wayoverthere

At 6", that would be a 1/4 wave, correct? It looks like the closest laird equivalent to the Midland I have is the b4502, which is a base loaded 1/2 wave, 12.6" long and no ground plane required. There is an all black version as well (I have one for 430-450mhz), and spring versions in both colors.

No disagreement there; some are better than others (the program for my yaesu ft4x isn't awful), but it's probably the main reason RT systems was able to carve out a place in the market. It's mainly the window for editing the settings on a specific channel that hit me, as the naming boxes and the settings seem to pretty much mirror each other. Is this a hint that the mxt500 has a cousin on (or coming to) the market under a different brand? Between the software and the past crossover with the dbr2500/anytone 878, an Anytone seems likely. And with 25 watt radios being a long time thing for them, there IS room in their lineup to add a 50 watt model.

So, back here since this seems to be the main MXT500 thread. Went digging for the MXT500 manual tonight related to the thread in the guest forum about scanning issues, and stumbled into the programming guide first instead. What stands out most, looking at the screenshots in the programming guide, is how similar the screens are to the software for the anytone at779/radioddity Db20G/retevis RA25 triplets...there's a couple screenshots over here:

The one possible thing I see in the manual is that it comes configured to scan all the channels out of the box; are you sure you added the channels rather than. Removing them from the scan? The manual seems to indicate a period after the CH icon indicates a channel active in the scan list.

a quick search found this one pretty fast:

it was close enough that i thought it'd been reset. here's my quick attempt...i kind of cheated and looked at the page source to get a close font (Roboto), and grabbed a screenshot from another profile to match the background color, square size (200x200 px) and font sizing. feel free to use it if you'd like.

One minor addition: while the uv5r (and other radios in the same form factor don't natively support USB charging, the high capacity (3800mAh) batteries do have a barrel plug, and BTech sells a USB charging pigtail that can charge the battery via that plug. https://baofengtech.com/product/bt-1013/

my 'base' isn't too far off of that....3db (5/8 wave) midland whip (what they sold before the current 'ghost'), mag mounted on a 8"x12" piece of sheet metal on top of a bookcase. can't say much for simplex, but makes repeaters just fine at 30 and 60 miles out. i believe laird makes a similar whip for 450-470mhz, and both that and mine are around 12" tall. for best results you may want to have it outdoors when in use, on a window ledge or balcony, as many high rises use low emmissivity glass (low-e), which in addition to blocking heat, also somewhat blocks radio signals.

Went to see about throwing something together for you to approximate the blank/callsign only user photo (since i'm home again with access to a computer), but it looks like either you beat me to it, or @rdunajewski got it handled (if so, thanks Rich!) Below is what I saw just now when viewing your profile in the main site:

Gotcha....the profiles between the forums and the main page don't quite connect, though when the forum took place we did at least have the logins merged. The forum profile does offer removing the picture, but it doesn't seem to carry over to the main pahe, and the main page doesn't have the "remove" option, or a "hide my user photo" option either. Barring some assistance from @rdunajewski , the easiest option may be to just mock up what you want in your image editing program of choice (or paint) and upload that in place of what's there. (I'll note that I have completely different profile pics between the two, which didn't seem to merge with the logins.)

linking won't affect the range of a specific repeater; it's going to be dependent on the location, the machine itself, the antenna, and everything in the RF path from repeater to antenna. across the link, it's pretty much wherever the repeater can be linked to, you can reach, as long as you're within RF range of the repeater you're accessing the network through. if i were to travel down to socal (where one of the repeaters is linked in for the national nets, i could talk to a user in Brooklyn or New Jersey, or anywhere else that a repeater is linked into the network. if you throw something like zello into the mix, you can, it's pretty much the sky's the limit. i've checked into repeaters in Bronx, Jersey, Utah, and Arizona that way, as there's not currently anything in my range that's linked for the nets.

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.