AdmiralCochrane

OK, I looked at the P1225s on eBay and did some other searching. Where is the programming cable and software for these? It appears to be a stumbling block to using them. Also there seems to be a mystery to decoding which models are VHF, UHF or dual band; sellers rarely seem to know anything except that they are radios. Can you point out where this info can be found. I spent about a half hour searching and am coming up blank on these answers.

I've never found better made radios close to the price of CCR's, usually double or triple to move up, sometimes 4 or 5 times. My "junk CCR's" performance has been only marginally worse than the name brand Japanese radios I have replaced them with, maybe I have been lucky. CCR's are an entry point to the hobby. The firearms comparison isn't close, a High Point pistol often doesn't function at all, much less poorly.

Valid considerations, but I decided I wanted the ability to jump into the repeater momentarily if I thought simplex would be too weak. Repeater traffic in my area is very sparse and infrequent; its exciting to hear one contact per week.

Actually my question was answered when it was revealed that the antenna I questioned was identified as a stacked dual band unit and not a UHF only antenna.

It occured to me while programming my programmable radios that if you programmed a channel to both receive and transmit on a repeater's input you would be able to hear a nearby transmitter and determine if it was close enough for simplex or not and instantly respond on the repeater with the results. I decided this was practical on most GMRS radios because we would already have the repeater output as a simplex channel and another memory channel for repeater use and a full spilt wasn't really needed. If you programmed them in succesively as 15, 15r, and 15s you could easly flip back and forth.

I think this is because FCC sets the repeater offsets without exception for GMRS and on the ham bands, there are a few exceptions. Because of this, the aren't choices for GMRS, but there are for ham.

So, if I switch the receiver on the second radio to wide band, half of the possiblitiies are eliminated, right?

Time will tell

I failed to mention that I monitored the retransmit from the repeater with a second radio. There's just not that much traffic in my location.

If you have a cell phone, you have a decoder

Not getting that on this particular repeater in my neighborhood.

Talkaround is repeater offset defeat. Uses a preset channel normally used with a repeater (and different transmit and receive frequencies) but directly using the normal receive frequency for both transmit and receive (also known as 'simplex')

CB may work too.

On my MXT400 narrow works just fine on the repeaters near me

Just FCC requirement. There are many old hams and ex military that can read it that fast. Its also legal for you to use prerecorded/digital Morse Code as your station ID.

Yes using the calculator linked, I see the same length ~19" That the antenna mentioned is dual band explains the extra length; I didn't see that in the original mention. I think Ed makes single band antennas too, so without the dual band mention, I didn't know why a longer one was mentioned.

These answers don't directly answer my question. 65cm (the wavelength of the GMRS band) is ~25 inches. A half wave antenna would be ~12 inches. My home made Slim JIM (which gives me swr's below 1.17) is about 19 inches overall including the lower loop. Wouldn't a properly tuned J pole for GMRS will be about the same size?

Why would one use a 5 ft antenna on a 65cm band radio?

I used an old piece of RG8 between my 400 and my swr/power meter and it ate up 45% of the power output. Changed to direct connection at the back of the radio and now measure 40 watts. UHF is very easy to leak out of coax and any bad or weak connectors are signal killers

Midland still has the MSRP at $249.99, but all the common sales locations bumped them to $299.99 I got mine for $229.00 from Northern Tools, because I had a $20 off coupon Lowes no longer shows the kit, only the 400 alone at MSRP

I use Chirp for all my other Baofengs, but there isn't a Chirp version for the Mini

CCR's are the free samples of crack of the radio world. I bought a 70cm Baofeng Mini when they were on sale for about $10 shipped not realizing to get it programmed the way I wanted it would cost more for the programming cable than I paid for the radio. Then the programming software wouldn't run on my Mac and I had to program it from the Dell laptop I use at work. I have several of the local 70cm repeaters programmed into it but have never had the opertunity to try it close enough to hit any of them. It does receive if you are line of sight to the towers at least 5 miles away, I have done that with it; its almost worth the $10 for that alone.

Ditto

TerraWave TWS-400 has the same rated db loss and moisture resistance for about 80 cents per foot from The Antenna Farm. They cut custom lengths and will put whatever connectors you want (or none) on either or both ends at a reasonalbe price.

Looking at similar equipment on eBay, I noticed one seller noting that some of his resale items may be password protected that might take extra work to brick and reset. Buying from a seller like Used-Radios.com is going to get you a guaranteed ready to use machine; worth an extra few bucks in my book.