WSIU940

Most criminals aren't that smart and most crimes are committed based on opportunity. Most common criminals will look for obvious signs at a residence that the owner isn't home before they ever consider hitting a house. Things previously mentioned like stacked up mail, un-mowed grass, specific lights always being on at all hours, no cars coming and going from the house, no exterior lights on at night, no security system signs, no visible security cameras, no drapes or window curtains, no neighbors out walking their dog or working outside of their own house, and multiple bushes or trees hiding points of access to a residence which may conceal them as they enter and leave. If a criminal does try and plan organized burglaries, all of the above is a sure thing for them to hit a house. Having a house sitter and at least a few of these issues resolved will scare away even the most seasoned burglars because the risk wouldn't be worth the reward. They have no guarantee of the value of what is in your house so it is a huge gamble to hit a house. Rarely anyone who is willing to break into your house is going to use GMRS radio monitoring to determine if you are home or not. I won't say it could never happen, but you are more likely to get struck by lightning during a shark attack.

Thankfully my education as an industrial controls electrician helped me wrap my head around this stuff pretty well. I use to wonder why things like bonding and what not were required when I first started in the career. I had great instructors who broke the ideas down to bite size pieces that were easy to understand and gave examples that supported the "science" of it all.

Bare with me, I will try to explain this as concisely as possible but things are about to get technical. This is by no means every reason as to why you should bond the two systems but here are a few examples. Bonding creates a low-impedance path for lightning to flow to ground which in turn prevents dangerous voltage differences between different parts of a structure or different systems. Bonding reduces the risk of electrical shock to anyone who may be in contact with metal objects during a lighting strike event. Bonding can also prevent an event called a side flash. A side flash is where lighting current jumps from one conductive object to another due to the difference of electrical potential. So one of the reasons why you want to bond to the main electrical system ground (house ground) are to equalize the electrical potential of the radio communications system and its power source. Say there is a strike and the systems aren't bonded together. The lightning strike can jump to or cause what's called induced voltage on any conductive metal objects including piping, wiring, telecoms conductors etc. The earth actually makes for a poor conductor albeit some caveats and special circumstances such as soil composition, soil moisture content, yada yada; on a molecular level, the soil is comprised of elements with few free electrons. Free electrons allow for the movement of an electrical charge from one atom to another. The fewer the free electrons in an atom, the poorer the conductor. Say one system gets an induced electrical charge or there is a failure of one of the systems causing it to become energized with a charge. A charge from one system will discharge to another system that is not bonded, because that charged system wants to attempt to equalize and shed its excessive charge. Atoms want to remain in a neutral state. If an atom has too many electrons, it will dump those electrons anywhere it can, ie. another atom with fewer electrons. In electrical systems, the electrons want to go back to the source which is the main electrical panel or wherever the system is bonded to neutral. if a piece of equipment such as a radio fails and sends line voltage into the coax cable, the earth being a poor conductor will have enough resistance to allow that coax to heat up and not trip the breaker that feeds power to the radio. This will cause a fire since the coax basically turns into a resistive load such as a heating element and so do the conductors in your walls feeding power to the radio. Static electrical charges can also build up causing discharges on sensitive electrical equipment. Say the wind is creating an electrical charge on your antenna and it wants a place to go. If that antenna isn't properly grounded and bonded, it will find a path through your equipment to ground and cause severe damage. Ground connections degrade over time as well. Copper and other metals tend to oxidize causing resistance in the electrical connection. If the resistance in the grounding system is greater than an alternative pathway to ground, that electrical charge will take that alternate pathway. Most if not all jurisdictions who have authority over codes and installations of electrical systems, communications systems etc. actually require these systems to be bonded together due to the safety aspect of the examples I listed above.

Yes. WRKC935 hits the nail on the head on all counts. It is also important for the radio system to be bonded in case there is an electrical short between the radio system conductors like antenna cable and any hot conductors of an electrical system. The only way some breakers can sense a fault when a communications line become energized is if there is a return path back to the electrical panel that is bonded to the neutral conductor. The breaker cannot clear the fault without a return path. The earth is a poor conductor and is not an effective fault current return path. Ground fault circuit interruptors (GFCI) sense an imbalance of current on the hot and neutral conductors. If the difference is around 5 milliamps or so, the GFCI trips. This is why a GFCI doesn't need a ground wire to work. It senses when current is being drawn by other sources and that current isn't returning to the source (electrical panel).

I also noted something else peculiar with this radio as well. If your right channel is set to a VHF frequency and you tune in to a UHF frequency on the left such as a weather band frequency, the radio shows that it can receive the UHF signal but the volume of that signal is practically mute. It doesn't matter which side is set to main, the audio does not change. In order to hear clear audio, both sides either need to be in UHF or VHF. the radio cannot scan both at the same time it seems. Does anyone know of a setting that may affect this or is the radio just not able to tune into both UHF and VHF simultaneously?

So I just got the Anytone 5888UV Dual Band in today and ran into the issue with Chirp showing "list index out of range" error beginning at channel 35 when I pulled the original programming from the radio. It wouldn't let me program to the radio from channel 35 onward. I found a solution to this issue and wanted to share it. In order to get the full frequency list to index properly in Chirp, you first need to download and install the AnyTone 5888UV factory software. Once the software is installed, open it and download the stock programing from the radio. After the download is complete, upload that exact list back to the radio using the factory software. Go back into Chirp and download from the radio again. Now all of the available channels for the radio can be accessed and the "list index out of range" error is gone. I discovered this by messing around with both softwares because I really wanted to use Chirp to dump my programming list into the radio. You will need to use the factory software to set advanced settings however for the radio configuration options. I spend atleast an hour online searching for this workaround but wasn't able to find it. Hopefully this post will help others down the road with this issue.

Awesome, thanks for that information. I will definitely be taking that into consideration. I'm just trying to get something up and going for the meantime as I build the setup I want when I have the time to do it.

I want to set up the antenna temporarily in the joists until I can get the long term setup built and in place. I don't get a lot of free time due to work, kids etc. so I was going to do the joist mount as a down and dirty temporary solution as I built the antenna setup I really want. If I do mount the temporary setup outside, I want to make sure it is properly grounded and bonded. I work as an industrial controls electrician and I've seen how lightning strikes, even indirect ones, can completely destroy communications systems.

As a preface, I should mention that I am rather green in the whole GMRS scene but I have some experience from my years in the emergency services, so I understand the bare basics. I only ever had to set up mobile systems and that was few and far between. I've maintained quite a few emergency vehicles and did a full upfit on one which turned out beautifully. For my long term setup, I want to pop a hole to the outside of my house for a base station antenna to be mounted at the roof but I need to locate a good mounting point, penetration point, and pathway to my base station setup. I also want to install the cable in conduit to protect it if i have to run most of it externally, intall a proper grounding system for lightning protection and tie it to my data grounding system I built to ensure equal potential. This being said, I have a lot of work ahead of me for that Install. I would like to temporarily set up my base station and mount my antenna inside the basement up between the floor joists near my base station location. I'm looking at horizontal mounting to keep it out of the way and looking at a ground plane. Here is a list of supplies I have so far. I plan to use a different antenna when I mount it externally on the roof. -AnyTone AT-5888UV Mobile Transceiver -BTECH RPS-30M 30 Amp Compact Regulated Bench Power Supply -Nagoya GPK-01 (21" Radials) NMO Mount Ground Plane Kit -Midland - MXTA26 MicroMobile 6DB Gain Whip Antenna -PL259 UHF Coax Cable My main question is with the antenna orientation and ground plane. The antenna mounted vertically would be ideal but I just don't have anywhere to mount it besides in the floor joists. If I mount it horizontally with the whip pointing toward the exterior butt plate of the wall, will I get decent signal reception? I should also note that some of the stuff I bought with intentions of reusing it on a mobile setup once I get the base station situated. I wanted to make sure that what I bought for the temporary solution wouldn't go to waste.