Raybestos

If you are within the warranty, you are probably good to go. If outside the warranty, you are SOL. These radios are a "rig on a chip" and from what one of their guys told me, not much of anything can be done in the way of adjustments. This is why I mention checking before it goes out of warranty.

Au contraire. The first time I saw it mentioned was a few years ago, from a commenter on one of your vids.

Absent some expensive test equipment, you will need to check the tones against another radio or other radios, or against a repeater known to be encoding and decoding certain tones. I had a 905G that would not decode a local Motorola repeater's output tone of 210.7. There were other tones I discovered by accident that would not encode and/or decode with another radio of the same model, when only a few yards apart. I forget which tones. I have seen one or two comments from viewers on Randy's YT channel regarding this issue a few years ago. I asked the poster for details but never got a reply. Then I had radios that exhibited this undesirable tendency. Recently, I was testing simplex range between a friend's KG1000G+ and my own S88. We were using a 245 DPL. I had set the DPL in both radios and later double checked to ensure that I had not put in the wrong tone on one or a reverse tone. I had not. We were on simplex with varying signal strength between very good and very poor as I drove down the road. For whatever reason, when he transmitted on that simplex channel (between 1 and 7, I forget which), he would not open my decoder. I had to hit my monitor button to hear him. This is a real issue, despite apparent lack of reporting of same.

PL is the same thing as CTCSS.

Congratulations on the new radio! I had a couple of the 905's as well as 935's and a S88. While Wouxun overall is superior to Midland, B-Tech, and similar brands, one place I have found where they seriously drop the ball is their PL/DPL encoding and decoding. I have had issues with all models I own(ed) with regard to PL/DPL encoding and decoding. It seems to be different tones or codes based on the particular radio and maybe even the day of the week. I would recommend checking the tones against repeaters or known simplex operations in your area. If you find a problem, contact Buy Two Way Radios ASAP and make them aware of it. If you wait till after the warranty expires, you will be SOL. I hope at some point Wouxun finds it in their hearts to remedy the issues with their PL/DPL encoders and decoders. Best of luck to you!

Also, other repeaters are not the only possible victims of interference from a linked system where distant stations cannot monitor local outputs for traffic. Simplex operators on those eight 50W simplex/repeater channels can also negatively be impacted.

Not sure what others' motivation is, but I just got kinda tired of ham. Most of the interesting guys either died off or otherwise ceased operating. Then there was a population explosion of what Not A Rubicon excellently dubbed "sad hams" that I just lost my tolerance for. When the interesting guys were talking, and you were enjoying listening to their all-too-rare in ham interesting QSO, the needy sad hams would break into their conversation "just to say hi" or to tell one of the guys he just worked Brazil on 20m, or maybe he worked Germany on 40m, or share some equally useless and unwanted bit of information such as he just bought himself a new $8K radio. For some, on that last item we would be glad for them, but this guy is Mr Gotrocks and loves to brag, brag, brag, all the time. By the time he got off of the radio, the guys having the interesting conversation had lost their place and were sidetracked for the rest of the day, or night. A couple of them do this like clockwork as though destruction of an interesting QSO were an aspect of the hobby for them. Then there is the camaraderie! The GMRS guys I know, when we get together like at our monthly meet-n-greets, the friendship is genuine. You feel like you are with family. It's actual fellowship rather than everybody trying to measure and see whose is biggest. Another thing I prefer about GMRS over ham, we meet at different restaurants, in differing nearby towns each month. We have never met in a Gun Free Zone, the places statistically most likely to be hit by an active shooter terrorist. The ham groups I know of in a 50mi radius, they just cannot help themselves. Every place they find to meet is a Gun Free Zone under state law. Schools, churches, court houses, hospitals, government, buildings... I get regular invites to attend the ham gatherings but prefer to pass on them. There are other hams in our group, but they are some of the good hams not the sad ones. I can't speak for the guys you note getting on GMRS more than ham, but maybe they have similar reasons to mine. Oh, I do keep ham gear in case it is needed. I just don't use it a whole lot as of late.

Okay.

If only GMRS ops would adopt trendier-looking traffic vests and hard hats, they would get a bigger response

Not sure. I know some years back, Kenwood made a dual band (VHF/UHF) mobile for ham that had a feature similar to what you describe. I think it was the TMV71A. I had one and I believe the feature was called "Reverse PL" or similar. I played with it out of curiosity but was underwhelmed by its performance in actual use. You could set it to "silence" a repeater using say, a 162.2 Hz tone, but it wasn't completely silenced, as I recall. The station transmitting the tone selected for "silencing" would occasionally open the squelch for brief periods of time. It did not offer the quiet that a properly-working PL or DPL does against a station not transmitting the selected PL or DPL did. In other words, with my specimen, the technology had not yet been perfected.

Sorry, but I must disagree. Given the original intent of Class A Citizens Band/GMRS radio, of facilitating reliable local area communications between family and friends, linking is neither normal nor expected in this radio service. In areas with cellular dead spots, or where people may wish to have backup comms for the possibility of a cellular outage, a well-engineered and fortuitously located stand-alone repeater can be a real blessing to the community, county, or larger area that it provides coverage to. A cellular outage lasting a few hours could create a minor panic if a family member were not heard from in some time when they normally call or "check in" by a given time each day. Likewise, emergencies such as severe weather, missing persons where a community fields volunteers to search an area, etc, could be well served by such a repeater. Linking to other repeaters outside of your area, especially across the state or across the nation provides no practical or necessary comms for your local area. Instead, more often than not, they jam up one or more of the only eight repeater/50W simplex channels with inane and pointless chatter from other areas which have little or no bearing or interest to your local area. Frequently, chatter on only one or maybe two of the linked repeaters, ties up multiple repeaters and frequency pairs unnecessarily, hampering efforts to use the remaining repeaters in their local area, or just someone wanting to use 50W simplex to communicate locally, only to be washed out by the linked repeaters. The only real purpose I have seen in linking to distant repeaters and networks is to give the repeater owner doing the linking a level of Freudian "compensation", as they imagine the masses gathering to admire how far theirs can reach. In reality, most who are not newbies are not impressed. The technology used in linking is the same technology that allows most cell phones to make long distance calls. If you really get your jollies talking long distance over a commonplace network, call a friend or relative in another state. If you have no friends or relatives in another state, call a motel desk clerk elsewhere and ask them questions about their rates. You have just achieved the same exact thing as you do talking to or listening to a bunch of ratchetjaws many states away on a GMRS linked system, but without jamming scarce spectrum. If you really want to do VOIP DX, talk with the nice man or woman in India who calls to help you get a better rate on your credit card, next time they call. YEEEE HAW! IF that still leaves you dissatisfied, do the minimal studying required to get your Technician Class ham license and put up or utilize one of the many VHF/UHF networks there. While the linking there is annoying too, they at least have a lot more pairs (than our GMRS eight) to do these networks on.

Thank You! I found the other thread!

Can you tell us more? Sounds great!

Back in the 1960's, a lot of old Motorola, GE, and similar land mobile radios had a squelch tail, which was about a half-second of open squelch (white noise) you heard when a received station quit transmitting, before the squelch closed and silenced the receiver. As a kid, I always enjoyed the traffic and squelch tails when the city cop with a (then) new Motorola HT-200 came in the drug store with his radio blaring. Even now, in my old age, I enjoy the sound of the squelch tails on ham, GMRS, commercial, etc, FM radio systems. As then, it let you know that the transmission of the receive station ended. Somewhere along the line, land mobile radio companies decided that the squelch tail was annoying and should be eliminated. Various technical solutions were employed to make the squelch tail go away, to include Motorola's "reverse burst" which inverted or otherwise altered the PL tone for a split second when a transmitter unkeyed. Over time, mainly on ham, then later FRS and GMRS, plus land mobile, radio companies added the "courtesy tone" or as CB'ers called it the roger beep, to let people know a transmission had ended. We went full circle, from eliminating a naturally occurring cue that a received station had ceased transmitting, to creating a beep or other tone to do the same, generated internally by the radio. Some ham, land mobile, and GMRS, radios have settings that enhance the probability that the radio will create a squelch tail while transmitting (or receiving). I usually have those settings adjusted to do so on my radios. I always wondered how popular a "courtesy tone" setting (transmit and/or receive) would be that sounded like a squelch tail, if manufacturers included that as an option, along with the more well known beeps.

You can see some really weird stuff on the pages of some repeaters. I can think of one, this week it is "Permission Only". Next week it is "Open to any licensed user". Week after that it is "Permission Only" again; and on, and on, and on.

Mine is as an alternative to cellular in the event that it goes down. I am part of an informal repeater group that meets monthly at varying restaurants for mutual help with radio stuff and for fellowship. I have ham too but was becoming disenchanted with some of the personalities and attitudes found there.

Who sits around and thinks up this kind of stupidity? No! Not just no, but hell no! This is another hairbrained attempt to make GMRS into "ham radio lite". I am an Extra class ham, and I am 100% against this. GMRS (Class A CB) was originally another means of personal (and at one time, business) communication. It should remain that way. It should remain 100% analog. GMRS allows for reliable communication with a short wavelength (think being able to use an ht in a car without an outside or excessively long antenna). It is great for families, friends, and even properly licensed hams, to keep in touch, especially with family and friends who just do not want to be bothered with testing, radio theory, etc. If someone wants to enjoy the hobby aspects of ham, play with digital, etc; then let them get off of their dead behind and study and take the tests or shut up! Those who are already hams and who want to turn GMRS into ham lite or other extension of ham radio, please use the privileges you have on ham or upgrade if that is not enough. People are continuously trying to wreck a great thing that GMRS is with these bright ideas.

That sounds like a great idea!

Excellent point, Uncle Yoda! I am aware of two linked systems in our general area on ham. One, most of the time, is not linked, but access codes to link and de-link are published. Due to longstanding tradition, they are usually linked on weekends and some holidays with no option to de-link a repeater from the system. This was a cool novelty in the beginning, but anymore is a PITA because of a bunch of ratchet jaws along the coast (again, on one or two repeaters) who tie up the whole system for long periods of time so that no one on the other repeaters (2m side of system) can use it. How much better it would be if you could de-link the repeater in your area to call a friend across town when the ratchet jaws are in session. The other linked system, is linked 24-7-365 with no end-user option to de-link. I haven't been on it in months, but conflicts were common with heavy use, again on one or two repeaters, tying up the whole network. Ideally, a such a system would be de-linked with published link codes to link to individual repeaters. Even normally linked, with published de-link codes would be an improvement over 24-7-365 links.

It seems as though every newbie who wants to dive into putting up a repeater(s), for some reason feels the need to link it/them to other repeaters or some big network. Before doing so, please consider that there are ONLY eight GMRS frequencies which may be used for repeater or 50W simplex. More often than not, when you have multiple repeaters linked, you will have situations where a rag chew in progress is only taking place on one or two of the repeaters, but that conversation will necessarily tie up ALL repeaters linked to the used one(s) at the time, as well as the simplex aspect of each repeater frequency for anyone in range of it. The guy trying to use one of those uninvolved repeaters, another repeater in range of any of them, or 50W simplex in range of any of them, will have a difficult or impossible time connecting with his family or friends. Because someone thinks it kewel and trendy to link a bunch of repeaters together, people trying to use any of those eight GMRS channels in range of repeaters so connected, for the original purpose of GMRS, will likely be out of luck. Please take this into consideration before adding to the congestion of those eight channels with unnecessary linking. If you wish to provide a service to the GMRS community in a given area, an open stand-alone repeater capable of covering as much area as feasible will be a far greater service to a given area. I understand that in San Francisco, it is perfectly legal to relieve oneself on the sidewalks. This is probably not considerate of others who use the sidewalk for its original intended purpose. Just because we "can" do something doesn't mean we necessarily "should" do it.

I have noted issues with several Wouxun ht's regarding CTCSS and frankly, am getting a bit discouraged with what was my favorite brand. I had several 905G's that would not encode or decode the same tones between the same model radios on simplex. One would not decode a repeater operating with a 210.7 PL. As such, the KG905G is now on my do-not-buy list. More recently, a wide coverage repeater owned and maintained by a very competent land mobile technician was chopping in and out of the decoders on a KG935G+, KGS88G, and KG1000G+, each at a different location and each owned by a different person. If CTCSS decode was disabled, the problem stopped. If received on another brand radio, the chopping was not present with its CTCSS decoder turned on. This issue was brought to the attention of the repeater owner a few hours earlier and persisted after he thoroughly checked his output frequency and PL tone frequency. The problem tone? 141.3. Unless and until BTWR forces Wouxun to do better, I will not be purchasing anymore Wouxun GMRS radios in the foreseeable future. I have literally bought several thousand dollars worth of Wouxun radios and accessories for myself and for friends, but find this crummy QC to be unacceptable.

There are lots of reasons for encoding the repeater output tone on the output/simplex channel that in no way involve purposely interfering with anyone. I am a member of an informal repeater group that meets at different restaurants in about a 40 mile radius of the repeater one day, each month. Oftentimes, these restaurants will be well outside of the repeater's coverage area. As such, we usually agree to monitor the output of our repeater to help newcomers or old members locate where we are for that day. Several of us, to include myself, make sure we encode the repeater's tone on its output/simplex channel so that someone with the tone set in the decoder can hear us. Likewise, when two operators are mobile, portable, or even on base; many miles from the repeater, if they are close enough to each other, they can communicate more easily on simplex than through the repeater. Encoding the repeater output tone on the simplex channel the repeater uses facilitates simplex and allows monitoring the repeater when cresting hills or otherwise in receiving range of the repeater. If someone is not a member of a paid repeater group, encoding that repeater's tone while transmitting simplex can allow for useful communication to a paid user if close to the paid user. For instance, the paid user is lost or needs mechanical assistance. The paid user might need a connector, cable, or something else and if the non-member has something helpful to share and is close enough, they can assist the paid user without violating the sanctity of the members-only repeater. Not everything is sinister.

Thanks for the link. After numerous attempts, I finally got it to take my express filing.

Another person trying to turn GMRS into "ham radio lite". If you want to do ham stuff go get your ham license and do ham stuff. We already have the eight 50W Simplex/Repeater channels clogged up with "networks" and linking by wannabe hams in too many locales. No need to jam up GMRS with more digital noise. Or if you really want to play digital mode on simplex, do it on one of the five MURS channels.

For many of us, it is not "just one time". It is a pattern of many, many, times, in many different ways. I understand that mistakes will happen in any endeavor where you have a high volume of traffic, such as dispatching, delivery, etc. When these mistakes become the rule rather than the exception, "mission control we have a problem".