wrci350

You cannot accurately measure the SWR of an HT antenna with that setup. When you hold an HT in your hand and push the PTT button, the radio and your body are providing the ground plane for the antenna. Laying the HT on a table and inserting a power meter between it and the antenna removes the ground plane. You can measure *power* in that configuration, but the SWR readings aren't accurate. More reading here:

No debate from me on the fact that what the rule says is that hams can use any *amateur* frequency in an emergency. I will, however, disagree with your assertion that "Most hams" think otherwise. Some? Oh definitely. But not most.

Which pretty much defeats the purpose, no?

Correct. If the repeater were active for "group a" and someone from "group b" keyed up as well, none of the other "group b" radios would hear the transmission.

Amazon listing for what? What radio are you talking about? If you are looking at the same Amazon listing that I am, you can order both versions (SMA-M or SMA-F).

There *are* repeaters (that work on GMRS) that won't do that, but *will* allow you to set up multiple CTCSS/DCS tones on the same frequency pair. That would allow you to use one tone for the farmer and one for the family and they wouldn't hear each other.

Interesting. Do you hear more on the iPhone app than you do on your old scanner, or the same? If you hear more on the app, that probably lmeans that SIRN is in use and whoever is providing the feed has a scanner monitoring that system. (Keep in mind that's how those apps work ... somewhere there is someone with a real scanner that is monitoring the traffic and streams it to the Internet.) If you can pick up those frequencies on your scanner but not the new radio that suggests a programming problem.

The Radio Reference DB is crowd sourced. Nothing is [supposed to be] added unless it's based on first-hand knowledge, either from someone who is a user on the system or from someone who has monitored and identified traffic. It's a lot easier to add new things than to remove old ones since many agencies will keep an old system as a backup when they move to a new one. In that case, someone saying "I don't hear anything on this frequency" isn't generally enough. The fact that an expired license is listed is also not always evidence that something is not still in use. Perhaps there is a new license, or perhaps the agency keeps on using the frequency in spite of the fact that the FCC license is expired. (Yes, it happens.) With all that said, I think the answer is found higher up on the RRDB page for your county, under "Barbour County Trunked Systems". West Virginia has a state-wide P25 trunked system called SIRN. If you take a look at the system you'll see a bunch of talkgroups for Barbour County, including Fire, EMS, and law enforcement dispatch. The good news is that none of them are marked as encrypted, so they should be monitorable. The bad news? None of the Wouxun or other GMRS radios can monitor systems like that, since those radios are analog only. I have to laugh at some of these radios that are marketed as "when bad things happen scanners" since there are very large areas of the country that have moved to P25 or other digital modes. Those "900 emergency channels" are almost certainly going to be useless if someone wants to listen in to "see what's going on". I'm basing all this on just looking at the DB. If you want to verify that the local agencies are moved to SIRN you could post in the WV forum on RR and ask if there is someone local who can tell you.

But that doesn't include the actual node hardware, correct?

There is no such thing as a "Part 97" radio, so using one with Part 90 acceptance isn't breaking any rules. The only certification you will find on a ham radio is Part 15.

Never mind. ?

I'm going to say again what I said yesterday in another thread. There's "what the rules say". There's "what people THINK the rules say". And there's "what people think the rules SHOULD say". You are looking at the first. Others, not so much.

I think you answered your own question. We have "what the FCC rules say", then we have "what people THINK the FCC rules say", and finally "what people think the FCC rules SHOULD say". Hence the ongoing debate. Please provide the section of Part 95e that says that. Oh wait; there isn't one. For a radio to be "legal" on GMRS, it HAS to have a Part 95e certification. Full stop. The rules do allow for a radio to have dual certification (Part 90 and Part 95e) as long as it cannot transmit on frequencies that are part of a service that doesn't require transmitter certification (aka Part 97). But nowhere does it say, "Part 90 radios are automatically certified for Part 95e". Indeed, many Part 90 radios are 400-470 or 400-480 so they can be used for ham radio (which is perfectly legal) but that precludes them from being 95e certified. As far as I know, there are NO currently-produced radios that are both Part 90 and 95e. Not completely accurate. Mobiles cannot be used on the low-power channels; those are restricted to HTs only. Not a matter of "turning down to a legal power output". The bottom line is that the FCC doesn't care if you use a Part 90 radio on GMRS. But that's not what the rules say. It's up to each GMRS licensee to decide how important it is to use a Part 95e certified radio.

After seeing this thread last night I grabbed my KG-UV7D (6m/2m) and sure enough, the battery was dead. I just checked my 805M (don't have an 805G) and its battery is still fully charged after also sitting unused for a couple months.

I do not have one, but according to the website it uses an SMA-Male Antenna (so it has a standard SMA female connector on the radio). The Btech radios have SMA male connectors and use SMA female antennas, I'm pretty sure.

It's definitely a zip archive (look at the URL) so anyone downloaading it on Windows has to open the archive to get to the folder with the installer in it. Yes, you can configure your browser to automatically do that, but not recommended. Sometimes nasty things come in zip horses.

You must be seeing a different download than I am then. The whole thing is a zip archive. ?

What error message are you seeing? Is Windows complaining that it is an unsafe app and won't run the installer? I've loaded it on both Windows 10 and 11 recently without any issue. Did you download it from here? https://radioddity.s3.amazonaws.com/Radioddity_GM-30_Firmware 20210615 %26 Software_V2.06_20210615.zip Inside the zip archive is a "CPS V2.06" folder. Run the installer inside that folder. You may get a "Windows protected your PC" pop-up. Click "More info" and then "Run anyway".

Actually I wasn't aware of that either; I've been a premium subscriber forever so didn't ever notice!

Sorry but this made me laugh. Have you ever read the QRZ forums? Or the ones here? ? Actually now that I think about it, I *have* ignored a number of users on RR so maybe I don't notice as much.

Most GMRS repeaters seem to use both transmit and receive squelch tones, but that is certainly a possibility so taking the receive tone off would be a reasonable testing step.

It's absolutely worth it *for me*, since I use the database download feature on a regular basis. If that's not something you will use, then off the top of my head I can't think of a reason it would be worth it for you.

It's quite possible that you aren't doing anything wrong. What were you expecting to hear? Some repeaters will ID when keyed up (if they haven't done so recently) and some will have an audible squelch tail, but hearing nothing is not unusual. Did you ID with your call sign and ask for a signal report? Have you left your radio on and monitoring that repeater to see if you hear anyone else?

OK please lay out your plan for making it more accurate. I'm sure the owner/founder would be happy to hear it. Submissions are accepted from people who have first-hand knowledge of the frequency in question. There is no way for some central authority to verify everything. Just because there is a reference to an expired license doesn't mean the frequency isn't still in use. Your initial post made it pretty clear that you don't feel it's worth the money, so why did you even ask? There are lots of other folks (including me) who use it on a regular basis who feel it IS worth the few bucks a month it costs.

The RR database is crowd sourced. Everything in it is [supposed to be] based on a submission from someone who has actually monitored that frequency and can positively identify who is using it. Are there errors? Sure. Another issue is that unless someone is directly involved with a system it's hard to tell if the use of a frequency has actually been discontinued or if it's been kept as a backup to a new system. As far as expired licenses, do you really think that there aren't any entities out there still using a frequency that was allocated on a license that has expired? ? It is worth pointing out that the RR database is NOT fed from the FCC license database. There are tons of licenses out there that are not in use, or where someone has licensed analog plus DMR or NXDN (or both) but are only using analog. The premium subscription gives you the ability to download from the database into scanner programming software. AFAIK just looking at the database on the web site is free.