kidphc

Not sure what is going on with your antenna. Maybe a short in the coax or bad nmo. What does your SWR look like, only reason I ask is because the antenna is supposably rated for 120w. Could just be a cheap chinese antenna, knowing Midland probably is. As far as the DBI goes I wouldn't strain to much on that. You probably wouldn't even notice the difference between the 6dbi and 5.5 dbi. What power level are you running at?

Personally, I just assigned unit #'s for the radios. Although my family just adopted which radio they were on as their personal unit number. For instance, wife gets referred to as unit 2, oldest child unit 3. So a call out over the radio (simplex or repeater) is "XXXXX(CALLSIGN) UNIT2 this is XXXXX Unit 3. Works for me and my wife, since she doesn't want names out over the airwaves for the kids.

Just went to O.C. this week end. Got nada from the inlet. Didn't get any repeater tail or anything. With a chinese ht with NA771 GMRS-V1 with NA 701c

Thanks.. More of a sweat fest because of the mentatility going in. Took longer to get test session setup them me actually taking the test.

Pretty much how I look at it. Wife has been preaching to me for years about change yourself, you can't change anyone but that. Side story: In the D.C. area it is pretty much dead for simplex/repeaters on 2m and 70cm bands also with GMRS and CB, well at least up by Rockville. Spoke to a ham in my neighborhood for about an hour. Asked him if ham was really dead. He turned on a radio onto 70cm and started scanning simplex, turned on another radio and started scanning all the memory repeaters. 45 minutes of scanning and nada while we talked. Before I left he turned on a DStar radio it was just constant talking. His words were basically, it's not that we aren't out there. A lot of us are on different modes. Adjust your frame of thought a bit. The hobby is still alive and kicking just FM in our area is pretty quiet. I should add the Technician test is pretty easy. I personally, think I could of taken the test with about 3 days of study. Unfortunately, couldn't match any test times. Which resulted in a 3 week study time.

Thanks.

Looked at offroading there. Unfortunately, with a young family. Some hobbies are not in the plan. We do have land out in West Virginia so we get our kicks heading up to the mountains. George Washington National park (fire roads), our personal mountain range (well a portion of it) out on New Creek Mountain, as well as several runs out to Assateague's beach. I do hope to do a Flag Pole Knob run and camp in a couple of years. Think I might have the burb ready for some light rock crawling and SOTA at the camp site by then. First gotta pass the Tech on Saturday.

Speaking of that, when I was in high school we use to run down to the power lines. There is a substation not to far from the house. We use to grab fluorescent tube lights and walk under the power line to light them up. Until, we thought about how if there was enough stray electricity floating in the air to light the bulbs up, it probably wasn't a good idea to be walking around there for any amount of time. Google map of lines, the long open green path.

Our neighborhood has most of the electrical underground. Except, for the transformer pedestal 50 feet from my front door. Not much in the way with interference on GMRS, 2m and 70cm bands. Although, I mostly just listen. So I couldn't tell you how it affects transmit purity. One of my neighbors a couple of blocks over has his long wire slung in the trees. He doesn't have any complaints on any of the bands. Well I take it back, he was complaining about all the vegetation interfering with his satellite play time. http://k3rrr.com/ Now the plethora of Plasma screen T.V.s in my neighborhood make trying to listen to HF with the SDR is another story. Should mention I have neighbors up real close to all sides of my house. Close enough my kids watch his living room T.V. from our living room.

Flew RC Heli for many years, I found the dean connectors a pita to solder. Often depending on the angle and length of wire there was excessive strain on the solder joints for the deans. They were a real pain to disconnect if you were even a bit sweaty. I switched to the Anderson Power poles when my setups for the helis started venturing into high voltage systems. I found that wicking the lead, then crimping then running a bit of solder worked the best. Plus you can slide them together to form a "T", use roll pins to lock them side by side or buy a plastic connector to lock the ends together. I've actually hot glued some to parts to secure them. The only real negative I found was the length of the connectors when connected.

Always learning something new. Now I need to do some more reading. **** update Figured it out, I was just fat finger the columns in CHIRP.and missing the column on every click. It was just an ID10T error.

If you are trying to do split tones the Btech radios don't seem to be able to do it. While requesting access to repeaters, I have only come across two that have had split tones, so not common at all. One of them, didn't have a tone on the input, it did have a tone on output, which I thought was weird. Not really sure what the site owner was thinking about, or is trying to hide actual tone input. As far as making the off the shelf radios useless it isn't entirely true. If you have a dual monitor capable radio (Btech GMRS-v1, you could set the input with the tone to channel A and set Channel B to the output using carrier squelch.

Pretty standard for multiple companies in the same industry to be owned by actually only and handful of parent companies. Food in grocery stores, electronics, software etc... In the US car industry there are only really two manufacturers of battery cores, same with gas only a handful of refineries and the distribution network is becoming a monopoly at this point. The gas you buy at Shell, BP, Costco really only differ in additive packages, added at truck loading and where in the storage unit the fuel came from. The cheaper the gas the more likely the containments. Since, it is most likely coming from the bottom of that gigantic storage unit when it is almost empty. I wonder if the price mark up is the distribution markup combined with FCC certification and Midland's own markup. Esentially, I wonder how much of that $130 or so price difference is markup vs added cost from FCC cert.

Just had a power outage and lost all my long winded response. Here is the short. Thank you Corey for taking the time to answer the questions for me.

Corey I am still a bit new to the radio world. Those attic mounted antenna attract lightning? If it does how does the lightning grounding work?

I agree so far they have been pretty good with their support at least with my couple of experiences with them.

Hopefully, you can PM me a e-mail address. So I can send you an e-mail when I head up into the Ocean City area.

You could just send the information to me. I can put the information into chirp and send back the saved file. Just keep in mind anything past memory slot 30 is receive only. Then you can at least have a file to look at how it was set. Also seems some locals are willing to come by. Then you can watch the process in person. It's pretty easy to do. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

APRS is essentially automated packet radio system. Think of a TNC as a modem for your radio. You still need access to a 20 or 70cm repeater that has a connection to the internet to send a package out. There are commercially available aprs units with GPS that are really small and used by hikers. some are even connected to the satellites. Others can text and send emails as well as some limited functions with a subscription. check into the earlier congestion of spot. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

I would say that the receive tone is wrong, or improperly set on his hand set. Haven't gotten to play with repeaters with my radios yet.

I had mentioned both before to him. I believe, well in my case it would be cost prohibited. I only say this because he mentioned 6 radios before. I do agree with your post though, from see where he generally lives. Even an APRS system with messaging may not cut it.

I have the gear also. What are you trying to program the NOAA stations?

Ht. Handheld transmitter Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

What radio?

It is quite fine to ramble on. He just sounds like an jerk. For all he knows you have a mother in law there, that you go to visit 2x a month. Asking permission was just a courtesy. Brush it off. There are plenty of awesome repeater operators and folks out there. A lot of the ones i contact just tell me the repeater no longer exist or etc. Their money their equipment. In your terrain you may be quite frustrated with the range of a HT or even a mobile unit. I have you thought of a sat phone or an aprs unit with text capabilities? Although the aprs units (ie. Spot etc) have their own limitations. Personally, I am still working on my bugout gear (three tiered). Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk