marcspaz

I made a special EmComm rig with two Campbell's soup cans from the '70s and 5,000 feet of Spider Wire.

I have had to separate some handheld radios as much as 100+ feet to stop the desense. If you're running more than 1w-2w, you may need more distance than what you're currently doing.

Yes, this is exactly what you want to do.

Understood and makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the explanation and agree with you.

No worries my friend. We all had to learn somehow. I'm still learning new things. No need to apologize. So, a carrier squelch is just the regular squelch that you adjust to stop the hash noise from coming over the speaker. It won't let any audio come through until a signal is received that is strong enough to break that squelch. So, the repeater requires both a signal that is strong enough to break the carrier squelch, and it needs a tone to be embedded in the signal to open its receiver. You radio has the same ability. If you don't enable the tone squelch on your radio, it is simply relying on the signal strength to allow audio to come out of the speaker. This way you can hear every station. To do that, set the radio to use Tone (TN) instead of Tone Squelch (TSQ). This will transmit the tone to unlock the repeater a d let you hear everything. If you use Tone Squelch (TSQ), then the radio only unlocks when the repeater (or another radio) transmits that same tone. I hope that makes sense.

Use the two radios to talk to each other directly to make sure the audio works. If it does, and you are bringing up the repeater, it could be that your signal is too weak and people can't understand you. Another possibility is That some repeaters can have multiple tones options enabled at the same time. If other are using a different tone squelch, they may not hear you. If they are not using a ti e squelch, but transmitting a different tone than you, you wouldn't hear them reply. After you do the simplex test (radio to radio) try programming the o e that does reach the repeater to only use a carrier squelch, but transmitting the proper tone. This way you will hear all traffic on that channel.

I would recommend at least watching the video before commenting on it. The problem discussed has nothing to do with a radio, but the fact that all parties involved did a very poor job of communicating and coordinating with each other. Taking unprovoked digs at Hams for no reason is in poor taste, too... though I'm not going to try to tell you not to share your opinion... I'm just mentioning it.

Holy sh!t... I am in love. That is by far the hottest, most sexy non-Rubicon I have ever seen. Please ask her if she into fat, old white guys. Kick in the part about being rich and looking for a third. That might help. My Gladiator and Wrangler are getting bored and lonely in the driveway, and the Mrs cleared getting a new toy.

Unfortunately it's completely legal. Many businesses do it to get around the high cost of getting business licenses and quality commercial gear. The upside is that the range usually sucks since most of them are using FRS radios.

Did WRKW566 get banned? All his posts are showing up as "guest" on my end.

Based on the understanding that the radio role is defined by its use (which I know both of you understand) I would think that something like two homes with beam antennas setup to talk exclusively to each other would be a great example of 'fixed stations'. It's important to remember that any radio can be found anywhere in the role/type matrix at any time, by simply changing how it is used in that moment.

Yeah, I mean, if you are trying to use the radio to manage repeaters or links that support DTMF, it can be handy. You can program the repeater controller to only allow specific ID's to connect. So, you can user the ANI-ID as a preamble (BOT) to unlock the remote control, and the release PTT-ID (EOT) to enable or disable a feature. A great example would be to enable or disable a repeater link. It really was never intended for peer-to-peer use.

Bad news... the ANI-ID and PTT-ID are worthless on most amateur and GMRS radios (including the TD-H3) unless you have a standalone DTMF decoder. There is no decoder, built-in or otherwise, that will display the ID on the screen of the radio. So, unless you like hearing sounds like someone dialing a touch tone phone every time you transmit, don't waste your time.

I'd hate to see you spend money on a PC for no reason. I feel like if I was sitting in front of it with you we could probably figure it out. Unfortunately I don't know anything about running the windows OS on an emulator. So I'm really not much of a help there. Even if it's running as a virtual machine through a hypervisor, it should still be able to create serial ports and use the USB ports. We do it on Linux OS all the time.

Works fine for me. Not sure what to say.

In the device manager, install legacy hardware, as mentioned above. You don't need Windows 10.

Okay, im just going to put it out there. If you speak louder into the microphone, we are not going to hear you better. Just stop. Thats not how this works. In fact, the louder you are, the worse the quality is. Again, it doesn't matter what radio you have nor what microphone you have, if we are having trouble hearing you due to a poor signal or some technical issue, yelling at the mic doesn't help. There are exactly 2 times when yelling at the mic is appropriate. One is when the ambient noise level is high and you are trying to make your voice more distinguishable from the background. The other is when you DON'T key up, but you are yelling at the dummy on the other end. In both cases, I recommend you put the mic down and come back to the radio when the issue subsides. I hear this everyday I'm on the radio (and no, it's not because I am the one yelling at the radio). That is why I mention it.

I used to do this for federal law enforcement. Feel free to reach out if you want to know what was being done when I left about 2 years ago.

Man... in my neighborhood, snitches get got! Quick.

The answer to all 3 questions are "just the FCC rules." The long and short of it... the FCC is less worried about the hardware compliance for performance sake and more worried about the end user. Restricting the hardware to help prevent users who are not knowledgeable from getting on emergency frequencies and causing harmful interference is the end goal. There are some other license holders that they are trying to prevent interference with, too... but emergency services is the top priority. There are a bunch of radios that are capable of covering all of the desired frequencies and typically outperform the technical requirements for GMRS and other services, but due to the risk of harmful interference, they can't get certified for legal use.

Give this a watch. It's about an hour, but many people have found it helpful. https://youtu.be/1rZ_oWdls-E?si=Kjnqac1q3oqPvj0i

I'm Marc Spaz, and I approve this message. In compliance with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.

A wise man once said a product or service is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

I mean... I think you asked a good question. But, I'm a radio dork. So my opinion may be a little skewed. LOL

I honestly can't tell is you are serious. LOL Yeah, I giggle to myself when I hear this. Unless I am with other radio dork friends. Then we get a good laugh together. Especially when I hear a guy and his wife doing tests while she is home and he is driving around, and no matter how bad he would sound into the repeater, she would keep saying "the gauge is full, but I can barely hear you. I think the radio is broken." Yeah, that is typically the way I help people. I'll tell the stuff like Loud and Clear, A little 'pan fry' static, about 50/50 SNR, but still 100% understandable, I'm missing words, negative copy. I figure that type of stuff is the most helpful. And of course, that only helps if I hear the repeater Q5 myself. If not, sometimes I just say, I'm too far from the repeater to tell for sure, but it sounds ok."