gman1971

I didn't thought it would either... but when you're pumping 50W mobile on GMRS and the base can't hear you further than 5 miles desperation grows rather quickly.. so I tried everything... and the range came when I grounded everything. So whatever my problem with reception was, grounded fixed it.... the rumor has it that vertical end fed antennas have issues with fully decoupling from the feedline... by grounding it thoroughly it lessened the issues, rumor also says that grounding could fix the nulls on the antenna radiation pattern.... and deal with common mode currents on the coax which create noise... but like I said, I don't know why, but my range improved quite a bit by grounding the antenna. The DB408 is probably a far superior antenna to the 39.95 TRAM special... folded dipoles tend to be just better antennas... G.

Yeah, like berkinet said. Get used Kenwood, Icom or Vertex Standard from eBay... much better radios. G.

Radioshack? whut?

Would be awesome if they moved the manufacturing back to the USA... but I won't hold my hopes very high...

Wow, after 20+ years the 75-820 is going away... hard to believe... I still have mine, purchased from Bill2Ways back in 1997... wow... time flies... G.

Your "sharing experiences" was what allowed to put it all together. Thanks! Moral of the story is, even if you think you know, talking to someone who has a lot of experience will help a lot... G.

LOL... you got me.

Well, I wouldn't use ham grade gear as the standard to measure the CCRs up against either, when in reality most ham gear is also pretty subpar when compared to commercial or military grade gear. Receiver performance, in particular intermod rejection and selectivity is where most CCRs and ham gear tends to fall flat. The receiver sensitivity is a meaningless figure without taking into account selectivity. The TM-V71a has 0.16 uV sensitivity @ 12 SINAD in VHF/ UHF, which beats the 0.18uV of the IC-7000, and the 0.25uV of the Vertex Standard EVX-5400... but suffers heavily from intermod. When the TM-V71a is tuned to VHF frequencies, the NOAA weather station sitting 2 1/2 miles from home breaks through randomly regardless of whatever frequency you have the radio tuned to. On the other hand, the EVX-5400 hooked to the same antenna, in the same frequency never hears the NOAA station. That is an example of poor receiver performance. The TM-V71a can barely hear anything beyond 10 miles due to the receiver being saturated by the nearby RF noise, but the EVX-5400 almost full quiets from 10 miles away when talking to home from the same 5W portable... The CCRs, in particular all the TYT brands, those will simply desense down to zero when connected to my base antenna so reception range goes to zero. Now, perhaps If you live in a lower RF congested area then, perhaps, a CCR would be fine; but the again, owning a radio that only works in certain conditions is not a good radio to own IMO. If you need urban performance in crowded RF environments, then most of these Cheap Chinese Radios will disappoint. With that said, cheapies CCRs have their uses. For example, the Baofeng BF-1801 (Clone of the TYT MD-760) works great as a floor intercom radio... just don't expect that radio to make miracles in terms of range. Considering a lot of the Kenwood/Icom/Motorola commercial grade radios are sold for quite a bargain on eBay, I really don't see any reason to own a subpar radio... Buying cheap in radio gear is the surest way to buying twice. G.

I wish I would've known Marc Spaz before I started on GMRS, or anything radio, really... he has helped me tremendously go from barely 4 miles to well beyond 15 miles simplex mobile to base... G.

Marc, did you really meant to say SMA? I think perhaps you meant to say N? Not sure how well SMA would work outdoors since its doesn't seem to be sealed and SMA might not work for anything larger than LMR240... LOL, wrangling with a 20' run Heliax 1/2" is already a pain, I can't imagine dealing with a 7/8" longer than that... lol. However, for those who like running radio straight to the antenna, I did found out that I get far better S21 readings on the analyzer (the transmitted power, not the return loss) ) when using two grounds and 3 segments of cable between radio and antenna than with a single (ungrounded) piece of 1/2 Heliax straight to the antenna. What that means is that I see more RF being radiated through the antenna. Also, when I had the single run of Heliax ungrounded I could never match 50 ohms impedance to the correct antenna length for the frequency. Now I have 50 ohms sharp and a solid -34 dB loss (~1.04 SWR) on a 5/8th wave vertical that reaches for miles... I've always thought that more connectors was bad for reception, so I never bothered grounding things b/c I thought it will kill the radio signal, etc... But I can safely say I was wrong: what a good ground seems to do is lower the noise threshold and improve the radiation pattern. G.

If you want decent radios something like this is what i would look for: https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Vertex-Standard-VX-131-G4-2-UHF-1channel-2-watt-Job-Site-portable-radios-2/283839353868?hash=item421624d40c:g:1QEAAOSw2aJei2~a

Confusing yellow radios with girls now axorlov??? I don't see no girl there... LOLOL

Very cool, yeah N connectors are great if only b/c they are sealed... which is great for outdoor installations. Also I think there are more options out there for higher end gear with N than SO239... Unless you're super skilled in soldering this kind of stuff I wouldn't attempt replacing the SO-239 on the back of the radio... and I've thought about it too. Just not worth the ris All my Vertex Standard mobile radios use mini-UHF which are chrome plated and a pain in the rear to work with...etc... Had to make patch cables from mini UHF to N... The radio UHF connector is probably the least of the worries, as the radio usually is not sitting outside taking water... etc, the real problem arises when you start going down the UHF route b/c its what inexpensive gear comes with... after some time you realize you have 10 devices that all use the UHF and changing course is just hard as heck. I've had good luck using Deoxit to clean and lube the So239 connectors prior to connecting it... G.

Well, attic and indoor certainly helps with SO239 and crimped cables rusting outdoors... but LMR400 in general is just too hyped. Honestly I would ditch it and get Heliax. You can find surplus heliax quite affordable.... but if you must have LMR400 at least use silver plated solderless N connectors like these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Male-Coax-Connector-Silver-Clamp-LMR-400-9913-by-W5SWL/221584358558?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649. I have a small 4 feet patch between the top arrester and the antenna, the N side is using such connector... and the other side is using a 100% silver plated UHF connector, sold from the same guy. (since antenna is UHF...) next antenna will be N connector... and hopefully tri-metal too... we'll see. Again, I strongly advice to ditch the SO239 as early as possible in your hobby endeavor. Otherwise you'll have to redo everything at a cost later... As for grounding, sure, the metal mast I am using is mounted on the roof with no grounded metal nearby either so I ran a solid 10AWG copper wire to get it grounded directly to the rod at the electrical box. Ideally you'd want to ground yours to the outside ground rod too, and use the same cable for grounding all stuff... but any metal pipe that is grounded should work, just make sure its grounded, tho. I would still ground everything to the same ground wire if possible. I've found out that the more I improved the grounding on the mast/antenna/radio the more it made cable lengths less important for SWR. When I had the antenna 100% ungrounded, then using different cable lengths gave vastly different SWR readings at the radio end, but once I started grounding it, the SWR differences between lengths became much smaller. The explanation I've read for this is that verticals tend to have issues with feed line decoupling (I am using a TRAM 1450 vertical for GMRS) whereas higher quality antennas like the DB404 folded dipoles tend to not have this kind of issues due to how folded dipoles work. Arresters, I think they are great for grounding the feedline, and I suggest using two, even for an attic setup like yours. One placed right under the antenna and another somewhere closer to the radio. I've had very good results with these Times Microwave LP-BTR-NFF, which are fairly inexpensive and use tri-metal instead of chrome plated connectors. Lastly, I also recommend coiling two or three times the patch cable going from the top arrester to the antenna with around 8 inches diameter in each turn. That in conjunction with a sold ground should improve noise threshold quite a bit. Having the arresters at each end of the mast also made the installation really manageable, since now I can bring the antenna(s) down without having to remove or deal with the 20 feet Heliax anaconda feedline... G.

Lets not sugar coat this and get to the point: I've had horrible experience using MPD made LMR400 cables. First off, these cables were a PIM galore, riddled with high SWR and noise, and windy day? forget to hear anything but noise due to the cables swinging in the wind.. In addition, the crimping always failed too. Connectors are chrome plated cheap garbage, even though they claim silver, they are NOT silver. The crimping is not weatherproof either, they are not using anything to help weatherproofing at all, its just a regular POS shrink tubing... nada. So, when sitting outside the outer jacket will rust and the already crappy LMR400 PIM-galore performance will turn into utter trash with sky high SWRs. For a 100 feet run, please, save yourself all the headaches and buy Heliax, 1/2" should be a good start; seriously, don't bother with LMR garbage. I can hear it... "here comes another heliax snob..." yes yes, I've heard that before, but let say I owned a ton of LMR400 too, I always thought it was the best thing since sliced bread...., I thought it was great... ha... ha... ha.... until I tried Heliax and chrome-less connectors... never ever ever in a million years will use LMR for anything longer than a 3-4 feet patch, and silver plated connectors or tri-metal ONLY. In addition to that, I will reiterate what everyone here has already stated: use N connectors, preferably Commscope tri-metal ones for the long Heliax runs; the cheapo chrome plated ones suck at impedance as I've found out. If you want performance, be prepared to spend $$$, unless you live atop Mount Everest... Yes, its hard to swap the UHF thingy, but I've recently done it, and it was well worth it, and once you have the setup running you'll love it: no more sealing connectors, ever, no more creeping SWR after a couple of thunderstorms... no more hearing the NOAA due to PIM garbage LMR400 swaying in the wind... etc.. G. EDIT: Oh, don't forget to ground PROPERLY the antenna/mast/radio to the same ground rod. Massive improvement when I did this in noise floor threshold reduction...

I didn't thought much of grounding antennas until I moved to my current house and needed every bit of range I could muster. Grounding the antenna made a significant reception difference, as in, it went from ~5 miles max to ~15 miles easy... grounding the antenna did lower the dB floor according to my spectrum analyzer, thus substantially improving reception range. To do grounding I read a lot of advice from people who do commercial tower installations and the NEC guidelines, etc. So, here is what worked for me: I purchased two Times Microwave Arresters, both N female, both Low PIM (low Passive Inter-Modulation), and both are bolted to the metal mast that holds the antenna(s) and the mast (1.25" steel pipe) is grounded using two copper clamps and a 10AWG wire to the house ground rod electrical box. The first arrester is placed right before the antenna, at the top of the mast. The second one is at the bottom of the mast. The short run between the antenna and the first arrester is a 4 foot LMR400 patch, coiled twice and both ends are silver plated connectors for low PIM. Then, from the first arrester (at the top) to the 2nd arrester at the bottom of the mast there is a 20 feet Heliax 1/2" cable run, both are N male ends and tri-metal low PIM connectors. The bottom arrester has a 90 degree elbow (silver plated) and another Heliax 1/2" 6 feet run, (both ends of this cable are also tri-metal low PIM) to the input of the "radio box" ... Inside the radio box I am using MILSPEC RG-214 patch cables with N male silver plated connectors for low PIM. The only connections that have any chrome plating are the antenna's SO239 and the Vertex Standard EVX-5300's mini-UHF connector. As you can see, I ditched all the UHF connectors and my SWR no longer creeps over time due to connectors being exposed to the crap weather. It was a "Copernican turn" for me, as all I had before was 239 stuff... glad I moved away from those, and from chrome plating... which caused a host of problems with the massive 1400 Candelabra tower sitting less than 2 miles from my antenna mast... All my radios are connected to a solar panel array and a 12VDC battery bank, thus not sharing anything electrical with the house, but the negative (ground) of the battery bank is connected to the same ground 10AWG wire the antenna mast is. G.

What cable are you using to program the radio? If you are not using a genuine FIF-12 from Vertex standard it won't work. I've tried a few knock offs myself to save a few bucks... but in the end you'll need a genuine FIF-12 cable with the appropriate CT-104A lead to the VX-2200 radio. Here is the manual for the radio, page 19 lists the information about accessories, software, etc. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/content/dam/msi/docs/products/two-way-radios/analog-business-radios/mobile-radios/vx/vx_2100_vx_2200_om_na.pdf And if yours is truly the the LTR version, here is the manual: https://www.aircomm.com/downloads/vertex/vertex_vx2200ltr_manual.pdf And the 2200 LTR uses the FIF-12 with the CT-171 cable lead. Not the CT-104A as stated earlier. G.

Sorry Logan5, but your case is not typical. You either live in a very flat place, at the top of a hill, or atop a mount, or even atop a mountain, b/c using 5W UHF where I live (near Madison WI), with my antenna placed atop a 40 feet mast, using Heliax 1/2" feedline doesn't reach reliably more than 5 miles out to HT, and that is spotty at best... even when pushing 50W GMRS out using Vertex Standard EVX-5400 mobile, through the same 40 feet antenna, it barely reaches 10 miles to another EVX-5400 mobile using a vehicle mounted NMO antenna (no magmount crap)... but to HT?... Sorry, but not typical to get 10 miles out of 5W. Using BTECH crap, TYT crap, or in general anything CCR crap, or anything that isn't commercial grade gear will result in disappointment. I've alredy been through the CCR road, and while they do have their uses, reliable comms at long range isn't one of them, and I am talking about all these cheapies with flashy screens and 10 million channels with fancy colored buttons and slick shapes... etc. In the end, my Vertex Standard EVX-5300 G7, with a single digit 8 segment LCD display and a total of 8 channels draws rings around all of these cheapies in terms of what matters: radio reception performance. G.

Works if you're a "flat earther" as it doesn't seem to take into account Earth's curvature, nor the 4/3rds of Earth curvature for radio waves propagation, etc. Radio Mobile Online seems to be a better free option, JMHO. According to the app, the Madison WI, Candelabra tower @ 330 meters tall (~1400 feet) has "line of sight" down to Chicago... and a 1 km tower in the same place should have line-of-sight all the way to Spain, from Madison WI... not sure if that's right... LOL G.

I downgraded to 1.05 and changed every password on everything I have after finding the trojan virus on 1.06 firmware made by Bridgecomm... so beware. Yeah, the site is back up now... anytone.net. Don't matter tho, no new firmware and that thing is out of my velomobile for good... now it works great as backpack radio tho... so it will remain there... shame doesn't have airband but Thank you! G.

Looks like Anytone website is no more, so can't even check for a firmware upgrade... oh well. Wonder if they went out of business...? Another 578 update: I removed the radio from the Velomobile and installed it inside a backpack with an NMO no-ground antenna. Since performance is good, it will remain there, and since it will be unlikely I'll be using the backpack unattended, I won't have to worry about the radio freezing up... oh well... shame. For the Velomobile I went with a pair of EVX-531 G7 (450-512Mhz) radios, a Surecom controller and a duplexer to a 1/4 wave antenna. Works really well and its 100% reliable. Maybe if Anytone ever fixes the firmware I'll reconsider putting this radio back on the velomobile... in the meant time, its all about Vertex Standard. G.

Well, I understand, but based on all the CCR brands I've tested, I would really advice to stay away from anything Retevis, TYT and all their clones. Their receivers are utter garbage... maybe in the middle of the desert they will work well due to not being overloaded front ends... otherwise I'd stay away. They sell small linear amplifiers that will boost 2W to whatever level you need. I honestly think an HT1000 is a far better radio than anything cheaply made by Retevis, TYT, etc... But understand that is just my opinion. In the end, if you have the money, its worth a try... so go for it if you think is worth it. G.

You could build a far better repeater from commercial gear... cheaper, and be type accepted too...

Well, the 1.05 firmware didn't trigger the antivirus... and only bridgecomm systems has the 1.06 version, its not available on the Anytone website... so that makes me wonder... Suffice to say, I won't be using the CPS until a new one comes out that doesn't trigger the antivirus. Shame. G

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse... I upgraded my antivirus and found that the 578 CPS installer program has a trojan virus. uds:worm.win32.wbvb So, BEWARE.... FRACKING A... Bridgecomm systems...