Bogieboy01

Welcome from a snowy eastern TN!

Presumably with sharp implements no less....

I was just gonna say this... and program all the channels to the same one.... that way they CANT screw up the channel. That leaves power/volume.

That depends on a lot of factors, as we know with radio, line of sight is huge with any uhf transmissions. If you have line of sight to a repeater on a mountain top 60 mi away, you have a good chance of hitting it, vs a simplex (person to person) transmission thru a mile of densely wooded terrain, theres a good chance you may not be able to make that.

Radio check for clarity of your transmission and ability to hit the repeater is fine, but range check, not so much in my opinion. Reason being (in my opinion) a range check on a repeater is only going to tell you how far the repeater can get out, not your radio.

I have the 2 ars, then i have a pair of ham locked uv-17r, and i have a Btonera bt8000, which is my daily on (sitting on the top of my tool box) at work radio, because, while its physically smaller than the ar5rm, and the uv17, it has a 6500mah battery... which means it can be listening to local repeaters for 3 days straight and still have 2 bars of battery... i also prefer the visual interface on the btonera due to the ability to put both the frequency AND the channel name for both channels. It cost about the same as a tid h3 btw.

I can second the AR-5RM, have 2 of them myself, and can be gotten for about $20 a piece if you are patient and wait for stuff to go on sale at the "river site"

I dont have any hoa concerns as i am in the middle of nowhere, but i have had great luck so far with a "6db" multiband whip with a geound plane added... had it just above the roofline of my apartment in ny, and no at the peak of my shed in TN, and get many fars with my anytone at5888uv. You can also see my cobbled cb 11m whip on a magmount on the roof going ro pick up a big boy cb 10/11/15m antenna tonight though, grabbing an Antron-99 from about 45 min away tonight for $35... then the tower is gonna get built.... because i dont care what the neighbors think....

Over here in eastern tn we just had donut glaze fall overnight... and its already melting off....

That is precisely my biggest gripe with the factory cps as well...LOL so i do the same as previously mentioned, keep a copy of code saved in both chirp and the stock cps

If i were picking from brand new, i would 100% do a 5888uvIII.... i took a gamble on a used one listed as for parts for $50 which turned out to be a faulty fuse was all that was wrong, other than being locked down to the very restrictive first gen software, but was able to get the unlock software for it, so it is getting used for gmrs (dont tell the eff cee cees that its used outside its type acceptance!!! LOL) until i take the ham test....

I ha e both a 778 in my car, and a 5888 (first gen, early firmware, not triband) as my base... love them both, and both are pretty well wide open as far as programability....

The nanovna has a bit of a steep learning curve, biggest being any time you power off and power back on you need to recalibrate your open, short and 50ohm load, and if you change the range, same goes, so if you switch from testing a gmrs antenna at 450-470mhz, and want to test a cb (i do t have a 10m radio currently, still working on a 10m radio and ham license) antenna at 25-28mhz, you need to recalibrate... once i figured that detail out i got my boofwang ar5rm reliably hitting a repeater from 23 mi away once i got the swr nailed to 1:1 for 467.600 transmit... but yeah theres a learning curve, but i wouldnt trade my nanovna for just an swr/power meter.... youre guessing in the dark, it will tell you swr, but you dont know for sure if youre too short already or still too long without being able to see the sweep... i have both the nano and i have a surecom sw33plus... they do thier jobs well, but in my opinion are not interchangable.

I have a pair of these, purchased second hand... LOL some good deals can be had, as i picked these up for $120 for the pair... As for the inverter, its a cheapo from harbor freight... would a pure sine wave be better for rf noise?

My small shack is run soley off solar currently, and have no noise issues (on vhf/uhf and 11m) with anything until i turn on my 600w inverter for the lights..... i think i need to wire up some 12v lighting instead of the previously installed 120v setup that the previous owner was running off a generator... that stinkin inverter runs about s6 accross the 11m band my 620w worth of solar panels and renogy adventurer 30a mppt controller are silent, as in maybe an s1 noise floor on 11m...

Thats why when we moved here, i made sure my wife at least knew how to operate a radio, even if she isnt a radio dork like myself, she at least knows how to use it, and she has an HT with the gmrs frequencies all programmed in her truck... meanwhile i have both an ht and a mobile in my car, and i am about ready to go for my tech license for ham as well, so i have more options for frequencies legally if the need arises....

I live about 45min from where hurricane helene tore thru tn/nc last year.... wiped out all internet and cell service for multiple weeks.... my boss's parents had thier house washed off the side of the mountain they lived on.... i would rather be able to make a simplex contact to a stranger than have a useless dead brick in my pocket...

Very true.... in a true emergency, all the rules effectively go out the window...LOL

If i had to guess it has more to do with power output than anything.... IE, using said 5888 for murs....murs is power limited to 2w... if i recall, (from my 5888 dual band) the lowest power output available comes out about 7w....so grossly over the accepted use case for murs... same goes for the interstitial GMRS channels and power output...to the point i have tx locked on those channels on my 5888...

Very nice setup! I am currently running 2 310w panels on a renogy adventurer 30a mppt controller for my radio shack... have 250a worth of lead acid currently but looking at changing to lithium this summer... also have somewhere around 700ish gal (if i recall correctly) of rainwater collection So far i have not been able to run the batteries out monitoring the radio and powering a 600w invertor for lights... if i try and use a circular saw for a while on the invertor it taxes the batteries pretty hard, but it still will do it...

so true... i am a small engine mechanic... what oil to use and if 2 stroke what mix rate..... great way to stir the pot...

Likely because firearms are an even more devisive a topic than which antenna gets the most fars

good point.... i can say though, that the local telegram radio group i am in (well... was local when i was living in upstate NY...have since moved to TN) had a post sept 18 about it, and i clicked that link and signed on the 18th of sept...

Why was i able to sign the petition before this thread was even created then, with only a GMRS license? That would seem to state you are in fsct, wrong....

The bintolk and btonera versions also have "super mode" that unlocks all of those as well.... have not had a chance to really play around with listening on them on my btonera yet....but plan to once i get my home base radios set up in my man cave shed at our new place...