OldRadioGuy

I have tested several of my 2M/70cm ham antennas on my KG-805G and they all have a very acceptable SWR. 456MHz is only about a 7% delta in frequency from 70cm (440MHz) so not a big surprise. Keep this in mind though - Probably no radio has an exact 50 ohm output. Radios are designed to work well into a nominal 50 ohm load - but that does not mean the radio output is an exact 50 ohms. Most radios are reasonably close to 50 ohms but not at all exact. When I connected my 805G to my Arrow 7 element beam made for 70cm ham band the SWR was like perfect. The reflected power needle didn't even budge. Then I looked at the forward power needle. The radio's normal output is around 4-5W but with the Arrow beam the forward power was more like 7W! Could this be possible? Yes. The Arrow beam probably just happened to be a reciprocal match for my 805G. (And the length of coax probably was part of that equation.) The 805G output power is spec'd into a 50 ohm dummy load which may or may not be the ideal match for that radio. But this is how things are specified and tested. Bottom line: I think most 70cm ham antennas will work well with most GMRS radios but everyone needs to test their specific setup. The length of coax may have a significant effect when the antenna is not an exact match. Vince

BTW, the Smiley antenna description is incorrect on length. Collapsed it is 5" and fully extended 17" I think that description might be from their 2M version of that antenna. Vince

I have the 771 and it's a good antenna but, as people have said, it's a bit in the way. I also have the Smiley Super Stick 465MHz. https://www.smileyantenna.com/product-p/46510.htm It can be used fully collapsed or fully extended for better gain. Fully extended it's comparable to the 771 and works very well. Fully collapsed it's more like a compact rubber duck. I use it fully collapsed and only extend it when the signal gets weak . I think it's a pretty good way to go. BTW, you can convert your radio and your favorite antennas to BNC for quick changing if you like. I do this on my Ham 2M/440MHz rig. VK

Best way to find out is go on mygmrs.com and look at repeater listings. You have to be logged in for the tones to show. 141.3 and 123 are fairly common but check your area. Vince

That looks like a nice radio but I notice the Ditty people have lots of "license free" PMR446 radios for sale that operate in the Ham 70cm/440MHz band. They seem to make no effort to tell people that these radios are only license free in Europe. It looks like they are a US based company so even worse. I like the looks of some of their radios but I feel like boycotting them for selling ham band radios as license free. Why can't they just get these radios made in an FRS versions to sell? I realize the radio in this posting is a GMRS so what I've said is not applicable to that model. Vince

There is a place called aquapac.net that sells special radio bags to make them waterproof. Or just use a ziploc bag and poke the antenna through. Make a small starter hole first. Not waterproof but pretty good. The DeWalt FRS radio is listed as IP67 if you really need waterproof. (Going from 2W to 5W is just a little more than 3dB.) I think somebody mentioned that the KG 905 is more water resistant than the 805. BTW, there are several different batteries available for the 805. It's very practical to have a set of spares. So, in my book the 805 has a lot going for it. Of course the 905 sounds nice too. I like the transmit power level switch for one thing. But I'm happy with the 805's. Vince

The Wouxun 805G is not that intimidating. If you don't use privacy codes there is almost no setup required. You can just use them right out of the box pretty much. The bigger deal than the 5W is the antenna connector allowing use of an different antennas. So you can put a mag mount on it for in the car or get a Smiley GMRS super stick or a Nagoya 14" flexible whip antenna. These better antennas really do help. They are very nice radios and I like that you can have spare batteries and switch any time. If you are going to use repeaters you will want to change the display so the chan Freq is displayed rather than just channel #. This is pretty easy. Menu item 19 takes care of it. There is no power level control so if you wan to save batteries at close range you need to switch to the low power channels. That's about my only complaint. Vince

I'm pretty sure these are 900MHz digital radios which I think means trunking or at least a TDMA scheme of some kind. I'm not an expert but went to an ARES/RACES meeting for hams who volunteer for emergency comms. They told me the radios cost like $1000 each. Some were made by Motorola. They have a red panic button that calls all hands to your location. So they probably have GPS built in. It's basically for when you are being shot at. They tell you to be really careful of that button. Vince

The only confusion may be that some radios give the actual tone and others just number them sequentially. There is a table on page 27 that gives the actual tone freq for each numbered tone. You probably want to have that with you when you travel. Vince

digikey.com has a million connectors, but just as importantly, a really good web filter for finding the one you need. You might try them. This type of connector may be called a header or a boxed header. The pin spacing will be very helpful in finding the right one. Measure carefully to see if it's metric or english. Vince

If you have an unbalanced antenna - such as a vertical that works off a ground plane - it really doesn't matter what you do with excess cable. I would mainly be worried about the loss. Transmission line is transmission line. With a balanced type antenna (like a dipole or a beam) - coiling the cable can actually be helpful because is works like a balun transformer. Balanced antennas are not referenced to ground and want a differential drive. I would say nearly 100% of mobile antennas for vehicle are unbalanced or ground referenced antennas. Vince

I would expect Ham to be used much more in an official capacity. Many repeater clubs do a lot of drills and things for emergency comm. But in an actual emergency the repeater might closed to casual use. It may be restricted to only those associated with the emergency comm. network. There are also ARES/RACES groups in most areas that officially work with Govt. services. They will actually assign you a police/fire radio in an emergency. GMRS might be useful in an emergency but probably for more local and basic type communications. If you are really into this kind of thing Ham is probably going g to be lot more interesting. Vince

On the Wouxun 805G the only way you could do this is to create special channels using your PC with the software and cable. There is no way to do it with just the radio as it comes. Vince

The wavelength of GMRS is around 65cm which is like 25 inches while 11 meters is like 33 feet. Shorter wavelengths do much better at getting through windows such as in a car. If you take a portable radio inside your car you'll probably get FM pretty well but not AM. GMRS is 1/4 the wavelength of FM so would do even better. I think it's possible that you'll do just fine with the antenna on the hood. There may be a couple angles that are a problem but mostly will do OK. It's definitely worth a try. We've used hand held radios between vehicles with my in the Sprinter van up front. It has only one small window in the back which is a horrible scenario. It's a huge metal box with almost no opening towards the back which was the direction to the other vehicle. But it worked OK out to about a 1/2 mile. It almost shouldn't have worked at all. You could hardly imagine a worse situation but it wasn't that bad. So 460MHz is pretty good at sneaking through small openings. Vince Vince

Finding a Ham club is the best way to get into a local class. (I am an extra class ham since 1985) Of course, right now the problem is Covid and most classes have been cancelled. Some clubs are having zoom meetings so you can at least do that. I lived around Portland for 25 years (before moving to Spokane). There are several clubs around Portland and one even operates a 5W FM broadcast radio station on Cooper mtn in Beaverton. It's kind of fun to listen to because they do ads for ham radio and things like that. There are some good ham clubs there but some may be a bit too serious. I'm sure there are also clubs in Eugene or Salem that you'll want to join. The Rickreall hamfest is something you'll want to go to when it returns and absolutely the Seaside Hamfest (in June) when it returns. I'm pretty sure these are still cancelled for this year. Rickreall would normally be right around now. Lapine might be a good place for a ham station or a GMRS repeater. You can just have an HF antenna there and bring your radio along on trips. Thanks for the kind offer to let us stay at your place in LaPine when we come down there. I did not get the address though. :-) Vince

With the 805G go to menu item 19 and change the display so the frequency is displayed large and the channel number (or memory slot) will display as a smaller number on the right. Repeaters always list Freq rather than channel numbers so you kind of have see the Freq rather than channel. You will usually have to set the T CTC (menu 13) squelch tone as listed for that repeater. The R CTC (menu 12) is usually not required and can be left off. Of course ham repeaters like 2M and 70cm (or 440MHz) are only for licensed hams and legal ham radios. You will find that a 70cm ham antenna can probably be shared with you GMRS radio. If you have a dual band 2M/70cm ham radio there are many more repeaters available than for GMRS. Some ham repeaters are pretty active and others are really deads-ville. Some repeater owners strongly encourage you to "join" or send money and others not so much. Sometimes it's pretty hard to get a reply on a ham repeater. Either nobody is listening or they just want to talk to their buddies. If you join their club of course you're in. You said you have an electronics engineering degree.... In this case you will find the Novice ham test is the hardest and the more advanced level tests are the easiest. This is because the more advanced tests cover things you learned in engineering school. I went from technician license to Extra Class in a month... and that's when we still had the code requirement. The reason I have GMRS as well as ham is that outdoors people are not often hams. My wife and my fishing buddies are not hams. So GMRS is more practical for those things. Vince

For one thing - lead free solder (which everyone is required to use now) is nasty stuff. It can create whiskers and bad bonds and other problems. Also, the geometries of the components has gotten ridiculous. Have you ever seen an 0402 size cap or resistor? (that's .040"x.020") and now they have 0201's. The lead spacing on chips is likewise incredibly close, even under a microscope. The solder paste needs to be just the right thickness and something we even had to make stencils with different thicknesses. So they would have to etch the stencil down thinner in some areas. So no big surprise when something goes wrong. The only other thing that could have caused your TX to go out is timing out. If you PTT was accidentally pushed for a couple minutes you TX may shut down until it cools off or resets. Vince

That scadacore is a really cool and useful tool. Thanks to the guy who posted it. It seems to perfectly validate what I find with my radios. You can get away with "grazing" terrain interference but not much more. If you have terrain that is simply not conquerable with towers you may find that longer wave bands such as Ham 80M would do the trick. Longer waves are much more forgiving of terrain but this is a whole other universe from GMRS. It requires Ham licensing and very expensive radios with large wire antennas so may not be your answer. A repeater probably would be cheaper. A more radical solution is to look for possible reflections like bouncing off hills with a beam antenna. A guy on our 2m repeater last night was talking about having to point his antenna the "opposite" direction to bounce off a hill and talk to a station 50 miles the other way. He was using SSB on 2 Meters and probably 100W of power so he was pushing it. Obviously not an efficient scheme so need plenty of antenna gain (on both ends) and sufficient power. A co-worker years ago who was an antenna designer at Lockheed put a sheet of metal-clad plywood up on the hill behind his house to get Boston TV from Milford, NH. It worked quite well once he got it aimed right (using walkie talkies). Of course he was only 100-200 feet from the plywood sheet so it "looked pretty big" to his antenna. Vince

Ham Radio Outlet has lots of NMO mounts. You should be able to find something good there. I think all of my NMO's have come without the connector installed because you need to fish the cable through anyway. So I think I have always installed the connector after cutting the cable to the desired length. Looks like 20' of RG58 is less than 2db of loss at 460MHz. 10' of course would be just half that or 1dB. Not the end of the world. A good antenna will easily make it up. Vince

Yeah Jack A speaker mic with a long extender cable is way cheaper :-) The problem though is that you need a more expensive radio. Then the bluetooth adapter will not seem so expensive :-) Vince

I notice my Yeasu FT-7900 ham mobile radio does pretty much the same thing. So maybe it's just "a thing". ;-) Vince

The LED backlight probably draws only 2-5mA. So I wouldn't worry too much about it. I had a blue indicator LED on a piece of production lab equipment that I designed. The LED's keep getting more efficient. People were complaining that it was too bright. We finally turned it down to under 2mA. Vince

I ran across this Wouxun Bluetooth adapter that's kind of interesting. https://powerwerx.com/wouxun-radio-bluetooth-adapter I have the Powerwerx speaker mics and they work great with my 805G's so I assume this would also be compatible. I'm thinking you could hoist an 805G up a tree or lash it to a pole with a Nagoya 771 or Smiley Superstick antenna. (If you hoist your 805 up a tree make sure you have a "pull down" rope so it doesn't get stuck.) Could make an interesting base station for camp situations. I'm not very experienced with bluetooth so don't know what the range would be. Anyhow, this could be a cool (but expensive) accessory. Vince

Some nice features like a huge battery and power level select in menus. It says "waterproof" but it's only IP-66 which is just "water jet" proof - not submersible. Don't drop it while wading with your flyrod. My Cobra ACXT645's have tone scan but I've never tried it. I wonder if it's smart enough to only scan when a signal is present? Otherwise would be really hit-miss. I'm pretty happy with the 805G's and I wonder if my wife would "run away" from the 905G with "too many" features. I suppose the 805 is the same basic radio. Not necessarily obsolete... I hope. Vince

PC's are terrible producers of EMI/RFI interference. It's just not an easy job to get all that stuff down. As an engineer I've spent many (miserable) hours getting products to pass EMI standards. We made products that connect to a PC - so they had to be EMI tested while connected to a PC. We had a heck of a time finding a PC that actually passed EMI just by itself. Dell and hp were usually pretty good. Even if the PC is legitimate and passes EMI you need to get your radio at least a few feet away. There will still be some interference. I do pretty well just getting my radio 5-6 feet away. When I hear something I can walk to another room. You can put ferrites on your USB cables and that will almost certainly help some. Digikey sells "clamp on" ferrites and probably Ham Radio Outlet does too. Most EMI is radiated by common mode which means the whole cable is an antenna. Shielding does not do a lot of good unless the whole system is within the shield with NO wires exiting. Another easy thing to do is simply take up the slack in your cables, making a flat bundle with the slack. Don't make a loop keep it flat like a hot dog shaped bundle. This is what the EMI test rules allow to make the test reasonable. It really can make a difference. I've seen 3-6dB improvements doing this. As you can see it's a little bit of this and that. Vince