WRCY896

I did an online test with the San Benito County amateur radio association last night. I passed my Technician test 31/35. It was quite simple, and easier and less stressful than I thought it would be. Waiting on my call sign now, and beat the $35 fee haha. I will continue to study for general and have Craig's book for that.

The repeater channels have the offsets built in, you don't need to worry about it. For the V1 radios, its menu 11 to 14 which you want. The person who has the repeater should be able to tell you what the TX and RX codes are. In is TX and out is RX on your radios. The simplex channels are the repeater output frequencies, so if you have the codes set the same on the simplex channel as the repeater, you will hear the traffic on the repeater, but won't be able to transmit to the repeater on the simplex channel.

I saw that today. Seems interesting. I have quite a bit of stuff on my birthday wish list, so will see how that goes next week. That, and I plan to take my HAM test in the next couple weeks, so that is adding more stuff to my radio plate at the moment. Lots of stuff to do, and not enough money and time to do it all. Haha.

I got Gordon west's book for tech on Tuesday. I read Tuesday evening, and yesterday, and have taken several practice exams on QRZ. I am averaging above 85 percent, where I was in the 70's yesterday morning. If I miss a question on the practice exam, I go back, re read the material and take a test again pretty simple.

Mostly simplex between family members in close proximity. We use the repeater for talking longer distance.

Keep in mind that some of the signals you are hearing are going to be from FRS bubble pack radios. Unlikely you are going to get a response from a radio check by an unknown person, especially on local. If you can get into a repeater, more likely you will get a response. Keep in mind, this is not ham. From what I can see, the gm30 appears to be the same radio as the Retevis. Upgrading to a Wouxun is not going to do you any good if there is no one on the other end to talk to.

Double click on each code and scroll to the top. Also, I discovered for in the field, changing codes is pretty easy(at least ctcss). Menu 12 and 14. Then click menu. "0" turns off the ctcss codes and you can just type in the code as well rather than having to scroll through. I jave not messed with dcs codes.

Regarding the last part. I would like to put in a couple receive frequencies out of bad. But it doesn't look like the radio will let you do that. Regarding adding additional GMRS channel slots, though legal, I don't think it has the ability to do so. Basically a lot of the discussion based on the CCR/low parts count radios. The Wouxon will let you add additional frequencies, but it costs twice as much, and has more filters in the hard coding to prevent out of band transmission. The RT76P also has fewer keypad menu options (such as scan add/del), but is available in the program. Compare that to the GMRSV1 which has it in the menu on screens, but again, costs a few dollars more. Also, I can't figure out how to get the weather stations programmed.

I just applied for the permit. 40 feet. Pretty easy and I don't see any issues regarding approval. I qm not in the approach, just within the radius.

Tech for sure first, and will try for my general at the same time. I will get the books here soon to start studying. For starters, it would just be VHF and UHF. I did a quick search and it doesn't look like the application is a big deal for the FAA, so I will probably get that going anyway. It could still gain me a few feet even without the HAM ticket.

I have a repeater at my house which I acquired by accident two years ago when I got my license. It works well with an HT here at the house, and I do not have a base. I run it with a slim Jim Gmrs tuned antenna. I have been trying to get the repeater on a mountain top with no success, so I have accepted the fact the repeater will likely be permanent at my property. There is a lot of good view feom where I am, so that is a positive. Last year I acquired a 20 foot section of comm tower which is 2 feet wide on each side. I also have plans in the future to get my HAM and have a VHF and UHF repeater in view. Not sure what else HAM might bring me later. I plan to bury the bottom 4 feetand put the tower next to my shed which will be my radio shack and gun/reloading room. No HOA or county code issues, but I am in an FAA zone and am limited to 20 feet with no permit. What problems will I run into with spacing and elevation of various antennas on the same tower? First, let's presume GMRS, VHF, UHF. Any other suggestions are welcome as well. I attached pictures of the tower and my current antenna. Pictures had to be resized, so they may appear weird.

You would have to know what the tones are. For example, my family and I use 100.0 for the low power channel, and 462 high power and repeater channels. This translates in my Cobra FRS radios to CTCSS number 12. The book should have a list for the codes and how they correspond in the radio. So if you wanted to get in my local and repeater channels, you would use channel 15, and channel 15 repeater and whatever code number the chart has for 100.00

Those three little dots are called an ellipsis (plural: ellipses). The term ellipsis comes from the Greek word meaning “omission,” and that's just what an ellipsis does—it shows that something has been left out. When you're quoting someone, you can use an ellipsis to show that you've omitted some of their words I searched the dictionary meaning for it. Not trying to be a jerk, I just presume people understand punctuation and it's possible meanings and interpretation. Just the way my personality is, and how I see things on a printed format, where we can't actually see people's faces and interact that way.

Thanks to everyone for the information on power. I need to get a power meter and test my own I suppose. Haha.

Umm... I was asking for insight about a specific question and you brought up something totally different and how you hate a certain part about these radios... with three dots indicating you wanted more discussion on the matter or the thought wasn't complete. So I elaborated. I brought up ham because I notice a lot of people bring up how a lot of GMRS radios don't have the ability to do certain things which they were never designed to do and have been hard coded for the GMRS channels. Basically I was responding to the last part of your statement regarding custom channels. There isn't much room for customization in GMRS and I was just pointing that out while trying to stay on topic. No offense taken and I certainly didn't intend to push any forward.