marcspaz

Hey Kenny... I appreciate the recommendation, but I will never buy a Rugged Radio. They have such bad products and reputation for poor quality. Everyone I ever knew personally who owned one, it was broken in some way shape or form and none of them ever made anything close the the power they claim... like 4 or 5 watts on max instead of 50w, kind of stuff. Also, that they have been cited for unlawfully marketing radios in violation of marketing rules. I'd rather steer clear. https://www.fcc.gov/document/eb-issues-citation-rugged-radios-equipment-marketing-violations

Well, i got the green light from the wife to build another rock crawler. This one is going to include some nice VHF/UHF comms, too. Just not sure if I'm going to stick HF in it. I feel like I won't need it, unless I'm wheeling with someone who is still running a CB. Of course, I know a few people with CBs, but no one uses them offroad. I am pretty sure I am going to install the MXT500 due to its IP rating. The Jeep won't have any roof or doors once it's done. Shoot, im not even sure if it will have a windshield when it's done. LoL Anyone aware of a different, affordable and readily available GMRS/UHF mobile radio that I should consider? IP66 or better and 20+w? This is what I picked up. 1997 Wrangler TJ. This is roughly what it will look like when its done.

I came home from work, and man, this thread delivered for my nightly wind-down...

The Queen has declared it; so it will be.

Or... you could have just replied 'no'.

I wish I could like a post more than once.

No.

Fantastic! Glad to hear it!

Depends on if they are sitting still or shuffling around.

I made a special EmComm rig with two Campbell's soup cans from the '70s and 5,000 feet of Spider Wire.

I have had to separate some handheld radios as much as 100+ feet to stop the desense. If you're running more than 1w-2w, you may need more distance than what you're currently doing.

Yes, this is exactly what you want to do.

Understood and makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the explanation and agree with you.

No worries my friend. We all had to learn somehow. I'm still learning new things. No need to apologize. So, a carrier squelch is just the regular squelch that you adjust to stop the hash noise from coming over the speaker. It won't let any audio come through until a signal is received that is strong enough to break that squelch. So, the repeater requires both a signal that is strong enough to break the carrier squelch, and it needs a tone to be embedded in the signal to open its receiver. You radio has the same ability. If you don't enable the tone squelch on your radio, it is simply relying on the signal strength to allow audio to come out of the speaker. This way you can hear every station. To do that, set the radio to use Tone (TN) instead of Tone Squelch (TSQ). This will transmit the tone to unlock the repeater a d let you hear everything. If you use Tone Squelch (TSQ), then the radio only unlocks when the repeater (or another radio) transmits that same tone. I hope that makes sense.

Use the two radios to talk to each other directly to make sure the audio works. If it does, and you are bringing up the repeater, it could be that your signal is too weak and people can't understand you. Another possibility is That some repeaters can have multiple tones options enabled at the same time. If other are using a different tone squelch, they may not hear you. If they are not using a ti e squelch, but transmitting a different tone than you, you wouldn't hear them reply. After you do the simplex test (radio to radio) try programming the o e that does reach the repeater to only use a carrier squelch, but transmitting the proper tone. This way you will hear all traffic on that channel.

I would recommend at least watching the video before commenting on it. The problem discussed has nothing to do with a radio, but the fact that all parties involved did a very poor job of communicating and coordinating with each other. Taking unprovoked digs at Hams for no reason is in poor taste, too... though I'm not going to try to tell you not to share your opinion... I'm just mentioning it.

Holy sh!t... I am in love. That is by far the hottest, most sexy non-Rubicon I have ever seen. Please ask her if she into fat, old white guys. Kick in the part about being rich and looking for a third. That might help. My Gladiator and Wrangler are getting bored and lonely in the driveway, and the Mrs cleared getting a new toy.

Unfortunately it's completely legal. Many businesses do it to get around the high cost of getting business licenses and quality commercial gear. The upside is that the range usually sucks since most of them are using FRS radios.

Did WRKW566 get banned? All his posts are showing up as "guest" on my end.

Based on the understanding that the radio role is defined by its use (which I know both of you understand) I would think that something like two homes with beam antennas setup to talk exclusively to each other would be a great example of 'fixed stations'. It's important to remember that any radio can be found anywhere in the role/type matrix at any time, by simply changing how it is used in that moment.

Yeah, I mean, if you are trying to use the radio to manage repeaters or links that support DTMF, it can be handy. You can program the repeater controller to only allow specific ID's to connect. So, you can user the ANI-ID as a preamble (BOT) to unlock the remote control, and the release PTT-ID (EOT) to enable or disable a feature. A great example would be to enable or disable a repeater link. It really was never intended for peer-to-peer use.

Bad news... the ANI-ID and PTT-ID are worthless on most amateur and GMRS radios (including the TD-H3) unless you have a standalone DTMF decoder. There is no decoder, built-in or otherwise, that will display the ID on the screen of the radio. So, unless you like hearing sounds like someone dialing a touch tone phone every time you transmit, don't waste your time.

I'd hate to see you spend money on a PC for no reason. I feel like if I was sitting in front of it with you we could probably figure it out. Unfortunately I don't know anything about running the windows OS on an emulator. So I'm really not much of a help there. Even if it's running as a virtual machine through a hypervisor, it should still be able to create serial ports and use the USB ports. We do it on Linux OS all the time.

Works fine for me. Not sure what to say.

In the device manager, install legacy hardware, as mentioned above. You don't need Windows 10.