AdmiralCochrane

I worked on a demo job at a three letter agency building once, it was isolated as described above. The laborers carried literal tons of copper screen to the recyclers. One floor, maybe 20,000 sq ft and 10,000 - 15,000 fully wired telephone connections. Desks with headsets and typewriters - old school telephone intercept building.

So, you heard more traffic on 19?

The Lone Ranger rides again

A crappy rubber duck would also inhibit longer distance propagationand can limit it to UHF/GMRS wavelengths. example: My very nice Kenwood ham tribander is super with a good antenna, but near worthless with the rubber duck that came on it. I can hit repeaters over 20 miles away with proper elevation and the good antenna on all 3 bands, but only UHF under a mile away with the rubber duck.

I don't think its dual watch, but outside of that, its sort of what OP is looking for.

The simple solution is an FRS radio and a used handheld scanner from eBay. There were very few dual service part approved radios and I'm not sure any of them could be programmed to do what you want even if you could find one.

Remotely possible that you are hearing 3 different repeaters on the same frequency. Nothing to prevent it.

Its not an option, you don't have any more rights to the use the frequency than any other licensed GMRS user.

Same here. SWR on GMRS was slightly better than on 2m. All 4 bands were under 1.35

Waiting for the uneducated replies ?

No reason for Midland to lower the price when they are selling all they can make. Many people remember the Midland name from CB's and scanners from the 70's and 80's and have no knowledge of better Japanese brands and fewer still can sort between the wheat and chaff of equipment made elsewhere in Asia.

I do. There is the clarity at distance - until it drops out. The idea works for me.

VOIP radio is the future of the internet

I'd buy and put up a tower to use simplex before I bought a repeater. People spend fortunes on other hardware, but in truth, RF comms are more dependant on the antenna and its placement than any other component. Without a well placed antenna over it, a repeater is just money in someone else's pocket .

Starting this week there wil be a discussion net on the Towson 600 repeater in central MD. The repeater is located at pretty high elevation on a tower in Towson MD and has a large coverage area. It comes in clearly as far as Edgewater to the south and the PA line to the north. To the east it propagates well into western and central Cecil and Kent Counties. Not sure how far west it works, but I would imagine most or all of Howard County. Perk up your ears and if you can hear the net, give a try to check in. We will be listening!

Always depends on the exact location. There are places in Alexandria and Arlington that you can hardly reach a mile with 50 watts because of structural obstacles

In my area not all agencies have moved to P25 and there is still a lot for a kid to listen to. I still use a BC245XLT from time to time. I bought it on eBay a couple years ago, since 245XLT is no longer state of the art, it can be had cheap

Its called "kerchunking" the repeater. Technically its not legal, but people do it all the time.

I have used this scheme and even found my radio to be sensitive to the plane of the ground wire if held perpendicular to the antenna. Best reception was with the loose wire pointed directly to or away from the other transmitter.

Sometime in a previous life my employer was contracted to do specialzed maintenance at cell locations. One service call for no signal from the equipment invovled in our contract turned out to be the fact that the cell tower primary owner forgot to pay the electric bill and the meter had been pulled. The tower stayed on line an additional 30 hours then the generator fuel tank went dry. All cell towers are subject to random mistakes as such.

No. No difference that you could tell

And discount what you will hear about the Slim Jim variant. It has been debunked, it has no more gain than a plain J-pole. The myth of the Slim Jim goes back to an early article about the design that "hopes" to have higher gain. No such improvement was ever detected, but the legend goes on via "Post Office" game repetition of the original story with the details left out.

A good J pole should have about 3db gain. There are variations with a little more gain, but I am not fully versed in them. I have successfully made and used 3 J-poles and am currently using one on my 1.25m Alinco. My nanonva and wattmeter both say the SWR is in the 1.1:1 range, where my Comet triband antenna is about 1.5:1 on 1.25m

Well covered for commercial passenger flights. There are private pilots that are hams and use their HT's while in flight. Height is might, line of sight, baby!

I have no trouble using Chirp on Macs. You do have to tell the Mac that you do want to run the program you found on the internet.