wrci350

Do you read through old threads looking for places you can "contribute"? Was it really necessary to add this statement to something posted over 4 months ago? The fact that maximum transmission power on the interstitials is expressed in ERP does not in any way prohibit a removable antenna, which is what I was commenting on. It does, however, place the onus on staying under the limit on the user of the radio ... not that most people care, of course.

What kind of radios? Do they actually have their own 'custom version of Chirp', or is it their own programming software? As far as the second question, since FRS and GMRS share the first 22 channels, if you import both "FRS" and "GMRS" you are going to end up with 44 plus the 8 repeater channels, or a total of 52. Pre-programmed FRS radios come with 1-22 (set up narrow and FRS power). Pre-programmed GMRS radios come with 1-22 (set up wide [other than 8-14] and GMRS power) plus the 8 repeater channels.

Search on eBay for "repeater duplexer" and you'll see lots of them.

Yes if you look around you'll find several other radios that look like an 878 and are more than likely made in the same factory. The DJ-MD5 has a different form-factor but on the inside I'm pretty sure it's the same radio as an 878, or very close.

I had to look it up, so you can probably guess the answer. Sounds like an Icom thing, yes? Nothing like that, but one nice thing about the DJ-MD5 (and other DMR radios) is the use of "zones" that you put all your channels in. So you could have a "home" zone and a "beach" zone and easily switch between them.

Alinco DJ-500TB Analog $140 Alinco DJ-MD5XTG DMR/Analog $196 Both are Part 90 radios, so no diode clipping, resister removing, or magic power-on sequence needed. They ship with a 136-174/400-470 antenna, which certainly must be better at *some* of those frequencies, but usable at all of them.

Take a look at LMR400UF (the UF is for UltraFlexible). A bit more loss, but very easy to work with.

Not sure where you got your cables but $96 for a two-foot cable is way out of line IMHO. I just priced a two-foot LMR400UF cable at TheAntennaFarm*. The cable itself is $1.68 a foot, so a whopping $3.36. It's only $10 to have both connectors installed with heat wrap, so it's not the labor. The cost is in the connectors themselves. For an N male you can pay $43.37, or you can pay $5.46. PL-259? $10.48 or $3.14. Even if you opted for the most expensive connectors you'd be looking at $70, not almost $100. *Highly recommended, BTW.

Sounds like you paid whoever you bought the scanner from to program it for you. My suggestion would be to buy software so you can program it yourself and do so; that will give you a better understanding of what's in there. (It is certainly possible to do the programming by hand, but trust me, using software is MUCH easier!) There is also a more scanner-specific forum site (RadioReference) where questions about "how do I program it" and "what should I be able to hear" can be asked. Based on your listed location I looked in the RadioReference DB for the four nearby counties and all emergency services are using conventional analog VHF and UHF, so iyour 325P2 should be hearing a lot of traffic. Nothing is on a trunking system, and there is no encryption in use. State-wide trunking systems are definitely the exception rather than the rule, and while there IS a state-wide system in PA the primary user is the State Police (who are fully encrypted), not county or local agencies. I will echo what others have said about GMRS. While there is a significant faction out there that looks at it as a "chat with random folks on the radio" service, that really isn't the intended purpose (although that's not forbidden either). If that's what you are looking for you are much better off getting your Technician license.

Apparently "the regulation" you don't agree with isn't the one I thought you were talking about. I was specifically addressing FRS/GMRS combo radios. By "only on the FRS frequencies" I'm guessing you mean the simplex FRS/GMRS channels, since there aren't any FRS-only frequencies. I believe that any Part 90 radios that have grandfathered Part 95 certifications are considered "GMRS" radios, so as the rules are currently written, yes, a GMRS license is required, and yes, IDing is required. Do I care? No, I don't. On paper, the FCC does. In reality, they don't either.

Perhaps, but it's also understandable, since the pre-2017 rules allowed for those combination FRS/GMRS radios, and somewhere in the manual that came with them there was a notice that a license was needed if you wanted to use the higher-power "GMRS" channels. I'll bet the percentage of people who purchased those bubble-pack combo radios and got (or had) a GMRS license was in the single digits. FRS radios are also not allowed to use repeaters, so it's not just bandwidth and power levels that differ between FRS and GMRS. As far as the requirement to ID if using a GMRS radio (even on simplex), that certainly seems to be what the FCC regulations say. Will anyone know and/or care if you don't? Probably not.

Uniden BCT125AT. You can get one for just over $100.

Yup. And fixed station <> base station. ?

OK that's totally false. Care to show us where in 95E it says that? Oh wait, it doesn't. What it DOES say is this (in 95.1763): (b) 462 MHz interstitial channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable and base stations may transmit on these 7 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5625, 462.5875, 462.6125, 462.6375, 462.6625, 462.6875, and 462.7125 MHz. (c) 467 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, control and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels. Mobile, hand-held portable and control stations may transmit on these channels only when communicating through a repeater station or making brief test transmissions in accordance with § 95.319(c). The channel center frequencies are: 467.5500, 467.5750, 467.6000, 467.6250, 467.6500, 467.6750, 467.7000, and 467.7250 MHz. And in 95.303: Control station. A station at a fixed location that communicates with mobile stations and other control stations through repeater stations, and may also be used to control the operation of repeater stations. A GMRS "BASE" station (which is almost certainly a mobile radio connected to a power supply and an external antenna) is a control station.

OMG really? I don't need an explanation of the less than and greater than signs. It was a typo, and I fixed it.

The 467 interstitials are restricted to HTs, are they not? I appear to have lucked out with two Diamond antennas, as far as working on 2m/70cm and GMRS. The X50NA I've been using for almost two years has a SWR just under 2.0 on the GMRS repeater inputs. Not great, but OK for limited use. I just put up a V2000A and it has an SWR< 1.5 all across the GMRS 462 and 467 frequencies.

That would definitely not be type-accepted for either service. If you dig into the website further it's an either/or ... there is a MURS version, an FRS version, and a PMR446 version for Europe. But you have to pick one.

Couple questions: Where are you when you hear these pages, and what radio(s) are you using?

Not considering. Done deal.

I would remove the receive CTCSS tone and see if that makes a difference. It's possible that the repeater isn't actually transmitting the published tone or the signal is so weak that your radio cannot detect the tone.

If all houses were produced by one manufacturer and sold through a small set of resellers at a price set by the manufacturer then I would agree with your analogy. How about, "Best tickets for this sporting event are $75 but you can get them for $400 from some guy standing in the parking lot the night of the game. That means the price of the tickets is $400." Fortunately I have a small stockpile of Raspberry Pi's that should last me until they can be purchased for $35 (the price) again. ?

"The price" has not changed at all. Go look at an authorized reseller's site and you'll see they are still the same price they were two years ago. Unfortunately, they are also all out of stock everywhere. There are people out there that are buying them from an authorized reseller (on the rare occasions that they are available) and turning around and selling them at highly inflated prices. Illegal? No. Immoral and wrong? Some would say so. Others would say they are good business people. But either way, the official prices have not changed.

That's true everywhere, whether the tower is owned by a corporation or an individual. "My tower, my rules." As others have said, your choices would appear to be: a) find a company or organization that has a tower and would be willing to let you rent space on it or b) put up your own tower.

Set the tone mode to "Tone".

The receive tone (from the repeater back to your radio) is never required. You can configure your radio to "Tone" mode (TX tone only) and it will work just fine. The advantage to using a RX tone (assuming that the repeater is transmitting one!) is that you will *only* hear traffic that matches that tone. Here's an example. Keep in mind that the repeater output frequencies are shared with simplex users, including FRS users. If the kids next door are talking on 462.550 on their little bubble-pack HTs and either not using a tone, or using a different tone (say 110.9) then if you don't have the RX tone set on your radio you will hear them. If you DO have it set, you won't. Hopefully that makes sense