SteveShannon

Not in the ham market. Although not considered one of the big three, Alinco has both handheld and mobile radios in DMR, which appear to be Anytone OEM. All are type 90 certified. I like mine.

My Alinco Ham radio has the ability to program in different tone sequences and no-tone sequences in a custom roger beep, but I don’t think the level is configurable. I don’t know if my Garmin Rino GMRS Radio has a similar capability; I doubt it does.

Two separate antennas on the same tower? It’s done all the time, but I don’t believe you’d need a third duplexer. Just be sure to separate them vertically.

You can use either. Personally, I would choose metal for the added rigidity. Having a Yagi on the end of a flexible mast would be counterproductive.

You didn’t provide much background. I don’t know if the preprogrammed channels will survive a reset. Your seller can advise you. What I would suggest is to download the configuration from the radio before performing a reset. As far as your second question, whether CTCSS should be on, it depends on whether whatever radio you’re transmitting to is set to expect CTCSS. If you’re just transmitting in hopes that someone will hear you and chat with you, then leave CTCSS off. If you’re trying to get into a repeater that requires CTCSS, then turn it on, but you must make sure to set the right CTCSS tone to transmit. When getting started it’s usually better to leave CTCSS off on the receive side, at least until you know what you’re doing.

My Yaesu FT5DR has automatic mode select. I tried to use it. Once I was listening to an analog net and when I tried to check in it switched to digital when hit the PTT. It’s entirely possible that I had it configured incorrectly, but it was sure annoying to everyone else listening. I turned AMS off and haven’t had any problems since.

I think it’s still possibly multipath.

I understand that the FRS radio is fine. It almost certainly has a less selective SOC receiver than the superhet KG-S88G, not necessarily less sensitive. Thus it will be less affected by things that can disturb the repeaters transmitted signal. Usually that helps reduce interference from other sources, but it could also cause a poor signal to be rejected, even though you want to hear it. When I suggested trying other radios I was hoping to detect a pattern of more than a single sample. If other superhet radios do the same thing then you might be able to rule out problems with the Wouxun. Are there any wind generators or similar large moving surfaces near you or the repeater? Or the fading in and out maybe caused by multipath propagation.

Maybe it’s a problem that affects the more selective receivers. Try it with some other radios.

So for purposes of this thought exercise, a bunch of hams would network their ham repeaters and then discuss GMRS? Of course to be compliant we wouldn’t allow any GMRS repeaters to connect to the common network, right?

The GMRS Pro supports sending texts using simplex from radio to radio, but not through a repeater. It does not support digital voice in any format, either transmit or receive. It has a single receiver. It does receive VHF and UHF, but only transmits on the GMRS channels.

This is a key factor. Without some kind of organization representing us, I doubt much will change. And based on the vast diversity of ways people use GMRS, it would be a challenge forming such an organization. I must be missing something. How would hams even see the traffic?

But digital GMRS is not interoperable with analog GMRS, so they would be effectively creating another service (DGMRS or DMRS). At that point, why not use a different section of spectrum? Fortunately for me, I live where there’s a lot of underutilized spectrum, but that also means I don’t have a feel for what you metropolitans have to deal with. And I guess a part of me asks why people don’t just get their technician licenses and buy into 70cm digital voice. Of course the family license is probably the reason.

Good document. Makes me want to run out and buy a couple dPMR handhelds to play with. The only thing I quibble with is the opening statement that GMRS isn’t for hobby use, but that’s been cussed and discussed elsewhere and this thread has had enough diversions.

One way might be to split existing analog channels into two DGMRS channels, one at a time over a period of time. That way everyone would be inconvenienced equally. For locations like mine, analog and digital could happily coexist, at least for a while. You’re right that a new band would be best, but whom do you take it from? The FCC must have some studies showing any lesser used spectrum.

Don’t drag me into this very annoying sidebar.

I couldn’t commit enough time or capital support to doing that, but you’re right; that would seem like a great location. Thank you for the thought.

I’ve got one of those 18”x18”x18” all-weather equipment boxes with an extending handle and wheels. I wish it had larger tires so I could tow it behind me while hiking up a hill at our rocket launch site. I also have lots of SLA 7Ah batteries I’d like to use. They’re heavy-ish but that would be mitigated by being able to roll the case behind me. I haven’t done the calculations but I think I’d only need a couple for a Retevis RT97S. Most of the time it will simply be receiving with maybe 5 or 10 minutes of transmitting max. I’ve toyed with doing something like you did using the two Radioddity DB20G mobiles I bought last month, but it would probably end up costing nearly as much as a Retevis RT97S.

CTCSS are analog tones. DPL are digital codes. There is no conversion. Nor are they interchangeable. You will have to learn how and where to select the DPL, also known as DCS, DTCSS, or possibly something else, but all meaning the same thing. It’s usually a different menu item than the CTCSS tone. I don’t have a 935, but someone will probably chime in and tell you which menu choice it is. Under the correct menu there will be a long list of choices. There will also be a column telling whether the codes are normal or inverse.

Probably similar gain, but you can take a Signal Stick and wind it into a loop and put it in your pocket, or use two of them to make a dipole, or multiple ones of different lengths to make a fan dipole. They’re part of a system. The most important thing they do is make Ham Study available for people who want to study.

Maybe this will help: ” The origin of the Super-Elastic Signal Stick Approximately 15 years ago I made my first antenna following this general design. These are based on the traditional “1/4 wave piano wire antenna” design; it turns out that 1/4 wave on 2m is roughly 3/4 wave on 70cm, and a 3/4 wave antenna performs roughly the same as a 1/4 wave antenna, which makes these work equally well on both 70cm and 2m. These antennas were originally made with stainless steel wire as a fundraiser for a ham radio youth group (the one I met my wife in, actually). Over the years we’ve improved the design dramatically, most notably by changing to use nitinol superelastic wire. When the youth group shut down I was assistant advisor to it and due to continued demand I took over the project and have continued selling them as a fundraiser for HamStudy.org, a site which I am also connected with.”

Any antennas can have its gain expressed in dBi. dBi is simply a unit. Perhaps you meant they have a gain of 2.1 dBi or something like that?

Cool, thanks! That's good enough; you don't need to dig for a BOM.

Both of the statement above, by @KAF6045 and @OffRoaderX are correct. The rest of my post is useless except as a geeky point of interest. There is a calculation that can be done to determine theoretical loss at given distance, but it assumes perfect conditions, i.e. "Free Space." That could useful for establishing an absolute outer limit for distance. Great for space travel. The equation looks like this: d is the distance between the receiving antenna and transmitting antenna. f is the frequency in Hertz c is the speed of light in the same units your distance is in. Gt is the gain of the transmitting antenna Gr is the gain of the receiving antenna Here's a calculator built to use it: https://www.pasternack.com/t-calculator-fspl.aspx