wayoverthere

It would need to be inline with one of the leads and set to amperage, if it has that option. Voltage holding is a good sign though. Afaik, more ferrites won't hurt anything, and i might double check if theres anything close and metal near the antenna that might be affecting swr.

Using a gmrs tuned antenna would be the best option. That said OP, have you checked that one yet to see how it measures up on GMRS? my comet gp1 wasn't happy for gmrs (swr of 3+), but others have reported some similar type antennas not being so bad, closer to 1.5:1. It may be usable, it may not, but testing will tell for sure for not much cost besides time, and maybe a swr meter if you don't have one yet (which is good to have anyway) .

I use the 60 watt version of the Surecom dummy load as well, though I forgot about checking with the dummy load ? perhaps later/next time. Did a little testing though; same abr400, same gp1, same vx4207 and same surecom sw102. There's now a diplexer after the radio, which it shares with a vx4204 en route to the coax/antenna. all tests were done on an unused 70cm simplex frequency, with 4 different pigtails. Pigtail sat between radio and meter, with diplexer connected to the TX port on the meter. 18" black rg8x - 1.03:1 swr, 48.4 watts 12" Proxicast branded LMR240 - 1.05:1 swr, 49.5 watts 36" grey pigtail, unmarked but listing claims rg8x - 1.02:1 swr, 48.8 watts 6" RG174/u from nanoVNA kit, with SMA-F to PL259 adapters at each end - 1.05:1 swr, 47.5 watts. Truthfully, not surprised to see a minor effect between cables. Trying another cable would help reduce the possibility of a bad cable being the issue. One other thought that hit me was taking a multimeter to that power supply, just to make sure it's putting out what it should be, both current and voltage. 30a (even peak rated) should be more than enough for 25 watts (the vertex and btech show 10-11amps draw on high power), and i'd expect around 5amps for a 25 watt radio. if both of those check out, i'm leaning toward the radio is the issue.

I'd be curious what numbers would look like into a dummy load rather than into the antenna. I'd also be curious to test how much difference in numbers a short pigtail (12"-18" ) really makes in the numbers. For reference, I did some testing on 70cm awhile back with a vertex standard radio (rated 45 watts out on high), the 17 ft of unlabeled cable that came with a Midland mount, and 35 ft of abr400. Measured at the radio, with coax and comet gp1 attached, I saw 43 watts either way. Measuring at the antenna end, the Midland cable showed 23 watts, while twice the length of abr400 showed 35 watts at the antenna. I want to say it was spot on 45 with a dummy load at the radio.

I get the appeal of being able to hide everything but the mic..it really comes down to which features are more important to you, the stealth or the ability to load the extra channels...all we can do here is suggest, and try to help you (and others) get the radio(s) that best fit your wants and needs. On the profit thing, while the wouxun ARE made overseas, there IS definitely some profit staying stateside, with buytwowayradios (based in south carolina) ordering batches of them manufactured to spec to resell.

This. It's not that Midland gear is bad, per se, but that's one aspect they're kind of limited. I wonder if the wouxun kg1000g might be a better choice, and it's similar price wise to the Midland, though it doesn't include the antenna. That said, a basic 1/4 wave is around $10, and it sounds like op already has a mount.

I will agree with the subjectiveness. I have a few different ones, from the cheapie baofeng (tinny, not fantastic), the slightly better btech water resistant with the dmr 6x2 (decent), to a water resistant vertex (solid, even at higher volume with the windows down). Have a pryme for the vx7r that I haven't put to use yet.

That site is a great resource...we've been half looking at houses, and I've been running potential homes against that to see what i'd be be up against for the hobby, both figuratively and literally.

I'm honestly tempted to try one just for giggles...I have a spare mount, and will have a diplexer free once I shuffle radios, since those all seem to be single band antennas. Since I don't have a source of freebies for testing, if I do give one a try, it'll most likely be a laird.

Yep, the signal stalks are ham antennas. And while I won't say they don't exist, I haven't seen anything similar to that sbb1 that was tuned for GMRS...one upside of a super basic whip is the ability to trim it a little to tune for gmrs

Sbb-1 is one one that's pretty much a rubber duck, and it's been the only one that clears the work garages on a mag mount on the roof...that couple inches difference from the sbb-2 (which is more of a classic whip with a phasing coil in the middle) is just enough to clear. (Previously ran a 1/4 wave signal stalk, that's also 18"...it hit every beam in the parking structure)

Thank you, first refresh took care of it ?

Minor quibble, but is there a reason classifieds shows up twice in the sidebar? ?

Yes, the N and the I specify "normal" or "inverted" version of the digital tone. Usually if the letter is omitted, "normal" is assumed. At worst, if one doesn't work, switch to the other.

I can check again this evening; I think I clicked on it the other day and it was to convert between a handheld format (vx820/920) file and a mobile format (vx4200) file, as that software package does all 3 model lines.

Apologies, I'm being a little salty ? The quality control is kind of expected at the price point a lot of the baofeng stuff rings in at. The handhelds have been decent aside from the battery latch breaking off from a les than 12" drop, and another battery that expanded. They seem to do better with handhelds than mobiles, haven't heard much bad about the 50x3 but maybe more due to few willing to buy it at that price than them lasting well. My 50x1 is losing power, others have had both the 50x1 and 50x2 die with minimal use. Makes me wonder if they're giving btech the rejected products/parts.

Who, lets be real, aren't exactly industry leaders in quality control, or reliability.

it may not be so much that you're doing something wrong as just being excessively locked down; some of the Baofeng and Btech stuff (the gmrs v1 handhelds, the gmrs 50x1 mobile among them) disallowed adding any new TX channels beyond the hard coded 30 (22 simplex, 8 repeater)...had to use what it came with, and anything else was RX only. you may dig back through the documentation (or the listing) to see if this is the case. Btech has started moving away from this with the gmrs v2 handheld which allows adding some new GMRS TX channels, and it appears the upcoming GMRS50V2 will as well.

Have run into this. It won't even load https sites when I've messed with the date.

In general, accessing a repeater via zello is depends on either the repeater itself or a radio within range of the repeater being interconnected to a device/zello channel. There are definitely some repeaters that are connected and allow access.

to add...i found a thread on the topic on radioreference.com that has some suggestions of some 95a certified Kenwoods; one of the posts on page 3 was even kind enough to provide the FCC ids for their list of kenwood (and other) models. https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/part-95-gmrs-radio-list.275040/

Little longer, little thinner, more durable. I have a Nagoya that has a little bend in it from the radio falling over and I didn't notice for a couple days. The signal stick gets folded into a u in my backpack and doesn't seem to care. Also available in colors, and the more recent ones are glow in the dark tip on all of them.

Yep, another longer antenna for handhelds, these are very flexible and durable...I have one that gets shoved in the backpack when I travel.

I want to say I've seen the Kenwood tk8180 and/or 880 in use. Kenwood definitely has a few models that carry dual 90/95a certification...none of them are part of the amateur radio line, though. There's a few members here that are big on Kenwood's and can say better than I ( @Lscottperhaps?)

https://signalstuff.com/products/ It's the same people behind hamstudy.org and examtools