SteveShannon

That’s exactly right. Wartime conditions probably don’t allow room for snobbery.

Ham Radio 2.0 had a YouTube video where he mentioned a Polish ham radio organization that was collecting Baofeng radios to provide to Ukrainian fighters.

Telemetry stations are fixed stations.

You ask “can it be repaired?” Do you have reason to believe damage has been done?

From part 95.531 - permissible uses: (c) GMRS stations. FRS units normally communicate with other FRS units, but may also be used to communicate with General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) stations.

It shouldn’t be. He took material off the 771 base, not out of the rim of the case.

Very nice. In photo 7 it looks like the cord is tight against the edge of the hole. Can you put a grommet to relieve the edge of the hole, and possibly let some slack into the cord?

At the same time GMRS fees come down to $35 from $70, ham license fees go from $0 to $35. His gladness has nothing to do with the price of GMRS, just the fact that he got his ham license before they start charging a fee.

Much more helpful than my post. Thanks!

Log into your account on the fcc ULS site. You may have to look it up using an email address to find your FRN, then in the account any of your licenses will be available to download.

Is there any reason you can’t combine your antenna with your flagpole? What is the flagpole material?

That may simply be a loose power connection somewhere in your truck that’s causing interference.

That’s outstanding! Everything affects everything, right?

While you’re doing that I plan on hanging an end fed half wave antenna from my eaves and then connecting a NanoVNA to see how it looks.

The General rule of thumb is one half wavelength above the ground, but a large conductive surface like a roof can act like a reflector causing other problems. I wish you the best and I’m curious to see what you learn today.

P.S. I found a short book that describes the effect of the ground plane and antenna height above the ground plane. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/IR/nbsir79-1605.pdf Here’s an excerpt: “When the antenna height is replaced by 2H, we again obtain the same result as that given in eq (5). This implies that the field strength measured by a receiving antenna at a height of 2H meters above an imperfect earth (a is finite) is approximately 6 decibels more than that measured by the same antenna at one-half of the previous height, when the distance to the transmitter is very much greater than H. This difference in measurement results is solely due to changes in the transmitted field strength by the imperfect earth.” Also this earlier thread here on the forum discusses a similar question:

At this point, right after you mounted it at the same height at the Sirio, and before you removed the counterpoise, what was the SWR on 2 m and 70 cm? This is a perfect example of everything affecting everything when it comes to antennas, isn’t it? I would probably put it back the way it was designed, with counterpoise and additional height, and see if it receives better on GMRS even though you would not want to transmit into that 3.5 swr. I’m also curious what a sweep looks like at the different heights and three different bands and with and without radials. i think your loss of receive sensitivity might be due to the effect of lowering the antenna and the resulting change in field. You may be better off using the two separate antennas for the bands they were designed for, x50 for 2 m and 70 cm and the Sirio for GMRS. I really am interested and will be following this.

Guest Sal, First you register for an FRN. That’s free. Then you pay for your license. Only after you pay for your license does the fcc issue a call sign. Your call sign is printed on your license. The FCC usually notifies you (using the email address you registered with them) so you can log on and download your license. It usually takes a day or two. Then a couple days later you can update your account here. Good luck! p.s. Notarubicon has a video that explains the process on YouTube.

Thanks! That’s good to know. I knew there was a 97p; I didn’t realize it did DMR. I agree; DMR isn’t allowed on GMRS. I read somewhere on this site (maybe in this thread) that both the 97s and 97p have an external port that allows an auto-ID.

Just let it play and see if you hear people make contact, ragchew, and then leave. I’ve even listened on statewide digital talk groups and heard them go quiet for long periods.

Without knowing which repeater my guess is that people are simply not transmitting. Monitoring the repeaters here I very seldom hear people talking. If I’m misunderstanding the question I’m sorry.

I couldn’t say it better than wayoverthere. Set the right tone frequency for xmit and turn tone on. I would not turn on the receive tone (tone sql) until you are certain your transmissions are activating the repeater.

I’m curious why you don’t get a ham license then? You’ll have a much greater number of repeaters to use, more bandwidths to play on, higher power for transmitting, the ability to talk literally around the world on longer wavelengths, and a free license. Of course your license won’t cover your entire family from grandparents to grandchildren, and all your siblings, like it does for GMRS and you might have to actually study to pass at least the technician class test, but at least for now the license is “free”. Also, the ham license will also be changing to a $35 fee at the same time the GMRS fee changes to $35. A lot of people use GMRS radios without paying for a license. They just don’t usually announce it by whining about someone else’s license costs.

Welcome! The most dynamic source of information on GMRS is YouTube. There are lots of videos, including some from a person or two who frequent these pages. But if you want to learn about radio, study educational content that has been created for amateur radio. All the technical information about how radio works is directly applicable. Of course licensing as well as the rules and regulations for GMRS are different.

You bet.