Logan5

No, I am sure that is for an expired Ham call sign, the applicant may have had in the past. should not apply to your situation.

Yes Bridgecom and Riton are two I am aware of. but I think there are a few others as well.

no, it is just an ID that is automated. it likely translates to the call sign of the owner. If you can hear the ID, You may be able to key it up and talk to either the owner or another user, If they are listening,..

Yep, be a shame to blow a 50watt radio on cheap feedline or foul antenna array. You are on the right track, take your time

We started with Times Microwave LMR400 We are now running LMR600. You can get 50feet of genuine tm LMR400 for less than a hundred bucks. Get it terminated with Type N connector and get an antenna with Type N connector, for the least hassle waterproof low loss connection. You may also like heat shrink tubing, some is adhesive lined for particular waterproof applications.

Do not worry about a higher power radio for now. save your money and work on other aspects of your setup. Do a lot more reading/reasearch so when you purchase a 15 to 50 watt mobile, and or repeater, you know exactly what you are getting and you know why you want it.

check this out. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/252-cable-types-and-losses/

TV coax is not suitable for 2 way radio. a directional antenna can make long distance communications possible even with low power input. Yes, you will turn the antenna by hand or with a relativity inexpensive rotor. depending on the Yagi, you will still have local service on the rear and side lobes. but your forward lobe can be several times further than an Omni antenna even with low power.

Yes you will likely prefer coax cost wise as hardline is expensive and unforgiving when mistakes are made. For long range contacts consider a Yagi directional antenna, you will need much less power than an omni. Each radio site is different, I used a push up mast in a tree for a couple of years. I also done several roof mounts etc. The higher you get the better.

Higher power seldom improves a less than ideal situation. antenna Height, and quality feedline are far more important. Once communication is established it is common courtesy to reduce power output to a level sufficient to maintain communications. a 5 watt radio at 50' is generally more effective than a 50 watt radio at 5'.

Unless something has changed, the profile pic option is very sensitive about file size, so you must crop and resize your image so that it is not over the file size limit before you attempt to upload.

Too bad it's at the opposite end of the state from Rehoboth Beach. At least Delaware has joined the GMRS age. Now if we can just get a repeater in DC.

Glad to see you William, Hope you are doing well...

lol

No it is not, but the Pofung-GT-1 is the upgraded version of the 888. It uses a feature button to address the FM radio tuner. US based members, Please be mindful this radio as well as the 888 is not part95 cert for use on FRS/GMRS

FRS requires a non removable antenna, your radio is non compliant for use on FRS for several other reasons as well. 2 watts is Max for FRS. A radio used on FRS should not even offer to option for higher output. If you wish to use 5 watts, get your GMRS license and use a GMRS channel. I assume your radio is a BF-F9-HP?

If you are a licensed HAM operator a tower can be erected almost any where. Code should only evaluate the project for safety issues, not aesthetics. We live in a close quarters neighborhood, 15 to 20 feet between houses. I thought for sure we would be denied the permit and we were, but not for what we thought. Code required an FAA sign off and wet stamped engineering documents from the Tower manufacture. ARRL helped with legal documents, and although we did obtain a lawyer, I suspect we could have accomplished this with out one.

Yes the airwaves open up for UHF sometimes as well, especially with a very high antenna. a few years back from 12floor condo balcony I was hearing repeaters from Orlando, Land O lakes and Tampa areas. over 100miles away. Later that day I listened on our local net and everyone was astonished by the opening on many Ham bands as well as UHF.

We had a wonderful Vegas trip. I did make contact on 600 repeater, I mostly scanned FRS/GMRS from 55th floor open balcony facing north. Amazing amount of activity on FRS and cross the band interference that could be intentional but is likely not, sounds like a neon sign that goes on an off. did not see any neon, everything LED these days. 5 days was enough for me glad to be home where the band is quieter than Vegas.

If there had been usable repeater in my area, I would not have invested in repeater equipment myself. If you can not gain access to or permission and still wish to deploy a repeater of your own, Keep listening until you find an unused or least used freq. Also monitor the 467.xxx inputs, If 675 is available that would be great as 675 is the non official emergency calling freq. and you could also chose to run the travel tone on any of the GMRS repeater pairs and run as an ORI conforming repeater. Once you have your repeater or pair of useful radios, you will need to understand duplexors and feedline. If I had access to a highrise, I would just run two antennas properly separated. Welcome to the hobby and have fun.

Also heading to Vegas for 5 days. will do repeater checks WQQT630 and simplex 462.600 will only have 2 watt radio.

are you hearing any hang time after you key up? some repeaters have a hang time of open sound after key up, some do not. do you hear your voice on your scanner set to the repeater output frequency only? do you have an outdoor antenna? If you can pin point the actual location of the repeater, with height and watt output info, you should be able to figure out the height of an outdoor antenna to effectively communicate in your area. If the repeater is outside your area, you may have to wait for a tropospheric event.

I might add, a long hang time makes it easier for even a novice repeater jammer to find your tone. We have had some illegal commercial use and used this as well as other means to investigate who it was. However we have not encountered any malicious Jamming.

If a repeater has only one PL tone designate, the programmer could chose to set it to 141.3, If a repeater has multipliable tone capacity then the programmer could chose to designate one of those tones to 141.3, the travel tone designation, is a suggestion not a rule.

Never mind, was my end, Voip