SteveShannon

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I know Ky and his son Buddy. He’s well known in the hobby and they still make and sell parachutes for our hobby.

I’ve been flying high power rockets for 25 years. I got GMRS radios to enhance my enjoyment of my high power rocketry hobby. Most of us in my rocket club got Garmin Rino radios so we could see where each other were while out recovering our rockets. After several years of being a scofflaw I decided that I wanted to do the right thing and get licensed as well. Somewhere along the line I started watching Notarubicon videos where Randy (@OffRoaderX) spoke about Baofeng UV5R radios. Also a friend showed me his UV5R radio and I ended buying one. I discovered that I really enjoyed programming it which gave me confidence. Playing with the Baofeng radios reawakened a barely dormant interest in ham radio that I’ve had since eighth grade. So three years ago I finally got around to applying myself to ham radio. For me (not for everyone) ham radio has been a fascinating experience. It keeps my brain working and is something I will be able to do even as I eventually get old. (I’ll be 70 next month but I feel 40 most of the time.) GMRS is something that can be done in conjunction with other activities, including very dynamic and energetic ones, and without becoming an expert on radio operations. Ham radio is a government sanctioned hobby intended to develop radio operators. It’s structured in such a way that older hams can (and sometimes do) mentor younger hams with differing levels of licensing and activities that are relatively sedentary. So, I think it’s natural to perceive GMRS as a younger person’s hobby. Now why did I come into this room?

You’re welcome. Doing things as you can afford is smart. It’s way too easy to start buying radio stuff that you only need once. It’s possible to do a manual sweep using your SW-102 by incrementing the VFO frequency a couple kilohertz at a time across the entire range and writing down the SWR for each frequency. Put the two values (frequency and SWR) in a spreadsheet or put the values on graph paper with frequency as the X (horizontal) axis and SWR as the Y (vertical) axis. You’ll end up with something like these. Sorry for the rotation of the paper one. Neither of these are for GMRS but all the same principles apply.

Okay. With 5 MHz between the 462 MHz channels the the 467 MHz channels there’s usually some swings high or low that will appear on an analyzer in the off channel frequencies (463-466) or higher and lower than the GMRS channels. There should be a dip somewhere along the spectrum. Also, instead of the ground plane devices you asked about, a lot of people simply attach the antenna mount to a big cookie sheet. You could try that. It’s especially easy to try if you have a magnetic mount and a steel cookie sheet or pie plate.

Matching tones (CTCSS or PL) or codes (DCS or DPL) are both ways of squelching the audio. The other way is commonly referred to as “carrier squelch” where the radio requires the signal to surpass some level before unsquelching (desquelching? I’m not sure what the verb is). Pushing the “Mon” (short for “monitor”) opens all forms of squelch so you can hear anything that is on the frequency.

At what frequency is that 4.6:1 SWR? Do you have an antenna analyzer that will sweep the range from 462 to 468 MHz so you can see where the minimum SWR ratio occurs? Maybe the antenna just needs tuning.

He certainly might have been. If that’s so I apologize for interrupting.

Look, anyone can post two web links and ask which is best. It’s the laziest way to post. But without explaining exactly what you mean by “best” nobody can give you a serious answer. Now had you explained what model of Laird antenna you had and that you think it might require a ground plane, people would be able to give you a serious answer to your question. So, why don’t you try again. I might not have the answer and if I don’t I won’t act like I do, but at least you won’t look like an entitled idiot.

I help with our ham repeaters, but I don’t operate one of my own. I’m slightly interested in putting together a portable GMRS repeater for our rocket club.

Now I remember why you were on my ignore list …

So why are you looking at Tram and Nagoya?

With the exception of mounting hardware, steel is seldom used in antennas. Aluminum is lightweight and a very good conductor. For RF connectors brass is much more easily machined and a better conductor than steel. But brass is often plated to prevent oxidation which can affect performance (mechanical and electrical) and appearance.

Without knowing what is really in that tube I’m not certain. It could be a couple pieces of wire with a trap between them. If that’s so I would think (low confidence!!!) that the first (lower) wire is the UHF element and both elements together form the VHF element. The trap serves as a conductor at the lower frequencies so the two wires are connected together and becomes high impedance at UHF frequencies so only the bottom wire is the radiator. The difference between full wave GMRS and 70 cm is just a few centimeters and if the UHF antenna is intended to be a quarter wave it would be a quarter of that. But I don’t know if you can get the fiberglass radome off the base anyway. Mine appears to be epoxied.

Yes, remove the bolts that hold the bottom tube on and you can easily get to the coax connector which is probably just a pl-259 on the cable and so-239 on bottom of the antenna.

This! Nano VNASaver is just so much easier to use and gets you more easily viewed results.

I would get it. If nothing else the parts can be scavenged. That looks a lot like the Comet dual band Antenna I have which works very well. It also looks like they have a pretty long length of coax that might be worthless for GMRS but usable for lower frequencies.

Not at all. In amateur radio it’s not terribly unusual to work split like that.

Thanks, that’s very helpful. So each repeater is capable of receiving on two different frequencies and repeating on one. Interesting. I learned something new today. I’d like to hear from someone who actually has tried it.

The problem is that it results in an infinite loop, going right back to the first repeater.

If you choose not to comply with regulations that’s your choice, but it’s wrong to belittle someone else who does a good job of explaining the regulations to someone who might not understand them.

I agree. When I bought my first DMR radio the fact that it could store 200,000 contacts seemed important. Since the I can count on three or four fingers how many times I have actually downloaded the list and loaded it into my radio. Of course within months 200,000 wasn’t enough, so the second time I chose to just load European and North America. Then just North America. Now, I don’t even bother.

I can only speculate, but perhaps they reserve the air band radio for conversations with the tower and leave it tuned to that frequency. Chit chat on GMRS doesn’t affect that.

95.307…Operation of Personal Radio Service stations in any location outside of those described in the following paragraphs is not authorized by this part. (B)Aboard any vessel or aircraft registered in the United States. With the permission of the captain, while the vessel or aircraft is within or over the United States or its territories, U.S. territorial waters, or upon or over international waters. So, it appears it’s allowed.

SWR is somewhat important, but tells you nothing about gain or pattern. A dummy load will test nearly perfectly for SWR.