SteveShannon

I think what you’re saying is that the radio transmits fine on both ham and GMRS frequencies when you use the built in microphone, but when you plug in the external microphone you can only transmit on ham radio frequencies, not GMRS frequencies. Is that right? Because that doesn’t make sense. If it simply doesn’t transmit when using the PTT button on the external microphone, that’s probably a hardware problem. Either your microphone plug isn’t plugged in deeply enough or the jack or cable has an issue. Try a different one to see if the same thing happens.

Use it if you want. It’s your radio and there are no rules prohibiting it. It makes no difference. I don’t understand why anyone is bothered by it, but they should get over it. Edited to add: some repeater owners don’t want Roger beeps on their repeaters. Follow their wishes when using their repeater.

Wouldn’t have happened if Hezbollah had removed the batteries …

Remove the battery.

Either material works well at picking up RF. Of far more importance is matching the design of the antenna to the need.

Copper is excellent from a conductivity perspective, but it’s soft enough that a long length of it can stretch from its own weight. One nice thing about copper is that even if it oxidizes at the connections it still has good conductivity. Aluminum is another excellent material from a conductivity perspective, but aluminum oxide is an insulator, which must be dealt with. For a wire antenna, copper clad steel is one of the very best. At UHF current flows on the surface, rather than throughput the material, so copper clad steel wire sacrifices nothing and resists stretching. But constructing an antenna is about more than just the material. A lot depends on what kind of antenna you want to build and just as much depends on the frequency needed. If you want a really good vertical antenna for a single UHF band like GMRS, you can easily build one using copper pipe or aluminum tubing. The lengths are short so mechanical stresses are almost nil.

We used to say “Shits the beets out of me!”

My hobby is flying big rockets to a few miles high. Hopefully that’s not too boring.

I must be boring as hell, then. No beer at the prom. In fact most of my class didn’t. I graduated in 1973 and one guy in the Junior class had a brand new Chevy Blazer that he rolled in a beet field after having a few beers. I’m sure that was not boring. Another had a chartreuse Ford Mustang and launched it into a beet field. Also not boring. Fortunately nobody died. We boring kids had an alcohol free prom at the school, and an all night party afterwards, followed by breakfast in one of the boring kids Quonset huts.

?

Are you trying to transmit on GMRS or ham frequencies? If you are certain it’s not user error send it in. If you are not certain enough to send it in then don’t take it personally if they ask you questions meant to determine whether it is user error. Probably the vast majority of problems they see are.

Usually within three days but occasionally as long as a week. It’s not checked in real time but against a bulk download. Also, make sure you are reading your callsign correctly. There was one guy who tried for weeks and kept getting shot down. All GMRS callsigns are 4 letters followed by 3 numbers. He misread an L for a 1.

You have to be a premium member, which means finish getting your license, which must be done to become a member, then pay the fees ($50 annually I think) to become a premium member, and then run reports to generate CSV files from the repeater database.

I found numerous articles about humidity and various forms of precipitation affecting UHF. It definitely happens, plus the effect of varying air density as a result of temperature can cause refraction. My old satellite system used to lose its signal whenever we had heavy wet snowfall (even without snow building up on the dish and horn.)

Does the radio CPS allow you to set a baud rate? One sure way to identify the correct port is to unplug the usb cable at the computer end while watching in Device Manager to see which com port disappears.

HRO has radios set up for hams to try also.

They do slightly, and moisture or particles in the atmosphere can increase attenuation, but the main reason distance matters is because the radio waves become less dense as they occupy more area. Higher gain antennas minimize that.

It’s possible, but usually a bad cable doesn’t work at all. I would make sure you have loaded the most current driver first. Also, look in Device Manager and make sure that the port looks right.

For the first situation it depends on the sensitivity of the receivers and the gain and pattern of the antennas, but with Yagi antennas you might easily get a couple hundred miles. With our earth’s curvature it’s down to about 15% farther away than the optical horizon.

Actually those are all just your feelings. The rules do not prohibit using GMRS to chat about weather or antennas or kids first report card, but if you’ve determined that you must have sole access to radio frequencies for the many emergencies that you purport to swoop in and handle you’ve made a terrible choice in GMRS. One would think that the first emergency might have taught you that.

Make sure the plug is inserted all the way. Some radios you really have to push hard.

Make sure the volume on the radio is set at least midrange.

It also helps if you read what he posted: Stop being a douche, Devin.

So now you’re also an expert on propagation of UHF in Connecticut? What is your need to act like such a complete douche?

So when you’re in memory mode and you get to channel 19 and then start pushing the channel up key what happens?