SteveShannon

That’s correct. All “privacy tones” do is filter out anything else to reduce interruptions. They do not make your conversations private.

This is absolutely correct. A lot of people assume that if a tower is grounded at its base, it provides some level of protection, but it must be bonded to the electrical service ground system as well. It's not uncommon to measure a voltage between two different points in the ground and without bonding, that voltage is being carried on the shield of your antenna feed line and through your radio equipment. A simplified and illustrated reference that's pretty understandable is this one. It refers to "Radio Telescopes" but don't let that hang you up: https://reeve.com/Documents/Articles Papers/Reeve_AntennaSystemGroundingRequirements.pdf but the ones WRUU653 posted above are good to have as well. A denser article is the one I've attached below from Polyphasor. It's not as easy to digest (at least for me), but it's more specific for some things. Some of the most important points, such as the importance of a single point ground, can be too easily overlooked. Steve 1485-013.pdf

You're running in circles. Diagnose one problem at a time. Analyze the RFMax cable without the antenna to see if you have a cable problem. You'll need a 50 ohm dummy load to do that. If you find out the cable is crap, get rid of it. Once you have a cable that gives you a nice low SWR going into a dummy load, then try different antennas. It really doesn't take much ground plane for GMRS frequencies. The ground plane provides balance to the radiating element.

If you do a thread on this I’ll subscribe.

The Midland MXTA26 is a decent antenna, and arrives well tuned for low SWR on GMRS frequencies. The mount is separate.

It’s not a bad idea. I think every state should designate an emergency channel. But it would possibly be more useful if it were a common channel everywhere and if there were no privacy code. In an emergency the last thing you want is for a message to be missed because somebody couldn’t set the tone correctly. Just look at how many people on this forum, which is dedicated to GMRS, ask how tones work. And those are people who are interested in GMRS.

For the clamp style connectors the center pin can even be crimped instead of soldered.

A ground plane is not the same as grounding the antenna post. Conduction is not necessary. A 30 foot mast is way more than adequate as a ground plane for a 68 centimeter wavelength anyway.

That’s correct. Aluminum oxidizes immediately and aluminum oxide is not a conductor. Having an aluminum pole in the ground doesn’t ground it.

But it’s still an inadequate solution for the reasons often repeated. That something has been discussed before without resolving the inherent problems is no reason not to discuss it again. The horse isn’t dead.

Dress it up with a wiring grommet. https://www.amazon.com/Garmin-010-10562-00-Cable-grommet/dp/B000T13DBS?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Hopefully they monitor without the tone. I agree with you. I suspect they were just taking advantage of the mnemonic.

No

What about snail mail?

Thanks for the reminder, but the Garmin radios don’t transmit GPS data on the repeater channels. Also, because they are capable of sending GPS data they have molded in antennas that cannot be changed.

Make sure you have it set to show stale and inactive repeaters.

You either need a duplexer or two antennas with lots of distance between them. The signal transmitted by a repeater must be isolated from the receiver in order for the receiver to simultaneously receive.

If you can live with a monochrome map, they have a model that you could afford to buy two of. I love how they share the location of each handheld. All the senior members of our rocket club carry them so we can keep track of each other.

Okay, so let me tell you one thing that some people here would object to. The channels on mine (and I suspect all others ?) are all preset. By that I mean there’s a simple choice of 30 channels. You cannot have six different channels set up and ready to go to cover the six repeaters in your state that all use 462.700. You just have to change the tones for that channel depending on where you are. They’re really ideally set up for communications between people where you want to know where each other are. And, mine at least, is well made in Taiwan, not communist China.

Do you have a call sign for the repeater? Typically it’s announced during the net. The only repeater listed for Plymouth in the directory here is on 700. I presume you know about that one. There are seven repeaters listed for 462.600 in Massachusetts. A few have unlisted tones and MassNet seems to own most of them. As soon as I edit out their tones I’ll post a picture.

Do you have a call sign for the repeater? Typically it’s announced during the net.

On the Rino the repeater channels don’t appear by default, but once you enable it for repeater use they do. They are excellent. I don’t have the 750, but I have one a bit older. 675 maybe? No camera built in, but it does have the ability to send and receive pictures. It’s rugged, super visible in bright sunshine, and very easy to change tones.

I don’t disagree with the others, but there should be a way to discover who owns it. Does the repeater ever identify itself? This site (mygmrs.com) and the FCC have the ability to look up the licensee.

I don’t have a UV9G so I cannot provide step by step instructions, but I can provide the basics: 1. Tune to the correct channel. There are a limited number of repeater channels and they are pre-programmed into the UV9G. 2. Set that channel’s squelch type to “Tone” rather than “Tone Squelch” which is commonly shown as TSQL. 3. Set the transmit tone to match the UPLINK tone the repeater requires. 4. Do not set program a receive tone, at least at first. That and step #2 will leave your receiver accessible to any transmissions. That’s it. Your instruction manual should have step by step instructions for each of the above steps. Welcome to the forums! Best wishes!