Socalgmrs

Loads and loads and loads of info on this exact question for this exact radio on this site and others. It seams a few new posts a week come up with issue after issue.

Get a Rubi grid type system (will also hold your phone or gps and a removable face plate radio like a Motorola mcs2000 or xtl5000. As for the antenna for an off road no ground plane antenna and mount it to the bed behind the cab and get a 90deg folding mount.

Mounting it that way if it’s a ground plane antenna your missing 180 deg of ground plane. But if you don’t mind only having 1/2 the ground plane go for it. Or make the wise choice and drill a real nmo mount in the center of the roof.

You can not practically measure swr on an HT. Just do some radio checks with a buddy and see how you sound and how they sound. Thats the best you can do. I’ve found the 771 does best for me. All my hts have them. I hear a guy just about every week on our local repeater trying out all kinds of different ht antennas and from my perspective they all sound exactly the same. But don’t tell him that he gets all kinds of upset. He must spend $100 a week on ht antennas.

A good refurbished windows lap top can be had for less then $100. Many times much less.

I put any radioditty radio right down at the very bottom of the sludge pit with rigged, retivis, woxoun, and midland. Anytone, tyt, heck you can even buy a used used 40w professional Motorola, cable and laptop for less and have an amazing radio compared to a radiotitty. but some people on Here that either don’t really use there radios or have never used a good one. Or some people get paid to pedal junk on you tube loooove radoditty. I do have one truck running a 20v4 and it does get abused alone with all the other radios and never had a problem. Other then the truck is so loud I had to put a Motorola speaker on it.

Midland and others make off road antennas. I have abused the heck out of them with no issues. AND they don’t need a ground plane like a ghost or mx26

That’s one of many reasons why I’ll never own a midland. Gmrs antennas do not need chassis ground. All they need is a good ground plane. Two totally different things. A mag mount t of paint will never have a chassis ground just an fyi.

Sorry to hear about the h8 I wouldn’t want to own one. Is it a gmrs radio? Not a ham? Might be you need to swap it to ham? Or it’s just out of the radios band?

Seriously if it works great. I would not count on it working very long but it may get you through. But for the $530 price tag a good used 40w Motorola can be had on eBay ready to hook up coax and antenna and go.

It’s not Montana but here in the high desert of good old southern crapafornia we still have a bunch on our higher elevations mountains. Usually it hangs around until June or so and shows back up October It’s a nice thing to look at every day.

No you do not need a duplexer. You just need radios that you can put into repeater mode. BUT if you don’t your antennas will need a bunch of vertical separation. The good news is a duplexer takes about 50% of your wattage so a 50w radio with a duplexer is sending about 25 out the back. But then again good coax and a good antenna can make up for that. But if you don’t use a duplexer you’re going to send 50w out to your coax. Sooo…

Anther solution looking for a problem.

Actually what was clairified about repeater linking by the fcc is linked over phone line and internet. It is still and has always been ok to link via radio waves. Just harder and more expensive to do. as far as it being in the rules. THIS right here is why every one needs to read the rules BEFORE paying your $35 fees. When you pay your fees you are swearing to the fcc that you have read AND understand the gmrs rules. Ignorance is not an excuse. Just read. Do your own research. 1/2 the posts on this site and all over the web could be deleted if people would just do research before asking to be hand fed. In this world no one has any excuse to be ignorant in anything.

If you have ever needed to carry a ruck for any length of time you and others would understand my point. If I’m hiking for fun and I just want to hike to the top of the highest peak and talk to strangers I’ve got an ht. It does 60miles easy. If it’s a shtf type of thing I don’t want to waste valuable weight dragging around a radio that will be mostly useless anyway. Your support of this tells me about your life experiences or lack there of. Food water and protection from the weather and people is priority not a useless radio. Besides what type of coax gonna use? Light weight and full of loss? How high and how is an antenna gonna get? one more thing. You’re wearing a bomb. Lithium is not stable. If it charges to much fire. If it discharges to much fire. If you drop it fire. If it gets to hot fire. If it gets to cold fire. See the pattern. Fire bad. So your hiking for the fun of it and you slip and you dont even know you damaged the battery untill your bag is in fire. Then you set the whole mountain on fire. .