SteveShannon

ARRL is not the only organization recognized as a testing organization, although they might be the largest in the USA. There are 14 Volunteer Exam Coordinators recognized by the FCC I’m a volunteer examiner for the Laurel VEC. They have a lot of test locations every month. Check their schedule at LaurelVEC.com. Click on “Exam Schedule” on the left.

Dumbest thread ever.

You’re only putting out 31 watts on transmit as well as receive? On receive your SWR/wattmeter should show nothing. Presumably one radio is set to be the transmitter and one is set to act as the receiver with the two radios both connecting to the duplexer, the transmitter connected to the 462.xxx input and the receiver connected to the port that allows 467.xxx to pass. The third port on the duplexer goes to the antenna. As @gortex2 alluded, the tuning of the duplexer is key to getting everything working together. Where is your SWR/wattmeter connected? If it’s directly connected at the output of the transmit radio, it should be closer to 50 watts, but probably still somewhere in the 40s. If it’s connected at the 462.xxx input of the duplexer the wattmeter will read whatever power is left after cable losses. If it’s connected at the antenna side of the duplexer it will reflect insertion loss through the duplexer as well as cable losses to the duplexer, and if you connected it at the antenna it will read losses through two different cables as well as insertion loss through the duplexer. And finally, if you connected the wattmeter at the 467.xxx port of the duplexer you shouldn’t see any power at all. What kind of coax are you using? What’s the length? What kind of duplexer is it? If you’re measuring at the output of the duplexer, and depending on the type of duplexer, 31 watts out could be reasonable. As @OffRoaderX commented the low audio could be caused by transmitting narrow band and receiving it on a radio set for wide band.

Welcome! As @BoxCar said, it doesn’t work that way. Full duplex analog repeaters simultaneously transmit what they receive using one frequency to receive and another to transmit. They do no routing and they do not pass along signals. In GMRS, full duplex repeaters receive on 467.xxx MHz and transmit on 462.xxx MHz so they cannot hear each other. Networked GMRS repeaters are connected via the Internet and in some instances are subject to transmitted commands to join the network, but I have no idea how routing works (or if it does). Due to their public nature, though, if you routed a networked repeater everyone else using the repeater goes along with you and, conversely, if they are allowed to command the repeater you’re using to re-connect to another networked repeater mid conversation, off you go. And of course in an emergency that involves an Internet outage all networking fails. Although I have no experience using networked GMRS repeaters, I do have experience using DMR repeaters in the amateur radio service (ARS). There you connect via Talk Groups. Depending on which network your repeater is linked to, you can talk to someone else on another repeater connected to the same network anywhere in the world as long as they know to listen at that time. Calling them on the phone works for arranging that. ? Of course everyone else connected to either repeater on either end hears you and can even join your conversation. Neither GMRS nor ARS has anything remotely resembling secure and private conversations.

I would suggest that you get some experience and education before building a rolling NSA station designed to cover every frequency. There might really not be any need and by adding all of the frequencies and limiting the number of antennas you want as bristles on your vehicle, you are constraining yourself to compromises somewhere. Why do you want to cover MURS? Why do you want to cover 1.25m? Are they truly important to you? Do you need to transmit on them all or just be able to monitor them? Especially for mobile use you probably don't need to cover that much. In any kind of communications plan for emergency use you will probably want to restrict your activities to one or two specific frequencies or you stand the risk of never finding someone. Another thought is that there are antenna systems where you swap out the element to concentrate on a single band at a time. They are available for 80 meters through 6 meters and can even be combined for greater versatility. They're sometimes called Ham Sticks. Shark is one of the vendors carried by Gigaparts: https://www.gigaparts.com/nsearch/?lp=SHARK

Are you having trouble finding a club? It would appear that the area is pretty active. In May the Hagerstown Hamfest will be held: http://www.arrl.org/hamfests/the-great-hagerstown-hamfest-4

And that’s with Belden RG-8x, which is quality. It’s a characteristic of the cable and proportionate to length, and it’s simply not possible that you would have a 50 foot RG-8x cable that doesn’t have much loss at GMRS frequencies. There are lots of accounts of really terrible performance from the cheap gray RG-8x or RG-8 mini from Amazon.

Those are very good pictures. Based on those sweeps, if I wanted one antenna to cover the greatest range (albeit not the lowest SWR on all bands) VHF amateur and MURS and UHF Amateur and GMRS, the Comet would be a good choice. That’s very helpful. Thanks!

The screenshots from NanoVNA Saver are usually pretty good and while the NanoVNA isn’t labrotory grade as long as it’s calibrated for each band beforehand the results are very usable. Sure, I’d like to have a RigExpert Zoom 1500, and maybe I will get a RigExpert Zoom 650, but the NanoVNA isn’t total garbage.

So one more level of organization than DMR? So, when you add selections to zones are you including the entire Personal group of individual channels or do you assign channels to zones individually?

I would be interested in seeing the graphs.

How and where are you power testing? What does it say at the back of the radio and at the other end of the feedline? What are you using for feedline?

He’s just been super busy?: ??

You might also see this post which describes the Comet 2x4. That’s an antenna designed to cover a wide range of frequencies for emergency services. The advertised range covers 2meter, MURS, 70 cm, and part of GMRS:

Exactly. "WROM258 looking for a radio check. Does anyone copy?"

There can be only one... Welcome! You’ll fit right in.

Yes, every word matters with rules, laws, lawyers and official forms. The letter never said a license was canceled. It specifically said an application was dismissed. But (understandably) the OP read it as “license was canceled” and used that as the title of the thread.

Not that I have found, but I haven’t looked hard.

There are ways to minimize the number of antennas. I think you could get by with a couple of antennas but you’ll be compromising performance. But if you figure out where you want to concentrate your attention (which bands are most important) you can manage. An end fed half wave can work well for the HF bands without looking like a n NSA station. It’s just a wire strung up and blends into the background, but it stops at 10 meters. Or, if you’re willing to compromise performance a little more the Diamond BB7V handles HF and 6 m. There are many decent multi band antennas. I would look for one for 2 meters, 1.25 meters and 70 cm, like the Comet cx333, but @marcspaz has had good success covering GMRS with a Diamond antenna. Otherwise you’ll need another dual band antenna for MURS and GMRS.

Usually just a few days. Welcome!

What frequency are you trying to transmit on?

Ham radio operators often get thousands of miles using only a few watts at lower frequencies. Radio is funny. Sometimes more power isn’t the solution, but the smart bet always goes to a good antenna system. I got on a 2 meter simplex net last night and I used my 20 watt mobile instead of my 5 watt handheld. I was able to very reliably talk with the net control who was maybe 16 miles away parked on an overpass, but a very strong signal coming from six miles away and above me on a hill came in very broken blasts, signal strength meter pegging “spurts” that were uncopyable until I turned off the mobile radio and picked up my handheld with its rubber duck antenna. Then I could hear the nearby station very clearly. Sometimes a signal needs attenuation. The best thing is to try different things to see what works.

That’s true, but while a grandfathered license limits them to a specific frequency it doesn’t grant them exclusive use of the frequency now. I don’t know if it did in the 90’s when the incident occurred.

Look, buying a Bird 43 is entirely your choice but it’s really not the easiest tool to use. All it does is tell you how much RF power is passing through a single point in the system. You’ll need the right element and after transmitting in one direction to read the forward power you rotate the element 180° and transmit again to read the reflected power. It’s almost certainly more absolutely accurate than the SW102, but absolute accuracy really isn’t what you need. You’re getting relative readings from your power meter that tell you everything a power meter can tell you. An antenna analyzer doesn’t rely on transmitting, in fact you disconnect your transceiver and the analyzer provides all the signals necessary at low power levels to determine the characteristics of your feed line and antenna, separately and together. Here’s how I would do it: 1. Remove the antenna and put a dummy load on the antenna end of the coax. It should show a length of coax that is about right and an impedance of 50 ohms and an SWR of 1:1 or very close. 2. Then reconnect the antenna and sweep it for SWR from about 460 MHz to 470 MHz. If you use a NanoVNA there are a limited number of data points so I would find the dip and then recalibrate and bracket it. That will tell you where the antenna is closest to resonance. It will also tell you how low of SWR your installation can achieve. 3. Then try doing one thing at a time to affect the ground plane size to see if it makes a difference. As long as you’re not changing the range of frequencies you’re sweeping you don’t need to recalibrate the NanoVNA. I can’t emphasize enough that you want to examine one thing at a time until you eliminate everything but those one or two things that are affecting your installation

You probably were in the right. I doubt there are very many state constables who know anything about FCC regulations.