AdmiralCochrane

Not knowing what it is you’re trying to achieve it is hard to say. 
There are cases where some form of directionality may be desired, but I suspect those are few and far between.
 
Generally speaking, repeaters are positioned towards the center of their intended coverage area. A Yagi in that environment would be counter productive. However, if your repeater is located along a coast line or the edge of your desired coverage area you may favor directional antenna to maximum power into your target area. I would speculate however that there are few cases where a highly directional Yagi is the appropriate solution.
 
Conversely, I can definitely see where a Yagi could benefit the distant base station trying to hit a distant repeater.
 
Now, a collinear antenna with high gain is different story. With a collinear design you can achieve high gain and uniform horizontal (azimuth) coverage all around then antenna. I believe you will find some variant of the collinear design to be the most common for high-performing repeater sites.
 
Michael
WRHS965
KE8PLM
 
Edited for spelling.
 
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

In fact, making a repeater compliant with Part95E isn't all that hard. Most of the compliance issues for GMRS relate to user control over frequency. Since a repeater operates on a fixed frequency, that part is already taken care of.  I'd assume the biggest problem is the cost of the certification likely exceeds the potential sales value.

Have you searched the MyGMRS repeater directory and map?

Yeah rg400 can be tough. I found a easy way. Take scrap 2×4 drill a whole so the center conductor can slip easily through the center. Before you cut the sheath, slip the shrink wrap, ferrule, and the ring. (Using pl259 here). Proceed to cut the coax, slip the ferrule part way on to the shield wiring. Slip on the pl259, place the rest of the shielding around the connector. Take the crimper and gently grab the ferrule. Place the whole thing onto the 2x4, make sure not to damage the center lead. Using the crimper as a vise push down till seated. Finish the crimp and check for shorts as usual. 
Kinda works for n connectors as well.
 
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Thanks for the tips, I might try it... but I've given up on crimping any cable, b/c when you finally discover what rendered the setup range-less was my poor crimping job... its kinda sad.... 
 
G.
 

Did I say this already? THIS... this is how its done. 
 

I went with 7/8" Andrews Heliax myself, but kinda overestimated the length I actually needed. Hence I have nearly 20' excess which I've gently coiled up and tie-wrapped neatly.
 
For any future needs I have 678' of 1/2" Andrews FSJ4-50B Heliax. The Type N Male connectors are $20 each.

Another Anaconda? hahaha.... How did you manage to coil the anaconda??? with 1 a kilometer curvature radius?? hahaha.... the 7/8 Anaconda was just too much for my 25 foot run, basically to the top of the mast over on a 2 1/2 story house, so I went with FSJ4-50B b/c I could also fit it easily inside the 1" antenna mast tube... At some point before I had some Heliax 1/2, but turns out the cable, for some unknown reason to me, was clearly damaged as it always read massive SWR on the analyzer... no matter what connectors were installed.
 
Good to know about the gigantic spool of FSJ4-50B, however, factory made cables for me only, with factory pre-installed tri-metal N connectors b/c I now know I can't crimp those Heliax cables to save my own life... so its better to pay the professionals to do it right, just once. heh...
 
I think the FSJ4-50B is a great cable for most runs, provided you don't need a 200 foot run or something that long... for anything above 50 feet I would probably go 1/2 and anything beyond 150 probably 7/8 Anaconda...
 
G.
 
 

That or I could try threatening her with being grounded.
 
Oh wait... pretty sure my authority in that area disappeared 18 years ago.... 
 
Buttering it up it is.

That doesn't mean the selectivity is sufficient enough to reject closer noise that makes weak on-frequency transmissions readable.

The topic of the use of un-certified radios on GMRS, including Part-15, Part-90 and Part-97 gear, has been: discussed, argued, debated, nuanced, bantered, ridiculed, promoted and otherwise been beaten well past death on MyGMRS,com.
 
It certainly is worthwhile to note any certification a given radio might have. Be it as a pro, con, or simple comment.  But, please let's keep this thread to a simple presentation of brand name UHF radios that work on the GMRS frequencies and not get into that discussion again on this thread.

So, since this is the GMRS forums, which one of these are part 95 compliant?  Because, sometimes, it's not academic if they are or aren't.

Yes, that is why I carry the mobile UHF in the car. Sometimes I'll carry the 7550e UHF if I am going out and about with the family, so we can talk via GMRS... but... 
 
We should probably start a new thread, hijacking a CCR thread to post about pros/cons of Motorola/Kenwood/ICOM et. all radios is probably not going to fly well with the moderators.
 
DONE: https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/2183-brand-name-radios-proscons-thread-usednew/
 
G.

I believe hes mentioning CTCSS and DCS codes, which have been gone over extensively in the forums.  R-tone and T-tone. Not exactly sure how they'll be labeled but I do recall it saying R and T before the setting for Receive and Transmit

Oh, dang... I am very very sorry if I came out that way. Just trying to help, that's all, sometimes I get too passionate about it... 
 
So, there is a plethora of older Motorola (and other brands) radios to chose from, to my mind first comes the workhorse HT1000, the radio that public safety used to carry back when I was in college, or the HT1250s, both of those are good radios to own, but if you want to do the newer digital VHF/UHF ham radio stuff, the newer XPR series offers DMR and FM, although only single band. The APX radios (more $$$) will do more than one band, but in P25. The XTS will also do P25... which is not compatible with DMR (or MotoTRBO) unfortunately, although some people build MMDVMs that will link P25 repeaters to DMR, or D-Star, or Fusion... et. all. 
 
In my experience, once you get past the "single band" psicological barrier, b/c most of the LMR stuff is going to be single band, I think you won't ever look back.
 
I will say that, b/c for me at least it was a very hard pill to swallow at first. I've always carried dual band radios on me for more than a decade... But been carrying a single band radio for a year or so now and never looked back. Most of the time on my belt is a VHF XPR6550, but I have two mobiles, one VHF and one UHF in the car to reach the other band.
 
You might ask why VHF? well, I found it to be much further reaching than UHF, has HAM VHF repeaters, has MURS in case you need simplex, plus Marine VHF along with the NOAA weather channels to which I listen. Then there is a host of EMS/Public safety stuff on VHF too, like Dane County EMS, etc, which is all VHF FM still. All Police Depts around here went digital circa 2017 IIRC, most of them are P25 now.
 
I found the XPR6550 to be a really good radio for the cost. I have a few of those, in both flavors, U and V. You can find those for < 100 bucks on eBay from time to time, and the CPS can be purchased on eBay as well, along with the XPR programming cable. The APX/XTS/XTL radios I don't know much about, but I've spoken with people who swear by them, so I figured those are worth a look too.
 
There are a lot of <100 buck used radios that are way better than most CCRs. ICOM and Kenwood make a lot of decent stuff too, some of the newer Kenwood NX-series radios will do P25 and DMR on the same radio... and while Motorola won't, the audio overall sounds better, IMO, of course. The RX Audio Leveling function available on the XPR7000 series and  XPR5000 series is probably the best feature I've ever encountered in a radio... which basically makes every incoming transmission sound exactly the same volume, regardless of the other person having the gain on their mic set to +30 dB... So you never have to reach for the volume level ever again...  
 
Feel free to PM me.
 
G.

Thank you all for the information. I haven't heard of the Golay code/algorithm.... I will have to look that up. LoL.... I am acquainted with Gray code, BCD code, and binary coded octal.... Used to work with come navigation equipment that was nearly as ancient as I. The telemetry monitoring unit we used during preflights had nixie tube displays. We used thumbwheels to dial in hexadecimal addresses to display. Some outputs were in octal and we had to convert the octal numbers to decimal forms of radians and then convert the radians to degrees.... Good ole days...

I've been on a few hobby specific web sites. They all have their brand snobs. Whether it's firearms, outdoor power equipment, model railroad, and now radio... if it's not some preferred brand, it's garbage. I've learned to ignore it, but to many noobs this attitude is a turn off. They ask the question, 'on my $xx budget, what should I buy', then look at the products suggested by the brand snob, look at the price, then seek another hobby. I see threads and hear discussions about amateur radio (in all its forms) slowly becoming extinct because of expanding cell phone coverage. Making the newly interested feel that what they can afford is not welcome in the hobby does not make for 'good business'.
 
Ok, so the Chineese radios are not great, but don't knock them. They are the entry point for many, because for only slightly more than $100 you can have a radio and a GMRS license. If you don't like it, you're only out around $100. If you do enjoy the hobby, you can drop the coin and upgrade to a better radio. These "CCRs" are my entry point and I am enjoying this hobby. I expect that I will upgrade to better equipment at some point, but at the moment, I'm running what I can afford; what I can afford to lose if I don't like it.

That is a good idea for those radios without that capability.
 
If I were doing that, I would configure the split channel as a Rx only channel so as to avoid its accidental use as a simplex channel which would/could interfere with repeater operations. I would also configure it without tone so nothing would be blocked.
 
Michael
WRHS965
KE8PLM
 
 
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No. The J-Pole antenna is a 1/2 wave length long for the radiating section. The end of the antenna has a rather high impedance making for a very poor match to 50 ohm coax. Thus the extra length is due to an additional 1/4 wave matching section, the section with the short length of extra conductor parallel to the long one, where the tap point selected yields the desired 50 ohms. The overall length will be closer to 3/4 wave length long. At 462MHz the wave length is about 64.7 cm (25.8 inches) and 3/4's of that would be 19.1 inches, just what you measured.
 
http://www.ka3pmw.com/files/jpole_presentation_rev2.pdf

Motorola MSF5000, MSR2000*, MTR2000, XPR8300General Electric Mastr-II*, Mastr-IIIKenwood TKR-820 repeaterKenwood TKR-850 repeaterKenwood NEXEDGE NXR-800 (nice 5W 1U package for driving an external PA)Kenwood NEXEDGE NXR-810Vertex VX7000 series * = Depends on exact model, not all have Part 95.

I think that would be a great idea. I also believe that with MyGMRS selling node controllers that perhaps there could be a tutorial on the main site explaining some of the set-up steps and reminders of some of the codes and files that can be customized. I was thinking about contacting Rich and seeing if we could get that all going.

With an apparent increase in interest in linking repeaters, and posts on that topic appearing in several different sections of this site, would it be a good idea to create a separate, possibly private, section devoted to Linking repeaters?

I have a Midland 275, and the repeater access thing is still confusing to me.  So it appears that I need to select the correct channel for a given repeater - in this instance the frequency match is channel 21 - THEN I would need to program in the appropriate CTCSS code, which I'll have to look up or get from the repeater owner / manager.  Correct?  Apparently just turning the repeater feature to ON is not enough.  [The repeater owner is local and extremely helpful - I just hate bugging him all the time. ]

Yes, you're on the right track. Once you have the ctcss tone from the repeater owner, you'll have to check the mxt275 manual to see what ctcss code number that is in the radio (for example, the 141.3 hz 'travel tone' is #22).
 
The repeater option just makes the channels with the right tx offsets available (tx 5mHz higher, vs tx/rx on the same frequency for the simplex channels).

Two comments:
 
As a GMRS group, it is, or should be, expected that we would also advise where GMRS was not the best solution. Expertise on a topic should not imply promotion of that same topic.  It is far better to mention the alternatives now, early in @Guest_Kevin_'s project than to have him discover that GMRS was not the best solution after pouring money and time into it.
 
+1 on the UHF handhelds. The standard VHF rubber ducky antenna will have somewhere around a -2dB to -4dB loss. So, the 2 watt MURS transmitter output will likely be down around 1 watt ERP (Effective Radiated Power).