wayoverthere

I was thinking that direction too...is that year still distributor and plug wires, or had they gone coil on plug? if it's individual wires and a distributor, i might try pulling them off at the distributor one at a time, and see if the noise stops with a specific one. if so, bad plug wire. if there's no change, you've at least ruled out a short in one or two being the issue; while it doesn't completely rule out ALL of the wires being a source of interference, the intermittent nature seems to point more toward a bad connection SOMEWHERE than a consistent source.

Sort of a blind guess, since I don't have any experience with the CDMs or the rim-maxtrac/RPI setup. With what works and what doesn't , it sounds like the issue is in the audio path from your rx radio. It's clearly hearing and keying up the tx, and that you can hear on the Rx radio itself says tones probably aren't the issue. Is it feasible to shuffle the radios, use the tx radio as the rx, to rule out an issue with the Rx radio? I'm think if there still no audio, the issue is between the radios, cable or a setting in the rpi. One other thought is if there's something in the programming that needs to be done to enable audio out on the CDMs.

LED running lights? wireless charging pad perhaps? Both are also possibilities.

That seems consistent with the idea that the FCC kind of trusts the hams to know what they're doing, and gmrs users, less so...kind of the impression I got from the last tightening of the certification regs related to the ability to transmit on ham bands.

if you go to your profile, and hit the icon on your profile photo, there IS a 'remove photo' option there. have you tried selecting that, and then hitting the 'continue' button?

Definite positives! I found the uv7d and the kg805g also interchange batteries and accessories as well. (Got the one with 1.25m)

I've been curious about both that and then newer handhelds. The 805g is pretty easy (though uhf only), while the btech 50x1, no luck.

One reason for this is achieving the gain by "stacking" elements; the browning I've had good results with is a 5/8 over 5/8 wave for uhf. It claims 5.5dbd gain, and checks in around 33" long.

You can absolutely use an address other than your home. The only requirement is that it be an address where you can receive mail. Myself and a number of others use PO boxes, while there's also a number in my area using private mailbox stores as their mailing address.

I've caught a bit of the 'feature licensing' model with Icom's commercial stuff as well. Had my eye on a "P25 capable" radio, as I'd like to have the option in a mobile (only handhelds, so far), which seemed like a decent price at ~$300...as I dug deeper, I found out it doesn't actually COME with P25, you pay an additional fee for the license to unlock that capability, which runs another $350 or so. At that price point, those moto packages on ebay don't look as bad at $550ish. alternately, it seemed feasible to put together a dual band kenwood setup (110 watt, P25) on a single control head for around the same price, but it's a lot of pulling together pieces from multiple sources.

Good resource on the digital search. And I haven't dug around the state as a whole to say how popular P25 is statewide, but it's it's probably not far behind DMR, and well ahead of C4FM/D-Star...there's actually a few more than I remembered when I went back and looked. I know there's one network (N6LYE) with P25 nodes covering a bit of the central valley (IIRC, from Sacramento down to/past Coalinga), plus the local club has one standalone, and there's one linked to a mixed network (Salinas Valley Repeater Group) that reaches out to the central coast; I believe there are a couple more nodes along the coast on that one that are P25, but it's mostly analog. There's also a couple others around Monterey/Santa Cruz that are standalone P25.

This pretty much sums it up. I can hit one 60ish miles away with a small antenna indoors and a 50 watt mobile, while with good lines of sight I've hit 70cm repeaters at 75ish miles on a 5 watt ht, and near 120 miles at 15 watts on the mobile, was clearer kicked up to 50 watts. Both of the 70cm were from up in the foothills, basically line of sight over the top of the valley I live in.

You may try recording the Morse and running it through one of the decoder apps...it's semi likely to be a repeater identifying itself.

I definitely have them loaded in mine, though the two 450-512 (&dmr) radios mostly do scanner duty. On the p25 side, there's just a couple of amateur repeaters around (and basically no dstar or c4fm), so more often than not I'll just take something analog.

That, and how many gmrs users will be willing to pay commercial radio prices to buy one new, even if they did dual certify? I know there would be a few, but suspect "few" will be about it. The other twist with Vertex is being sold to Motorola, and Motorola subsequently dropping most of those models while rolling a few under the Moto banner.

I kind of want to dig into fcc listings for vertex now, and see how many 95a models I can find, and the frequency ranges...I know there's 400-470 and 450-512 splits in multiple model ranges. The 4 EVXs are near identical; one is an older display (the vhf one), one of the 450-512 has a smooth ptt button, and 2 of the uhf are spot on identical (one 450-512, the other 400-470). I'm thinking @PACNWCommsimay be the former Kenwood guy you're thinking of

Interesting question...being under the old rules (95a) makes me think it was more of a "didn't submit for certification" rather than a "fcc wouldn't allow it" situation. There seems to be a number of other 90/95a radios that cover both gmrs and 70cm (my vx4207's included). I don't know (hadn't thought to research yet) if there were any changes in the certification requirements in that time period, though. Would be interesting to compare the certification dates of both radios too.

It does sound like you're getting into the repeater; that brief bit of silence follow by the beep is one form of response (courtesy tone) letting you know the repeater heard you. Not receiving a response isn't super surprising, as some repeaters are quieter than others, and some people stick to their group, and may not respond to "strangers". One thing to watch when testing with a second radio is to get some distance between the listening and transmitting radios. The strong transmit signal can temporarily "deafen" the receiving radio; it adjusts to a strong signal close by, and may not hear the repeater's signal from further away.

Great to hear!

The reason a repeater runs a duplexer is the ability to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same antenna...to isolate the receiver from the transmit. You can absolutely run a repeater without a duplexer with separate Rx and tx antennas, and given adequate separation, will work fine. That said, i do have a DIplexer in my shack, to allow 2m and 70cm monoband radios to feed one dual band antenna. Power wise, the big variable is your coax. With low enough loss, 40 watts at the antenna isn't impossible. Case in point, I've done some testing with my vx4207. It shows 45 watts into a dummy load, or 43 into an antenna. With 17 or so ft of whatever coax Midland ships with it's bundles (it's unlabeled), I showed 23 watts at the antenna end. Swapped that for 35ft of abr400 (still all pl259/so239 connectors), and power at the antenna jumped to 35 watts.

If you were testing into an antenna rather than a dummy load, that can introduce a little variance as well. I've seen differences of a few watts comparing different antennas and a dummy load.

Glad to help. That's one upside with the certified stuff that they generally come with a base set of channels preloaded, including the offset on the repeater slots, and all you need to do is add the appropriate tones. Lots of info on a lot of different models, at various price points; some are a bit more limited/locked down than others, but depending on the use case, that may not be an issue.

If code 1 for dcs (DC) isn't doing the trick, try ctcss (CT) code 1 on the mxt400. My gtx1050's and mxt115 follow the same numbering scheme, but there's 2 types of codes the radios can do, and they both need to be using the same one to hear each other. @offroaderx 's suggestion is a good one as well.

I won't beat on that point then. Range is still a possibility. Manually programming channels on the uv5r and it's cousins is a little funky to get the Rx and tx sides programmed with the offset to use a repeater (+5.0 mhz). That would be the big configuration issue to check besides tones...I forget off the top of my head if the * or the # switches to set the tx frequency. Miklor.com has a good guide to hand programming https://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_ProgMem.php

If the repeaters are listed here, yes, there is the capability to send permission requests via the listing once your call sign goes through ( and gets picked up)...haven't looked at the repeaters mentioned, but some 9n the site do have alternate avenues (listed in their description) for permission requests. As for the unsuccessful attempt, what kind of radio is it? Range and configuration are both the two main possibilities.