SteveShannon

Good job figuring it out. What brand of LMR400 and connectors were they?

Something appears to be lost in quotation...

What's your area? Perhaps you can show us a screenshot of your search terms. I suspect you have a term that excludes all of the repeaters in your area.

I bow in your direction... That's one of the funniest videos I have seen lately. Timely too. In rocketry we have a lot of little gadgets. One of our members had built a nice little business making kits (like Heathkit, but rocketry related). A couple of his kits are wifi switches, tiny little circuit boards that connect to a battery and to the rocketry electronics. The switch is very reliable and allows a person to arm the ejection charges while standing a safe distance away. $15 for the miniature version: https://eggtimerrocketry.com/home/altimeters-av-bay/

It’s possible to make a microphone from one work with another, but because of different features, like push buttons on the mic, some things might not work as expected.

No, there is not. Each mic is wired to its own radio.

GMRS radios come preprogrammed with the right frequencies.

https://youtu.be/t9wmWZbr_wQ?si=UbyYQZA6vKW4cMyw

Why can’t you listen to the output frequency? No tone or permission is needed to listen.

In a GMRS radio, just choose one of the pre-programmed repeater channels, 23-30 (there are 8 of them) and set the necessary tone to get into the repeater.

My understanding of the regulations leads me to believe that profiting is not allowed. Recuperating costs is though. The cost of establishing and supporting 25 linked repeaters seems like it would be pretty high though. Are you sure they’re taking a profit? They might just be pouring money back into their network and accumulating some for unforeseen future use. If they’re organized as a non-profit that’s probably what they’re doing.

I just heard that in Lebanon, reports vary from eight killed to 3,000 injured) Hezbollah fighters have been injured when all of their pagers exploded. Wow!

Keep up the good work. After seeing me participate in the local net and serve as net control my wife seems to take a greater interest in it. I wouldn’t say she’s chomping at the bit, but she has enough of an interest to ask questions and offer to help support my activities. It can’t be forced though.

General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS). A mobile two-way voice communication service, with limited data applications, for facilitating activities of individual licensees and their family members, including, but not limited to, voluntary provision of assistance to the public during emergencies and natural disasters.

Without knowing more about what you actually tried, it really boils down to this: 1. Try different channels; it won’t be the first time a radio doesn’t work on all channels. The GM-30 is capable of transmitting on eight repeater channels that the RT22, a FRS radio, cannot receive. Stay away from those. They will be named RP15 - RP22 or they will be numbered 23-30, but they are frequencies intended to transmit to repeaters which FRS radios like the RT22 don’t do. If the GM30 is set to one of those channels, it will hear the RT22 because they share the same receiving frequencies, but the RT22 will never hear the GM30. 2. Make sure both radios are on the same channel. 3. Make sure you don’t have any “privacy tones” set for either, for transmit or receive. 4. Don’t just stand right next to each other when you test the radios; separate yourselves by several feet. Some radios go deaf in the presence of strong signals. That’s commonly called “desensing”. Welcome to the forums!

This is untrue. Your disagreeing with my statements about GMRS’s primary purpose didn’t bother me at all. What bothered me was your need to take a swipe at all hams with derogatory nicknames. And what I said was barely an insult, but apparently it got under your skin. I’m just not going to waste my time attempting to appease people who lead with insults and then whine repeatedly because someone implies that their abrasive talk will result in being ignored. As you have seen there are some very welcoming hams who are interested in helping you. I was at first. I’m proud of them; I’m sorry for you.

No, not at all.

Some radios have S-meters which display the signal strength. For most people there is a somewhat noticeable audible difference between each number. Although radio S-meters are not precisely calibrated, generally speaking (and a question on the ham test ) one unit difference on an S meter correlates to 6 dB. What that means is that if 40 watts gets to S9, 10 watts gets to S8.

I’ll try to take a look at it today, sightseeing, if for no other reason. Our ham club already has a couple repeaters up 9700’ at an old forest service lookout site south of town which has fantastic coverage. We’re working on getting some electrical improvements there.

There’s a chain link fenced lot in Walkerville with what looks like an unused tower on it. I don’t suppose that’s yours, is it? Otherwise, which lots do you have up there. I doubt I could afford them without having some kind of plan, but I’d be stupid not to ask.

He does. He knows of a tower west of town he might be able to put an antenna on.

I’m glad you did because I never would’ve thought of it.

I agree. I think factory tinted windows alway use tinted glass rather than film. My wife had a 1998 Accord once that came from down south. It had a very nice aftermarket tinting job, but it really didn’t work well with my sunglasses which were polarized. If I tilted my head the window would almost become opaque. I’ve only had factory tint since then.

There’s a forum for everything isn’t there? I found a forum dedicated to window tinting professionals! Posts there indicate no issues with any metallic tint materials blocking antennas which are internal to the windows from receiving signals from outside the car. That doesn’t mean it has never happened, but it isn’t currently complained about. Actually that probably makes sense since it seems window tint material is applied to the inside of the window so it’s not in a position to interfere with antennas which are on the RF side of the tint material. I didn’t find anything that discussed the Larsen antennas on either side of a metallic tint. Honestly it was something I had never considered before and I was surprised when WRYZ926 said it could either attenuate or interrupt RF between the two halves of a glass mount antenna, but I know that with antennas anything can have an effect, so I’m not discounting the idea. I’d be very interested in seeing empirical data that documents the effect of different materials on inductive coupling.

Great Falls is way too far away from me (148 miles), but the significant metropolitan population would seem to indicate that an GMRS repeater might have traffic there. I’m not certain why none exists already, but as far as I know, none does. Our ham club has a guy who plans to put up a GMRS repeater here in the Butte area. We’re probably only between one third and one half the metropolitan size of Great Falls.