SteveShannon

Hopefully Rich will pin this so people see it when they first come to the forums. It seems to be a pretty frequent question.

30 second audio relay?

Yes, you did.

The OP asked one question, whether to use channel 17 or 17RP to talk to his repeater. It was answered in a straightforward post (use 17 RP) almost immediately afterwards. Why are you guys fighting over this? Go to your rooms.

We use the Garmin radios when we’re out searching for rockets. We can see each other’s locations (simplex) in real time on a topo map. In the event of a medical emergency (this is hilly terrain) we can find each other quickly. Having a uhf channel sending APRS (or any kind of location data) is definitely not useless.

Unfortunately the test of the N9TAX antenna on UHF had no data. He’ll be rerunning that part of the test. On VHF test results were obtained for both and the Ed Fong antenna was about 2.5 dB better on SN. The SN numbers that were obtained for UHF were quite low compared to VHF. Josh even commented that they weren’t much better than a simple stick antenna.

Thank you. That helped me understand. So when the CW ID is transmitted, no CTCSS or DCS tone is transmitted. Anyone who has the tone operated squelch set won’t hear the ID. For all other transmissions the tone is included so those who have the tone operated squelch set will hear them. Thanks again.

I enjoyed this reminder. We don’t all need to be quite so ready to find fault with each other even when we’ve gotten on each other’s nerves in the past. And I really appreciate Marc’s humor!

It sometimes does.

17RP (467.600) - RP is for repeater. As Axorlov explained you need to transmit on the repeater input frequency and receive on the repeater transmit frequency

13 amps should be fine. Midland FAQS say any power supply exceeding 15 amps. https://midlandusa.com/products/mxt575-micromobile®two-way-radio That’s almost certainly estimated conservatively, but a radio that puts out 50 watts of RF power must consume more than 50 watts of electrical power. At 13.8 volts the very minimum the radio can draw while putting out 50 watts must exceed 3.62 amps, so 2.5 amps isn’t right unless the radio was putting out much less RF.

In your vehicle or your house? In your house just use a 115vac power supply In a vehicle using an inverter to get 115vac and then a 115vac power supply to get 13.8vdc is inefficient. Just run it off the battery. Your output will suffer very slightly when the engine is off because your battery probably provides 12.7vdc then.

I haven’t disliked any of them. Each one taught me something and I still own them all.

For transmitting yes, but it’s odd the radio doesn’t include them as receive only.

Well, hypothetically speaking. ?

I’m confused. What do you mean by “out tone mode”? The ID must be transmitted in accordance with the rules, no confusion or argument there. Everyone receiving the transmission will hear it, no confusion there. The transmission is on 462.xxx. The receiver half of the repeater is on 467.xxx so it never hears the transmission with the CW ID. Don’t all repeater controllers that generate a CW ID simply add it into the audio from the receiver half as it’s passed to the transmitter half? What am I missing?

I’m curious if they have a pudgy duck antenna that wouldn’t have that gap. ?

This got me curious. Some forward thinking ARES groups do include GMRS in their plans. It would be silly not to. If the goal is to communicate as widely as possible to those people who are affected by an emergency or those people who can help during an emergency you don’t turn up your nose because it’s not amateur radio. You use every means possible and you plan to succeed. https://www.aresd1.com/post/ares-district-1-deploys-to-hobart-for-simulated-emergency-test

It’s a feature. ?

Even if you missed all the math questions you could pass the test. Take the sample tests in HamStudy when you have the time and you’ll see very few math problems. I don’t think I had to do math until the Amateur Extra exam.

I don’t know about ARES or Skywarn and GMRS, BUT if you still want to get your technician license for amateur radio, I can help you find some study guides. Everyone learns differently and for me the flash cards provided at HamStudy (free - although I did spring for $4 to buy the app for my phone) were perfect. I also would be happy to help you understand the questions and answers if that would help. I would still get into GMRS. It all is valuable and enjoyable.

Use a different manual ? http://www.pofung.cn/UploadFiles/20200827094748361.pdf It explains that you must have all 22 channels programmed and then power on while on channel 22. It will automatically begin scanning: Scan This function can be activated only by means of the optional programming software. To enable the Scan function, all 22 channels must be programmed. If you turn on the radio on channel 22, the scanning will automatically start. Whenever any signal is detected, the scanning will stop on a busy channel. If the PTT is pressed, you will transmit on the latest busy channel. Channel 22 is the priority channel; therefore if you don’t pick up any signal when you press PTT, the radio will transmit on channel 22.

I sat in one place at my kitchen table and tested my Faux Nagoya (TID Radio 771 antenna). I’m about 16 miles from a 70cm DMR repeater. 70 cm is close in frequency to GMRS. The nice thing with DMR is that I’m able to see on a computer screen an automated signal strength report as measured by the repeater. With the rubber duck that came on my DMR Radio I was getting reports that my transmissions were received by the repeater as S6 or S7. With the Faux Nagoya I saw consistent S8 reported. So at least in my case there was a measurable difference. One S unit is equivalent to 6 dB.

Probably the best way is to pick up something like the ARRL Antenna book and then watch some videos that teach the use of EZNec or MMANA, which are two antenna modeling programs. Free versions of each are available and they’re pretty easy to use. Look for a channel on YouTube by DX Commander that has some tutorials on MMANA or David Casler on EZNec. I would try going to a ham swap meet and getting a used copy of the book; it’ll cost much less than ordering from ARRL and the difference will be minimal. Antenna theory hasn’t changed much lately, except for the gigahertz regime. There haven’t been any landmark discoveries that have changed people’s minds for awhile. I receive a big book quarterly of the Transactions of the Antennas and Propagation Society of the IEEE and I almost freeze at the titles of the articles. I think I’d have to go back to school just to understand the titles, much less the actual articles, but every article is about gigahertz or terahertz uses. As far as I can tell the UHF stuff is relegated to the same dusty shelf as VHF, and HF. There’s probably something still being done for ELF also, but I haven’t seen anything.

According to the data sheet, Vgg is rated for 6 volts, so I wouldn't do that. Where does the input to Vgg come from in the circuit? See if you can find a Service Manual and look at the schematic of the TK-880.