SteveShannon

I’m a member of a 40 meter net that meets three times per week. One guy was always getting on and complaining about various problems until one day he died. Perhaps talking to us about his problems was comforting to him in some way but it certainly didn’t improve his situation. Maybe he should have been communicating with his doctor instead. Frankly, I think it’s stupid to announce medical problems and other personal information on-air. It makes you more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves. Not only that but it is often disgusting. Fortunately, with ham radio I have a multitude of alternative frequencies and even bands. With GMRS, the hapless users are limited to 8 repeater channels.

Excellent suggestion! A vertical antenna can be easily hidden inside or alongside a fiberglass flagpole.

You have three problems that team up to cause you problems. Length, resistive losses, and mismatched impedance. First, RG6 is the wrong impedance. It’s 75 ohm, which matches television equipment but not two way radio equipment. For very low loss cable that would not automatically be a problem but as WRYZ926 pointed out you’re working with UHF here which leads to: Second, it has high resistive losses. The losses for 100 feet of RG6 are a little more than 6 dB. That’s 75% of your signal that would be converted into heat by your cable. So if you’re using a 50 watt radio the antenna would only ever see 12.5 watts. That’s on transmit. The same thing happens on receive. Your antenna is acted upon by a certain number of micro volts of RF but only 25% of that reaches your receiver. A mismatched impedance alone isn’t a kiss of death but combined with a lossy cable it is. I absolutely agree with LScott that you should use at least LM400 or a high quality similar cable like M&P 10 mm Ultraflex. Either of those will “only” cost you 2.7 dB of the signal, or just under half. And I agree with LScott that LMR600 (or its 13 mm equivalent from M&P) would be much better.

It can take up to a week. My belief is that there’s a weekly update of the my GMRS database. I think you’ll be recognized within the next two days.

Welcome!

An SWR of 2 on a handheld radio is nearly meaningless. I wouldn’t worry about it at all. All the power will still go out the antenna.

Having an RX tone will filter out all transmissions that don’t have that tone. Leaving the receiver tone out will allow you to receive everything transmitted on that frequency.

Well probably not. But maybe you can use it to pull in some LMR-400. What length?

I wouldn’t for gmrs. That’s something that ham radio operators frequently do and the regulations in many countries support foreign hams operating while visiting, BUT many (perhaps most) countries do not have such reciprocity for any other service.

Not really because you still lose the power. If you lose 6 db in your cable you’ve lost 75%. If you use a 6 db gain antenna it gets you back to where you started, but only in the direction of the 6 dB gain. But you can reduce the loss through the cable by using a better cable. Welcome!

So pick the channel with the correct transmission frequency and edit the receive frequency. I suspect that’s how they maintain their 95e certification by locking you into the specific channels.

Menu 15 adjusts TX compander. Menu 16 is for RX compander, or noise reduction. I would play with them both to see if they help. They use gain control to perform their their actions. Interestingly to me the Retevis radio includes a menu 14 Scramble. The manual for the DB20G skips from 13 to 15.

I’ll report your post to the owner. He can help.

You’re overthinking it. It’s true that there must be a good electrical connection between the roof of your vehicle and the chassis ground or you may get noise issues, but the antenna base electrically couples to your roof like a big capacitor. High frequency signals pass through capacitors.

You’re absolutely right about higher frequencies. It’s because of the additional losses in the feedline that occur as a result of high SWR at those higher frequencies. An installation with a super short feedline, such as a cell phone or handheld radio isn’t bothered nearly as much by high SWR. And I completely agree that we shouldn’t be giving poor advice to newcomers; that’s why I think we should de-emphasize the myth of 1.0:1 SWR and help people understand why and under what circumstances SWR is important and where SWR should be measured.

Because it is less of an issue than most people believe. We have people on this forum who hold the mistaken belief that an SWR of 2.5:1 causes suffering and that’s just wrong. When an antenna is easily or cheaply tuned I would recommend tuning it. I enjoy that kind of thing, but my original comment was made in response to an instance of a person who had an antenna with a 2.5:1 SWR and another person recommended that they go buy another antenna. That’s poor advice.

First, I never said I was extremely happy with 2.5:1. It’s just not the kiss of death that being anal might make you think. Here’s why: The 18% that is reflected is not lost. That power reflects back from the antenna to the radio where it reflects again and goes back to the antenna. This time 82% of the reflected power goes into the antenna and 18% of the 18% reflects again. It does that over and over until all the power goes out the antenna or is attenuated by the cable. Attenuation in your cable often has a much greater effect than having an SWR greater than 2.0:1.

And DTCSS.

DCS is exactly the same as DPL. Motorola just called it DPL. Change your radio so it transmits with 156N. Leave tones off for receive until you know you have transmit set correctly. That way you’ll hear everything on that frequency.

Way too much is made of SWR below 2.0:1 (ref. power 11%) or even 2.5:1 (ref. power 18%). Unless you have lossy cable the power ends up going out of the antenna anyway because that reflected power is reflected again at the radio and goes back to the antenna where the greatest portion goes into the antenna.

Try creating a new folder in documents and save it under a different name.

Just some things to consider: Byrd 43 wattmeters are an expensive and desirable product. Yet they only advertise +/- 5% accuracy. And that’s with slugs tuned to a narrow frequency band and specific to a limited power range. Most hobby SWR meters (Daiwa, Comet, Nissei, MFJ, etc.) claim +/- 5 to 10%. I don’t have an SW-102, but I have nothing against them. In fact i really like the built in frequency counter. I have seen posts on this forum going back a couple years (but not recently) by people who were getting significantly incorrect power readings, to the point where they thought their radio was malfunctioning. I’m a hobbyist, not a pro. I buy things because they’re fun to use, convenient, and good enough. I think that as long as a person checks his/her SW-102 against some known values it should be just fine.

What would you like to do with it? What did you have in mind when you bought it? Do you have a buddy or family member who has a radio? Are you hoping to get onto the airwaves so you can hear other people and then contact them? Help us understand what you want to achieve. Someone is sure to have some helpful advice.

Marc Spaz is one of the nicest guys on these forums. He never beats his own chest or blows his own horn. And he does have some serious technical skills. So when someone who has been here for months attacks him as posting something that’s “not real” and does it in a way that simply reveals his own ignorance, it’s a chickenshit move. Then you doubled down on it as if you were somehow an expert. You owe Marc a sincere apology, not “got a little silly. Sorry folks.” Learn from your mistakes and move on. Perhaps seek counseling. If you make an honest attempt at an apology and don’t act like that again the forum members will get over it quickly. But, I owe you an apology also. I made fun of your name. That was a cheap shot. It was mean-spirited of me and completely unacceptable. I apologize for that. Steve

Two days ago you didn’t know how to waterproof your coax connectors and today you’re lecturing Marc Spaz on receiver sensitivity measurements. You posted a picture of a radio installation that looks like what Randy discarded last week. (Edited to remove mean-spirited attempt at humor.) In any case you’re just one more wannabe on the ignore list.