gortex2

In that area there is not much of anything. There was a guy in liberty with a "simplex" repeater but it shows offline. Being in the catskill park there is alot of good locations but not many that allow repeaters. AKD park is similar. Unless you find someone that wants to put one up on their mountain top house you will be limited.

Reach out to Rich

So back in the xstal base days we added alot of "pl" boards. You could definitely here the hum/tone when it was over modulated. If its set for the right level you wont hear it as said above. On wideband it was normally 700 hz we were shooting for on lowband. If you got over 750 you could definately hear the hum in the background.

Google earth does the same. I use it alot for work path study stuff.

Depends on your use case. I have the 275 in both my jeeps and love them but use them 99% of the time as simplex with handhelds. I do run them on a repeater with no issues thats private. If you have an NMO mount already drop a 1/4 wave on it and use it.

You can use aluminum. The antenna isn't that good of a unit to worry about the 8" difference in height. Just mount it and enjoy. Personally I'd swap on a uhf 1/4 wave but thats me.

No all my personal and SAR radios are all on my own time. Thats why I finally installed a RM server. Lots of radios take time to deploy. NO I work in RM little at a time when Im free and can push updates when ready.

Try doing an APX with 197 zones, 37 trunking systems and tons of conventional.....Oh and a boat load of secure keys...gets crazy. Thank god for RM.

Yup I know but there is no need for it. Not sure why everyone feels it needs to be there. Maybe in HF world but in UHF no. I've yet to see one antenna on a publics safety tower in 30 years with a loop in a cable..... Again I guess I just deal with Public Safety and LMR so my antenna systems emulate them at home to.

How far down the mast will there be cable ? I would use stainless ties from HD or Lowes. Just below antenna I'd wrap it with electrical tape (3M good stuff) then 2 stainless ties. There is no reason to do a loop, just run it straight down the mast. Where it goes into house/shed put a small drip loop and tape with double stainless tie there also. For reference good tape will last for years. I removed my fathers tower last year when he sold the house. I had used 3M tape then around the 6' mast with stainless ties about 15 years ago. I still had to cut the tape and ties. They were fine in Upstate NY snow and ice belt. There really is a difference in harbor freight electrical tape and 3M.

I think what @BoxCar meant were none of the major ham manufacturers ie: icom, kenwood, Yaesu. All went different directions with digital. I may be wrong but thats the way I read it. In the LMR world your right Kenwood, Motorola are both compatible with each other as long as we stay away from specific features.

I agree. The problem is and was Kenwood or Yaseu wasn't going to create a radio that would compete with the LMR world. Remember Yasue Vertex was part of MSI for a short period. I'm surprised ICOM never got on board with DMR but they and Kenwood were working on IDAS/NXDN at the time and went that direction. Even in the LMR world no one could standardize on one platform. It seems its leveled out and NXDN and DMR are the preferred digital vendors in the LMR non public safety world. MSI never was in the Amateur Radio world other than a few HF rigs that were basically built for EMO/SEMO applications. When MARC-DMR got started they were the only group working with digital and all equipment was LMR branded gear. I don't recall other LMR manufacturers adding DMR until recently to be honest. I think the entire Hytera incident may of caused some of the CCR folks releasing DMR also. Who knows but agree none of the main ham radio manufactures produce DMR gear to my knowledge ? Does ICOM, Kenwood or Yaesu have a DMR radio in the market ? From what I've read, Yaesu has Fusion (c4fm varriant), Icom has DSTAR and Kenwood has APRS and one handheld with DSTAR and that's it.

So to be fair this thread started about digital on ham. Now we want to change GMRS again.... Back to digital on HAM one of the issues now is the poor CCR radios on the systems. If it was not a market for CCR stuff they wouldn't build it. This goes back to me "cheap" comment in the past. People dont spend money on good gear anymore when they can get a CCR for the cost of one battery.

Radio or antenna ?

Thats the issue. Spectrum is money for FCC. they are not going to take spectrum from another paying location to give it away for free. The only option would be some of the 70cm amatuer band. Over the years there was rumblings of them taking it in the past. But that also would move the operating band of radios too far apart in my opinion. In the end I don't ever see this happening. There are places to play DMR, P25, NXDN and C4FM if you really want or need to. I'm actually surprised the FCC hasn't pulled the spectrum to sell yet.

There is no import feature. You need to type it in.

I just answered this here -

So I'd probably find some to help if I was you. both the HT1000 and MT2000 use a DOS based program that will not run on any newer PC. HT1000 basically needs true DOS. On top of the programming software and ancient laptop with a TRUE serial port (aka 9 pin) you will need a Motorola RIB and a cable for the HT1000. We still use the HT1000 for SAR work and have dedicated DOS only PC (Toshiba CF-25) for programming.

a DPL is a DCS tone in your radio. You should be able to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list. Lots of videos on You Tube on programming.

If your talking LRM radios yes. I have used the ICOM F420, F221S, F221, F6061 as well as a hand full of the ICOM handhelds. At one point ICOM made a FRS unit but its long been discontinued. All are solid decent units with great receivers. I think @Lscott has a few Kenwood LMR and could answer you on that regard. All my Kenwood LMR stuff is VHF.

Good deal. Since then we have built one in a similar size case with 2 20 watt vhf mobiles set for 15 watts. Additionally we have another in a Big Box with 45 watt mobiles and a huge VHF duplexer (Sinclair) but with 4 35amh batteries takes a 6 wheeler and a small army to setup. We only use this unit on one event thru out the year and it covers a large area.

Welcome. What is Central VA >

I'll have to dig for final pictures but here was the pictures from our "trial" unit. Pretty much all is the same other than we replaced the connectors on the ICOM with BNC (it was an orderable part from them) vs the adapter we used on this unit. For this one that was VHF that basically the only change we made. The UHF has a similar duplexer but in silver. That really the only way to know them apart without turning on the radios. I'd have to dig for the parts list as this was done back in 2013.

So other than the Bridgecomm I can say for 100% none of the new repeaters I linked are 2 mobile radios inside a box. They are full blown repeaters. This is why I posted those repeaters. If Bridgecomm is 2 mobiles inside they don't talk about that in the programming of the repeater. You hook up the cable and program the code plug in the repeater per their video here on their site. I realize there are many "mobile" based repeaters that can be built and are even sold however the repeaters I linked are true repeaters. Many folks don't have the technical ability to assemble multiple radios so that's why I put the links here. I realize there are many "mobile" based repeaters that can be built and are even sold however the repeaters I linked are true repeaters. Many folks don't have the technical ability to assemble multiple radios so that's why I put the links here.

Yup. Purchased alot of used gear from Sunny for our SAR team. Also shipped him a pallet of gear in the past. Good guys.