marcspaz

Wow! That looks great and is one heck of a deal! Congrats! Looking forward to seeing the new thread. It was based on signal reports from other stations. As soon as I got the reports, since the radio was nice and cool, I automatically assumed line voltage drop would be the most likely problem. The next thing I would have looked for was SWR (bad antenna ground, etc.). Going back a bit more than 20 years ago, I worked in radiotelegraph. RFI is most frequently caused by either proximity to the antenna being too close, bad RF shielding on the transmission line or improper output grounding. That is not exclusive, but frequent.

I'm so jealous. I was just looking at the FT-857D... but good grief, that is expensive for a mobile. Please let me know how you like it. Especially if you do the MARS/CAP mod. I may pick one up in a couple of months.

I ran a 4 gauge line from the battery, through a 100 am circuit breaker. Then connected it to a 100 amp circuit block, with each fuse bus being rated for 30 amps. From the fuse bus block, I ran 14 gauge. All bolt down except for the fuse itself. I think I should have run 12 gauge, and then I wouldn't see any drop. Its all run through the interior and don't feel like pulling it all apart. Too much work. LOL

If you are new to radio, hopefully this will be helpful information for getting the most out of your radio. Normally, when I install a radio in one of my vehicles, I cut off all the connectors and run my own lines from the battery to the radio. Occasionally, my GMRS radio gets moves between 2 vehicles, so I left the factory T connector on it. Turns out, that was a big mistake for performance. I had a few people tell me that my signal would be very good for a second and then rapidly drop to a weak signal. I ran a field strength test and the voltage would peak at 77.5 V/m on initial key, and almost instantly drop to 65.7 V/m. That is a huge drop. Knowing what to look for, I measured the power from the battery on the cold side of the T connector and it was 14.0v while on stand-by. However, when I key up, the voltage dropped to 12.4v. A couple of times, it dropped to 12.1v. On the hot side of the connector, there was only 0.25v drop on key-up. I cut the T connector off and soldered in some Power Pole connectors, which have more surface area and much higher spring tension. Now, I only have 0.25v drop on the input of the radio and my field strength is holding steady at 77.5 V/m while transmitting. To give you an idea of how much drop that is in usable power, it is the equivalent of changing your antenna feed from about 37 watts to 50 watts (assuming an antenna with no gain and 100% antenna efficiency). So, if you want to get the most out of your radio, ditch your glass fuses (weak squeeze connector) for a blade fuse and replace your factory T connector with either a fully soldered connection or a high quality Power Pole style connector. Note: I could resolve the 0.25v drop if I run a larger diameter power and ground cables... but it's not worth the effort for my application. Hope this helps.

LMRS will never go away... ever. As good as trunked networks, WebEOC and FirstNet are, they will never be reliable because they are all reliant on a single massive infrastructure to exist and be configured correctly to work. Anyone who has ever worked a true SHTF mass casualty, mass municipality response, knows that NONE of those networks work in the affected area. LMRS only requires that an EMP or Nuke hasn't gone off near unprotected radios, and you're moving voice, video and data around the world.

The purpose of Digital Private Line (DPL Tone) is so many "user groups" can share the same channel without causing harmful interference to each other. The technology is extremely proficient at its intended purpose. The radio still receives a signal from a radio that doesn't have a matching sub-tone. The radio just discriminates between received signals and only opens the squelch when your selected code is detected. You can literally have 280 groups on one channel, all having different conversations, and not interfering with each other. Go to a major public event (like a Boy Scout Jamboree) and suddenly, 22 channels is no where near enough. Enter DPL on a modern FRS/GMRS combo radio and now you have the ability to have the equivalent of 6,160 channels. Even at a major event, the likelihood of interference due to things like splash, inter-modulation, etc, is almost zero. Especially when you are only using 0.5 watts of power. I see your point, I just disagree. "Familiar" and "intuitive" are words used to describe ease of ability to naturally understand how something works. That understanding ONLY comes with experience and repetition. No one is born familiar with anything and no one is born "intuitively" knowing how to do anything but suck and poop. Everything else is a learn skill. I already answered that question above (my first 2 paragraphs in this post) How you handle any harmful interference you may cause is up to you. If you don't want to use DPL.... don't use DPL. By no means is the feature "ruining" the radio service. It is extremely beneficial to the radio community and has been for 70 years.

Use of smartphones is way more complex than bubble pack radios. I know plenty of 6 year old kids that can run a smartphone like champs. Adults have no excuses. As far as FRS radio compatibility goes, 100% of all FRS radios are compatible with each other. It is mandatory per federal statute and FCC rule that all protocols must be published before use and strictly adhered to. The original set of continuous signal-controled selective signalling (aka Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System, CTCSS, Tone Squelch) has been published since 1952 with ten code. The last revision was made in February of 1980, introducing the current 38 codes, which still includes the original ten codes from 1952. Today, you would need a working radio that is within months of being 40 years old, before your tone options start to become limited. Even a radio that is almost 70 years old, CTCSS is still compatible with a radio made today. Given FRS was not even a thing prior to 1996... there is zero compatibility issues with any FRS radios from brand to brand and model to model. Also, Continuous Digital-Coded Squelch System (aka CDCSS, DCS, sub-channels) is in the same boat. It was originally released with 38 digital signals, now has 121, including all original 38 codes.

Welcome! What kid of rock hunting do you do? Decorated (painted and hidden) or precious and semi-precious? And yes... GMRS and FRS is way better than trying to yell. BUT... my kids still tend to ignore me on the radio, too. LOL

Forgot to mention... There are very good, legacy radios that are capable of being legally used on GMRS frequencies. However, an overwhelming majority are used. You can find them in good working condition, but likely in need of some minor programing. There are several members who have posted many threads on them. I would recommend joining the forum, reading some of threads and ask questions where/when appropriate. The second generation MXT400 is a good "new" radio, in my personal opinion, compared to other "new" options on the market. However, there are some things to be aware of as far as its limits are concerned. Again, that is discussed in detail in several threads too. Keep in mind that there are two generations/revisions and the first one was lacking reliability in the opinions of many. Myself included.

I can't stress this enough... Radio is not something to do (generally speaking). Radio is a tool you integrate into other aspects of your life to either make those other activities easier, more entertaining or safer. If you are buying a radio as a source of entertainment, you are likely going to be very disappointed unless you're a ham and can find people to chat with around the world. As far as picking a base or a mobile, there are some serious restraints for UHF (GMRS/FRS/70cm Ham/etc.). One is, its a line-of-sight application. If you don't have an antenna that is at least 50 feet higher than the terrain around you... your not talking very far. 100+ would be better. Trees, buildings, hills, etc all cause interference. At ground level, you will get to the horizon line, which is about 3 or 4 miles depending on how tall you are (and what's between you and the other station). As you get higher in elevation, the better your coverage will be. If you're mobile, you can drive to an area where you can get better performance. Some examples would be, at 1200 feet I got a solid 50 miles on GMRS mobile with 40 watts, mobile to mobile. At the same elevation I can also talk to a repeater in northern Virginia with an antenna at ~980 feet, while I am in central Pennsylvania with my 40 watt mobile. Same 40 watt GMRS mobile, but on the blind side of a commercial building, I experience high static mobile to mobile. Normally I can only talk about 2.5 to 5 miles car to car. Just some food for thought. I love GMRS and really enjoy having radio comms as part of my life. I wouldn't discourage anyone from getting into the hobby. You just need to be realistic about expectations.

Welcome! FRS and GMRS is getting really popular in the east coast offroad community too. While the range is not great without elevation, the quality of UHF FM comms is top-notch. Its always good to have a common use radio for brown-fan moments. It may seem like there are not many people out there, but as a former emergency comms person, you will be pretty surprised how crowded the channels get if something goes sideways.

We do things a bit different at my house. My wife and kids ID with our license number, no special designation. We call each other by name. My kids often refer to me as "Dad" while we are talking. Just plain English, normal convos. There is no requirement to ID as anything special "per station", as all stations and users in my family are covered under that ID. So, we don't. Now, me personally, I am the exception. Likely from decades of passing formal traffic and Ham contesting with clubs. If I am talking to my family members on the radio (repeater or not) and someone calls our call sign, my family will NOT respond. Rather, they wait for me to respond. Because I am the trustee/license holder, I will reply "Calling station, this is ABCD123 actual." followed by "Go Ahead" or "You're acknowledged.", and wait for following comms. If I am the only member on the air, I only ID with the call sign. Also, when there are multiple people from the family talking, they clear a frequency with the call sign, and I will clear with the "Actual" designation.

Edit: Jones be me to it. LOL Drawback of typing on my phone instead of the PC. Just briefly, you have the transmit and receive transposed. You want the repeater to listen to 467.575 and transmit on 462.575. Radios that will use the repeater listen on the repeaters output 462.575, but shift up to 467.575 when they transmit. This is how the channel pairs are setup. Also, you will need to tune the duplexer. The band pass and band reject filters are extremely tight. You're either going to need to hire someone with the right tools to do it or spend some decent time and money buying and learning how to use a spectrum analyzer, tracking generator or VNA and some other tools. The only benefit I can think of to having the two units programmed with the same in/out values is that they can switch roles if needed. Such as if a decoder fails or a transmitter final amplifier starts to go bad, you can reverse which system does what job while waiting to do repairs. I have only worked with diplexers which are similar. Hopefully one of our other members with experience with tuning the duplexer can give e you some more refined information.

Yea, lots of vendors use it as a quick method of switching to simplex mode. I think its more of a pain than just switching to to simplex, so I don't use it.

I just said the import agent has great customer service, not a good product. LoL In all seriousness though, what you're saying does not surprised me at all. I had two 50x2's do the same thing. Not a fan.

Okay... so, sounds like you have a defective radio. BTech / Baofeng folks at the SD location are good people. They should be able to take good care of you. They do care about the customer experience, which is pretty cool. I had a problem with a radio that I returned and they snail mailed and apology letter to my house. Please keep us up to date... and welcome to MyGMRS.com!

I noticed that in the first video, the DEC is not set. DEC stand for Decode and ENC stands for Encode. This describes that you are encoding a DPL code into the signal when you transmit, or you are asking that your squelch only opens when it detect an encoded signal, i.e. decoding the signal to open the squelch. If you are not decoding, meaning DEC is blank and not set, that means you will hear all stations instead of selective stations. If the repeater was tripped, you would have heard it no matter what. Also, in the same video, when you transmit, the DEC changes to ENC and shows the proper code you programed. This indicates that either the DPL encoder on the radio is broken or you possibly have the incorrect code. The best way to test this is to get your MXT400, set it to receive on a channel with a DPL set. Set both encode and decode on the BTech and key up the BTech. Even without an antenna, the MXT400 just a few feet away, should hear the signal and open its squelch. Don't try to transmit with no antenna connected to any radio. Though, even if it works, there is something funky going on in the menu that has me concerned.

I watched your videos after reading your post. It looks like you are doing everything correctly. I have good reason to believe your radio is defective. I did comment on your thread, asking if you tried to program it via CHIRP of if you are only using the front panel programing options. It's not likely that CHIRP will help, but it will all but guaranty its not something you are doing.

I owned this radio for a few weeks. I believe yours is defective. You are doing everything correctly. Before you send it back for an exchange, have you tried programing the radio with the CHIRP software?

EDIT: Before all that stuff below, try setting the program to just encode, not encode and decode. The radio may not like the tone squelch combo, even though its a programing option. -------------------- That's odd. Its been a long time since I have used one. I may be thinking of another model, but IIRC, TA is something that typically has to be manually selected and it is selected on the per group basis. If you press and hold the the AUX button (or scan. don't remember), and then power on the unit, that puts the radio in FPP mode. From there you can scan through the menu options to enable or disable TA on a specific group. If that doesn't help, I would see if you can find someone with a working radio and clone their unit to yours. From there, make a backup copy on your computer and then try to mod the image again. Also, what version of Windows are you using? That software was created for DOS and DOS hasn't existed since 1995. If you have Windows 7 or older, you can make a dual-boot computer with DOS 6.0 or 6.1. The command prompt on anything newer than Windows 95a is not true DOS, but rather it emulates DOS. You may be having a timeout issue while programing it due to the emulator timing out. I have the same issue on one of my radios. If I upload the configs once, it fails to set everything. However, if I upload it 2 or 3 times back to back, it works fine. The reasoning behind it is the radio is taking to long to send the kill command, indicating to the software that the programing is done, so the software times out. When you do multiple writes, one after the other, the second and third attempts don't have to do anything but verify the settings are already present. If no change is needed, it keeps going and eventually finishes. The only caveat is, you have to keep it in the programing mode. If you reset the radio and then try to flash it again, its the same as starting from scratch, and it won't work. I am a computer systems engineer with over 30 years of experience. I have been specializing in Microsoft operating systems since 1991. To this day, I have not figured out how to change the TTL in the CMD DOS emulator... so I just put up with it. I hope this helps. If it doesn't, I hope someone is able to get you the support you need. Looking forward to your follow-up. Good luck!

We're good. I sent you a PM.

My condolences on the loss of your grandfather. That is tough for many of us, for sure. You put some pretty personal stuff out there... and I appreciate that. It helps me understand what you are going through. Knowing those things puts some light on what and why. Also, makes it so I wish you success and wanting to point you in a good direction even more. Most of my time on CB is pretty evenly spent on 19 and 28, but 6, 11, 19, 22, and 28 are all usually pretty busy. However, night time it is almost completely dead. Recreational users are mostly day-time and the OTR truck drivers are usually just looking for some quite time at night. I wish you the best of luck. If I can think of anything else positive to contribute, I'll let you know.

Please keep in mind, this is not meant to be belittling or to start an argument, but more to help you find something that will help with a hobby. At one point, I was homeless. I spent years on welfare with a young family. I can relate to being tight on cash and don't look down on or judge people based on their income. However and unfortunately, hobbies are for people with expendable cash and free time. Your career options based on your degree and the state of the economy are not really relevant to that fact. We have to adjust our spare time and entertainment into what we can afford. If getting $400 together is tough for you, I would recommend staying away from anything beyond an inexpensive radio that operates on a spectrum that is in use around you. I have to disagree with a good portion of this. Especially about the "purpose" of CB and GMRS. Depending on what service you are talking about, the purpose is non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, "radio sport", contesting, and emergency communication. Meaning, these services are provided for users to incorporate a common communications platform into your life and life activities, such as the aforementioned. If lack of radio contact is truly your experience, its not the bands or the service you are using. There is a very high likelihood that there are some significant flaws in your radio and/or antenna setup, and I will explain why. I live in Virginia most of the year, but I own a home in Hollywood and have family all over all over Florida, including Jacksonville, Daytona, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Winter Springs, Tampa, St. Pete, and Clearwater. CB and amateur radio are alive and well. I can't speak to GMRS yet, as I haven't been down there since I got my license, but I will be there to check on my house and visit family very soon... so we'll see. In fact, CB is doing so well in Florida that, while I am in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, I talk to guys all over Florida. (one skip hop is about 1,200 miles) When I am local, there is no shortage of people to chew the rag with while cruising down i-95, RT 301, i-4, etc. My best recommendation would be to get online and join local clubs. Find people who are close to you and are in the hobby. This will give you a new group of friends with like interests and likely introduce you folks that are technically skilled and able to help you get the most out of your equipment. Also, many radio clubs in and around each other have events that are like flea-markets, but its all two-way radio related. You can find great deals on some equipment that will run fine. I flip radios all the time because I get board with them or they don't have some feature I thought they did when I bought it. Just my humble opinion. Hopefully some of the things I mentioned will help you find the camaraderie with some local folks and help you enjoy the hobby.

I have been thinking about this thread for about a week. I drive around with my radio scanning all the GMRS (including shared FRS channels). Every day, Monday through Friday, from about 6 AM until about 6 PM (some channels, 24x7) every single GMRS and FRS frequency is in use by at least one business. Some channels are being used by multiple businesses in the same county. Some businesses are using multiple GMRS and FRS frequencies. After noticing this... I came to the conclusion that regardless of the laws and whats permitted, it is really impossible for practical use of GMRS and FRS in my area without causing interference or being the recipient of interference. I know I invested in the gear I have for when we go offroading... but it seems grossly unfair that businesses are using GMRS channel and flooding FRS channels, making it so the service is mostly unusable to a private party around here. Truth be told, using CTCSS (TSQL) and DCS can be a workaround so I can't hear them, but using these squelch methods noticeably reduces the ability to receive weak signals. Of course, this is just a moral opinion and a point of aggravation on my part. I'm done venting. LOL

It's not just wanna-be repeater users either. I was running some tests with two of my radios today. Some guy got on and told me I needed to be "OFF HIS FREQUENCY" by 6:00 PM because him and his friends have a conversation every Monday through Friday starting at 6:00 PM on that frequency. I was a hot second away from using a very poor selection of words to remind him that these are "public" airways and no one has priority unless there is emergency traffic and if the frequency was in use... he could just pick another one. Best part... I listened in on the 6:00 PM convo... they are talking about what they like on their salad. What restaurants have the best salads and salad bars. Dude was going to be in such and such a place tomorrow and wanted to know if anyone know where he can get a good salad... especially with good ranch dressing. Glad they consider a dinner salad priority traffic and tell others to get off "their" channel. Good grief.