gortex2

The stuff that drives me nuts is the old men who talk about their health problems. Strokes, gout, oozing wounds, cancers, the whole gamut of issues. Totally depressing. My friends and I are very active hiking, off roading, camping, shooting, fishing, metal detecting, rockhounding, candy making, beer making, meat smoking, you name it, there's someone in our club that does it. And sometimes we even talk about radios.

Hams do talk about other things but yes, ham equipment is a big topic. Ham has a lot of bands and modes and therefore there is a lot to talk about when it comes to equipment.

When installing an NMO you want the outside ring the same height or a bit lower than the center. On a standard mount thats how it should be. With a 3/8" style mount you want the center slightly above the brass ring. 

Your best bet is to drop a NMO mount center of the roof. One hole. Throw a UHF 1/4 wave on it and enjoy scanning your DPS stuff and use it for GMRS. Simple effective and cheap.
 

141.3 traditionally was the REACT tone which kinda became the travel tone.



Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

It appears that 99.9% of the GMRS repeaters throughout the country operate on wideband channels. The only exception to the norm is the Arizona GMRS Repeater Club which operates all four of their repeaters, and nine tactical channels on narrowband channels and without any issues in regards to audio quality.
Personally, I would like to see the FCC mandate that the GMRS channel operate on narrowband channels. If it works for Part 90 radio services it can work for Part 95 radio services.
Narrowband emissions help facilitate spectrum efficiency and minimize adjacent channel interference.

After the system I was involved with during the narrowband changeover, we did not have any issues as most have described with their experiences. All of our systems were designed with overlapping coverage for redundancy with simulcast, and voting receivers. There could have been some propagation differences but it didn't impact operations.
Even the difference in the audio quality was negligible. I guess when you use quality radios you don't experience those issues.

LMR 400 for 35' feet. 
 
RG58 - Loss per 100 - 10.6db
LMR400 - Loss per 100 - 2.7
So at 35' of RG58 you are loosing almost 4db which is over 50% of signal loss and power. 

Linking may have its place but I dont believe GMRS is it. I'm in the same boat of listening to long drawn out ragchewing from guys states away. Ive heard the same on ham. Heck there are times I hear thesame conversation 2 hour apart on ahn or GMRS. I never got into GMRS for contacts or to make a statewide system. I prefer my small repeaters, and use them for a purpose. With a good repeater setup there is no reason a town, county can't have good coverage. As of late I use my Part 90 stuff more and more. GMRS was once a great family/friend service. Linking, nets and all the ham radio stuff is not what GMRS started as. I know things change but you asked for opinions.
 

I'd say, GMRS isn't a ham facsimile. I know that a ton of people on it seem to really want to treat it as such, but it isn't what it's for. It's closer to FRS. It's aim is to be a utility/domestic/family service. That's why the call isn't for an individual, but a household. It's for house:main radio, family cars:mobile and some handhelds for ski trips. Nobody constantly yelling out call signs and whatnot.. But, it's a novel radio service that attracted the ham nerds who took liberties with the 8 repeater channels and here we are.

In all my years of LMR work Hardline is preferred. The only time I've used LMR600 is when we had to pull some thru a conduit between two buildings. LMR400 all the time in the control station environment. Even my house has LD4-50A run to my antenna's. In my work environment we use up to 1 7/8" hardline. Connectors for hardline can cost more than your radio and antenna system combined....
 

In all my years of LMR work Hardline is preferred. The only time I've used LMR600 is when we had to pull some thru a conduit between two buildings. LMR400 all the time in the control station environment. Even my house has LD4-50A run to my antenna's. In my work environment we use up to 1 7/8" hardline. Connectors for hardline can cost more than your radio and antenna system combined....
 

Jeezus...

Usually, in most cases, generally speaking, most of the time, for most people, on average, and assuming there are no issues with your cabling or connectors, you will get better send and receive performance using an external antenna vs using the HT antenna INSIDE the car.  I would expect the external antenna to work a little better than the stock antenna outside the car, but not hugely.
Dont forget that you are losing some power through the coax, connectors and patch-cord, so that could negatively impact the performance.

Really depends on what you looking to listen to. If its public safety and trunking systems the SDS series is about whats there. There are older BCT15 or 996P2 but they all have drawbacks. For air my BCT15 is a solid unit. SDR is great but takes some knowledge in software and scans different than a scanner. In additon requires a computer on all the time to scan. 

In all my years of LMR work Hardline is preferred. The only time I've used LMR600 is when we had to pull some thru a conduit between two buildings. LMR400 all the time in the control station environment. Even my house has LD4-50A run to my antenna's. In my work environment we use up to 1 7/8" hardline. Connectors for hardline can cost more than your radio and antenna system combined....
 

We have to keep in mind that the primary purpose of GMRS is for families and other small groups. Using repeaters is just a bonus. For everything else, HAM is the way to go.

Joining a club will not make the tones show up on myGMRS.com. You need to get the tones from the club or repeater owner.

I see no reason to link GMRS repeaters.  Let the ham team enjoy that.  (Which makes me sound like I have dual personality disorder, since I have both licenses 🤣)

Linking may have its place but I dont believe GMRS is it. I'm in the same boat of listening to long drawn out ragchewing from guys states away. Ive heard the same on ham. Heck there are times I hear thesame conversation 2 hour apart on ahn or GMRS. I never got into GMRS for contacts or to make a statewide system. I prefer my small repeaters, and use them for a purpose. With a good repeater setup there is no reason a town, county can't have good coverage. As of late I use my Part 90 stuff more and more. GMRS was once a great family/friend service. Linking, nets and all the ham radio stuff is not what GMRS started as. I know things change but you asked for opinions.
 

Way back when our county linked the RACES ham repeater to the StasteWide system (all RF days no internet) one had to use a different PL to activate the link. After x amount of time with no traffic local the link would drop. think it was 15 minutes back then. Maybe 30. The goal of the link was to give us outside area help on an event when needed but not to have daily qso on the channel. It worked great for years. Then they linked via internet and since its been non stop chatter from the other end of the state. So basically no one uses the repeater. 
Thats been my issue with the GMRS repeaters I have come across that are linked. I have no cares in the world about stuff 300 miles from where I am. In a disaster its different. But not for every day life. If you need long distance traffic use zello or something else to talk on. WE do the samei n the SAR world. We have multiple repeaters across an area but none are linked full time. If there is a need for an incident then they can be patched. If you want to listen to one or the other you go to your zello app and listen in. 
As said earlier resource allocation is more of the issue. On top of that is the limited amoutn of repeaters. I have been in areas where I can hear 3 repeaters and its all the same traffic as they are all linked. There is no reason for that. Pick one channel and link it. If you need more coverage build out that repeater site. 

I think you articulated the problem.
By having several repeaters in an area linked each one requires it's own pair of frequencies. Sticking to the usual standard of a 5MHz offset that leaves just 8 pairs. So, by linking several repeaters together when any one of them goes active all are now on the air. This effectively ties up several valuable repeater pair frequencies whereas one might have been sufficient.
The argument for this practice is now a much wider area is covered. However one forgets that another user may wish to setup their own repeater, and has NO desire to share it with anyone outside their family or group. The multiple linked repeaters now consumes the limited repeater frequency pairs, and possibility leaving none available for somebody to use on a limited basis. 
For example here in the metro Detroit area we have, I think, three linked repeaters, and one wide area standalone repeater. Since we are past the FCC's "Line A" two of the official repeater frequency pairs are not available. With four of the remaining pairs consumed by the linked system that leaves just 2 frequency pairs open for somebody else to use.

All of this is just my opinion, but since you asked... I don't like or use linked repeaters. Not on GMRS, not on amateur radio. I have three stand-alone repeaters on a 6,000 foot peak and one out in the desert near Barstow. None of them are linked to anything and never will be. There is an amateur radio system called the Winsystem with linked repeaters all over the U.S. as well as nodes linked in internationally. Not only do you have to hear conversations possibly taking place in other states or countries taking up valuable local repeater bandwidth, the entire system is a target for jammers. Many of the nodes sound like crap. I find little value in linked repeaters.

I think networked repeaters have their place, but I agree with you for the most part. I want at least a few unlinked repeaters so I can contact people who use the same repeater. 
I don’t understand hams making QSOs on networked repeaters. 
I do understand enjoying the challenge of “conquering the airwaves” to make distant contacts, not for the joy of talking to strangers (nothing wrong with that, just not my thing), but for the technical challenge it represents. 
 

Not likely. This has been discussed ad-nauseum in a different thread. There are some for and some against but it seams the majority are against. The FCC isn't likely to give the issue any attention.