SteveShannon

Switch it back to English. Plug in the programming cable. Open the software (it should still be in English). Read from the radio. Open up the Edit menu. Choose Function Setup. Menu Language is the third selection on the right column of the Function Setup dialog. Change it to English (the middle selection). Write to the radio.

Except for special events, most ham traffic is not on VHF/UHF and not through repeaters. Those repeaters will certainly see use during special events, nets, or sometimes casually by hams as they run errands or travel through a city. I have used the Phoenix DMR repeaters before, but 99% of my ham activities are spent on HF making contacts directly to other hams. There’s no real challenge to making contacts via repeaters and a lot of ham radio is about making distant connections, exchanging signal reports, and moving to the next connection. I’ll see if I can show you a signal report map showing a snippet in time in the Phoenix area. Here’s a map from PSKreporter of activity over the past hour: Each inverted teardrop shows one ham. I suspect you’ll agree that between 5 and 6 AM is probably not a really busy ham time, but there are still a pretty decent number of people who are working contacts using digital modes. None of this is through a single repeater and they are almost all trying to make contacts with someone at some distance:

Yes, be sure you don’t have it on dual watch. I had my bottom channel set to a frequency that had activity or active interference on it without realizing it. I kept wondering why I was hearing stuff even though there was no activity on the upper/larger channel A. Since then I keep dual watch turned off.

Make it yours! Of course I haven’t gotten around to cutting a hole in my 4Runner but I find myself wishing I had done it years ago.

No, that's not impossible but that antenna looks like a gimmick. There are a lot of dual band antennas with narrower bandwidth. The Comet CA-2x4SRNMO is a commercial quality antenna that advertises SWR under 2.0:1 from 140-160MHz / 435-465MHz: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/cma-ca-2x4srnmo?ppckw=dxedsa-br-comet-antennas&gclid=CjwKCAiAlPu9BhAjEiwA5NDSA391BAQ5nheA3lTesm2uL_RtcAxEGeTVdPk02M-JzNlz8vamfTEcAhoCnZgQAvD_BwE#overview

Welcome!

I wouldn’t use that antenna for GMRS. If you really need an antenna that’s good for GMRS the mxta26 from Midland is very good. If you need an antenna that’ll handle both ham and GMRS the Comet 2x4 is what I would get. I’m honestly trying to understand what this Hys antenna is supposed to be. It looks like it might want to be a j-pole but the feed isn’t right.

Exactly. They have almost exactly the same low gain and RF pattern as a dipole with a null in the direction of the axis of the element. They’re vertically polarized. And they’re relatively easy and inexpensive to build if a person has an antenna analyzer, tubing cutter, tape measure, and can follow simple instructions. Saying get a real antenna is simply a way to put down others. I don’t believe @tweiss3 intended it that way because it’s out of character for him (I was surprised to see that in his post), but it’s true to @Socalgmrs character.

Me too, but now that I’m not working uptown I don’t go there often. The owner of the M&M reopened in the building nearly next door. I think she has the same menu. I used to really enjoy the ground round cheese D with gravy on the fries.

On most radios you just plug it in. But be sure it’s plugged all the way in.

As far as a beep when changing channels, that’s probably the key tone, menu 1.9 according to the manual. Turn it on. It’s not surprising that updating the firmware would reset that. As far as losing communication you’ll have to explain that. Does the radio no longer transmit? Does it no longer receive? Maybe the tones were cleared (again, fully expected in a firmware upgrade). I have no clue what e1-e2 means; maybe nothing.

Welcome from Montana! Look for videos from Notarubicon. There are a lot and they cover nearly everything a person needs to know to get started. Andd of course don’t be afraid to ask questions and try things!

Notice the word “dedicated” in my quote above. I think GMRS is great for regular community communications. But a repeater for the community is hard to dedicate to emergencies. People will use it to chat, kids will play with radios, and hobbyists will talk about antennas. The community has no legal way to reserve the frequency for emergencies. As a result some people will leave their radios off. How do you tell them to turn them back on? Remember, this is a ten mile radius community.

Are you talking about the vertical null?

Perhaps because it can’t get down to 0.5 watts ERP?

Based on what I’ve read, the ones made,of copper tubing are about equivalent to a dipole in performance, not high gain, but decent omnidirectional performance. I intend to build one this spring sometime. It’ll be single band, possibly 6 meters. That’s the only vhf band I don’t have an antenna for now.

You’ll get quite a range of different opinions.

No, the repeater is required to ID also, unless the only people using it are authorized to use the same call sign as the repeater and they correctly ID.

It’s menu #59 for the 935h:

I gave you an up-vote. SoCalGMRS voted you down just so he wouldn’t be at the bottom. The word “Gain” doesn’t appear in the manual for the 935g. Squelch tail is referred to in menu #51, aka RPT-TONE. Here’s what it says: Enables or disables the squelch tail sent to the receiving radio.

Also, if a high tower must be erected that could cost a few thousand depending on how high, new or used, and who does the work.

Interesting. Garmin got a waiver even before that to send location data. Theirs is a really neat feature that works very well with their gps map also.

We like the Brookings area also. It has been years since we’ve been there, but we used to stay at a Best Western which had rooms that opened up right above the beach. One thing I would do is make sure the radios I picked for this community communications project are all capable of receiving the fire department’s transmissions and make that a priority channel on power up. That communication system is much more likely to receive the needed funding to make it reliable.

In GMRS relay repeaters which are networked to the original repeater are discouraged by the most recent interpretation from the FCC. A lot depends on what infrastructure already exists. Does your fire department already have a communications tower that a repeater antenna could use? GMRS is really not a good choice for dedicated emergency services. The only positive attributes are price and availability. Each of your families will have to make a choice for which radios to buy based on price and features. They range from under $20 to hundreds of dollars. Repeaters can range from hundreds to many thousands of dollars. If it must be reliable in an emergency don’t go cheap. If you’re serious about wanting a price hire a commercial communications contractor to put together a quote backed by path studies and whatever kind of special needs your community has.