Riktar

FWIW shoot me a PM and I will send you my email so I can take a crack at this. Not sure how much help I will be but I have setup all (6 total) the ones used by my family. Once I get your "dat" file from you I will take a look at it and load it into my spare 8180 and see what I come up with. ALL of the Kenwoods have a group that contains a mix of repeater channels and simplex ones and the scan function works flawlessly in that group. I suppose the frequency could be off but if that is the case, why does the radio work/pickup the simplex channels when it is not in scan mode? Weird....

They do make wonderful car wash covers for those of us who have done the permanent MNO mount on their cars. I have one in my car and whenever I am going through the car wash, off comes the Browning 450 and on goes the Larsen "Hockey Puck". While the performance of the puck is FAR below the Browning it GREATLY outperforms a MNO cap..... And no, I didn't buy it for that purpose. It came with a TK8180 radio I purchased.

As a follow up to this: I went back and looked at my earlier notes from other posts and couldn't figure out where I was getting the "Not allowed to use the homes electrical ground" until I did a search online and came across the original post (From here coincidently) from 2013 which does say it's a not legal to tie into the ground for the electric service. After reading it again (This time with a full measure of coffee in me) I realized the reference ("power company grounding system") was to the Utility company's electric service. IE: the pedestals they maintain on the property and not the electric service for the house. As freaking foolish as I feel right now, I am also REALLY grateful for getting the correct information from tweiss3 and having Jones warn me off using the lightning rod grounds at my home. Finally, thank you berkinet for asking the question about whether there are any stations I can't reach with my existing setup. The way I was setup in the attic was having a 6db omni antenna for hitting the local repeaters and a yagi that was aimed directly at my brothers house 15 miles away since the onmi directional didn't have enough "oomf" to have clear communications and the repeaters were pretty scratchy and noisy when I used the Yagi since it was not aimed in their direction. I had 2 separate runs of LMR400 that went into a coax switch that allowed me to flip between the 2 antennas. This worked as long as I had the switch in the correct position depending on who I was trying to reach. After pondering all the stuff I was going to go through getting an outdoor setup to allow using just one antenna I played around with the Yagi in the attic (And man was it hot up there this weekend!!!) and after several trips up and down the ladder I found a compass position that was between what the heading would be for the repeater I frequently use and my brothers house. The end result is having useable communications with the repeater and my brother!!! Granted I do a have slightly higher background noise. But is is REALLY slight and from everyone I talked to they can tell a difference but it's nothing objectionable. Maybe I can sell off the extra LMR400 cable and the omni directional antenna and put the proceeds towards a rotator for the Yagi. For now I will enjoy not having to check which antenna the switch is on to make contact with whoever. And I will wait for the temps to cool down a little. Thanks again to everybody who responded to this post!!!

Yes I see that now. UGH, all the information a person can run across (online and other places) can be very confusing. Some people say this, others say that. Ball canning jars and that sort of thing. Thanks again to everybody who provided information and insight. The attic antenna is looking better and better.....

From what I have gathered so far using the house's electrical service ground is a no-no. And the idea of pounding a grounding rod into the ground within close proximity of the existing pole sounds like a good idea. Thanks again to everyone who has posted in this thread. It's great having members share knowledge and smart advice to keep me from making a dumb mistake!!!

I don't know if the pole is set in concrete. I tried digging down a while back but after aalmost 2 feet I just stopped. If it is in concrete it's further down than 2 feet. But yeah. after reading reading through some of the stuff on the guide did note the concrete not being a suitable ground. I am still digging through the pages and trying to find if the lightning rods on the house that come down on 2 corners of the house would be suitable earth ground. The pole that I am considering using is only 3 feet from one of the rod cable. And by cable I mean thicker than the jumper cables I have. But the more I dig into this, the more I am content with the antennas I have in the attic. Just considering the outside pole to try and sneak above my roof line..... Thank you all for the replies!

I have a metal pole near (about 4 feet from) the corner of my house. I can't tell how deep this thing goes but I cant see any type of footing where the pole goes into the ground and I have hit this thing a time of 2 with the tractor and it didn't even budge so I am guessing it is buried pretty deep into the gound. That being said, would the pole itself provide a proper ground for an antenna? Or is using a copper grouding rod still adviseable?

I'm in for the 17th.

GREAT idea! I will tenatively block my morning schedule for the 16th through 19th. If I had my druthers my choice would be Tuesday the 18th but I will find a way to make the other days work. Looking forward to putting a face to the personalities I have enjoyed conversing with over the air!

Yes. The default volume(s) can be set. It's in the Common Page 2 tab in the Optional Features screen.

Thanks for the article Marc! I really liked the Dougnut analogy! The analogy I used to explain antenna gain to my brother was to imagine an inflated ballon that was being squished from the top and bottom, the sides will expand out further to compensate for the applied squishing to the top and bottom. It was also way less messy using the ballon as a physical prop instead of a dougnut!

I live in a rural setting with less than ideal cell coverage. I wanted an alternate way of staying in touch with the wife when I am out and about on my property and offsite (usually with 10 miles) as well. My brother who has been using GMRS for several years in his hunting group suggested going with that based on his experience. After doing some research online and finding out about repeaters, national linking, etc. etc. I dove in with both feet. Now my daughter and her husband have mobiles in both their vehicles as well as a base in their home so we have another way of connecting. Repeaters rock! I also picked up a couple of cheapy HT's from Walmart which serve me incredibly well on the property for staying in touch with the house. Heck with all the stuff I have learned (and still learning more everyday!) from the fine folks here and on the air, I am now the one answering questions my brother has regarding setting up a base unit for his house!

It is by no means dangerously hot. But there is a noticeable difference between the 30W and the 45w models. Put it this way: The 8180-K would make a wonderful hand warmer when you are talking for awhile. The 8180-HK gets a bit too warm too be a handwarmer. But if your asking if it will set anything on fire? No.

I wouldn't worry too much about the lack of HK models. I have a mix of both and after doing field tests , whether it's in a mobile or base/home unit setting, the biggest difference I notice is temperature of the units heatsink when transmitting. That' not to say that their isn't any difference in transmission performance but it's not as big a difference as I would have hoped the extra 15 watts added. 45 watts does give you a slightly louder voice, but it doesn't make your ears anymore sensitive. Or put another way who cares if you can yell father if you can't hear any farther?

As to your question of new/used: I purchased all my radios from Ebay. Brand new this radio was just under $500 and the "H" (higher 45w transmit power) was a few hundred more. Ebay pricing is all over the place but the cost is still WAAAAAAAY below what retail was when this model was new. I do believe Kenwood has recently discontinued this from a sales standpoint but the unit information is still on their website: https://www.kenwood.com/usa/com/lmr/tk-7180h_8180h/

I have family in North Carolina, Virgina and Pennsylvania. I also prefer driving over flying when I visit with family as does my Daughter. As I did my research into GMRS I discovered the repeater network for it that almost covered (Pennsylvania is lacking on the west side in terms of the national linked system) every destination we visit. So every radio that is installed in our family vehicles are Kenwood TK-8180 which has the ability to program various groups of channels. Every repeater that is on our driving route(s) has been programmed (by state) into the radio by repeater name. I have gotten permission by all the repeater owners to access their systems that we have traveled past so far. I still have to get permission from the North Carolina repeaters but that will be done before my next trip this Fall. Everyone in the family has been encouraged and taught how to use the scan functions in their radios so as they travel they can switch to their corresponding "state" as they drive. I will be doing a little tutorial explaning the regional nets and how they are linked for family use. IE: When my daughter leaves home she can be 3 states away and still reach me via the Midwest GMRS repeater network in the event her cell signal is poor and she needs to contact me or I her. This is used as a backup in the event they are in an area with less than ideal cell coverage and they suffer a breakdown/emergency and require assistance.

That explains alot. I am going to have my brother try keying his truck radio in the driveway to see if the same thing happens. I also believe we can get by on a lower power setting. Currently he is using a TK8180 (30 watt) for his home base and a TK8180H (45watt) for his truck. He does NOT want to interfere with his neighbors tv's so hopefully if we dial the power back (I think the 8180's are 10 watts on the low setting) it will be enough to still keep the connection between us but eliminate the cable box freezing. Thanks for the explanation!

This is really weird. The ONLY channel that freezes on his cable box is Fox News. There may be others but out of the 30+ channels we tried the problem did not occur. Aside from checking all the ground connections I had it in the back of my mind that maybe the GMRS frequency might be close enough to the rf frequency of his remote. But he said that he only has IR for his remote. And even if it was a case of interfering with the pause button command on the remote, why would it only occur on one out of 200+ channels? Just for clarifying, as soon as you key the mic the picture freezes and the sound stops. As soon as you release the mic, the picture jumps forward to the present and the sound restarts. This is a real head scratcher....

Thanks for the suggestions! I am heading over to his house on Monday and we will check on connections and ground paths we use.

My brother is running a Kenwood TK-8180 mobile as his base unit. He is running 75 feet of LMR400 cable to a Browning BR-6140 antenna in the attic of his garage. Every time he keys his mic the picture on his TV (In his living room on the first floor. His radio is in the basement) picture "freezes". He is using Spectrum cable TV. We have not checked to see if this happen for broadcast but I am not having any picture freezing issues and I do use broadcast TV. Anyone else ever run into this?

Some repeaters use a different tone for receive and transmit. Your MXT400 (as well as every other Midland GMRS radio) can only use the same code/tone on BOTH transmit and receieve. On the listing for the repeater do you see: 462.575 DPL156 467.575 DPL156 Or do you see a different code/tone for each of the frequencies? Idf it is the same you can access that repeater. If they are different you are out of luck. At least with your Midland.

Thanks for that bit of info. I will keep that on my future "shopping" list.

Thanks!

The Trailblazer I drive has virtually no dash mounting options and the floor console mounting would have been hitting my legs or whomever was in the passenger seat if I mounted it there. That and having to take my eyes off the road more than I would like to adjust volume or change the channel, etc. almost had me ordering the MXT275. But I discovered the Kenwood KRK-10 remote conversion kit for the TK-8180. I was lucky enough to find a listing on Ebay that had the TK-8180 with the KRK-10 kit together for a good price (Still less than what the MXT275 would have cost so I grabbed it.) and popped it in the Trailblazer. The main unit sits under the passenger seat which make the run to power fairly easy since the Trailblazer fuse panel is under the rear seat. The last piece I added to this was 16 key mic that Kenwood offered. Well it was a clone of the TK-686 mic. It's keys can be programmed for any function that is available on the front panel. It did not take long for muscle memory to kick in and now I can change/adjust anything I want and my eyes never leave the road for more than an instant IF I want to verify the change on the display.

In my case I am running an Ed fong antenna for hitting the local repeaters and a Yagi for simplexing with my brother. The antennas are at 2 different ends of my 2 story house (Both are in the attic, NOT outdoors) which is shaped like a "T". The 2 LMR400 cables are joined togther near the radio and are handled by a coax switch which works quite well. The difference between directly hooking each antenna to the radio vs having the them fed into the switch with a short 1 foot feed to the radio is so small it's not worth measuring. I am using this setup since the Ed Fong Omni aint cutting it for simplexing to my brother. Which is interesting in itself since the repeater I frequently use is 28 miles away as the crow flies and my brother is barely 13. We are talking about 2 compass directions that are nearly 90 degrees apart. Then again I do have a big fat hill between my brother and I and I think there is little to no elevation issues to the repeater. But I digress. So for grounding: Should I have a lightning arrestor at each antenna and one between the coax switch and the radio? Or is putting the ground between the radio and the Coax switch enough? If I can avoid crawling around in my attic anymore than I have already done that would be great. Lastly, I wonder if I could just use the water entry (I have well water) pipe for the earth ground? Fascinating topic!