marcspaz

@PACNWComms I have a portable repeater to use in the field and a repeater at my house. Neither of them get turn on unless I need to use them and no one outside of my ARES/RACES team and my household members know how to access it.

Did you use the directions on pages 21 and 22 of the manual to program the offset so when you transmit, the transmitter shifts up to 467.7MHz and back to 462.7MHz on receive? If not, that is going to be the issue.

The weather report isn't reliable on any radio. Lol I would see if you can reach the repeater owner to confirm the tone. Also, I am not sure how new you are to using this radio, but are you sure you are on a repeater channel?

Eh... people will get used to it. It's It's good tool to weed out the weak. Have you ever spent any time in court? This is exactly what happens in court. Someone is accused of doing something wrong. The defense team points to the code, rule or Tort Law that exonerates their client. The prosecution points to the code, rule or Tort Law to get a conviction. Many time they are both looking at exact same source and just looking at it from a different perspective or trying to use circumstance change the prism. Then its up to the judge or jury to decide who is right or wrong. Our laws and rule are so convoluted that much of it is contradictory or no longer rational. There is a book you may want to check out. Three Felonies A Day by Alan M. Dershowitz and Harvey Silverglate. The whole concept of the book is that our laws are such as mess that the average person commits an average of 3 felonies a day, while just living a normal life. Here is the Amazon description:

QFT! I have been chatting with folks like Axorlov for some time... I think many of us have figured out when we're messing with each other and when we're serious. Though it may not seem that way to others.

Now that IS a different conversation. It's okay... you guys can call it whatever you want. I know that regardless of any protest here, you at least agree enough that you know what I'm talking about. If you want to call it something other than what the FCC and industry manufacturers do.. have at it. Who am I to judge. LoL

But how can you disagree? They are literal channels on the radio too? Even advertisers call them channels... here is a quote from an advertiser... "This radio utilizes 15 GMRS channels and eight high-powered repeater channels". Regardless of if you find use in 0.5 watts in a mobile or not... it's still a legal option and a channel and totally in scope for a conversation about what channel to use while on the road. May not be a great option, but its still an option.

FCC calls them channels, so I do, too. § 95.1763 GMRS channels., (c): "467 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, control and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels."... "The channel center frequencies are: 467.5500, 467.5750, 467.6000, 467.6250, 467.6500, 467.6750, 467.7000, and 467.7250 MHz. "

@HCCFCA The Tram 1174 (taller of the two) is a half wave antenna and should work fine with the suction cup mount. The 1126B (shorter of the two) will require a ground plane. That means you are going to need to buy a ground plane kit or you are back to a mag mount or lip mount for the shorter antenna. As I mentioned earlier, you may have some luck flipping the upper bracket 180 degrees and getting the antenna over and as close to the roof as possible.

@Citizen Thank you for the question. I can see where is can be hard to track, but hopefully this clears it up a bit. Lets look at a test case, say when we are inside the Earth's atmosphere and there is absolutely nothing in between you and the other station. We could be on top of two mountain peaks, for example. If literally nothing is in the way, including the curve of the earth and all other conditions being equal, watt for watt VHF signals will travel farther than UHF signals. Where the clarification comes in and explaining the real world results above, all has to do with obstructions. Radio waves do not perform the same at every frequency. At some frequencies, signals bounce off of literally everything. At other frequencies, literally every object absorbs the signal. At still over frequencies, the radio waves pass through everything. Then, there is everything in between. At some frequencies, singals will be absorbed by some things, reflected or refracted by others, and still pass through some. So, it just so happens that when it comes to wood and steel (trees and metal buildings), those materials just happen to absorb signals between 130MHz to 300MHz at a much higher rate than a signal between 430MHz to 500MHz. Because their land and surrounding area was a combination of cleared land and heavily wooded, the trees simply cause more signal interference on VHF than UHF, by absorbing more of the signal. So, in that one specific case, UHF was the better choice because of the terrestrial interference. Hopefully that helps a bit. Let me know if you have other questions.

@HCCFCA, the Tram 1174 is a half wave antenna and the bare minimum for an antenna with no ground plane. The 1126B is a quarter wave and requires a ground plane. Based on the pictures you shared, you would need to move the suction cup mount closer to the roof line, center the mount on the window's leading edge and rotate the upper potion that holds the antenna 180 degrees in the mount... making it so the 1126B antenna is over the roof. That may improve the SWR, but the quarter wave will never work as good as the half wave in that type of mount. Even if you put the suction cup on the roof instead of the glass, I think that mount is entirely too tall for a quarter wave antenna. The only other option would be to buy or make an NMO UHF ground plane kit/adapter.

As I mentioned... the concept is in a theoretically perfect scenario. I actually field tested this for a customer while working a proposal. They had a 5 square mile piece of land that was hilly and about 50/50 cleared/wooded. The branch chief insisted that every radio (assortment of HT's mobiles and 3 base stations) were all on VHF. I explained that the heavy woods and metal building don't impact lower frequency UHF as much as the upper portions of VHF, but he didn't believe me. I ended up taking 2 other of my employees and ran field tests around the whole property, and then got out on the road and started a long distance test. Because of the woods, VHF didn't even cover half the property while 5w UHF HTs did. Plus, we put a portable antenna up 40' and hooked an HT to it and could talk mobile to HT to just short of 10 miles outside the property. The VHF radios didn't make it more than 2.5 miles up the road. Moral of the story? Theoretical perfection and practical application are rarely friends. LOL

To someone with no tones set, it may sound like chaos. LOL So, a couple of things. One is, Yes, the strongest signal wins. If someone is talking to you with a tone, your squelch opens and a second or even third station starts transmitting and your radio hears them at about the same receive strength, because your squelch is open you will hear all signals at the same time. If the person you want to hear is far away and another station is close by, the close station can cause enough interference that your squelch won't open when the person with the same tone transmits. Bottom line, if you felt like you had the airways to yourselves, then the tech worked. You were having conversations between conversations.

Generally speaking (terrestrially), watt for watt, the lower the frequency the further the signal travels before it spreads into oblivion. With that understanding, if GMRS and MURS had the same power restrictions, MURS would provide better distance. However, with GMRS, there is more than a 20 dB power advantage. Therefore (at least hypothetically) GMRS is going to be the better option. Now, there is an epic amount of variables that can change those results, but generally speaking...

None of that sounds right at all. A VEC is an Amateur Radio Volunteer Examiner Coordinator and has nothing to do with repeaters. The ARRL doesn't coordinate any repeaters. If the local amateur radio repeater coordinator says an area is saturated and won't coordinate any new repeater pairs in your area, you can still put up an uncoordinated repeater. You just have no bargaining chips if your uncoordinated repeater has interference from a coordinated repeater. And, still, none of any of that is an impact on GMRS because NO ONE coordinates GMRS repeaters. Not the FCC, not the ARRL, not VEC's, not coordinator agencies such as TMARC.

I think you are right about this. I also hear it in areas where there are several repeaters on the same pairs and close to each other. If there are two or three repeaters in the same 30 mile radius that one user could pull up on rCh20 for instance, it helps the listener or the person you are calling know what machine to respond on. My numbers are 328 and my buddy Danny's numbers 976, as an example. So, I'll hear or say something like this on the air... "Danny 976, Danny 976, this is Marc 328 Tampa 675." Which would be me calling my buddy Danny, letting him and other know I am on the Tampa Ch20 repeater pair. This is really common to help people when they are scanning, too. If your rig is not configured to stop scanning when a signal is heard, you know what channel to go back to or what memory you have configured for either that network or direct repeater.

@wrci350 Nice! I had no idea there were base/mobile radios out there. About 3 years ago, I tried to buy one and couldn't locate one.

The Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS) is a free radio service that uses 5 channels in the 151 – 154 MHz spectrum range. Like FRS, the most common use of MURS channels is for short-distance, two-way communications using small, portable handheld radios. Also, like FRS, MURS is restricted to handheld radios. Side note: These channels were originally approved for industrial/business radio service, but now its open to everyone. Free-banding is people buying radios that are unlocked or they pay to have them unlock and just transmit illegally wherever they feel like. Most of the time, they are using either modified CB radios or modified 10m amateur radios and talk between CB and the bottom of 10m. However, as of lately, thanks to the introduction of Baofeng radios they have been popping up on VHF and UHF, too.

Tools like Discord, Slack, etc... are not friendly to searches and historical records. Especially due to storage limits and costs associated with space for text and uploads.

We do? LOL I have been wheeling for over 35 years and I can't find 10 people to agree on what type of radio to use (CB, HAM, GMRS, FRS, MURS, Free-band). You can forget getting most people to agree on a single channel.

Welcome to GMRS and MyGMRS.Com. With only 30 channels in total... GMRS does not need that level of micro-management. The only thing that the GMRS community has agreed upon for a very long time is that channel 20 with CTCSS tone 141.3 Hz is the National GMRS calling channel. It was born out of a nationwide movement coordinated by Popular Wireless, as well as the Personal Radio Association. They came up with the idea of an Open Repeater Initiative, using the standards of channel 20 with tone 141.3 for repeaters. Due to being so popular with travelers, the simplex and repeater configuration became the accepted National GMRS calling channel. Where all the commotion came from with this thread is, some people are not happy unless there is chaos, so they decided to try to change what has been the standard for 22 years. So... there you have it. As far as ham radio goes... I'm not sure about where you are... but I have homes in several states on the east coast and I travel/visit a lot. I am a member of a lot of clubs, too. From what I can tell, from New England to Florida, the clubs really don't have anything to do with what channels are selected for casual chat or call frequencies. However, there is a little truth to local regions coordinating for some things. For instance, my primary home is in Virginia. We have the Southeastern Repeater Association and The Mid Atlantic Repeater Council for repeater coordination. For simplex stuff, ARRL divisions ARES and RACES have established regional simplex channels for specific uses. For example, neighboring counties agree to use specific frequencies or frequency pairs (as appropriate) for Operations and Logistics, Winlink and Packet, as well as specific frequency use for served agencies such as an EOC, the Red Cross or FEMA. This makes it so in an emergency, we don't interfere with each other AND we know where to find each other in an emergency. As far as rag-chew and general mischief, the ARRL coordinated specific frequencies for things like call channels. But in many cases, there is way more than 1 call channel. For example, you have the following call channels in 2m / VHF 144 MHz is for CW Earth-Moon-Earth calling. 144.05 MHz is for CW weak signal calling 144.10 MHz is for weak SSB calling 144.2 MHz is the National Calling Frequency. (usually SSB) 146.52 MHz is also a National Calling Frequency. (usually FM) And that is just the voice and CW stuff. There is even more stuff for digital, Satellite, etc.

You're probably experiencing scatter, diffraction and refraction. Think of it like sunlight. Where an object blocks the sun, there is not pure darkness. In fact, it can still be fairly bright and as you get further away from the object, the more sunlight is seen. Well, due to radio waves bouncing off of dust, moisture and debris in the atmosphere, combined with other elements redirecting the signal, it's very possible and common. If the weather and geomagnetic conditions are fairly stable, it can be very repeatable, too.

@Sbsyncro @IdahoJohn It sounds like you guys lucky with where you drive. To talk 20 miles you need to be 275' above the other radio with no obstructions and 40 miles, you need almost 1,100' of elevation above the other radio. I travel all around the country for work and R&R. Those conditions don't exist in a vast majority of the country. Which is why I asked the question.

I think the absolute most entertaining part of this topic is that (assuming enough people agree to a channel) an assumption is being made that someone is going to be close enough to hear us AND wants to talk. LoL Real question... how many of you have road tested simplex where you frequently drive? I have, and it sucks. Depending on terrain, I get 1 to 5 miles. On the highway, it's usually 1 mile because of the rapid elevation changes and LOS obstructions. I love standards and I would love for everyone or at least enough of us to agree, but we may as well be debating on what the best color outfit is while traveling through a black hole

I would use Repeaterbook.com to find a GMRS repeater and/or an Amateur Radio VHF or UHF repeater around you. In the details page of the repeater, there is a Sponsor field. If it is owned by a club, the club name will be listed. If its private, it will have the private owners name.