marcspaz

How dare you accuse me of thinking!? Have you read my posts?

We can't do much about the ads, but the dots show a concentration of repeaters. The dot color corresponds to how many repeaters are in that area. As you zoom in, the dots get closer to blue and the number shinks, until you zoom in enough to see individual repeaters on the map. Once you zoom in close enough and click on a single repeater, the green area highlights the forecasted coverage area. I'm not sure about the other questions.

Sorry to hear you aren't finding anyone to talk to, but not surprised. GMRS is known as a "Bring Your Own Contacts" (BYOC) service. The most common use is for families to be able to chat with each other in absence of or instead of a cell phone. The next most common use is car to car for people in a caravan, such as going offroad or multiple vehicles traveling together on the highway for long road trips. Don't expect to find anyone on the air except the people you bring to the air. Also, depending on what the terrain is like around you, with a handheld you can have another operator 1 or 2 miles away from you and you just aren't going to hear them. Mobiles can stretch that out a little tiny bit... maybe to 3 miles (again, depending on terrain). Unless you get on a tall hill/mountain or on a repeater with great coverage because it's up high, you may not have any luck. I have some bad news on the CB side of things too. It's not much better unless skip is in or your running a buttload of power, like 400w or more (not that I advocate for violating the FCC rules with use of an amp). Without extra power, using a 1/4 wave antenna (104"), I can double the range of simplex GMRS, but that is still only 6 to 8 miles assuming the other people I am talking to have a good setup, too. Even with a ton of power, CB is mostly a line of sight service, like GMRS.

I assumed we're talking about UHF in and around 400-500 mhz. Hence my answer/examples. That said, you're correct and I'm sure the information will be helpful.

You are correct. My mistake. It's always a 5 MHz split... only 'always' +5 in GMRS. Thanks for the catch!

In Amateur Radio and GMRS the offset is always up (+) 5 megahertz. So, if the receive frequency is 444.xxx, the offset is 449.xxx. or, if the receive frequency is 462.xxx, the offset is 467.xxx. Amateur Radio and GMRS are 2 distinctly different services. Do you want to learn about Amateur Radio, GMRS, both or radio communications technology in general?

I tried it with AGC off, but it seems to work better with AGC on and set to zero. May be placebo, but is sure sounds good on the recording. LoL

Here is a screen grab of what my settings are... Radio Configuration --> Radio Wide --> Tx Audio Control Per Mode. It's the Noise Suppression check box and Attenuation Level option. The directions say it works best with the Mic AGC disabled, but I find it works best with it on.

If you are a Jeep enthusiast and love to drive around with your doors off, but hate that the road noise is so bad that you can't use your radio, I highly recommend getting an XTL5000 or another Motorola model that was designed for use by first responders and has noise cancelling microphone features. I have had a total of three XTL5000 radios and I have never realized there is a noise cancelling feature before this one. This feature absolutely rocks. With every mobile radio I have every owned, I could never drive around in a Jeep with the doors off because the tire hum and wind noise would make it so my voice was washed out. It made the radio unusable while the Jeep was in motion. I decided to mess around with the mic auto gain control and noise suppression. I found that I can have the roof and doors off and still use the radio. I have aggressive 37" tires that hum so loud, that with the wind and tire noise, I can't talk to my passengers if the doors are off. BUT... now I can still use the radio! I setup my home-based FTM-300DR to record and went for a spin. The slowest I was going was 45 mph, at the very beginning. The fastest I was traveling during this test was 70 mph. I'm pretty happy with the results. You can hear the processor work its magic when I first start to transmit.

That is amazing. There is a 6m opening right now, with an s1 noise floor and the tropo duct map looks just right.

This is pretty wild. I don't check everyday, but this is either the third or fourth major storm I have seen this Spring. I haven't used the radio tonight, but I have to imagine this is causing some issues to some degree. I noticed the MUF is really high, too.

Hey folks, we had an awesome turnout! Thank you to everyone who attended. I had a great time and it was nice meeting some of you for the first time. Looking forward to the next one!

Hey, folks.... we're looking forward to seeing everyone today at 3PM in Gainesville. Even if you don't have a mobile setup you want tested, come hangout! https://facebook.com/events/s/mobile-tune-up-session/172329032127594/

Yes! Exactly! Some hams I know even use Q codes while they are are having a face to face conversation. Shoot... a lot of older hams I know call in-person conversations an 'eyeball QSO'. LOL Though, thankfully, the hams I know don't care if people say 10-4. It's mostly people I don't know that give me grief if I break ranks.

Please tell me that was a Jeep! That would make it even funnier!

I would start by asking what their interests are... meaning, why do they want to get into amateur radio. This way I may be able to point out different resources. Also, I would invite them to spend time with existing Amateur Radio clubs, especially during special events. The main goal here is so they can see and experience many different aspects of technology and the personalities of people, before taking a test or spending money on equipment. I would also stress how incredibly important it is to be sure they are very selective of whom they pay attention to when it comes to technology, because a lot of people have zero clue what they are talking about. I would provide resources on where they could find reliable printed information on how radio communications work, as well as where to find reliable information about equipment considered reliable and suitable for a particular task,without breaking the bank. I think the most important thing would be to listen as much as possible, talk less, and when I do talk, it would be to give guidance towards their goals. It's important to share experiences and opinions, but not push my hobby or opinions on them... mentor, not indoctrinate.

I have to echo the same sentiment. GMRS is a "Bring your our contacts" service. If you're looking for random people to talk with, my own opinion is that you picked the wrong radio service. Amateur radio (Ham radio) is a better option, for sure. I spend a good amount of time on GMRS with people I'm friends with in the area or when we're offloading, camping, etc., but very rarely ever have a stranger just start chatting. As far as trying to reach random people while driving, channels 19 and 20 seem to be the most popular around the country... be it simplex or if you're near a repeater. That said, I wouldn't expect much of a response.

I would love to have them on the back wall of the cab, but I would have to gut a lot of interior plastic out from behind the seats. The only place back there any radios would fit.... my FMT-300D and FT-891 are already there. I have been staying out of water and mud holes for the past few years. I figured they would be fine for now. I am going to seal the floor pan from outside to help prevent water infiltration. Yeah... LOL probably should have shot the video with roof panels on so I could run a slower shutter speed.

Well, it took a bit of work to finish installing my two XTL-5000 radios. A total of about 14 hours spread over a month. A big part of it was making it look as clean as I could. The transceivers are pretty well hidden under the front seats. I had to move them from under the rear seats because they took up too much space. I am much happier with this setup. From left to right: UHF XLT-5000, VHF XLT-5000, Yaesu FTM-300DR VHF/UHF w/Crossband Repeater & APRS, Yaesu FT-891 HF. It may seem odd to have 4 transceivers in 1 vehicle, but they all serve a specific purpose; each a role that none of the others can fill.

I have had a lot of people ask me about affordable Watt/SWR meters and the SureCom SW-102 comes up a lot. It's not my first choice, but the SW-102 can be a good, inexpensive meter. It is not exactly calibrated from the factory. It is really close in most instances I have seen, and "close enough" for most uses in the GMRS community. In this video, I calibrated the SureCom SW-102 against my Daiwa CN-901. Out of the box, the SureCom was within a couple of watts (a little lower than) the Daiwa. Also, the SWR was only 2 points off. Even after calibration, there is only 1 point variation. I adjusted the UHF power, as shown in the menu at the end of the video, line 5. When you adjust the power reading, you are taking power away from the reverse power value and adding it to the forward power value. This is the way the SWR reading is calibrated as well. In my case, out of the box, the SW-102 showed 41w compared to the CN-901's 44w. The SW-102 showed an SWR of 1.4:1 compared to the CN-901's 1.2:1. Honest, anything under 3.0:1 is safe to use and anything under 2.0:1 is in the "good" category. An SWR of 1.5:1 or better is considered great. Based on the differences both before and after calibration, and price points of $50 vs. $300, I would be confident in recommending the SureCom SW-102 to use as a tool that is definitely "good enough". Don't let Perfect be the enemy of Good. If you have any questions, let me know.

Bring your vehicle out and have your mobile radio checked out! We will check your power output, antenna tuning and the antenna system SWR. Along with testing your systems, we can make recommendations on improvements and if the opportunity exists, help make some improvements. We are going to meet in the Target parking lot, on the far end away from the building, near 5 Guys (shown in red circle). We'll bring out a table, canopy and some tools. Let me know if there are any questions.

I feel attacked!!! LOL

QFT!!!

Programar utilizando Bluetooth no es lo mismo que usar un cable y Chirp o RT Systems. Solo se puede crear, eliminar o modificar un canal a la vez. Debe conectar su teléfono mediante Bluetooth y utilizar la aplicación para editar el canal. BTech tiene el manual en su sitio web para que lo pueda descargar. También puede comprar el programador universal Tidradio, como mencionó @Sshannon. https://baofengtech.com/product/gmrs-pro/

Congratulations... you wrote the dumbest thing I've read on the internet today! You should be proud. You beat out a lot of competitors.