SteveShannon

We had a guy who was trying to transmit to our repeater. We could hear him activate the repeater because his radio was set up with a Roger beep but no voice. In his case his external microphone jack contacts had failed open. With an external mike we hear him but trying to use the internal mike means no audio. We had another guy whom we could barely hear. In his case the single hole in his microphone was plugged with something.

No. A Yagi that is rated at 7 dBi has 7 dBi in its strongest direction. A vertical Omni rated at 7 dBi has 7 dBi in its strongest direction. Your last paragraph is correct: Or,.. is that rating done with the idea that the furthest point of the radiation lobe achieved a (non-symmetrically) distance representative of 7Dbi?

I’ll have to look for that. I’m curious what was so important for him to broadcast that he just keeps (you know it’s not over) throwing himself at the FCC.

I should have added that the real takeaway is that all of these changes contribute towards good signal strength. Doubling the power only moves the S meter by a half unit, but if you double the power and use a high gain antenna you can get one or even two S units. Using better coax can get you another half S unit or more. It’s important to be aware of all of the different places where signal strength can be lost and how they can combine against you: antenna gain, antenna placement, directionality, output power, coax loss, connector loss, even the voltage of the DC power supply.

I don’t know, but if you read through the entire document describing the serial offender Abdias Datis, it’s like the fcc was playing whack-a-mole for five years: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-10A1.pdf

And the difference between the two radios, even through a 6 dB gain antenna, is still just one half unit on the S-meter. Absolutely, large changes in output power matter. Otherwise we could all be running 100 milliwatts. But it’s ridiculous to obsess about a radio putting out 9 watts instead of 10, or 45 watts instead of 50, even with trees.

Don’t get out. The only people who are never wrong are those who never try.

It’s been a couple years but I received an email also.

Welcome, @WSAI800!

That’s for sure!

You still have to follow the repeater owner’s rules. Even if she says you must have a Roger beep.

Old school I just went to the page, copied the URL from the browser address and pasted it into my post.

He has a braille printer. I put together a list of the channels each time I edit the codeplug. He has his text to speech software read it to him.

As you can see, some people don’t enjoy hearing Roger beeps. On simplex it only bothers the person you’re talking to. On a repeater everyone tuned to the repeater hears it. On top of that, some repeaters have a beep signifying that a transmission is over so now there’s two beep patterns. Some people let up on the PTT temporarily to avoid triggering the TOT on a repeater. That triggers another Roger beep but not necessarily the repeater beep because they sometimes have a delay built in. There could be more reasons that a repeater owner would have. I don’t know what they are.

Rather than making someone search for it, here’s a link to the club page:

Welcome, @WSAD366. I envy your call sign!

Thanks! That helps. He and I are always looking for something that would be easier for him to use.

More like 80% in my experience.

Ive been helping a blind, partially deaf, ham by programming his DMR radio so he can use it. It’s an Alinco DJ-MD5, which has room two thousand channels. Unfortunately, it has no voice prompts and very few audible cues. However, channels can be selected by entering a four digit channel number. So the method we came up with is to duplicate the channel list for every repeater, but minimize the number of zones because zones cannot be randomly selected from the front panel.. So, for instance, the channels for each individual repeater all start with the first two digits, such as “10” and all of the channels for all of the Brandmeister linked repeaters are the same last two digits. So, Brandmeister talkgroup #93 is channel 1093 for one repeater, 1193 for another, and so on up through whatever the practical limit is (not to exceed 9993). In that way my friend only has to learn the 20 or 30 different repeater digit pairs and up to 99 channel numbers. But that’s harder than it needs to be because of the inability of the manufacturer to imagine how their interface affects a blind person. Ideally a person could select a repeater randomly by entering its unique number and then select a Brandmeister talkgroup randomly by entering its number. So, after that long explanation, how does this displayless DMR radio allow a user to select channels? How does a person know which channel they’re on?

Welcome, James! I hope you enjoy it here.

Here’s a cable loss attenuation chart. M&P 10 mm cable is very close in attentuation to LMR400 (which is also 0.400” diameter). https://www.w4rp.com/ref/coax.html Here’s another: https://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/cable/coaxperf.html I use the M&P 10 mm cable. It’s pretty good. But when I need to make a sharp bend, or if I couldn’t physically fit the diameter, I would get a short jumper of the best smaller diameter cable I could find, something from M&P or Times Microwave, not because of the cable, but because adding additional connectors can quickly add to loss. Better quality cables have better connectors. Never believe that all connectors are the same. Unfortunately,mprice isn’t the only predictor. I really like the M&P EVOlution connectors. I also like the old school silver plated Amphenol connectors.

Winning!

The M&P is 10 mm which is 0.400. You can certainly find smaller diameters. There are lots out there but what you should be looking at is how much loss you can withstand. Smaller diameter cables have higher losses. So, can you shorten the run? Can you get by with a short piece of M&P 7mm Ultraflex but 10 mm everywhere else? Or can you get by losing half of your signal to losses in the cable? Unfortunately there are tradeoffs.

I don’t believe amplifiers are prohibited for GMRS, but good luck finding one that’s part 95e certified.

The KG-1000G plus from Wouxun is very popular with those who have purchased it. Some consider it the best mobile radio specifically built for GMRS. It is certified for GMRS and transmits on GMRS only. But it will also receive a wide array of frequencies between 50 MHz and 985 MHz (not completely inclusive), including 108-179 MHz: https://www.buytwowayradios.com/wouxun-kg-1000g-plus.html You might want an antenna switch as you can switch between a good GMRS antenna and something else for the other bands you want to listen to.