marcspaz

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.

@nokones i have said many times that there is a huge advantage with CB over FRS or GMRS, because HF has LOS propagation, like GMRS, but also has the advantage of Ground Wave and Sky Wave propagation as well. However, very few people I have met in my entire life, have a properly installed CB. Even fewer have SSB to take advantage of the extra power and sideband performance characteristics. I only know one person (personally) that has an FM CB. Bad performance of poorly installed factory stock AM radios that only put out 1 or 2 watts and 75%-80% modulation on a good day, and the lack of operators with compatible gear for SSB led me to recommend the much more powerful and installation forgiving GMRS. I have an AM / FM CB. Ive done a test similar to what you mentioned, comparing AM CB to FM VHF and UHF. While I didn't compare CB AM to CB FM, my results showed a dramatic range improvement with a 50w GMRS radio compared to my well performing AM CB. Living here in VA, I should try to find some time to duplicate your test, to see how terrain and woods impact performance. I'll have to see if I can get the one person I know with an FM CB to run some tests with me.

Did you drop a video on YT? I saw a few get released in the past few days/week.

They're not outlaws... rule breakers at best, but no laws broken.

Gee... I wonder. LOL

There are two different conversations when we talk about what the FCC might do verse what the rules say. Don't twist the two. We are talking about what the rules say; not what people have been getting away with. § 95.1705(b) states the holder of an individual license to operate GMRS stations is responsible at all times for the proper operation of the stations in compliance with all applicable rules. Also, § 95.1705 (d)(1) says the holder of an individual license shall determine specifically which individuals, including family members, are allowed to operate (i.e., exercise operational control over) its GMRS station(s). You can't accomplish any of that while the radio(s) or the person(s) using your call sign is 400 miles away. The operator must be at the 'control point'. The 'control point' is any location where the operator of a Personal Radio Services station may reliably operate that station. Now, techniques such as 'automatic control' and 'remote control' make it so the control operator does not have to be located at the transceiver and monitoring communications in order to avoid interference and rule violations. However, the licensee is still in constant control as they are considered 'at the control point'.

No one is born knowing anything. We all have to learn somehow. I'm glad you're here an asking questions. You are absolutely on the right track and asking the right questions. There are a bunch of ground plan kits for sale that are tripod mounted for portable and base station use, which sounds like what you really need. As someone mentioned earlier, you could also use a magnetic mount and a large (for stability) pie/cookie sheet as well. Have fun! Experimenting and finding what works best is a big part of the fun for me.

It varies based in antenna design and frequency. If you have a wire/rod antenna that is a quarter wave length of the desired frequency, ideally a disc that is about 1/8th wave radius (1/4 wave diameter) at a 45⁰ downward angle (like a cone) would be good. The closer to perpendicular or parallel, the longer/wider the ground plane would need to be. If you are using wire/rods for a ground plan, the length rules are the same, but the more elements you have, the better performance will be.

An RF ground plane is a conductive surface that serves as a ground reference point for radio frequency signals in antennas. It provides an electromagnetic reflection of energy to complete a portion of a radiated signal.. and is often an electrical ground, as well.

We have a group of radio dorks around DC and Northern Virginia that are on the GMRS repeaters just about every day. I call it "the going to work show" in the morning and the "going home show" in the evening. Great group of people. That said, it's a little burst. Everyone knows one another. The rest of the time, it's pretty quiet. And we have close to 4 million people in the coverage area. I would assume the total number of licensed operators around a group of 200,000 total citizens is pretty small. So I'm not surprised it's quiet for your area.

I have made several new friends due to my involvement with GMRS as well, but it truly is a "bring you own contacts" type of service. With roots in business and family purposes, it never really was for socializing with strangers or making new friends. While that is an anomaly among us radio dorks, it doesn't account for much activity, nor much of the growth in user base.

Do you have a single technical point supported by repeatable recorded data that disproves the fundamentals of physics as we understand them today, which were largely established in the 17th century and agreed upon by physicists worldwide for 300+ years? Or do you "just know" the earth is flat and we should take your word for it?

@LeeBo I found some genuine humor in that last line. It definitely had me chuckling. You are experiencing an odd situation with that mountain, for sure.

I know you are new, and I want to cut you some slack, but your post is so incredibly wrong that I can't let it go. We are talking about physics, not opinions. Radio waves generally do not travel far through the ground. A few meters at best, and it doesn't matter how much power you throw at it. Soil, rock, and other dense materials will either reflect (most common) or absorb radio waves. The distance the waves travel through ground depends on several factors, including the frequency of the waves, the conductivity and composition of the ground, and the moisture content. Absolute best case, low-frequency radio waves (e.g., Very Low Frequency, or VLF, 3–30 kHz) can penetrate several meters into the ground through materials like dry sand or soil. As the moisture level increases, the distance decreases. High-frequency waves (e.g., Medium to High Frequency, MF to HF, 300 kHz–30 MHz) penetrate the ground poorly and are mostly reflected at the surface or absorbed with penetration being 3 meters or less. Going to VHF or higher, we start measuring the penetration in fractions of a meter. Now, when it comes to radio waves flowing around objects (for lack of a better expression), there is a little bit of truth to that. Think of it like a shadow. When the sun is blocked by and object, there is not absolute darkness in the shadow. There are photons scattering all through the atmosphere, illuminating the blind side of an obstacle. However, there are no radios that have the power of the sun behind them. The energy that scatters around objects like buildings or hills is extremely minimal, and the closer to the blind side of the object, the less the saturation is. Kind of like a shadow being the darkest at the base crease of the object blocking the light.

@Raybestos integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is looking. I try to have integrity, but we all have moments of weakness. I didn't write the rules. Like many others, I just interpret them the best I can and honor them with all the integrity I can muster.

Yeah... refraction and scatter are why the RF horizon is further than the visual horizon. Once the photons overcome refraction and start to leave the atmosphere, a very small percentage of the signal is scattered, while most keeps traveling in a straight line. The more power you put out, the more the parts per million the scatter is and the more easily the signal can be pulled out of the atmosphere beyond the line of sight. Using troposcatter with a stacked beam antenna array and 1,500w, I have been able to talk to people in Texas from VA on 146.520 during contests and Field Day. UHF performs the same way. It's been awhile... so I don't remember the max distance we got on 446.000, but it was more than 300 miles.

Yeah, I was thinking about knife edge refraction as well as troposcatter.