tweiss3

The Ham VOIP image has both Allstar and Echolink baked into it. Allstar is best for linking repeaters together, and hotspot nodes, but Echolink is a nice addition for when you only have your phone and are out of town.

It only oversteps if it's linked to a 10M FM repeater (yes, there are some). In general, you are ok, because its only 6M, 2M, 70CM and higher frequencies. Its a pretty decent tool when out of town, but its has it's annoyances.

Yea, unless you can find a friend that has the updates, it's not possible. Also, with 2.0, you would need to have an active firmware subscription on the repeater with is $$. I would suggest you stick with CPS 16, and find the modification that allows wideband (same as the entitlement, but you don't have to go through the hoops of registering it with Moto, because you can't anymore). It's probably why it was chucked, support won't even look at it.

Like said above, the "shortest" will be 1/4 wave, which, on 2m (VHF) is about 16" in length. I use the Larsen NMO2/70SH for clearance reasons. It works well enough, but the UHF is a 3/4 pattern, which has quite a bit of uptilt.

On my old vehicle, I had the remote head kit and I mounted it on one of those CD slot phone mounts. It worked ok for a non-permanent install.

Again, it it comes back to trying to regulate so that one cannot make a mistake, but it still happens to everyone. Even running a dedicated Part 95 approved radio for GMRS, grabbing the wrong mic and using the wrong call sign. The reason many of the newer Chinese radios over lock the firmware (only 1 repeater channel possible for each repeater frequency) is to keep you from using the radio outside of GMRS. Once you get away from CCRs and into real LMR equipment, you begin to see the benefit of zones and other features. MURS has no use to me, so I don't ever even listen, but I do listen to railroad while traveling. Zones can let you split up frequencies by location/service/etc. Build separate zones for GMRS and ham, then when you are scanning the zone, you only respond to ham or GMRS. My Harris radio will go even further, by holding multiple mission plans (on the fly changing of code plugs). I have 1 for amateur radio (with zones for each group of counties in the entire state), and 1 for work frequencies. Can't ever mix them up then, even with a bump of a button. I have issues with many of the cheap chinese radios and their performance overall. While technically just as wrong, using proper LMR radios with Part 90 certifications is less of a concern when used on GMRS. They technically meet all the performance criteria of Part 95, where as the CCR radios are a huge crap shoot if it meets, they just toss a different firmware and sticker on the radio. I know some meet specs, and they may have gotten better over the last few years, but after my experiences with front end overload of expensive CCRs, I've determined it's not worth the cost savings to deal with a marginal receiver (and possible out of spec radio), not to mention the other plusses of true LMR equipment.

I went the XTS/XTL2500 route, and then found out they took down all the 900 repeaters, one guy had 5 in the area and let the tower lease lapse due to lack of use.

I'd put money that neither is genuine: https://www.ameradio.com/product/101281/description.html

KMC-45D

Are you able to hear ok with the speakers under the rear seat? I mounted my Kenwood decks to the underside of the seat to keep them off the floor.

You need the antennas to be 25' apart, one directly over the other, to achieve the isolation of a duplexer. That is 25' from top of bottom antenna to bottom of top antenna. If they are not directly 1 over the other, you loose your isolation. For horizontal separation, you need 2000'+ apart to get the same isolation as vertical separation, or a duplexer. 40' apart and at slightly different elevations is not enough, you are getting desense, which is 1 reason you are getting no range out of the repeater. As for 30W vs 40W, the difference in the field is minimally noticed, you are still limited in range by height you get the repeater, not wattage. When figuring height for how far the repeater can reach, you need to use the bottom elevation of the bottom antenna.

The wrong steps will do that....... For what it's worth, my Kendwood D74 did receive air and ok, but it was significantly quieter than FM signals.

Airband is AM modulation, as opposed to FM modulation. AM can sound quite or appear to have an echo, but the reason it is used because you can hear two signals at the same time, as opposed to FM where one "wins" the battle for the air, and weak signal work is easier in AM. AM won't ever sound as clear as FM, with open and closing squelch. Also, you may or may not hear the pilots, since it's all simplex, not like monitoring a repeaters. Your sound issues might be related to antenna, or just bad sensitivity on the radio. The best AM reception radio I had was a FTM400, and it picked up the airport from quite a ways out. It could also just be the cheap speaker on the radio that doesn't respond well with AM.

There is already a GMRS repeater in Brunswick. Also look into Medina County ARES https://ohioares10.ad8g.net/medina/. It would probably be a good idea to not duplicate efforts/protocols to increase the chance of making meaningful contact. Perhaps reach out to see about including GMRS as a secondary line of communication.

The real reason is because we agreed in the 50s that Canada can do whatever they want and we can't interfere. I know people in the industry that had to replace aging towers by building a new one 50' to the side, when updating the coordination Canada said "we now have a system on that frequency, too bad so sad" even this previous tower/coordination had been there for 30 years prior. Wrecked the project a good 12 months for re-coordination. I applaud the question and inquiry. It's always good to learn more. It took me a good 3 months after pouring though the Part 90 regs and all it's references, and coming up empty handed, before I found that agreement where it's pretty much buried that there is a 5W ERP limit before Canada gets a say. I think it was 2 years ago, I posed the question on a amateur radio net I was running, who knew what Lines A & C were, where they were located, and how it affects amateur radio. The answers were all "what are Lines A & C". It was sad, considering the area of the net is pretty squarely centered on Line A. Hint, look up information about the 70CM band (Part 97.303).