wayoverthere

Great presentation, Marc...well organized, and no fluff or foolishness.

Looks like xpr7550's

Same here...pretty spot on between the sw102, sw33, and nanovna.

I think that means the red tape of talking the city into bankrolling the cost of equipment and/or tower placement, not the gmrs side of things.

It probably will be, it's been showing it's age and I don't even know if I can still get toner for it. (Circa 2000 or so Samsung laser, on clearance from CompUSA).

I can't say what the community is like in Tampa; some areas you'll find the hobbyists, sometimes dual licensed hams, willing to chat with whoever. Other areas people stick to their group more, and just use the radio as a tool. I see a few open repeaters around Tampa that may be usable. On the possibility as a scanner...at least the public safety stuff for Hillsborough county looks to be all 800mhz, so probably outside the capability of the radio you're looking at. A dedicated scanner may work better if that's what you're after. That said, there's a fair bit of ham stuff around Tampa on repeaterbook, and the radio you have your eye on will be able to pick up some of that. If you went the ham route too, you'll usually find more people to just shoot the breeze with (aka ragchewing) than on gmrs. I'm in the same boat with no inbuilt group to talk to...the family has basically ZERO interest in radio....my area has a few hobbyists and a couple repeaters, but I made the jump to ham as well.

Sounds like a match made in heaven ?

When I first set up my btech, I had the 1/4 wave antenna sitting on top of my printer, mag mounted to a piece of sheet metal. When I keyed up, the printer woke up and printed a page of gibberish characters. ? Setup has since moved, and the antenna is on top of a bookshelf now.

They've been pushing the tacticool folding tape measure antennas on Amazon for awhile...perhaps they've decided to take a shot at what btech has done with baofeng and what btwr and others have done with wouxun... spec'ing a run of certified/certifiable radios? The telling part would be whether there's another source for that model besides Abbree. If not, custom spec is probably what it is....for Baofeng, its a win because they just make the radios and ship them, Abbree takes the risk on whether they'll sell or not.

I don't see it listed as supported, nor the radioddity gm30 it seems to be twins with. https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home does look like the gm30 is being worked on though: https://chirp.danplanet.com/issues/9237

There's a few addresses around here that show up on 2 or 3 dozen licenses....they're box numbers at the local UPS stores.

If you're looking for an easy starting point to start testing, a mag mount may be a good bet...nmo is very common for the antenna connector, and you'll have no problem finding a variety of sizes of antennas to match up to it. Lip mount is another very flexible option. In terms of antennas, anything rated for 450-470 or 460-470 mhz should work fine. One consideration to ponder is overall height: desired mounting point and antenna length. Generally more gain means longer antenna, and also means less vertical height of your signal. 1/4 wave antennas are around 6" long but depend on a bit of metal around the mount to work properly (about a 12" diameter circle). 5/8 wave run around 12" and are a bit less dependent, you can also find 1/2 wave that don't need a ground plane. Midland's 6db whip isn't a bad choice, 2 5/8 waves, but also close to 3 ft long. (Imo, a 1/2 or 5/8 wave, sometimes labeled as 3db gain, would be good starting point, since it's reasonably short but still has some gain). At the radio end, most mounts will have a pl259 (the male side, or PLug) connector on the radio end of the cable (also known as uhf connector); this mates to a so239 (female side, or SOcket) on a mobile radio. For your use you'll want an additional pigtail with so239 to either sma-m or sma-f. If the antenna on your uv9g threads into the radio body, the radio is the sma-m, and the antenna is sma-f (so get so239 to sma-f). If the antenna screws onto a connector that sticks out of the radio body, the radio side is sma-f, and you need so239 to sma-m).

Well, pending hands on testing, it looks like they've made an effort to address the weak point ?

While the 12v socket and what it can handle is definitely important, that part of the circuit is easy to determine, either from the owners manual or the fuse rating; likewise, you can spec adequate wiring from the radio to the plug, and have reasonable assurance it can handle the load. The hazy spot is the internal construction of the 12v plug itself, and the spring @Lscottomentions inside the plug that allows the center pin of the plug to move and maintain contact with the positive center conductor in the socket. That spring conducting between the radio side and the pin contacting the socket is the big unknown. If I had the socket to support a big draw, and really wanted to use a 12v plug, I'd probably want to add a better connection inside the plug, between the wiring and that center pin, so it isn't dependent on the spring for current, only keeping the pin in contact inside the socket

The 50x1 and v1 also program with chirp..on those there simply isn't a software setting for transmit or no transmit, it's set in the firmware and I've not found a way to override that. I will note my uv5r based radio have a "tx disable" setting on a band-wide basis, vhf and uhf. In the case of your gt5r, does baofeng have their own software for it? If it's a very recently certified version, it may be that the chirp isn't quite compatible with the new firmware needed to lock it down for part 95 certification. That lines up with the info I found on radioddity.com as well. 2m/70cm only, rx only outside that.

That may be it right there...What info i'm finding on the GT-5R seems to indicate these are locked down to transmit on ham frequencies only, which would explain why it's not allowing transmit on GMRS frequencies. That aside, if there's a GMRS legal version of the radio that i'm missing, it may also depend on the method used to lock them down for part 95e compliance. While they've made some progress with the GMRS-V2, the earlier Btech models (GMRS-V1, GMRS 50x1) forced compliance by not allowing the user to program ANY additional transmit channels. They got the base 30 (22 simplex, 8 repeater) from the factory, and anything else added by the user was RX only, whether it was in bounds for GMRS or not.

There's the added wrinkle of that requirement of not being able to operate in unlicensed services that I believe was added when GMRS moved from 95a to 95e. For the 450-512 radios, no real issue, but, but the 403-470, and some of the newer crop that do 400-512 out of the box...no go. Starts limiting how far they can spread that certification cost

that's one of the kind of confusing parts of GMRS; some of the simplex channels/frequencies (15-22) are the same as the repeater outputs (RPT15-RPTin terms of CH 19/Rpt19, Club650 is the closest. there's a couple further east on the same frequency, DB650 toward diamond bar, and another by Redlands. I found another in the listings called Crescenta; the listing shows online, but the description says it's offline, last updated 13 years ago....it also lists no input tone. given the location (and your location), it might be possible to reach the listed location if it were online. https://mygmrs.com/repeater/491 (crescenta) https://mygmrs.com/repeater/1270 (club650)

What are your local codes like for masts and such? I would expect the tin roof to somewhat work in your favor in terms of reducing rf into your house, and getting the antenna up would also help, along with improving range. Radio wise, perhaps the best option in gmrs may be the wouxun kg1000g, in that you can have the control head at your desk (with microphone), and place the actual transmitter a bit away. You'll find similar option on the ham side, both the kg1000g's ham cousin (uv980p), and from a variety of manufacturers (icom, yaesu, Kenwood, and others). The ham side does also have some remote operating gear that pairs up with remote head radios, though I don't know if either option has been tested with the wouxuns. Swapmyrigs uses a VGA cable for the connection, and if I remember right, the limit is 150ft. Remoterig goes further (fully remote) via the internet, though like some of the other remote options like echolink (ham) or zello (somewhat common in gmrs) apps, or the remotehams option, being internet dependent isn't a good emergency plan. In the interim, you may see if someone you know has either a ham or gmrs mobile they could set up temporarily, with a mobile antenna on the roof, and see if the rf from that is an issue...that may be a good starting point to decide how close will work for you. As @kaf6045 mentioned, there are measures you can take to further reduce the rf as well, if need be

I don't see a repeater on mount disappointment, or one with that name. I did find round table 725, though (see the screenshot). On a side note, if you got the angry fireman when trying for round table 725, this may be what you were actually hitting: https://mygmrs.com/repeater/4408

Am I missing where it shows that? It has dropped to what the map regards as "stale" (aka no updates in over a year), but I didn't see anything indicating it was offline. (On the map, hit the gear in the upper left, and toggle the "show stale repeaters" option)

I'd have to dig out the baofeng mic to say for sure, but if I remember right it's a metal circlip that holds the belt clip on the center pin. If you can get that out, you should be able to open up the mic, remove the center pin, and screw a replacement hanger button in its place ( 'microphone hanger button' would be a good term to search for options) Like this: https://www.rightchannelradios.com/products/replacement-hanger-button

You're on the right track. The small variance...since repeater outputs overlap with the simplex channels, with rx tone 77.0 set, you'll hear simplex transmissions and repeater outputs that have a tx tone of 77.0.

Rx tone and qt/dqt tone are your end of things, and think of it as a filter on what you hear...signals not matching that tone don't pass through the filter. Input tone is the transmit tone, and is what gets you through the same filter on what the repeater hears. setting your rx tone to 'off' means no filter, hear everything on The frequency.

we can see which poison i've chosen...tinkering. better half asked me the other day..."when did you get so many radios?"