummy match except the 1/2 wave types. I had thought that a good ground plane would yield a good match, nope. Some tested better when stuck on the back of my hand, see sample photo, verses a large sheet metal ground plane. I'm guessing the antennas are specifically tuned to use the small ground represented by the metal body of the radio and coupled into the users arm while hand held. I wouldn't depend on the coax shield either. You get RF on it which feeds back into the radio resulting in "undesirable" operation. For the NA-771G you can try a tiger tail. I'll suspect as the tail moves around the match will change a lot too. If you have a backpack with a good sized metal frame that might work as good if not better than the tiger tail. 483039407_AmateurRadioPedestrianMobileHandbook.pdf