Papa2118

Thanks all. I'll play with it. Like I say, not a huge deal but was wondering. Makes sense I guess. I found something wonky with the native programming software today where it would write to the radio and some of the settings would be written with info from other cells. For instance, even though everything was right before writing, after the write I found the same channel names would be written to more than one channel or values were being inserted into cells after the write that weren't there before the write.

Picked up a couple F8HP-PROs from BTECH and so far loving the things. What I've found though is I have to use the programming app from BTECH to access all the zones. CHIRP won't do it. It's not a huge deal since the purpose built app does it without issue, but odd since CHIRP has it as a listed model.

Good explanation. I learned something today. Thanks.

I just picked up a Tidradio H8 Gen2 and the best I've seen with it is 6.2 watts with a dummy load. I also see the SWR averaging 4.4 with the short antenna and drops to 1.3 with the supplied 771 and another 771 I had laying around. This is using a PM-100W, which I can't attest to the accuracy of. I've never had one of these radios so can't say if this is typical even though it's advertised as a true 10 watts.

To be honest, other than price compared to other brands that have a few more features, these Samcom's have worked pretty well for my purposes. I'm still considering returning them since I can get something better for around the same price, but the performance and audio quality has been pretty decent. Long term reliability I don't know since I've had them only a few weeks and I'd prefer something I can charge with USB.

Anyway, got it working. Turns out two of the K-12 radios were defective. There are two others that are working fine. The K-12s I didn't buy, nor would I. My grandkids got them for Christmas from someone I don't know on their father's side.

Samcon says the FPCN30A is GMRS type approved. I have the programming software and the out of the box settings are (verified by reading the settings from the radio).

Have done everything suggest and still no luck. I'm seriously considering sending the Samcoms back and getting maybe a couple BTECH GMRS-V2. The BTECH look to be more bang for the buck.

I have a couple Samcom FPCN30a's I'm trying to talk to some cheapie Topsung K-12 FRS radios. Freq (Ch 7) is the same for both according to he chart for the K-12's with 12.5 bandwidth. I have CTCSS and DCS is off on both the K-12 and the Samcom for the channel I'm using. The Samcom visually shows it's receiving a signal when I key the K-12, but no audio is heard. I can't figure what I might be missing.