GrouserPad

The female where the antenna is to mount into is 3/8”x24 standard thread if that helps.

I’m trying to repurpose the mount because I drilled a big hole in the roof for it many years ago. It’s a killer good setup but I figured there’d be a way to get a gmrs nmo on it or a pl259 on the top of it. I’ll keep looking. Thanks Steve!

Hi again! I have an old truck with this puck mount. Are there any gmrs antennas that would work on it or adapters to get it to work with an nmo mount? I’m kind of struggling with my Google-fu and thought I’d find something easily but am coming up empty. Any ideas? Looking to mount a 5/8 wave to it for gmrs frequencies https://www.icamanufacturing.com/shop/p/fatboy-puck-antenna-mount

I too was looking for base station roof mounted antennas and had your exact question. Ultimately I went with the Retevis ma09 462to467 Omni. It is really broad banded across the gmrs frequency range and has an excellent swr on repeaters and simplex channels. But and this is a big but, I don’t feel it receives distant signals very well and am going to pull it down give it to my mom and put up something better for me. I’m 12’ above my roofline to the coax connection. Ranch. Need to find the best Omni. My search is on. Currently talking an average of 3 to 5 miles home base (4watt tdh3) to my 50watt ocean kg1000 mobile and mag mount mxta26.

Right! My bad. The loading coil is literally at the exact same height as the sharp edge of my garage door seal. Just my luck.

My apologies. I thought this forum was for TECHNICAL DISCUSSION. But if anyone else is cool enough to add their thoughts i would be thrilled. And to add to this thread, the main reason I was looking at removing the whip that came with my mxta26 is mainly because the loading coil catches my garage door and grabs abold of it, the smooth non coiled whip glides right under it. So theres that huge positive! And don't worry Randy, Im not "some people".

Is it not true that loading coils hamper an antennas performance, and in an ideal world one would want to get rid of the loading coils if you could stay resonante, which would cause less attenuation of your signal? Been a long time for me since i studied antenna theory.

Hello again gentleman. Radios are fun and I like to tinker, so I was thinking about pulling my stock mxta antenna and placing a straight whip on it and tuning it for 462.6000Mhz (this channel my family and I use most. My mind tells me the stock mxta antenna is great and tuned to 1.18 in the middle of the gmrs band which if fine for me. But I can't leave well enough alone and I had a spare steel whip from an old wilson trucker antena laying around and its rather long. I ground the base of it down a few thousandths and put it in place of the stock antenna. I cut about 1 1/8" inch off it to tune it with no reflect on my chosen channel. Is there any reason not to do this other than it being a couple feet taller, and more drag on the mount? My thought is without the coil shortening the antenna then this would create more db gain and actually be better performing? It's using my truck as the groundplane and its mounted fairly centered on the top of the cab. Just wanted your thoughts on the matter. My goal was to just eliminate the coil loading of the stock whip as shown below

My experience installing Cb radios in probably over 50 different dump trucks/haul trucks/dozers and excavators over the years (I work construction/trucking and am by no means a rf expert) is that if there was an rf interference issue caused by a machine or trucks electrical system then running the power AND ground straight to the battery was the best option and nearly always fixed the electrical interference. A lot of times tapping into spare fuses for power or auxiliary switches with supplied power nearly always resulted in rf getting into the radios receiver. And on a few occasions I’ve had to run flat braid copper straps to bond the chassis to the frame and this stopped a lot of interference for me too for some reason. I know this goes against what most of you have said above but for 27mhz with cb; to the battery IS the way to go far as I’m concerned.

Icamanufacturing sells an mo219a PUCK mount that is similar to the Breedlove. I have used the previous generation of this mount and it’s still functional and working well 12 years later.

Interesting, to to recap, have you determined if this is RX interference being caused by your vehicles electronics, or maybe a noisy power line transformer close to your operating area? Could be an old street sign flickering outside or a badly shielded electronic appliance that is running in your house. I’ve even seen alarm clocks that “blink” or flash cause significant interference to radios. Just throwing this all out there. Sometimes something as simple as just moving the mag mount to the other side of the cab front to back can make a difference.

THATS IT. THAT FIXED IT! Thank you so much Ripper *fistbump

Yes, all off. Just checked. Thanks.

My Gmrs TDH3: I’ve got menu 36 Sync ON. The radio displays the a/b bands in the bottom left corner of screen. If I select two different channels say for instance; gmrs channel 8 for(a) and ch-011 for(b) then this radio “should” monitor both a and b right?! I tested this theory by taking a separate ht and tx to each channel with the tdh3 on standby and only the selected channel will RX the signal from my other ht. It’s as if the dual watch isn’t working on the TidRadio. Hopefully this isn’t too confusing how I have explained this. Thank you. and may I add on my Baofeng uv5gPlus whatever is in band a or b is always monitored and Rx’s either frequency just fine. And my tdh3 tx’s to it fine and it recognizes the two different channels or freqs quickly. I want my tdh3 to respond the same but it doesn’t. It only Rx’s the 1 channel that is selected by the a/b

If you go ht to mag mount for a vehicle make sure to get the proper sma to nmo or pl259 type connector adapters.

Cool, I’ve read up on the ra87 and it’s a pretty stout fully featured gmrs radio from the looks of it. I need to setup a base annd have another mobile to do and might use that radio to do double duty as a home base and mobile just swap it in and out of spare car when needed.

Ok ok good to know. Thank you. I’m learning so much so quickly. You guys are great !!

Right on. I’m leaning towards purchasing the “Ocean” kg1000g plus from buytwowayradios right now. Seems like everyone loves that radio.

Copy that. Glad yours are setup nicely like that. I am stuck to part95 gmrs gear and I don’t want to be running gear not “certified” for gmrs. Trying to stay as legal as possible. That’s why I am going gmrs to be able to run the 50watt maximum when needed to make contact.

I think I want easier adjustment because I’m looking into a vehicular mobile mounted unit. When traveling it’s rather common to get electrical interference breaking the squelch often enough to be aggravating and a quick reach for a knob is far easier than getting fiddly with menu access buttons and what not. For instance I’ve got a stretch of state route I run regularly that has old powerlines that just bleed noise into the radio frequency spectrum badly…. And when I’m in unfamiliar areas this same type of interference can come and go throughout a days drive. Maybe the higher end gmrs mobile radios are capable of programming a special button to expedite the squelch adjustment process?

I am curious; Why doesn’t it seem any mobile GMRS radio units have a knob dedicated to squelch adjustment. It seems like this would be far more intuitive and useful…. most gmrs units I’ve looked into have a bunch of menu hoops to jump through to access the squelch control gate. And then when you do access it you have to enter your squelch adjustment then exit or save it to see if it’s at the level you want rather than it adjust in real time. Seems like a simple thing that is missing amongst gmrs units. Am I alone in thinking this ?

That makes sense. The local amateur radio club owns the repeater far as I know and does it for a service to the GMRS community as it is listed as open and welcome for use by all licensed gmrs operators. Super cool of them!

I’ve used 2 way communications my entire adult life for work. I’m new to recreational gmrs. Ran radios in all sorts of work scenarios so I guess I’m just unsure of the proper etiquette of gmrs repeater usage as it is new to me. Glad to hear you guys mention that’s what repeaters are for. I kinda assumed they were for making communications when you were in a tough situation and simplex wasn’t enough reach. Maybe I should use my local repeater more. I never hear anyone on it but when I call out a radio check I always get a reply. It’s like everyone is monitoring never transmitting.

Nobody uses gmrs around here that I can tell. I’ve had my ht’s on scan in the car for 2 weeks straight and I’ve heard 2 conversations during my travels. Only way to talk to other gmrs users here far as I can tell is to use the local repeater and I’m Leary of doing that because I don’t want to be rude and tie it up for radio checks and rag chewing.

My opinion on why CB isn’t used is because it’s allocated to a terribly volatile frequency range. 27 mhz is too susceptible to solar skip and this makes the CB incredibly annoying for any individual to use. When all 40 channels are receiving “9db” of a max signal because of radios tx’ing from 1000+ miles away it makes using the cb as a means of local communication absolutely impossible or at best unbearable. I have the patience and “skill” to use cb and get around a lot of the skip most days but that’s because I’m a radio hobbyist to a degree(not an advanced one that is )and I’m willing to learn the details on when the best time to talk on them is and what channels not to pick, as it seems at least half the channels are now designated skip calling frequencies. Anyways that’s my take and as mentioned the antenna length is absurd and nobody wants a 106” whip on their vehicle.