RayP

Great idea! There used to be a company that made such antennas for VHF and UHF ham applications. I believe their name was Ventenna, or something like that. If they are still in business, surely they could be persuaded to make a GMRS version. Edit: Sorry. I just read elsewhere that the gentleman who owned Ventenna retired and closed up.

I was not aware they had expanded the channel capacity of the 500 by that much. I stand corrected on that. Thank You!

...

I have long suspected that Midland GMRS design engineers suffer from some form of arrested development. So many things, they missed the boat on. With regard to ht's that are promoted for use in the wilderness (also their Base Camp radio), they have woefully deficient battery capacity. I believe most of their ht's are packed standard with something like a whopping 700mAh battery. Additionally, and as far as I know, none of the Midland ht's are repeater capable, yet they promote use of their ht's and repeaters (along with mobiles) for farm and agriculture use. The mobile designs also are a mixed bag of weirdness. Some mobiles may only do narrowband FM while others are capable of narrowband and wideband on GMRS. Some of the smaller mobiles may not allow for different encode/decode CTCSS/DCS tones on repeaters that use differing encode and decode tones. The biggest issue with their mobiles that I see is they do not allow for programming additional repeater or simplex channels above the standard 22, 23, or whatever they come packed with. This means if you regularly travel into and out of areas where the repeaters might use the same frequency, say 462.675, and one repeater uses a 141.3 PL and the other uses a 67.0 PL, you will need to pull over and change PL's when driving out of one repeater's coverage area and into the coverage are of the other. Midland lamely tries to excuse this deficiency in design by saying they are making their radios simple to use for those who just want to hook up their radio and talk. Never mind that as you gain knowledge and/or benefit from the experience and wisdom of friends, you will likely want to expand the capabilities of your mobile radios. If your radio doesn't allow for such expansion, you are just out of luck. None of the Midland GMRS mobiles include a cooling fan, something you will quickly understand the need for if making multiple key down transmissions in a short time or extended transmissions. As WRYX926 correctly noted above, you will get a much better bang for your buck with a KG1000G or KG1000G+.

With growing children, a small attic antenna (provided you aren't using a metallic roof) hooked to a repeater might be great for your family, or other friends in the neighborhood to use. Something like the low-power (5-10 watt) Midland or similar repeater would allow for decent portable-to-portable coverage around the neighborhood, especially with something like the tiny WLN KDC1 ht's. Yeah, they technically are ham radios but I "hear" they work great on GMRS freqs if programmed for that. Of course I have no actual experience using them for such.

A few months ago, watching this Mr Ballen YouTube video, I couldn't help but wonder if a ham, CB, or GMRS, radio in their car would have gotten this family help much sooner. Ideally, they would have had all three but even a CB or 2m ham mobile might have made the difference and the husband and father might be alive had they been in possession of something other than their cell phones. A firearm would have provided additional comfort given the interest that bears were showing the family in their unenviable situation, but this was the West Coast and they were from California, areas where the government keeps citizens generally disarmed.

Not sure as I have never owned or used an 805G.

Sorry. I forgot that you believe all ideas and concepts can or should be adequately explained in 15 words or less, much like the original form of Twitter.

It was usually one or two tones out of a template that I was putting together in a radio out of about 60-80 channels. Not a lot, but enough to be annoying because of the problem. My guess is, not very many people program much if any beyond the thirty channels these radios come packed with. Those people use standard tones of 156.7 or below and rarely use DPL. This allows the problem to go undiscovered and un-reported or under-reported. I seriously doubt that I am the only one who has noticed this issue. I wish anyone ele who has would chime in.

True, but I have noted issues with the 905G (four individual radios), the 935G (one radio), the 935G+(one radio), and the S88G (one radio). Every 905 I had, exhibited the problem. Two were gifts for friends who I did not get a chance to pass them on to for a couple of years after purchasing them. The day before I knew I would be seeing these friends, I programmed them with a collection of area repeater channels and some PL'd simplex channels I had put in for off-road or on-property use. In testing them, some (but not most) PL codes would not decode between these two radios. Some PL's (pulling 250.3 out of the air) might allow one radio to encode and be decoded by the other, but the reverse was not true. I generally like Wouxun over the other GMRS specific brands, but they need to tighten up on QC regarding PL/DPL encoding and/or decoding of their radio models.

Well, actually, it can be and is. Many do not grasp what PL/DPL (hereafter shortened to just PL) can do to enhance the radio experience. To many (most maybe), PL is just an annoying selection you have to make in your radio's menu or on the programming software, so a given repeater opens up when you transmit. They don't grasp how helpful it can be (provided it works properly in your radio and the radio you are talking to or repeater you are using). Let's say you regularly use a repeater on 462/467.675 that uses a 141.3 PL. You monitor on your home base, mobile, or ht much of the day as do family and friends of yours for calls from each other. You also transact business on the phone, watch TV, listen to broadcast radio, and interact with others in person. Another repeater at a distance on the same frequency but using a 67.0 PL generates a lot of noise and traffic during the day, too. Being able to set your PL decoder so you only hear the repeater your family and friends use makes the whole experience of listening for them more enjoyable and less annoying when engaged in other activities. The same can be said for keeping out other noise sources such as kids or construction workers on the channel nearby, or computer noise, and other stuff that the carrier squelch in your radio just is not screening out very well. This is one of the reasons it is so annoying that some people go to the trouble and expense of setting up a repeater (whether open system or for a limited group), yet somehow just never had that extra thirty seconds it would have taken them to set a PL tone encoding on the output. This forces end-users to have to listen to every bit of noise from whatever source, in range of their receivers. In a downtown big city, there are endless sources of noise that will regularly break through a carrier squelch and become like Chinese water torture to your ears after a while, especially if your radio is direct conversion, like a KG-935G or KG935G+. A PL module that works properly is a real ear and sanity saver. Yes, it is a major issue for some.

Hi Sshannon! They aren't. If there is one thing in radio that I have an intimate working knowledge of, it is PL's. I suspect many do not discover a problem because they don't set the decoders, to begin with. The problems I have experienced with Wouxun GMRS radios, pretty much across the board can, as I noted earlier, seem to even vary with the day of the week, leading me to believe there may be an inconsistency somewhere.

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.