SteveShannon

Still pissed that these young whippersnappers don’t have to visit the local FCC field office and build a spark gap transmitter like you did?

I hope you don’t move on. I mentioned that I was a VE simply because I wanted you to know my background, not to imply that you should get your license also. It’s strictly your decision whether to get a ham license. I enjoy it and I wish I had done it earlier in my life, but that’s the story I have written for myself. I’m the guy who goofed off in college but continued being enrolled, even went through the graduation line even though incompletes in a few courses stood between me and my degree. I didn’t return to college until I truly wanted to and when I did it was right for me. I hope you find whatever makes you happy.

Nearly all of the questions about that are asked here involve radios that are new and still under warranty. People suspect they’re doing something incorrectly so they reach out to what should be a friendly group of peers.

I’m genuinely interested in why or how the “peer group method of qualifying for a license” bothers you. FYI, I’m a Volunteer Examiner, and I would be happy to help explain how the process has no character judging and no political influence.

Not “state”, “stale”, like old bread. The repeater isn’t actually stale, the data in the database is stale, meaning it has sat for too long without being touched. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, just that the person who placed the data there hasn’t been seen for a while.

No, it simply says that your id may be voice or Morse code. I’ve heard some that are pretty quick.

Mine too. Part of it is the fact that most (by far) of the people I know who use GMRS don’t bother getting a license. I think the people who eventually get a license have an interest in doing things right which is an attitude many people interested in ham radio have.

No problem, Adam. You’re a good guy and sometimes the regulations are difficult to understand.

You’re right that a mag mount has a much greater surface area, which does allow better (and more predictable) capacitive coupling. Metal to metal contact will also remove capacitive reactance, resulting in a different SWR (might be better depending on the inductance of the antenna).

What do you say when you key up? What kind of response are you expecting? Does your transmit light come on? On most of my radios the light is off usually, green when receiving, and red when transmitting. Are you on one of the eight repeater channels? Do you have the transmit tone on your radio set to match the input tone on the repeater?

You’re right. I missed seeing the 1. My mistake.

There’s no magical connection between starting up a repeater and it appearing on the map. If the owner doesn’t make the effort to place it on the map here and repeaterbook it doesn’t appear.

As long as the offset is positive, the OP is still on a GMRS channel. Channel 8 is channel 1 + 5.000 MHz. It’s also an interstitial channel which is limited to 0.5 watts. If the offset is negative the OP is down in some other service.

I guess I don’t understand your beef about memorization. The first section of the Technician test is a test on the rules of amateur radio. Of course you have to learn the rules. Learning requires memorizing. And, yes, separating the people who cannot learn the rules from those who can is the goal. People who don’t learn the rules don’t get licenses. The second section is operating procedures, such as “A common offset for70 cm is?” The answer is +/- 5.000 MHz. That’s exactly the kind of question that works well for memorization. Understanding comes with use. Section 3? How about this: Question: What is the effect of vegetation on UHF and microwave signals? Answer: Absorption Again, memorizing these questions and answers is a perfectly valid form of learning. I’m not even sure how a person could possibly memorize the answers without learning something.

One source on the internet says more than 321,000 GMRS people have GMRS licenses.

This is also untrue. The connection to the ground plane does not require metal to metal contact. It’s RF, at UHF, not DC (which would require metal to metal contact). The paint layer will add some slight capacitance, but slightly capacitive capacitors are conductive to UHF. I use the MXTA26 with a magnetic mount. Mag mounts have no metal to metal contact and they work fine.

How about a link so we can see what you saw?

It’s because their interpretations of the regulations don’t agree with the FCC’s interpretations, and although I am not a fan of linking GMRS repeaters I agree that the FCC’s interpretations seem incorrect.

Oh, horseshit. You’ve posted this many times before and you are still wrong. It will work better in some directions than others, but it will still work.

There’s a 2 meter repeater in a town near me that is still operating, even though the trustee (person who held the repeater license for the club) allowed the repeater license to expire two years ago and the license has now been cancelled (cancellation is automatic two years after expiration). Next month his personal license expires as well. The club is mostly defunct but there are some new hams there now interested in resurrecting it.

Yup, the OP hasn’t logged in since 2020.

Have you downloaded the documents? https://www.ingenieros.cl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Radio-Mobile-related-documents-English.zip

Welcome, Jeff!

I have one. I went through all of the menus and I didn’t see anyplace to inhibit transmit. Sorry. Thanks for trying to do the right thing.

Not really; the front end (RF) of the radio is on the outside of the tone squelch. That’s where the strongest signal is captured. Being open squelch allows your radio to audibly reproduce whatever the RF stage hears, but does nothing to prevent the RF stage from detecting it. The interference from the stronger signal happens in the RF stage before it ever gets to the squelch.