wayoverthere

I've been meaning to try something along that line with one of the local repeaters; with a not great base setup (gmrs 50x1, 5/8 wave whip in the attic), I can reach one ~60 miles to the southwest. Been curious if I can hit it from the hills on the east side of the valley (which would be in the neighborhood of 90 miles). closures due to last Summer's wildfires put that on hold though.

Been pondering that factor lately, and completely agree, although even reddit is a step up from Facebook for being able to make use of a knowledge base like this. (One of my car groups has ditched the forum and gone all Facebook...not a fan)

That, I'm not sure. It's crossed my mind, but I haven't dragged my programming stuff out to try it yet. I'd even give up 1-7 for more repeater slots, honestly.

Unfortunately, yes, that appears to be how it's programmed, anything past the base 30 presets is receive only. It's one of my biggest complaints with this radio.

Depending on the agencies, you may be able to use the uv82 as a scanner. I know ours here are mostly unencrypted, except for the tactical channels. I have a couple of uv5r's (also not 95 certified); one is programmed with tx disabled for use as a scanner. The other can still transmit, but I set it up with offsets on the public safety channels, where if I bump the ptt, the transmit goes to one of the frs frequencies, rather than stepping on public safety channels

It's definitely a learning journey, including separating some of the real world application from the marketing fluff. I have a set as well, and I have to give Midland credit for being beginner friendly gear. That said, one part of the journey is going to be research...varied levels of radios, and differing features. Some have all the features we want, some don't, and some of that we can learn from others' experience. Case in point was my hands discovering that the method btech uses to lock down the gmrs 50x1 is an inconvenience with the repeaters near me, where the kg805g handheld doesn't have the same limitation.

Yes, you're understanding correctly. You may be able to hear repeaters (as the repeater output frequencies, and the simplex frequencies for ch 15-22 are the same), the gxt's are not able to transmit to the repeaters.

Thanks for the tip; I held off ordering the cable for the HTs till they actually showed up, and glad I did...still waiting for word from UPS where those are. On the 4207, we'll see how it goes. Bluemax49ers stuff seems to be well regarded for working, but he's sold out on the one for the 4200 series.

Took a gamble on a less expensive option...cable and programming software for $49 from the antenna farm. We'll see how it goes. Radio itself is a vx4207-6, 400-470mHz range

I'm curious how the vertex stuff does; the evx539's I tried for seem to have disappeared in UPS hands somewhere; I'm on the edge of pulling the trigger on a mobile. Edit: I went for it. Ordered a programming cable too.

This. The power draw simply sitting idle receiving (or programming) is pretty much negligible; it fluctuates betwen 0.1 and 0.0A on my alinco psu's digital readout. edit: was doing some other testing tonight (whether switching power supply is inducing noise on gmrs); for my alternate power, i dug up a couple 6v lantern batteries, and wired them in series, and my 50x1 powered up just fine, showed 13.3v (it seems to read voltage a little high, it usually shows 14.2v when the psu is set to its 'set 13.8v' mode, and a multimeter on the batteries in series showed around 12.15v) also corrected amp reading above...it fluctuates between 0.0 and 0.1A.

Does friend by chance have led drl and or taillights? I know I get some pretty bad interference on the cb from the drop-in led headlight bulbs I have in my truck, though I haven't noticed any interference from any of the others 3rd brake, dome, reverse, and tails).

your understanding is correct. The 50x1 will only transmit on low power on 1-7, and your choice of level on 15-22 and the 15-22 repeater inputs (gmrs 15-22 and Rept15-Rept22)channels. everything else, including 8-14 are receive only.

Took a quick look, this tyt looks quite similar https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CY6CRZH/

Realistically, if you don't have pl tones input on the simplex (15-22) channels, you'll hear any traffic coming from the repeaters as well, since the receive side of the repeater channels 15-22 is the same as their simplex counterpart. Not exactly convenient to respond to something on that repeater, I admit, since when you come off scan it goes to whatever you were on prior to scanning

Miklor.com has a lot of good info on a variety of baofeng/btech models. The baofengs I have, I got the cable off of amazon at the same time, and it came with software, though chirp covers a lot of models as well (chirp.danplanet.com)

It was one of those "its time to replace it anyway" things, and I already had the replacements on hand...seemed like a good time to get some foolishness out of my system.

Are you testing with the radios close together? If so, it's possible that the transmitting radio is overloading the other, hence not hearing the audio come back from the repeater.

Pretty much. Setting both tone and tonesql, the repeater will hear you, and you'll only hear the repeater. If you set tone only, and leave tone sql blank, you're spot on, you can still talk to the repeater, and you'll hear the repeater and any other traffic on that channel.

Glad to help. It's definitely been a learning curve for me too. there's a ton of useful info here to digest (and helpful people) that's applicable to more than just gmrs, if the interest takes you that direction. One thing I will give btech credit for is at least getting instructions translated (or wholly rewritten) to reasonable English compared to what you get with the average baofeng stuff.

In simplified terms, tones act as a gate, signals without the key (correct time) don't get by. the 'tone' is the transmit tone, so the repeater hears you. ToneSql is for receiving; setting a code there (tone->tone) means you'll only hear signals with that tone. Leaving tonesql blank (tone->), you'll hear EVERYTHING on that frequency, repeater or not. The variety of radios and menus and various settings does make it a bit of a puzzle to figure out sometimes

his username is bluemax49ers. Looks like he's on Amazon as well. https://www.ebay.com/str/bluemax49ers

Glad to help!

Here's a little info specific to the gmrs v1 : https://www.miklor.com/BTGMRS/BTGMRS-FAQ.php#TransmitterReceiver And the main info page: https://www.miklor.com/BTGMRS/ Looks like the menu item you want will be named r-ctcs...that either needs to match the repeater's output tone, or be set to none/off to hear the repeater (the tones are effectively a filter; the MONI button bypasses that filter).

Photobucket is pretty bad now as well. As of late, I tend to use imgur.