marcspaz

'Tone' transmits the tone to open the repeater receiver, but your radio doesn't require the tone to be transmitted back in order to open your squelch. 'Tone Squelch' will open the receiver of the repeater and require the tone to be embedded in signals you receive in order to open your squelch. Normally, I don't use tone squelch so I can hear everyone, instead of just repeater traffic... assuming the repeater passes or transmits a tone to begin with.

Looks like 10m is doing well tonight. I made multiple contacts around 500+ miles with 5/9+ on both ends.

I do something similar to RCM. I like 445.000 through 447.000, which is coordinated for auxiliary and control links, repeaters and simplex.

G, here is a good link you can use. It will help you understand how a horizontal quad loop works, why its omnidirectional, and why there is such good natural noise reduction in the design. I am building this to scale for 80 meters, but you can easily build a VHF version. My friend has his fed with ladder line in the corner closest to his house and its 35 feet off the ground, due to the frequency its being used on. You cut the ladder line to length for tuning the SWR, as the ladder line is part of the antenna design. http://www.caarc.ca/articles/horizontal-quad-antenna

G, what dictates polarization is size in wavelength and physical orientation. A full wave is omnidirectional.

Some makes/models VNA have digital volt meters built into them and some have directions on how to use an external digital volt meter while the VNA sweeps. You would have to look at the directions for the VNA. The ones that use an external meter should have a clearly marked port.

Hey, G... Do you have a meter that can read 0.XX μV scale? I thought you told me you have an analyzer and the voltage was low. Is that correct? If so, what is the voltage reading going into the radio from the antenna transmission line, without the preamp? The filters help eliminate noise if you have poor selectivity, but the preamp is to help poor receive sensitivity or high line loss. Most good receivers will have a receive sensitivity of 12 dB SINAD on a signal that is 0.25 μV. Some are 12 dB at 0.20 μV or better. If the voltage on the antenna line (at the radio input) already meets or exceeds the radio requirements, the preamp won't do anything good. They are typically for signal loss due to high loss lines or signals filtered/trapped excessively. You may be better off with a 5/8 wave. Do some research on the antenna takeoff angles of specific antennas you are interested in. In the same way that high gain antennas are more narrow with regard to their usable frequency, some antennas tend to radiate up and out instead of down and out. Also, have you considered a vertical dipole? Or a loop? They are very easy and cheap to make... so you can experiment. Full wave loop antennas are true omnidirectional and fantastic with regard to receive sensitivity. I am about to build one for 80 meters after seeing a friend of mine a few miles away from me have full-quiet conversations with people I almost could hear at all.

If @WQEJ577 can move this to Private Discussion we can discuss actual locations and possible POC's, etc.

There is always topic drift in any forum thread. Nature of the beast, I'm afraid. And this thread has been derailed since post #2. Ian ask if anyone had experience with a RT76 and no one answered that question. Instead, responses drifted all over. For what its worth, I have no experience with the RT76. I am tired of cheap radios and don't want to roll the dice anymore. I can't provide any feedback beyond that.

True... I misspoke. Regulations are still rules published in the Federal Register by the FCC (and other federal agencies) for the purpose of enforcing statutory code. It is the legal guideline used to establish precedent. A good example is, the Bump Stock ban from the BATFE. The statutory code defines what a machine gun is. However, the regulations published by the BATFE redefined what a machine gun is. The bump stocks are now included in the definition of a machine gun via regulation, thus, now a federal firearms felony to own a bump stock. The regulations still carry the weight of law.

I'm not disagreeing with you there. That seems to be normal behavior in the real world. There are dozens of repeaters near me that are open for public use and only 2 of them self-ID (both in 20wpm CW). The issue is, legally, the statute regulation is very plain language. If its my repeater, me and my immediate family use the repeater... no need for the repeater to ID. If another licensee uses my repeater, than the repeater must ID with my station identification. The only legal exception I can think of would be a grandfathered GMRS station license. If a Trust holds a license and the Trust bi-laws states that anyone who uses the repeater is formally a beneficiary of the trust while using the repeater, than there would be no ID requirement. (All purely hypothetical, BTW... just thinking about a legal exemption.) Just a little understanding of why I am saying what I am saying. I studied Constitutional Law for 7 year (2 in college and 5 years of independent study) and I have spent years helping both write pro-2a Bills and fight anti-2a legislation. I am looking at it purely from a statutory prospective based on my training and experience. That said, the FCC has the discretion to prosecute or not. If laws are widely broken or those infractions are largely ignored by law enforcement, that doesn't make it legal, from a statutory standpoint. A great example would be CB radio. Maximum legal power on AM is the mean carrier power must not exceed 4 watts and its strictly prohibited to use any external amplifier of any kind. That is the statute. In reality, I don't know a single person who owns a CB that is running less than 30 watts without an amp and less than 200 watts with an amp. Most CB operators I know have amps that are well over 2,000 watts. Thousands of people are talking DX for 1,500 - 2,500 miles, every single day on CB. Yet there is no known FCC enforcement that I am aware of, on any of these people who violate the law, and its all the same people for decades. That doesn't mean its legal. It just means the FCC is ignoring it, for the most part.

The way the law is written, if the owner of the repeater and family members covered under the license are using the repeater to talk to each other, then there is no need to have the repeater transmit a station ID. Of course that assumes everyone using the repeater is ID'ing correctly. When the repeater is used to retransmit comms from other operators (not the owner), then the repeater needs to self ID with the owner's station identification using voice or CW.

I laughed pretty hard when I read this line. Mostly because the same guys I heard say that, are sitting on one HF frequency, talking to the same 3 guys all day, for 20 years. AND, they only ID maybe once every 2 hours and God forbid someone is on the air, tying up "their frequency" when they what to get online and BS for 5 hours.

The radio was only a few days old when it broke. The Ham Radio Outlet gave me a brand new radio and sent the damaged one back for analysis. It may be a month or so before we hear back. They may never tell me what the result is... but at least the HRO took good care of me.

Looks like the TM-8402A might do the trick, and cover Ham UHF, too... but the price is high on some of these.

That's my recollection in the Ham world too. If you didn't have a Yaesu, you made a mistake. That was 18-20 years ago. You can't imagine how disappoints I was when both of my FT-8900's broke and the fact that I am on my second FT-857D because the first one had the PA's catch on fire. I still have massive RFI on the FT-857D that is installed in the truck. I can't use 60m or 10m because of it. I bench tested the radio with a dummy load and everything was fine, so its RFI due to radiation exposure from the whip. It's driving me nuts... I can't fix it and Yaesu is stumped, too.

Wow... refurbished might be a way to go. I just don't want something DOA and be out of luck. As long as its clean and I have some recourse if there is an issue, that would be good. You are correct to a degree. While Motorola never owned Yaesu directly, when they acquired majority shares in the Vertex Standard label, they didn't take sole ownership. They continued to work with Yaesu to develop and sell products. While Vertex Standard was defunct in 2011(2012?), Motorola is currently actively selling new parts and products with the V/S Vertex Standard label, specifically and exclusively to be operated with Yaesu amateur radios. A good example is the Yaesu FT857D and the Yaesu FC-40 Antenna tuner. Brand new FC-40's are being manufactured today, exclusively by Motorola, shipped to customer in a Yaesu labeled box/packaging, but the device itself has exclusively Vertex Standard labels on the product. The tuner ONLY works with some Yaesu amateur radios. There is definitely an active and ongoing relationship between Motorola and Yaesu, via the Vertex Standard label.

I would agree that a lot of people feel that way. However, there is a tremendous amount of tech and protocols to discover with a Tech license, too. If you spend a lot of time in the upper end of VHF and UHF, you are dealing with line of sight services. Moving voice and data via RF linked networks and being a part of that systems can be a great time. Designing mesh networks and flowing email and other data is fun too. On the high side of HF (10m) and the low side of VHF (6m) you can still talk all around the country as well as making some international contacts using simplex comms. I think many Hams will say that the "hobby starts" with the general and advanced licenses because they never really had an interest in pursuing the great opportunities that entry level licenses provide, either because they don't know those options are there or they didn't see the potential. However, once you have easy success with the low side of HF (80m and 40m) and the high side of MF (160m), it encourages people into getting into other protocols and activities that also exist in the Tech class privileges. I have to admit, the main reason I wanted to upgrade my license was so I could talk simplex to my friends in South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Arizona and Rhode Island. However, being able to talk to people in New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Spain, Central and South America as well as all over Europe, direct, and with just 100 watts and an omnidirectional antenna is a nice plus! The HF equipment is a lot more fun to use too.

Okay.. cool. I'll consider a referb if the price is right.

That's great! I heard a couple of QSO's on a linked net. It's awesome seeing and hearing the kids talk to Santa. Good luck on upgrading to General. I did it a few months ago. Well worth the effort. I love talking on the lower HF and upper MF frequencies. You will really enjoy it.

I have looked at the Alinco and AnyTone radios. Their prices are okay, but I am trying to stay away from Chinese radios. I am not 100% ruling them out. Thank you! I hope you had a Merry Christmas! Vertex Standard, Motorola and Yaesu are all the same company. I have 4 Yaesu radios and every one of them has broken on me in the past 4 months... the vendors refuse to exchange them and I had to send them all back to Yaesu for repair. Every one of them had a receive filter failure. One of them is still broken and VS doesn't know what to do to fix it. The one before this one caught on fire while I was using it. I'm not too sure I want to go that route again. I haven't ruled it out... but consideration is very weak right now. The Kenwood looks pretty nice. I did a quick search and all I am finding is used and refurbished. I'll reach out to a local authorized vendor next week and see if I can get some pricing.

I am starting to do some research for a new radio. I am tempted to use my MARS/CAP hardware. However, I would rather have a Part 90 radio, since they seem to be widely accepted (at least anecdotally) by the FCC for use in GMRS, and MARS/CAP gear is not Part 90 or 95 approved. Does anyone have a lead on new Part 90 mobile radio's I can use for GMRS... like, current production line from a manufacturer? I am trying to stay away from legacy models and used radios. I definitely don't want a CCR. As it stands right now, the Icom F6021 looks like a nice option. I found a few older posts about them. Does anyone have any recent experience with that model? Are programing cables and software easy to find? Some of the sites I have looked at seem to be showing a USB to RJ45, but Icom shows a serial bus connector (like DB9) on the radio. Any other current production radio recommendations? I have just about had it with my Midland MXT400's. I sold 2 and have one left... I'm going to dump that one soon, too. My one and only problem is, I hate having to constantly manually change my tone configuration as I drive around. I have 3 major coverage repeaters near me that work amazing. I can't add any saved channels, there are no programming or expansion options and I can't stand having to set the tone on the radio several times a day as I drive around. If it wasn't for that, I would be happy. So, a multi-channel programmable radio is a must.

As RCM mentions... just set the proper offset and tone and you should be good to go. I would recommend checking the SWR. Many dual-band antennas do not go all the way to 470 MHz, but rather, are not rated above 450 MHz. BTW... I looked up the mini 8900 because I haven't heard of it before. Wow, that thing is tiny! LOL I hope you have good luck with it.

You have to select a channel and then manually engage the code/tone scanning feature.

I can do it after New Year's day. But my equipment is very old and doesn't have any computer interfaces... so I can only provide data... no images like what Corey gave us in the past.