wayoverthere

From what I see active on the map, Verdugo looks like the most likely suspect; it's a bit of a reach to ventura, but the description does indicate it being linked. The out of state activity coming via Zello is a definite possibility; I've dropped into a couple out of state repeaters that way before (when I still had access).

As @WRXE944 mentioned, color codes are a DMR thing, and not applicable to gmrs (currently, anyway, who knows for the future). On the second item, it CAN be done to have a repeater accept more than one tone, it can be assigned to different users, or configured for local repeat vs also passing audio to linked repeaters. However, unlike DMR (and the time slots), it doesnt allow more than one user to use the repeater at the same time.

That one works ?

They're not working for me either ?

Little more testing today...tested swr on the truck, both with the mag mount centered and with it moved to the back edge of the roof to approximate the 3rd brake light mount. Under 1.1:1 across the same places I tested previously, and no problem opening a couple uhf repeaters 30ish miles out (in the foothills) from my driveway. Going to leave it on and hope to get some real world testing in this coming week. With the link from the local repeaters to the rest of the system down, things have been pretty quiet.

I can't make any promises on function (as I haven't gotten a chance to test it on the truck yet), but this one is rated wideband enough for 70cm and gmrs (430-490). I did get a chance to do some limited swr testing with a handheld and a mag mount on a chest freezer, and the swr was good, about 1.2 or less everywhere I tested....a couple gmrs simplex and repeater inputs, 446.000, and a couple other 70cm simplex frequencies. As 4wd fullsize is the plan down the road, I grabbed the phantom as a limited clearance option (assuming it works adequately in practice). Vhf...remains to be seen, Maybe a 2nd phantom depending how this does. Laird does have a couple vhf options, and I already have a diplexer.

I was thinking along the same lines. Even at or just a ove the same price point of the id52, a new d75 would almost be a no brainer vs a used d74

Count me in the same boat....so much cool stuff that was discontinued by the time I got my ticket, so my interest is piqued. I'm always tempted to try something new, and the icom id52 had me curious, but this has some positives over the icom, even if it rings in at around the same price. Wanting actual APRS was pushing me to yaesu, though interface wise I prefer my icom, and have still been tempted to jump to the id5100. (Sorry, rambling)

For ublock, yeah. I could see some other types of blocking being less forgiving of the redirects though, especially in ostensibly more secure environments.

I wonder if something isnt a fan of that "awstrack.me" url that's being used as a redirect on all the links. Chrome ony phone opens it without complaint, but in Firefox, my ad blocker flags it as a hit from the "ad and tracking site" list .

had some time to kill, so i went hunting for my dummy load (shack is mid-rearrange), and did some testing. AFAIK, the one in the car is the older one, but I'm not 100% sure on that. both were tested with the same pigtail between radio and meter, same Surecom SW102, and same 50ohm 60 watt rated dummy load, pretty much back to back with the dummy load not even getting perceptibly warm. Truck / Car 467.675 - 15.9w / 14.1w 467.725 - 16.0w / 14.2w 446.000 - 16.8w / 14.6w 146.520 - 19.1w / 17.7w

I'll try to remember to get some numbers from mine too...add that to my mental to-do list. Also have another antenna en-route to check out...giving one of the "phantom" antennas a try.

If they're working correctly, no, FRS radios shouldn't. But since the subject has kind of bounced back and forth between the radios and the users, our hypothetical Joe Schmoe fall into the latter categoy (even if he isn't in compliance), no?

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.