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FrancisHaws

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FrancisHaws last won the day on October 27 2020

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  1. Just got my own call sign this weekend! Been operating under my brothers call sign but decided I wanted my own so I could chat on the forums. Any other users in southern pa region?
  2. I am in the same boat as you in Pa. Hopefully with more new comers like you and me gmrs with start getting more traffic. Keep at it maybe your traffic will get others who are listening to pick up the mic
  3. Let me be clear, I have no interest in confrontation or any form of vigilante justice, I am just looking for advice on how to get the local police involved because I think the perverted stuff with the kids on a communication device is their jurisdiction
  4. Mid atlantic region. GMRS/FRS 462.575. My daughter knows not to give out info, she is a smart cookie. I am filing a FCC complaint today. And I am going to call the local police and report the stuff he said to the kids. One of the repeater owners says he shut down a ham repeater as well so he has drawn alot of attention to himself.
  5. So after years of putting it off I finally got a repeater capable radio a few weeks ago so I could access the many repeaters I hear pinging locally. I started requesting access to repeaters listed here and every one responded nicely but mentioned there where some buttheads in the area causing problems. Sure enough when messing with a base antenna on my hill two weeks ago I hear a young man screaming, cursing, and talking nonsense non stop. Later that day my brother reported that he heard the same guy jamming a conversation over a repeater on his way home from helping me. Then this Friday he was on and I was picking him up loud and clear screaming nonsense for hours on a bubble pack radio in my living room that I had on scan. First off this makes me believe he is close by because I live in a bowl with my house at 375 surrounded on all sides by 450 elevation and I can't get a signal into those bubble packs on my mobile throwing 50 watts more than a half mile away. Second I recognized the voice as the same one that was interrupting my 7 year old daughter and some of her friends talking in the neighborhood on bubble packs. I figured at the time it was just one of the girls teenage brothers being a jerk but I recalled him trying to get personal info out of the girls and asking what kind of underwear they had on which makes me believe this falls into criminal activity, possibly child luring, and maybe something local law enforcement should be looking into. I know that several of the repeater owners have fcc complaints against him and we all know that is basically useless but I wanted to know if anyone here has dealt with something similar, especially the creeping on the kids part of what he is doing. I was considering buying a HT with a good meter and a yagi and trying to track down his location and reporting it to the police. I am also considering having my daughter pretend to talk to one of her friends and see if I can record him making sexual comments as evidence. I am not interested in any form of vigilante justice I just want to hear suggestions on the best way to get law enforcement involved and take actual action against him.
  6. So I got a Nagoya NMO-200c 5.5dbi, RB-50 magnet mount, and GPK-01 base ground plane kit for my btech 50x1. It sounded great and signals where coming in clear on the magnet mount and when I finally got a 20ft mast up I put it on the GPK-01 kit. It sounded great the first week but I had to keep taking it down and putting it on my magnet mount until my midland 3db ghost antenna arrived. A few days ago as the left overs of that hurricane moved thru the area I started not being able to hear repeaters that where coming in clear before. I figured it was just the storm because I was listening into a local ARES ham net and they where talking about reception problems related to the storm as well. Then yesterday I was attempting to contact my brother over a repeater and I couldn't hear anything where we normally have clear comms. I hit the monitor button and still couldn't hear anything. Then someone else came on the repeater and I heard them clearly but weak and said they could hear my brother and me fine so it must be on my end. My nanoVNA just arrived today with my ghost antenna so I figured I would throw it on to see what the swr was and it is showing an swr of 1:2 on 462.540, it drops to 1:1.02 on 464.520 and starts going back up to 1:2.03 on 467.760. The radio says it recommends and swr of no higher than 1.5. Did I possibly damage my receiver? I didn't tape up the coax connections because it's only set up temporary could water ingress cause this? The antenna is what btech recommends and it says it's rated at v.s.w.r.: <1.5. The ground plane radials screw straight in and are at 90 degrees to the antenna, should they be bent down to 45 degrees?
  7. I have to second the Btech 50x1. It comes set up ready for gmrs out of the box and programing repeaters is pretty easy using the manual. It sounds great on their recommend NMO-200c antenna and I also just got done swr testing the 3db ghost antenna which has very low profile and on a proper nmo mount it won't look obnoxious to a woman.
  8. I have been studying what they amateur radio guys say and do and the etiquette they use. Am I on the right track or will I sound like a total tool bag on the air? When I am driving at work and come into range of a repeater I will say my call sign and say listening but I haven't gotten many contacts that way. Is that the correct way to do it and how often should I be saying that with out being annoying or creepy. If it stays this boring I am probably going to just go the ham route.
  9. Yeah I don't get why it's dead, our family has had our license since 2017 and I have always hear repeaters IDing left and right when scanning but I rarely ever hear anyone on them. You would think people who invested that much time and energy into putting something like that up would actually use them from time to time. You seem to know your stuff so I have a question. There is one repeater in my area that gets some regular traffic, sounds like a bunch of blue collar guys like me who are in the trades. They are a riot to listen to and I have really wanted to jump in and chat with these guys but I tried scanning the receive tones but it seems like it is all over the place. I also noticed they have some kind of burst of code when ever they key the mics, is this some type of thing that opens and closes the repeater so only they have access to it even if some one knows the codes?
  10. I am new to using gmrs repeaters and I just figured out how to access some local ones in my area that where listed on this site. They are pretty far away but just inside my base radios range. I hear many other repeaters IDing really strong in my area and I am sure they are much closer than the ones I found listed. What is the proper way to access and ask for permission to use an unlisted repeater?
  11. Probably several days but I always put it on the charger at night so I can't say for sure. For example, today my btech 50x1 was on it all day scanning and I transmitted for maybe 30 mins total on high power (50 watts) and it never dropped below 14.1 volts. The radio needs a minimum of 13.8 so I figure under normal use I can get several days out of a single charge. I also have 2 large deep cycle batteries from my trolling motor that I keep hooked up to a 100w solar panel so in the worst case scenario I have that to fall back on. The small battery I use for my station is the 10ah harbor freight one for their electric start generators. It's smaller than a lawn tractor battery and easy to transport so that is why I use it. I think a regular size car or truck battery and a small solar panel would be more than enough to keep you on the air 24/7 as long as you you aren't rag chewing the whole time
  12. Yeah they are for my fridge/freezer and some led lights that came with the kit. I use a cheap 10ah battery on a charger for my gmrs mobile base radio. I also have a 12v power supply which runs my cb currently but I can just tie that in to the battery if the power goes out.
  13. Thanks bud, I was able to make my first repeater contact today while mobile because of your help. I am starting to figure out how to program this thing and work the menu. It's pretty confusing until you have messed with it a bit.
  14. Ok so I was up that way again today and it seems to have gone down quite a bit. It kicks in really strong right as I am driving by the plymouth meeting mall but then fades away. Maybe there is some kind of commercial radio set up in the mall that is causing interference. It was damp and drizzling all day today and clear last week when I heard it all the way from king of prussia so maybe that explains why it was weak today.
  15. I went the bare bones route with a 100w harbor freight solar kit, it comes with everything you need minus a battery and an inverter. I just wanted something to keep my radios online and charge electronics so I don't have to run my generator 24/7 in the event of a long term power outage like we have had in the past from ice storms. The long term plan is to expand my solar to 400w so I can run my fridge and deep freezer intermittently off an inverter to keep food from spoiling. I run wood stoves in the winter anyway to keep my heating bills low so that covers that.
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