SteveShannon

I don’t understand the intent of your post.

That’s about the max for simplex between two hand held radios in an urban area. Some people only get half of a mile. To get further than that you need a situation that removes obstacles between your two radios. Being on opposite sides of a valley with tall antennas would help, but if you’re both at street level it’s limited, even though some manufacturers proudly plaster “up to 35 miles” on the package.

You’re probably just desensing the second radio. Desense happens when you place two radios too close to each other and transmit on one. The receiver on the other one gets overwhelmed, even though it’s on a different channel and as a result it cannot receive the weaker repeater transmission. Move it fifty or a hundred feet away and try asking for a repeater check.

Video record the front of your radio while it’s doing this and post it for us to see. In one case a person had dual watch turned on and had channel B set to the channel that was actually transmitting while he was wondering what was going on with channel A.

No, if you make it to the toilet it’s diarrhea; if you don’t it’s the shits.

Well, that stinks.

Do you know the difference between diarrhea and the shits?

You mean since the thread from a few days ago asking much the same question? No, still not.

A ham friend has a 9800 that doesn’t click.

Welcome! Most of us are still trying to figure it out also.

Hi Whippy, There are lots of books, but the only one I have is the ARRL Amateur Radio Handbook. I suspect it’s more than you want. I’m not sure the what a person needs to know for GMRS would fill a book. Set the same channel, match the tones, push the button and talk. Marc Spaz on this forum has an excellent introductory video. Someone else will come up with a link. GMRS is limited to 22 receive channels and 30 transmit channels by the fcc regulations. Certified radios have those channels programmed in. Tones (CTCSS, PL, CTS are all names for the exact same thing) and digital codes (DPL, DTCSS, and DCS are all the same) are used to limit interruptions, but do not provide security. If I transmit using tone 100 Hz as my CTCSS, and someone else has their receiver tone set to something else, they won’t hear me because their receiver only allows through those that have matching tones. But if they set their tone to 100 Hz they will hear me because their receiver filters out everything except transmissions that include the 100 Hz tone. But if they don’t have a tone set on receive they have no filter and their receiver will reproduce everything. Codes work the same way. @OffRoaderX has YouTube videos under his other identity, Notarubicon that have enough information to fill several books.

Welcome! Have fun!

I agree with everything you’ve stated. MyGMRS lists 14 repeaters for Alaska and I bet that is still much lower than reality.

It’s a very good tool, but while line of sight is great for vhf and uhf radio work, it’s not absolute. For instance, here’s how it analyzed the path between my friend’s house and my cabin. He and I can communicate via 2 meter simplex, but according to the chart we shouldn’t expect to:

It’s a website called scadacore.com. The tool is RF Line of Sight. https://www.scadacore.com/tools/rf-path/rf-line-of-sight/

The SWR isn’t the issue and you’ll never be able to detect an audible difference in reception between 1.3:1 and 1.0:1. When you say you can’t hear people who are really close, do you mean that the radio isn’t breaking squelch? If you turn squelch down or off can you hear them? Do you have any PL tones or DPL codes set for receive? If so, clear them out completely for the channel you’re attempting to hear. With tones/codes cleared out and squelch at minimum you should hear static. if you still cannot receive even that you might simply have a bad receiver or audio problem.

If the problem is water, it is possible that it’s a weak solution with some contaminant. That would depress the freezing point. Or maybe it’s not water but some physical change, a contraction of some component along your feed line that results in a change in impedance somewhere. Do you have a dummy load you could use to isolate portions of your feed line to see where the issue is taking place?

I would register a complaint with the manufacturer. They might recognize the symptom. I think you said it’s only a couple days old. Make them replace it. You’ll have more peace of mind.

I haven’t got a clue what the sound is but I would open the case and listen to see if I could see or hear the source.

6 dBi is 6 dBi, but with the base antenna you usually have a larger radiator and need less inductance. Higher inductance causes steeper troughs and narrower dips in SWR (called high Q). That means that SWR might be lower across a wider range of frequencies. Also, a larger radiator is usually better than a smaller radiator, if it's tuned correctly, because it has more area to gather RF and because it sticks further up. But in actuality, you might never notice a difference. If what you have works for you, I don't think I would change it. And I agree with @GrouserPad, nice setup!

Here’s a pretty good video on fairly established HF emergency frequencies. Unfortunately I didn’t hear him mention 5167 kHz.

And that makes sense. It’s mentioned on my license also, iirc.

This!!! I’m always surprised by how many people spend many minutes and sometimes hours researching and asking others questions that could be answered in less than a minute by trying.