wayoverthere

Legit radios, yes. Joe schmoe that bought a baofeng from Amazon and programmed the FRS frequencies, and transmitting on the 467 interstitials, without realizing they needed to set it to narrowband (so instead it's bleeding into the repeater inputs on either side) could definitely be an issue.

What consitutes "a while"? I had to check my Amazon orders for dates on my two anytones... one was late February 2022, the other was mid March 2022. The February one has been in the old car unlocked for ham use the whole time, and seems to be going strong...it's on almost every time I drive the car , and often rag chew on mid power for the 30 mins drive to and from work. The one in the truck replaced a mxt115 and gets less use, but the occasional use it gets is usually on high power (nearest active repeaters are ~60 miles out)...going strong there as well. That said, it's not out of the realm of possibility that I got lucky, and later examples went downhill, or just some bad quality control let some with issues slip through. QC is one corner that often gets cut to meet a low price point. I'd also wonder about the usage on the ones that died...I'm not the most long winded on air ?

Maybe I can pair 2 of them to make a dipole for double the win ?

So here is the box-stock image for a VX-4200 mobile...one channel, everything else greyed out. However, each of those greyed out channels, I can double click to activate it. It starts out with just one group. if I click the channel menu, the only option I get is "Channel Allocation/Group Tag", which gives me this window. It's set for 16 channels in Group 01 (which I can rename) and that it's will scan this group. As above, I might have "GMRS Smplx" as my first group, "GMRS-Rept" as the second, allot 16 channels to that, set it to also scan there, and click OK. I can have up to 16 channels per group. Once Group 02 has some channels also, that "Group 1" dropdown near the top left will let me pick more than one group to edit. The main window is where you'll add our frequencies, channel names, and tones. Click the tone field for the channel you want to edit, and hit the space bar, it will cycle through CTCSS, DCS, and none. when you have the right type of tone, double click and it will bring up a window to select the actual tone frequency/number you want. Hope this helps with a starting point, at least. I don't have the other packages in front of me at the moment, (CE151/CE142 for the EVX series handhelds), but i remember one more column to set channels as analog or digital, close to the left side.

Do you mind posting some screenshots? Some others have covered more of the software packages than I have, but even the specific (trunking, maybe?) Talon package looked very similar across versions. I want to say I had to go into the groups first, and assign them some channels...I did a "gmrs simplex" group with the gmrs interstitial channels (462.5625 etc, aka gmrs01-07) etc, at low power and the high power channels (462.550 - .725 or 15-22), and then a "gmrs repeaters" group with the offsets and a 141.3 tx tone, no Rx tone, along with the 3 specific repeaters in range. I'll try to grab some screenshots a bit later this evening that may help visualize.

But the real question is...will it help my uv5r not desense itself completely deaf? ?

I forget if the copper mesh idea is something I picked up here or on Reddit, but it's an easy thing to try and I'm sure I can find other uses for the excess mesh too

On this line of thinking, wouldn't alternator whine show up as varying with engine speed? On my cheap LED issue, I have some copper mesh en route that I'm going to see if it helps my RFI issue.

I'd also be curious about antenna location, and what might be close by. I get a ton of RFI from some Amazon special LED headlight bulbs, to the point of 2m being near unusable. It wasn't an issue previously, with the antenna on the roof, but once I moved the antenna to the front fender, major RFI. I've read of using copper scouring pads to shield noisy LED/HID ballasts, but keep forgetting to track some down to test with.

I think you're probably pretty close to the mark. I dug out the mic for my 50x1 and opened it up, and while it does have the little tang inside, it's not connected to anything.

Perhaps something changed in the wiring with the move to the V2? I had the metal mic clip mounted on the side of the radio/mount and didn't see any issues with my x1.

So...this (and one of the other zello threads) cued me to go ahead and clean out my channel list, since I had a few I previously had access to but don't any longer (a couple went to requiring passwords to log in, which I apparently wasnt in the list to get, and a couple booted me out of the 'trusted' group), along with one I'd been sitting stuck in untrusted for months. I think I'm down to one, maybe two now, with repeater access, and a couple groups with no RF link.

Glad it helped! I haven't seen anything in the settings on my x1 that indicated a need for the mic button to be grounded; the only setting I've seen on anything that used it was the Vertex LMR radios, which stop scanning when you take the mic out of the holder. (Its kind of nice have it scan, and ever stop on the current channel or back you what you set as "primary" when you pick up the mic)

Height and obstructions (or lack of) can be big factors. I can reach one in central CA from 60ish miles out, both from home (the base radio) and from the 3rd floor hotel room on a HT. Ive also managed 75 miles to a 70cm ham repeater in the same area on the west side of the valley, with a 5 watt HT from high ground on the east side of the valley. There's another gmrs repeater east of town near the national park set up by one of the ham clubs that Incan regularly reach at 60ish miles out from various places around town on 10 watts from the mobile....their testing indicated it usable pretty much across the valley till you clear the hills headed into the coast range.

Millions of peaches, peaches for me ?

Were you able to check with a multimeter as @KAF6045suggested in the other thread? If it's something acting up when the mic button is grounded, I'd be tempted to disassemble the mic and disconnect any wires connected to the hanger button. (I know my vertex mics have a ground wire to the mic button it uses to detect "on hook" for scanning...when one wouldn't scan, I traced it down to that ground wire being broken)

One other nice feature in the older version; it has the option on the login screen to have it load on startup (or disable that). Maybe the new version has it hidden in options somewhere?

so...i have version 2.6 for PC installed (dug around and i still even had the installer file for it), and it DOES offer the option to "Create new Zello account" on the login screen. That said, they seem to have removed this version of the software from the website, and appear to only list the business focused version (with associated subscription fee).

My 50x1 has a metal button and metal hanger. This screenshot from the vid in the Amazon listing for the 50v2 shows the metal button and looks to be the same mic as mine.

If I get a chance, I'll dig out the laptop a bit later and see if the copy I have offers a "sign up" link. I've seen some discussions that indicated the latest version of the software was aimed more toward the paying users rather than the free users, and removing the option to sign up may be part of that.

Ahh...so I typed something up before, but deleted it because I was trying not to be TOO negative. I'll say yes, what i saw the 1181 had decent SWR numbers everywhere I tested in ham and GMRS (swr meter, not vna); ran it on the truck for a bit, since it cleared most of the height restricted locations, and didn't hit too much when it did hit. That said, a couple anecdotal experience notes; both were on 70cm, since my area doesn't have the community on GMRS, and the family has less than zero interest in anything radio. When had it on the beater, mag mount on the trunk; was talking into a local repeater on mid power (10 watts) and had to bump to high (20 watts) because I wasn't holding the repeater. I can get into the same repeater from my backyard on a 5 watt handheld, and have gotten into it from a couple blocks closer from inside the car with a handheld, no problem; I have the 2x4sr in its place now, which is working well. It's been up on the bookcase in my 'shack' for GMRS, mag mounted on a piece of sheet metal. This is the same location i had the midland 3db whip on before, which was good for using a GMRS repeater 60ish miles away on mid power, though high was better. more recently, I've been testing out a ftm400xdr through the tram till i can get it in the truck, and poking at APRS...noticed I'd only receive 3 or 4 hits a day on APRS, leaving it on most of the day. now that I'm shuffling my office/shack, i cleared most of the radios off the desk as i rearrange; the Vertex twins and the Btech got boxed up, which freed up the comet GP1 (which is on a tripod in the closet) for the Yaesu. Had the radio on for a bit yesterday, and even with it overwriting duplicates (and that not-ideal mounting location), I had 50+ hits inside a couple hours with it hooked up to the Comet (where before I was thinking there was just no activity on APRS). for what it's worth ?

Argh..good to know. Always a hidden trap with the seemingly easy solutions.

Alternately....what about going a little smaller on the hole, and put a so239 bulkhead connector through, with a pigtail between wall and radio? Then you can change out coax, or radios on the other side of the bulkhead pretty much at will.

Glad to help, on both counts. All of the cables I have from him have worked great (I have 3 or 4 now).

To the point of band split: if the model number (on the back of the radio behind the battery) ends in -G7, it's the 450-512 model, and -G6 is the 400-470. There is also a -D0 that is a vhf range (136-174, iirc).