SteveShannon

It’s a website called scadacore.com. The tool is RF Line of Sight. https://www.scadacore.com/tools/rf-path/rf-line-of-sight/

The SWR isn’t the issue and you’ll never be able to detect an audible difference in reception between 1.3:1 and 1.0:1. When you say you can’t hear people who are really close, do you mean that the radio isn’t breaking squelch? If you turn squelch down or off can you hear them? Do you have any PL tones or DPL codes set for receive? If so, clear them out completely for the channel you’re attempting to hear. With tones/codes cleared out and squelch at minimum you should hear static. if you still cannot receive even that you might simply have a bad receiver or audio problem.

If the problem is water, it is possible that it’s a weak solution with some contaminant. That would depress the freezing point. Or maybe it’s not water but some physical change, a contraction of some component along your feed line that results in a change in impedance somewhere. Do you have a dummy load you could use to isolate portions of your feed line to see where the issue is taking place?

I would register a complaint with the manufacturer. They might recognize the symptom. I think you said it’s only a couple days old. Make them replace it. You’ll have more peace of mind.

I haven’t got a clue what the sound is but I would open the case and listen to see if I could see or hear the source.

6 dBi is 6 dBi, but with the base antenna you usually have a larger radiator and need less inductance. Higher inductance causes steeper troughs and narrower dips in SWR (called high Q). That means that SWR might be lower across a wider range of frequencies. Also, a larger radiator is usually better than a smaller radiator, if it's tuned correctly, because it has more area to gather RF and because it sticks further up. But in actuality, you might never notice a difference. If what you have works for you, I don't think I would change it. And I agree with @GrouserPad, nice setup!

Here’s a pretty good video on fairly established HF emergency frequencies. Unfortunately I didn’t hear him mention 5167 kHz.

And that makes sense. It’s mentioned on my license also, iirc.

This!!! I’m always surprised by how many people spend many minutes and sometimes hours researching and asking others questions that could be answered in less than a minute by trying.

Almost all repeaters adhere to the +5 MHz offset, but all the regulations say is that repeaters transmit on the 462 MHz main channels and receive on the 467 MHz main channels. Thus, repeaters transmit owners are not constrained to use exactly 5 MHz. Unfortunately, certified GMRS tend to use the exact offset. So, sometimes you find a repeater that is off by 750 kHz, but sticks to the channels established by the FCC. It’s very seldom though. I’ve mostly heard of it happening near seaports where some channels are shared with maritime communications.

I think it depends on population. We have lots of mountainous areas in Montana (fourth largest in area, with only a million people) with no cellular service. I suspect Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, and even parts of eastern California, once you get away from the interstates and population centers, have significant areas with limited access. We have 158 amateur repeaters in Montana and only 8 GMRS repeaters. Alaska is much larger but according to RepeaterBook has 6 GMRS repeaters and 114 amateur repeaters. I don’t know how accurate that is but obviously neither state has sufficient coverage for emergency purposes. I don’t believe repeaterbook is as complete for GMRS repeaters as MyGMRS.com.

Well, 120 miles each way or so is a little far, but I truly appreciate your offer. I might even take you up on it! Thanks!

Another really good training method (I really enjoyed it) is HamStudy.org. All of the questions are presented along with lots of reference material that unwind the concepts or reasoning behind the answer. It works really well for those who want to learn the material. You can choose how you want to be presented the questions, a section at a time or randomly. You can take practice tests as often as you want. It’s all free online or for a very low price you can purchase the app and take it on your phone or tablet even when you’re offline. It tracks which questions you get wrong and goes back to them more frequently to help concentrate your studying.

I’m a volunteer examiner. We’re not allowed to place conditions like that on testing. We tell people about our club, but only as information they might enjoy having.

He never said that he did. He is a longtime ham (second sentence) and describes the radio’s power under 2 meters and 70 centimeters. But even if he does use it on GMRS it wouldn’t upset me.

Thanks, that gives me a little confidence.

Excellent! Well done.

I wouldn’t. It can cause a breathing background sound.

Our rocket club all uses 7-6 (channel 7, tone 6) on our Garmin radios. We’re miles away from the nearest town. We basically bring our own support group. We mostly use the radios to guide people towards where we saw their rocket descend. If someone had a medical emergency (a fall or heat exhaustion) they could let us know, so in that sense it’s useful, but only because we have a group of people monitoring the shared channel. Our most likely emergency is a grass fire. For that we have used cell phones to summon help.

Based on past statistics that seems like it’s probably right.

And a blanket statement like that is why every illiterate appliance operator is screaming about "muh rights". But his statement was not a blanket statement. An example of a blanket statement would be a statement that isists that government agencies are always right or always wrong. His statement simply admits to the possibility that government agencies sometimes get things wrong.

I don’t believe it would be useful. In fact I think it would be a drain on emergency services and do more harm by creating a false sense of security. How would it work? Strictly a voluntary simplex/peer to peer effort or something officially established? How would it interface with public services: 911, police, fire? How would it be monitored? Remember, GMRS regulations have no government agency licensing. All licensees are individuals, so every person who might have to communicate with the GMRS radio would need their own license. For public service employees that would also mean an additional radio to be carried. Given finite tax dollars, which other emergency services would receive less so GMRS users would have their own emergency channel? That’s not to say that having GMRS might not be be helpful in an emergency as a last resort. I just think it’s foolish to rely on it when planning a risky endeavor, unless you create your own response system.

That must mean I’m a random person

Yeah, when the temperature gets higher I hope to do my truck and 4Runner but the headliner is the thing that intimidates me. I haven’t done that before.

Good idea.