WRTC928

What is the logic behind bonding your lightning ground to the house ground? Lightning always wants to go to the earth, so grounding your antenna and coax makes sense. You give the lightning an easy path to the earth, and hopefully it will take it. I also understand why it's recommended that you bond the common ground for your equipment to the house ground. The powered equipment is part of the same circuit as all the other electrical equipment in the house and you want to keep it at the same potential. However, I don't follow the reasoning of bonding the two together. It seems to me that the most logical solution for protecting against lightning is to give the electrical buildup a way to get to the earth without directing it into your house; i.e., a lightning ground separate from the equipment ground. Yet everything I read recommends bonding the lightning ground to the house ground, so there must be some reason that I don't understand.

That's the way I do it these days.

If it gets you the distance and clarity you want, it's a good setup. "Good enough" is a valid concept.

There may even be one or more on this forum who has participated in it. A long time ago. When I was they were younger and more reckless.

Good information. See? I knew somebody here could answer that question.

I have gotten 20 miles HT-to-HT once when both of us were on elevated terrain features. Given the 140' elevation difference, you might be able to do it. The best-case scenario is if both stations are on higher elevations than everything in between, but one station higher than the other does improve your chances of getting a clear line of sight. You'll have to consider gain when you select your base station antennas. The more gain an antenna has, the "flatter" its signal, and it's possible to make the signal so flat it passes over the station at a lower elevation. There are some folks on here who know more about that than I do and might be able to help you figure out if that's going to be an issue. Generally speaking, more gain = more distance, so you'll have to balance the two factors.

I participate in the local severe weather net on one of the amateur radio repeaters in my area. I don't chase storms, but I do report on them. There's no technical reason why it shouldn't work on GMRS, but there's no long-standing tradition of it, so you'd have to develop a network of spotters from the ground up. To get a very significant net, you'd have to have access to a repeater with good coverage. Simplex would work fine for intra-group communication, but a good "footprint" will require a repeater. As noted, you'd have to have someone with the ability to report to the National Weather Service because the advantage of a radio-based weather network is its immediacy -- reports are in real time as the action happens. Even if you don't have access to NWS, one or more local emergency service agencies might find it helpful. You'd have to ask them. A deputy sheriff operates a GMRS repeater I can reach in the county just south of me, and although he doesn't formally run a weather net to the best of my knowledge, if I hear of severe weather headed that way, I'll put out a warning on it. If he doesn't want me to do that, he'll say so. For the most part, GMRS is a service people use at a predetermined time with a predetermined group of people for a predetermined purpose, and AFAIK, there aren't a lot of people just constantly monitoring it as with ham bands. I don't know how you would get the word out to the GMRS community at large to "tune in" during severe weather. It may take quite a while for people to find out. If you had a repeater with some reach, people could even listen with FRS radios if they knew about it.

The only thing I've ever won in my life is a coffee mug from the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry YouTube channel. I was the first to correctly answer a cavalry history question during a livestream. It ain't much, but I won it. I'd rather win a GMRS repeater, though.

I use both amateur and GMRS bands pretty much every day. For the most part, I'm conscientious about obeying rules, but I just can't see carrying two HTs around or mounting two different radios in my car if I can get both in a single radio. If the FCC showed an interest in enforcing the type-acceptance rules, I suppose I'd feel differently. I do get a little use out of the 1.25 meter band and I like that the AR-5RM has that capability. The Baofeng K61 also has 1.25 meter capability and is a little easier to carry around due to being intermediate in size between the UV-5r and the 5RM.

Too bad you missed it. It's a pretty good little repeater.

That's certainly possible. I didn't examine the radios myself, but both owners insisted they had checked that.

I haven't personally experienced it, but I have known two people who had issues with their radios having poor transmit audio when talking to other brands but not to their own radios of the same brand. Maybe they're just a little bit off frequency? They were both using inexpensive Chinese radios, which are known to suffer from spotty quality control. I have several inexpensive Chinese radios and haven't experienced it, so obviously it's not a universal phenomenon.

My repeater is set to wideband mode, as is standard for most repeaters. All my HTs and the QYT mobile have two bandwidth modes: narrowband (NFM) and wideband (FM). However, the TYTs and the AnyTone have three modes: narrowband (NFM), wideband (WFM), and FM which I guess is something in between. Both CHIRP and the CPS default to "FM" which has worked just fine until now. All the 2 meter, 70 centimeter, and GMRS repeaters I've tried except mine work with the mode set to FM, and TBH I had forgotten there was a third setting. While I was updating the firmware and rechecking all the settings on the repeater yesterday, I remembered about the three mode settings. I set the "mode" for my repeater channel on the TH-7900 to WFM and it works just fine. However, when I set the mode on the AnyTone to WFM, it doesn't connect to the repeater just like the TYT when it was set to FM. I can only guess the three machines have slightly different definitions of "wideband" and you have to find the one that will enable the given radio/repeater combination to communicate. It's almost as if TYT and AnyTone outsmarted themselves with their multiple options. The Retevis RT97L seems perfectly happy taking input from either mode, so at least I have that going for me.

Thanks! I found it.

I'm not sure if I have that cord. I'll have to look.

Thanks! I'll update it tomorrow and see if it changes anything.

You're right. I was testy because I was frustrated. I apologize. I do appreciate it when people are willing to help, but sometimes when things aren't going my way, I become a dick. I'll try to do better.

To test @MarkInTampa's hypothesis that maybe the two radio don't understand one another's tones, I changed the setting on the radio from "tone" to "TSQL". If I open the repeater with another radio, the TYT hears it just fine, but it still won't open the repeater.

There doesn't seem to be any way to do that, either from the software or from the front of the machine. It only allows a CTCSS tone or a DTCS tone. There's no way to leave it blank. FWIW, it doesn't work with either CTCSS or DTCS.

Hmmm... That's a thought. I'll try that.

Just to be sure I wasn't hallucinating, I tried it again just now with the 7900. Same antenna, same settings, only changing repeaters. It worked just fine with the Retevis but would not open the BTech. Based upon my (admittedly limited) knowledge of how radios work, this shouldn't be possible.

Read the entire post. I tested the TYT radios on a Retevis RT97L with the exact same settings and they worked. I used half a dozen antennas including the ones that worked just fine with the QYT and the AnyTone. Yes, I checked SWRs on all of the antennas and they were all below 2.0:1. Everywhere from my driveway to several miles away. I carried an HT to make sure I had contact with the repeater at the tested distance. No kidding, Sherlock? Of course it should. That's why I'm baffled.

I would say you're right except that they will connect to other GMRS repeaters. They connected to my RT97L without any problem.

I'm doubtful there is anything which can be done, but I'm going to throw this out there. Even if nobody can help, it still might be useful for others to know this. I have a BTech RPT50 repeater operating on 462.55000 tone 233.6. I also have a TYT TH-9800 and a TH-7900, neither of which will connect reliably to the repeater. The 9800 will sometimes connect after holding the PTT button for 5 seconds or so, but the 7900 just flatly refuses to connect at all. I tried them on a Retevis RT97L repeater using the same frequency and tone and they connected just fine. They work just fine on all the other repeaters I've tried, but obviously I don't know the brand/type of those repeaters. I quadruple-checked all the frequency and tone settings and I'm absolutely certain they're right. I tried the radios on the same repeater using various frequencies and CTCSS/DTCS tones with the same result. They'll receive but they won't transmit to the repeater. I checked all the settings and reprogrammed them using CHIRP and also the TYT CPS with no change. Baofeng, Retevis, QYT, AnyTone, and Arcshell radios have no problem connecting to the repeater. I can only conclude that there's some sort of incompatibility between the two brands. At this point, the only thing I can think of to do is replace the radios. If anyone else has tried TYT radios on a BTech repeater, I'd be interested to know if you ran into this problem.

I had familiarization training on those, but never actually used one. What I went away with was the feeling that if I ever had to use one in actual combat, I wouldn't remember how. By the late 1970s, they were in some vehicles, but I never saw one in a ground-pounder unit.