marcspaz

Your best bet for real emergency communications for the least amount of money is satellite communications. Things like the Garmin InReach are the best bang for the buck. Mostly because of cost and ease of use. HF radio on 3.8 MHz to 7.2 MHz would be the next best thing. It would be my first choice if you want voice communication. You can cover from 0 miles to 10,000 miles, radio to radio, with 100w and a simple wire antenna. No need for repeaters or other infrastructure. However, there is a very small learning curve and portable systems are a shade more bulky than SatComm stuff.

You are correct and it does happen. In some circles, its referred to as a "sentence enhancer".

Im primarily a Yaesu user. They do something very similar, over APRS. The compass even looks similar. P2P APRS is a great tool. Especially if voice is not working well. You can send text messages, even short (low quality) voice recordings and photos. It's one of my favorite digital modes.

Great find! Thanks!

In my opinion, the answer is yes and no. If you need to communicate between your home and mobile or other location, you just need a good radio setup to support simplex communications. No repeater needed. The best reason to need a repeater is if you know everyone will be or plan to potentially be somewhere that simplex isn't going to be possible due to line of site limitations. The problem is, that usually means you need a massive antenna system at your house or at some rented space some where. Towers and commercial repeaters are typically cost prohibitive, and tower installation restrictions at any given location also restricts repeater installs.

Im not sure that APRS, specifically, is being used. I can't find anything that the FCC published that specifies authorized protocols, only emission types. Im curious what protocols are being used, but don't have the correct tools to test for it and too tired to do anymore research. Knowing that would really determine how to proceed with aftermarket decoding.

Something else the users of our repeaters need to understand is, if we as owners need the repeater for our own emergency use or to augment an emergency response somehow, we're going to change the tones and access methods, stopping most other traffic. Not that we would want to put families in a tough spot. If my repeaters aren't needed for an emergency response, I'll leave it on as long as I can. That said, service to the whole community has to take priority over basic traffic.

Im just proud that its not me this time.

Im not sure what people consider "portable" in any given case, but solar and LiFePo4 batteries are light and cheap. 300w hrs of batteries and 100w of solar is about 17 lbs. 650w hrs of battery and 200w of solar panels is about 30lbs. 2,600w hrs of batteries and 600w of solar are under 100 lbs for vehicle portable. Unless you're planning on building a very heavy, portable hydro or wind station, I would never consider any kind of crank generator. Even at that, the wind and flowing water are no where near as reliable, constant and abundant as the sun.

I tested all 3 of mine and none of them do it. It sounds like your radios are unlocked.

Yes, if they have no tone squelch enabled, they should be able to hear you fine. I would recommend improving your communication plan, however. While it's not likely you will get in any trouble, one-way communication is heavily restricted to specific types information. Not to mention, if you can't hear them to know they received the message, it can very likely lead to confusion and missed messages.

I have seen the protective circuits in action on a meter... watching the power get rolled back as the mismatch increases or as heat increases. Even some of my cheap radios seem to have some type of protection. I would agree, there is likely a limit to how long I can do that for before it does indeed break. Thankfully, its not a 30% duty cycle for 3 days. LOL I think there are two possible answers... one is excessive heat causing the materials to break down. Sweating a chip is always bad. LOL The other would be a voltage peak exceeding the PIV / reverse breakdown voltage, causing a collector-emitter or base-emitter current leak. In either case, we are breaking down the PN junction enough to allow current leakage and nuking the radio. I would think as long as the current levels stay low, we can get lucky and just have to replace the PA.

I had a very strange experience this weekend. I wanted to share some information about antenna performance and SWR, in hopes of stimulating conversation and maybe helping debunk some common misconceptions about high SWR breaking radios. Obviously, there is a limit to this, but with the typical gear and power levels we operate at, it seems to be a non-issue. I have several radios in my Jeep, with a total of 4 antennas, depending on the band and radio being used. I went offroading this past weekend and took all my antennas off but one small rubber ducky style to use with GMRS communications while on the trails. I had this small, flexible antenna hooked up for the 5 hour trip to the park on Friday, all day wheeling Saturday and Sunday, and for the whole ride home. While on the trails, I was getting anywhere from 100 yards to 1/4 mile of range out of my radio. Most of the time, I was only using 5w, but when the terrain would cause issues, I would crank up the power to 50w. This is pretty standard while offroad and using a flexible antenna. Sunday, on the way home, I noticed I was getting less than a mile out of the radio. That had me a little concerned, but not enough to pull over and check on anything. We stopped for gas, so I decided to see if the antenna was loose and maybe check the SWR, to make sure everything was okay. However, when I went to check on the antenna, I realized the rubber ducky antenna was on the wrong mount. I had used my radio all weekend, running as much as 50w, with no antenna whatsoever on my GMRS radio. 100% of all of my communications for 3 days was all with no antenna, just radiant energy from the end of the coax... that's it. I put the antenna on the right mount and used it for the rest of the ride home... only about an hour. I got home and tested the radio. Everything was 100% perfect. The radio power output is still good, even after a 5 minute key-down on the dummy load. So, while this is 100% non-scientific, I was still able to get about 50% of my typical range in the terrain I was in, even without an antenna. With no antenna and obviously sky-high SWR, running an occasional 50w for 3 days, there was zero damage to my radio or coax. Going back to the thread title, does antenna choice and less than perfect SWR matter? I feel like the community may be overly sensitive to this issues. Thoughts? I am looking forward to some friendly discussion.

And how come the lines aren't in order? As you go north, it's A,B,D,C instead of A,B,C,D. I mean, the real question is how can we trust they made good decisions when they got the order of the alphabet wrong?

The legal requirement is yes, you all use the exact same call sign. You do not need anything except for that. Some clarifications... 1.) There is zero obligation to start your communications with your call sign. The rules state once every 15 minutes and at the end of the conversation. 2.) Your call sign does not need to the the last thing you say. I hear this happen a lot, where people end up saying their call sign 2, 3 or more times in 60 seconds or less. An example, if you ID thinking you are done talking and a family member asks you a brief question, like what time will you be home. Unless you engage in an obvious continuation of the conversation, you do not need to ID again. Meaning if you say something like "Around 4:30". That's it... you are still covered. 3.) There is zero need to append anything to your call sign to differentiate between multiple stations. However, many people do add what is commonly referred to as a tactical call sign to eliminate confusion among the group. For example, if I am convoying and my son is in another car, if I want to call him, ahead of time we can workout that I am Mobile 1 and he is Mobile 2. So, if I call him, I can say "Mobile 2, this is mobile 1. Do you copy?" and that is perfectly fine. When we ID, I can (but not required to) ID with my FCC call sign followed by my 'tactical call sign'. An example would be "WABC123 Mobile 1". Hope all that make sense and helps.

Shots fired!

I have to disagree with some of this... I'm not saying this is you specifically, as I don't know you well enough, but that is not a qualifier to convenience people you know what you are doing. I spent the past 40 years fixing well over 1,000 crap installs from offroad shops and gas station mechanics who think they know how to install a radio (especially CB), but don't. This is not accurate. Fender and hood mounted antennas for VHF and UHF work great for almost all vehicles, including Wranglers. It's not as good as the roof or other high point on the vehicle that provides more elevation... but the performance difference with the extra height wouldn't be noticed by the average user. Meaning, there may be a measurable improvement, but not a practical one. The worst places (which seem to be a growing fad due to Ausie videos) is the front bumper, bull bar, and rear bumper. The only way to get worse than those is to have them inside the vehicle or dragging in the dirt behind you. LOL Unless someone didn't install a mount right, you would have to do a lot more than drag through some bushes to damage an antenna mount. I have been wheeling the heavily wooded and rocky trails of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic for 40 years. Almost all of those years have been in a Jeep with a hood-lip/fender mounted antenna. Same with a vast majority of my friends. I have never seen a lip mount or fender mount antenna get damaged or ripped off in the bushes. In fact, if you watch the video I posted, my Jeep fell 6 feet and crashed into a dirt wall, snapping my fender flare and side mirror off. I even dented the fender, the lip of the hood and the side of the bed. The antenna mount and antenna that sticks out the side were not damaged at all. Again, that is not accurate. Having the UHF antenna mounted on the fender does not make it directional. We are dealing with an electromagnetic energy bubble that extends for thousands of miles in every direction. A non-conductive cab on a Wrangler (even conductive cabs on most other vehicles) is entirely too small to make an RF shadow. For UHF and VHF radios, unless there is a piece of metal close enough to the radiating element (7 inches or less on GMRS) to obscure the bubble or short the signal, there is zero impact to performance beyond the very minor height different you could achieve with a roof mounted antenna. Due to shielding by the metal of the cab of most vehicles and the special coatings on glass of all modern vehicles, the RF energy has some trouble penetrating the glass and roof, going inside the vehicle. This does not impact performance outside the vehicle. Wranglers don't have conductive roofs and the glass is only an issue if you are trying to use an HT inside the vehicle, with all of the glass windows in place. Otherwise, any glass that is in place is actually helping protect the occupants of the vehicle from RF exposure from the outside of the vehicle.

Use DaVinci Resolve. It's the same software many commercial movie production companies use, and is the top rated software used in Hollywood. The best part is, its free for folks like us. Commercial licenses don't give us anything we need. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve I use Corel VideoStudio also, which is $80 to buy, but is way easier to use when I am doing something quick. https://www.videostudiopro.com/en/

Hey Rob, thanks for checking in. We have a pretty active group spread from Alexandria/Arlington (and into MD) to Leesburg, and south into Woodbridge/Stafford/F'burg and as far as Warrenton and Culpeper. We don't have much activity here. Typically we will post events that are occurring. Most of the activity would be on the area repeaters and on our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/novagmrs The big repeaters we use are the Bull Run Mtn. 650, Warrenton 725, Seven Corners 675, and DC 700. Our members have wide area coverage repeaters on every available channel pair, but I think those are the largest and most popular, in that order. Come check us out on Facebook, and all the repeaters are listed here on MyGMRS. Using the 'Map' feature will likely be the most beneficial to find the repeaters and request access. Thanks, Marc

Based on a quick search of the FCC database, of all the licenses issued from the beginning of the service to 12/31/2017, there are only 3,143 active licenses. Today, there are 316,240 total active licenses. The total number of active users has increased over 100 times in less than 6 years. To see the continued growth, year to year, we can pull a few examples. In 2018 a total of 13,491 licenses were issued. In 2023, 63,904 licenses were issued. So far, 73,456 licenses were issued for 2024, and we still have 2 months left to the year. We could see over 88,000 new licensees this year, by the close of the year.

LOL... I'm in trouble.

Very nice!!!

That is typically where I mount my full-body radios, too. The tricky part is the antenna. Many people make the mistake of using a 3/4 mount and the nylon washer is trash in days... maybe weeks. But if you install a UHF mount with a UHF to 3/4 adapter, you get an incredibly strong mount. From there, it's just a matter of grounding.

I would be happy to lend a hand. Most of my mobile radio use has been in various Jeeps over the decades. I can definitely help you get a great performing antenna setup. I have a Cobra 75 All Road, but if you can find one, the President McKinley 2 is probably the best one I have ever seen. I wish I bought one, but missed the short window to buy a new one.

Since several of you are somewhat local to Uwharrie, I figured I would share this little gem with you. Its a video of the gatekeeper and v-notch of 390 / Daniel. There are some fairly funny parts; especially the last 2 minutes.