wayoverthere

Expanding on this with an example ..I think of it like you and a friend in a room, 6 ft apart. In the absence of other noise, you can carry on a conversation at a normal speaking volume just fine. Desense is the equivalent of now you have a rock concert speaker stack playing next to you, while you try in futility to hear your friend....you see their lips moving, but can't hear anything they're saying.

Are you testing with the two handhelds in basically the same location? If so, since the repeater is passing the transmitted audio in realtime it's entirely possible that the audio is getting through, but the nearby signal from the transmitting radio is causing the other radio to desense (or "go deaf"), so it doesn't "hear" the audio coming back. Having done a little testing for/with desense, the behavior in practice is pretty much what you described ...receiving radio shows an incoming signal, but no audio. Unless there's some pretty severe barrier (like a hill/mountain) to the signal (or a pretty bad blind spot near the repeater), getting into the repeater from a couple miles away should be doable.

Ive used both for checking into nets outside of RF range, in the sf Bay area and Seattle. Both can also be used to access a home radio when travelling, but depends on interfacing a radio to the computer (echolink) or node (all-star)

Good point. It's easy to get caught up in all the different flavors of digital, but it's worth looking at what's on the air in your area, or areas you frequent before going down one of those roads. I have mostly Yaesu mobiles in use (mainly for the APRS), but there's basically no Fusion repeaters around me, so that feature is not super useful.

Checked the requests....doesnt look like any updates or progress for months, at this point. https://chirp.danplanet.com/issues/9241 https://chirpmyradio.com/issues/8953

When it becomes "you know, xxxxx would be nice to have".

Don't know when I'll get to it, but that makes me think I should scan my SBB1 and see how it looks for gmrs. Size wise, It's even shorter, kind of a mobile version of a rubber duck. Iirc, around 12".

Bluemax49ers has been my source for cables for most of the LMR radios in my collection, and some of the software as well. It does look like he has a cable for those Icoms, too, with an option to add the software. https://bluemax49ers.com/product-explorer/icom-ic-f21gm-ftdi-programming-cable-opc-i478/

That was my thought as well. Curious what the pattern would be laid down, but in the end it boils down to folding and unfolding each time, or picking up a shorter whip. Personally, I'd park and measure at the lowest clearance point, and go from there to see what my options were for whip length. The ubiquitous 1/4 wave is around 6" and pretty inexpensive (not much over $10 last I looked), and a solid option of you have the ground plane for it, and the no ground plane 1/2 waves are around 12", iirc

I've had good results with multiple Midland mag mounts carrying a variety of antennas. Seen very few negative reports on the mxta26 antenna, and what I did see was related to potential used\damaged product received from Amazon. I had good results with a Browning br1713bs (similar to the mxta26 in size and configuration).n the other whip I have is NLA, so as an alternate smaller gain antenna I'd look at 1\2 or 5\8 wave Laird whips. Ground plane or not, depending on the mount. I want to say it'd be the 4502 for GMRS (450-470mhz)...have used the 430-450 model and it was great out of the package without tuning. Have had great results with the comet 2x4sr for ham, but the swr was a little high for GMRS, though not unusable (2.0:1 on 467, iirc)

https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/mobile-antenna-placement/ I forget if I alluded to it in this thread or another (or started to mention it and then deleted), but this page has the graphic that shows the relative loss for different mounting types and placements. Mag mount in the center is very close to the ideal (permanent hole/mount) loss-wise, evidently.

Truth be told, since I don't have much time to play radio, I don't remember all the limits either, even 3 years in. unless I'm doing something on a set frequency like ft8, I have a printed copy of the ARRL band chart near my "shack" (desk in the office) and a PDF copy on my phone and double check myself regularly.

Good luck on the radio search perhaps some can chime in with firsthand experiences with the kg-1000g. For the magnet, that's a good (and creative) idea as well. The other consideration with a mag mount is cable routing. While I've absolutely done it (mostly ran 2 till I moved one antenna to a fender mount), it does eventually take a toll on the paint at both the mount and wherever the cable runs on the body. In my case that was mostly where the cable tucked under the edge of the door seal at the top. On routing, I had a seal i could tuck under, follow the rear edge of the passenger door seal down, and loop up and in at the bottom (single cab compact truck, rarely had passengers). Current crew cab, the seals are tighter and don't hold the cable well, and all 4 doors get used regularly, so mag mounts are less optimal and mostly saved for when I'm running solo...have a comet 2x4sr on a fender mount for regular use.

No experience with that radio, but on antennas... If you're willing to drill a hole, doing a roof mounted nmo is optimal; if height/clearance is an issue, a 1/4 wave antenna is only 6ish inches tall, while a 1/2 or 5/8 wave will provide some gain without adding too much height (at around 12"). If clearance is no concern, Midland's mxta26 has lots of good reports but it's close to 3 ft tall. Alternately, there are 3rd brake light mounts (spendy) and fender mounting brackets as options; these may work better with a 1/2 wave "no ground plane" antenna....I haven't tried the mxta26 to say how it would do in that configuration. Truth be told, there's tons of antenna options out there, with gmrs sitting so close to some of the blocks of business and public safety

They've worked well (and hold well) for me, to the point that 4 of my 5 are Midland (between up to 3 at a time on the old truck, one stashed in the better half's car, and one used for a base (on sheet metal for a ground plane). The other is a browning, because I wanted to try one with rg-8x cable. No difference that I could tell , but it held well also. Comet have worked well for me on the ham side...the one diamond I tried, not so much (nr72b, if I remember right)