SteveShannon

If you’re trying for perfection, you’re fighting a losing battle. Raising the antenna might affect impedance and thus SWR. Lowering the antenna might affect impedance and thus SWR. The size of your ground plane will affect SWR. The length of your feedline can affect SWR. The length of the element isn’t the only variable. You can even have near perfect SWR and still have an antenna that nobody can hear. SWR is important. High SWR is to be avoided because of the power that’s reflected back into your transmitter, but 1.75 isn’t high SWR.

Everything affects everything with antennas. I have no idea if the top can be trimmed. I would stop at 1.75:1 and live with it for a while to see how well it works.

That may just be the best you can achieve with that combination of antenna, mount, and feed line. Did you check to see what the SWR was at the original designed frequency?

See if this helps. This appears to be a popular question. Someone else answered it earlier today in this thread:

Sorry, I thought that would be it for sure. I got the ft65 and it definitely allows different dcs tones for transmit and receive.

Edited to correct: You can set one to DCS and another to CTCSS, but the ft60 cannot have different tones for xmit and rcv. See pages 22-25 in the manual.

It’s absolutely his right to shut it down, but it might have been a little less “scorched earth” if he had simply found a way to block the complaints from the repeater user who was whining about outside traffic. There’s no point in owning and operating a repeater if ownership causes such misery. At this point his repeater users might not consider the repeater reliable. If he has gotten to the point of shutting it down completely (for his own peace of mind or any other reason) he might as well sell it to someone else or convert it to a 70cm DMR ham repeater so he can control access.

I think your post did help, Marc. If nothing else it took the edge off. ?

No, but a GMRS callsign is. The ham call sign is optional for those who have one.

I don’t mind OffroaderX proposing this (In fact I enjoy his videos), and I don’t mind having it discussed again for people who have recently joined the forum. I just happen to disagree with it because of Line A. However, it really won’t ever affect me to be honest, because I live near Line A and because I don’t expect to drive around with my GMRS radio on anyway. If I ever do it will be with a group of people and we’ll select something else so we don’t interfere with the Road Channel.

Sounds bad. I would call customer support right away. You’re almost certainly not the first person that has done this. Hopefully they can save you some stress. Let us know what you learn. Hopefully it’ll be something easy, like an electrolytic capacitor that sacrificed itself. They put out a bunch of smoke when reversed.

And what about the emergency channel? As I recall channel 9 used to be actively monitored for emergencies.

Hi Bob, I see from another thread that you’re still unable to find someone to chat with on the GMRS bands. I really like the idea posted above by bobthetj03: Then, if you hear traffic on the ham bands, you may decide you want to become a ham. There are lots of ham clubs all over that have study sessions, including one day ham-crams where you study and take the test on the same day, I believe. In my area there’s no formal GMRS activity but the hams get together weekly for three different net check ins, breakfast on Saturday morning, and a monthly meeting.

My 100 watt Yaesu radio draws an honest 23 amps when transmitting digital (which is a worst case mode) at 100 watts. I have a Samlex 1235PM power supply. If you don’t need the illuminated voltage and current meters you can find this 35 amp power supply for about $140 or so, I think. It’s nicely built but you do hear the fan when it turns on. It doesn’t bother me, but it might bother you.

A reverse polarity diode is usually used in series with a fuse. The diode and fuse combination provide an easier path for current to flow than the radio circuitry. If you connect the radio in reverse, the diode allows full current to flow in a short circuit, bypassing the radio circuits in order to avoid damaging them. A fuse is placed in one lead to power and the short circuit blows the fuse, preventing any current from flowing through the radio. Once you replace the fuse and connect the power in the right polarity you should be good to go. That’s why I asked if there was a fuse in the power line that could be changed. However, there are other reverse polarity protection schemes as well. If there’s no fuse accessible from outside the radiothen you may have to open the radio and find one. Before doing that I would strongly recommend contacting the dealer to ask about customer service. They have a far better knowledge of the circuitry of the radio than I do.

Is there a fuse in the power cable that might be blown? The manual makes it appear like there is.

It’s usually within a day or so. The FCC system had a problem with amateur radio licenses but that has supposedly been fixed. I recommend you log into you account and look to see. It’s possible your email was bounced somewhere along the way.

There are only two GMRS channels that may not be used above Line A: channels 19 and 21. I understand the desire to pay homage to “Channel 19”, but having a “Road Channel” that people within 100 miles of the Canadian border could use, such as the citizens of “Motor City” or Seattle, might be important. The channel 19 touch was a cool idea, though. It’s just better to have a single road channel that anyone can use.

I would support the idea if it weren’t for the fact that 10 - 12 million people live far enough north that they are not allowed to use channel 19 because of an agreement with Canada.

To the OP: As you can see, there’s a lot of fiddling around that accompanies repurposing something based on a high end commercial radio. That’s fine if that’s really how you want to spend your time. But for many people a decent radio, built to be sold as a GMRS radio, such as a Wouxun 805, 905, or 935 will be more than good enough without concerns over software legality, tuning partitions, needing a knob guard, or any one of a number of “perfect except for qualifiers” listed above.

It’s a 1998 Dodge Ram with a diesel on a cold day idling next door to your house. Sounds the same whether your radio is on or off. Don’t ask me how I know. ?

My understanding is: It’s easier to mount an antenna to the side of the tower (picture the poor tower climber trying to wrestle the antenna into position while being strapped to the tower), lights can be mounted to the tower (but not many antennas), and the tower provides some measure of lightning protection for the antenna.

Yeah, his golden days. ? I just thought it funny that he literally said “I don’t condemn an entire radio service, but I condemn CB!” But you’re right; he’s not worth wasting time on.

Isn’t CB a radio service?

Nobody likes you any less! ?