Ian

Hypothetically, but the internal duplexer has a 10 MHz split centered on 442 MHz. You'd have to connect an external "flatpack" duplexer, but at that point… Yeah, you've kitbashed together a cheap effective duplexer for around $300. It should outperform the RT97L, frankly -- at least if you use the right kind of duplexer, but they're increasingly cheap and ubiquitous.

This is smack in the middle of the "magic band", which is especially suitable for meteor-bounce communication and other really weird shit. We'll do fun propagation science to it, even if we need to buy a GMRS license to do it. That sounds just about fucking ideal for linking repeater sites over the air. How much digital data can we squish into the CTCSS frequencies? Something like AllStar without internet interconnections should be rules-compliant.

I also feel like MURS and FRS ought to be merged, since their rules are so close to identical. This would mean removable antennas on FRS radios, which… should be mostly a nothingburger with a few "duckheads" running amplifiers to create high-powered jamming equipment but… you can already do that today, it doesn't happen, so we shouldn't be forced onto fixed antennas because stupid people want us to not have nice things. Seriously, it's a non-thing. Time to drop it.

That radio is currently the GOAT but it’s a ham radio, so be aware that it’s freebanding, and if you’re going to do that, you’re not allowed to make a pest of yourself or you might actually get in the shit — only break one rule at a time! BTech has a beastly 50 watt unit which uses the same software as the Vero, and a GMRS Pro, which is probably still more radio than you need, but Vero software is super easy compared to the alternative menu and manual stuff!

https://www.cobra.com/products/performa-radio-programming-cable One of what I thought was its advantages just vanished; it requires a special programming cable and not just any old USB-C will do.

This is a great take, actually. First: Yeah, that's why I decided that I was barking up the wrong tree when I programmed 128 channels into my RT76P. Only one repeater ever gets any action anyway, so… At that point I may as well just get a crystal-controlled set with a reed and a single channel, like old ancient Regency commercial gear. (Actually scratch the reed; that repeater has switched to DCSS as of the beginning of this year. I guess I could still use a reed to generate the tone and a MOSFET or solid-state relay to switch the signal …)

Been fucking around with the codeplug editor for weeks, and ordered a pair last night. They arrive tomorrow before noon, if you trust Amazon's predictions. I look forward to offering my thoughts once I have the hardware in hand! :D Right now I have Orlando 700, GMRS 19, and Skycom 725 as my only three channels in group one, with Skycom disabled. (Easier to reenable it than recreate it from scratch) Group two is the somewhat-busier tourist frequencies and repeaters, and group three is interoperability. Ideally I'd have kept group 2 for that, since it comes programmed to match the industry consensus "extra channels" up to channel sixty or something for interop, but that's now "watching rockets and rocking a surfboard" zone. I also have a codeplug for home and beach, each one substantially less pared down than 03-SIMPLICITY_ITSEL (character limit) which I think is going to be my default codeplug unless I have a reason to expect to need to talk to NPCs. I'm much more likely to have trouble handing a radio to non-technical family members; ask me how much I know. And ask me how much the repair bill has been so far! Oh yeah, and guess what percent of it's been paid as promised.

Six years down the line, and there's good repeater coverage in central Florida. As suspected, a 50w mobile with a bluetooth hand-mic has scratched one itch, and having repeater coverage at home has eliminated the desire to roll my own, even now that the RT97L makes operating a genuinely nice repeater technically trivial and generally affordable. Wouldn't have thought of this, but someone reacted to it recently.

I intend on operating these as two-channel radios, having explored the programming software (it's browser-based) already. "The one repeater that I can reach" and "a simplex channel". I recommend looking at the programming software before deciding to blow these off. For all the complaints about these being too simple, if I'm close to my computer I can swap codeplugs at will, and these are to compliment radio-dork radios, not replace them. Actually, they appear to be identical across the Trailblazer lineup, save for color, and removable as well.

The Cobra Trailblazer lineup is out, and soon-to-be-on-Amazon, and the Trailblazer 500 looks really exciting to me. A UI that can be pared down to just the couple of repeaters you care about / can reach, and it's based on their older business-focused FRS radios so accessories are already available, plus they sell the older PX650 upon which this is based at Wal-Mart, so I expect this to be the first repeater-capable handie you can buy at Wally World in a while…

So my idea of encoding metadata into CDCSS and CTCSS is both feasible and legal! Given that its primary reason for existence is in fact squelch activation, all the rest of the things you can do with it slide right by.

This is the only thread on the forum that mentions MANET technology, so… I guess has anybody made any progress on MANET tech for "consumers" yet?

The T-Deck Plus is available in a 433 MHz model, and the Retevis RB91 and RB24 both operate via the LoRa waveform in the "70-cm" UHF band. Would it be possible to use both of these types of node in a 433 MHz mesh, presuming one had the necessary licenses to do so?

Lilygo has a ready-to-use version called the T-Deck Plus. As a starting point, I can see little reason to buy any other device than this.

I actually burned out a lead-acid battery charger plugged into my living room outlet when I "test-fired" a two watt MURS radio a room over. Never worked again, and since it was a seasonal product, Home Depot couldn't refund or replace it, which was awful annoying.

Yes. It's a known fault with certain AFCI/GFCI breakers, but this is the first time I've heard of it impacting a receptacle. I want to say it was Leviton, but don't quote me. They were surprisingly cool about it, however -- any RF damage or even RF sensitive breaker will be replaced no questions asked forever, after an investigation carried out in conjunction with the ARRL. Before this, one ham in a car could cut power to entire housing developments at a time built with the effected breakers!

Is there any way to get a dump of all the repeaters in my state from the database here so I can feed it into the RMOC, or am I going to have to do this by hand? Because I think at that point, a paper map, compass, and ruler would be easier than getting even MORE software involved, lol!

(dupe)

May I make a modest proposal? 20/22 is the Open Repeater Initiative method for allowing travelers to opportunistically use open repeaters while traveling, and the Queen has declared 19 to be the unofficial official highway channel. This makes life simple: 19/-- for simplex and 20/22* for repeater use. Now you can set your dual watch to those two, and just flip between the two depending on your intent. Easy as pie!* (22 being the common code invoking 141.3 Hz on most radios) (Unless your radio doesn't support dual watch…)

Bluntly what will MURS do that FRS won't? Waste your money. ;-) (And I say this as someone who's all in on the service!) Like I said, few products; fewer compelling.

There's an embarrassing dearth of compelling products, IMHO. Like there's cheap five-channel VHF radios sure, but there's no tiny pocket radios without freebanding a UV-3R, and the two compelling products are niche and expensive: Garmin has its Group Ride Radio which can be $1500/vehicle all in and Dakota Alert has its line of products which I want to play with, but can't justifiably afford until I have my first ham radio that'll do more than five watts. I'd like to point out that I own a small boatload of Dakota Alert radios, and I'd like to decode their "sensor zone" protocol. Tech support once told me that they operate using modulated CTCSS to identify which of four "zones" is triggered, in addition to playing their voice notification. On the base stations, this triggers a relay which can be used by anybody with a Radio Shack level of electronic engineering skill to do arbitrary things; on the handies, it sets a notification on the LCD. Still, all the kit is designed specifically to cater to rural users' specific pain-points, and isn't easily applied to suburban folks' situations or interfaced with other makers' kit, despite the apparent and alleged protocol simplicity. ---------------- On the other paw, the Garmin GRR is a nightmare of as-yet-un-reverse-engineered protocol combined with decent hardware and good UI design; if they'd come out with a GMRS version of it, I'd sell my right testicle to outfit my family's vehicles with them. As it is though, each vehicle really needs three freakin' radios, and even if I use the simplest possible radio in each "slot" it's going to be an unbearably complex experience for my ham-flavored ass, let alone the rest of the family. That was the turning point for me getting my ticket…

I unironically do, if there's not too much of it! They destroy the value of the frequencies, ensuring that there will never be a realistic temptation to turn it into a new block of license-by-auction cellular spectrum.

I live in flat-as-a-pancake Florida, so I completely forget about line-of-sight problems sometimes… The difference between theory and praxis in this state is very small!

The first one would be easy enough, and save me five minutes printing out a map and drawing circles on it. Not a big problem. Second one could be implemented one of two ways: one using highly detailed topo maps to give you realistic propagation simulations, which would be hard. The easy way would basically make a list of repeaters taken from the map view, and suggest which repeaters you might want to try. RepeaterFinder has a similar list view, sorted by distance. I feel like even the low-effort method would be a useful feature, to be honest. And then you could feed that data into your propagation software of choice, perhaps, but the quick glanceable list is going to save me ten minutes faffing about on the repeater viewer and copying everything I want to try to connect to into a note on my phone whenever I change locations, so it can't be THAT rare a use-case.

I think your video actually sold me a pair of these.