marcspaz

@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.

I don't understand what all the commotion is about. Talking to people is way overrated. Most of the time I can't stand talking to people I love. Never mind strangers on the radio. You guys are weird.

I am pretty sure they don't not have any.

Email is fine and all, but why would you want to limit yourself to a single person? The information and guidance you are looking for is here in this forum. No one person knows everything. However, the shared knowledge and experience of the group is limitless. There are several engineers, technicians and and self-taught operators on here that really know their stuff. And trust me.. we will call each other out and sort through it, if there is bad information put out there. OffRoaderX gave you a great answer. Take his advice and confirm you don't have receive tones set. Also, if you are in or near a home or building or in a vehicle, you may just be seeing random radio noise (called RF Interference or RFI), tricking you into thinking there is activity. This is especially common near charging bricks/wall warts, computers and 9v cell phones.

@Sbsyncro It is not possible to enable and initially program the MXT500 "unused channels" 8 though 14 via FPP. Those channels can only be initially enabled and setup via the programing software (Windows compatible and free from Midland). Once the channel is enabled and programmed, only very basic things can be programmed via FPP, such as the tone configuration, bandwidth, power, talk-around, etc. So, programming on the fly is not possible. However, since you know in advance that you are using 15 and 17 as "Club1" and "Club2", there is no reason why you can't accomplish your goal using the programing software to set it up in advance.

Not that I am aware of. GMRS Repeaters are not coordinated by anyone. The FCC doesn't even manage Amateur Radio Repeaters. I'm not sure why someone would say that they are not allowing any new repeaters, when the FCC never processed approvals in the first place.

Looks like a great, non-invasive install. I hope you have a good time with it!

Ah, yeah, all that makes sense. A third hole seems like the best option. I have used screwdriver antennas on lip mounts while stationary, but I would not drive with it on one. A solid body mount is really needed. I have used a Little Tarheel 2 and a Diamond SD330 HF screwdriver. They both work great. I wanted to try the Baby Tarheel, but they are out of stock everywhere. I can't even find another Diamond.

This is just my personal opinion. Unless you have a mobile high gain / beam antenna setup and plan on working world-wide FT8 while mobile, I wouldn't waste 10 cents on a 6m mobile. In the 20+ years I have been in radio, I have made exactly 1 voice contact on 6M that was past LOS. If I count FM repeaters, there were 2 contacts in 20 years. And even with 100w, my LOS is legit about 2.5-3.5 miles around my home. If you really want to talk while noodling around... get a 20m or 40m mobile. 20m is fantastic as far as users and mobile antenna efficiency, but fades faster after sunset than 40m. I personally have the ability to run everything from 160m through to GMRS in my Jeep, with only 2 radios and 2 antennas, swapping mono-band HF antennas depending on what band I want to work. If you really want to do it anyway, I would use 2 radios and antennas. Put the 6m antenna in spot 2,using a UHF mount and a Diamond HF6FX Monoband Mobile Antenna. Out of all the mobile antennas I have used, this is the one that I had the best luck with. Its the only antenna I made a long distance voice contact with, and on FT8 I worked 40 countries when the conditions were good. Also, unless you are going to keep power around 5w, you're probably going to have to keep whatever radio you are not using, off while talking on the other. If you want to do it all with 1 radio and 1 antenna, get a Yaesu 8900 (discontinued radio) or a clone of it, and a Diamond CR8900A antenna. It is pretuned to give best bandwidth and VSWR over the FM portions of 10m, 6m, 2m, and 70cm. It's not really usable for the Data/SSB portions of the 6m band without a tuner.

@HCCFCA This looks like a great source and advertiser/supporter of the site, too. https://www.buytwowayradios.com/tram-1126-b.html @wayoverthere no doubt. 410MHz-490MHz is outstanding.

Tram 1126-B works fantastic and is very low profile. I have been using it for years and love it.