SteveShannon

About Yagis or Omnis?

Instead of “work” I would say “transmit”, if that’s accurate. “Won’t work” doesn’t provide enough information.

I took the neighbor lady to the eye doctor so I haven’t tried it yet but once I get home and have lunch with my wife I’ll check it out.

About the only way is to reference both: “I programmed GMRS channel 16 into slot 100 on my radio, but it won’t work without setting a CTCSS tone.”

I’ll start by saying that I do not know of a 95E certified radio with voice prompts. My ham Baofeng UV5R has voice prompts for the menu and a 95E lookalike exists, but I have no idea if it includes voice prompts. I suspect it does. I do have two 95E certified radios, a Wouxun kg805 and a Garmin Rhino. I’ll check to see if either can have voice prompts turned on, but as much as I love the Garmin, it uses a context sensitive touch screen and for that reason I could not recommend it. Maybe I’ll be surprised by the Wouxun. Edited to add: the manual says the KG-805G, which is a pretty good 95E certified radio, has voice prompts which are enabled in menu #7. I’ll try it sometime today and let you know how it works. I have a friend who’s a blind-deaf ham. He holds a General license. His name is Maurice and he’s also the president of the blind-deaf division of the National Federation of the Blind. His deafness is aided by hearing aids. He has several handheld ham radios. If it would be helpful I would be happy to see if Maurice would be interested in talking to your enthusiast. Maurice is a true advocate for ham radio for the blind. He’ll be coming to Washington DC next week for NFB activities there. The hq for NFB is in Baltimore I believe.

HamStudy.org is free and interactive. I really enjoyed using it to the point where I bought it as an app for my phone/tablet. The Hi-Line has a lot of hams. I hear from some of them almost every night when they check in on the Montana Traffic Network. And if you see Helen Inabnit please tell her hi from Steve Shannon.

Do you still see the ads? Disregard TCP2525. There's nothing wrong with your browser. It's a hiccup in the database syncing to your membership status. The ads are a symptom, but you probably don't have access to the Premium features either so it must be fixed. As a Premium member here is what I see at the bottom. I just use Chrome with no ad blockers or anything of the sort. If you still are seeing advertisements and you're not seeing the blurb thanking you for being a premium member let me know and I'll report it to Rich again.:

You're not a dummy! Users of GMRS should never feel that they are somehow inferior to hams. I've seen some really stupid hams and I know some really smart GMRS people. There's shouldn't be a comparison. The two services were created for different reasons. GMRS is for facilitating activities. Amateur Radio is for learning about and extending the use of radio. Both are valuable for emergencies. The stated purpose for GMRS is as follows: § 95.1703 Definitions, GMRS. 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. The stated purpose for the Amateur Radio Service is as follows: 97.1 Basis and purpose. (Of Amateur Radio) The rules and regulations in this part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles: (a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications. (b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art. (c) Encouragement and improvement of the amateur service through rules which provide for advancing skills in both the communication and technical phases of the art. (d) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts. (e) Continuation and extension of the amateur's unique ability to enhance international goodwill.

Welcome!

Most GMRS users use them in pursuit of other activities rather than listening and hoping to talk to other, unknown, GMRS users. They usually just use their call sign occasionally to comply with the regulations and their first name or position in a family “This is grandpa. There’s a huge grizzly in the area. I want you to come back to the cabin. I’m sorry I let you play with the salmon guts before going into the woods. Make a lot of noise while you’re walking. Scream if you need me. WROM258.” But some GMRS users do listen for others on local repeaters, hoping to strike up a conversation. That’s much more of a ham thing, but it definitely does happen in GMRS as well. I have never heard someone use a handle on GMRS. Even calling them “walkie talkies” rather than “handhelds” could be fodder for some good natured ribbing. Get your license and jump right in.

For more about 3/8 x 24, maybe this will help. I haven’t watched it.

So the difference between one S-unit and the next is 6 db. So an S9 signal is 6 db or four times the power of an S8 signal, yet makes little audible difference. S7 would be 1/16 the power of an S9 and you’d be able to easily tell the difference. I think (hope) putting it on your roof will help, but be sure you get it at least a half wavelength above your roof. For GMRS that’s not very much distance.

Would this help? https://theantennafarm.com/shop-by-categories/antennas-mounts/mobile-antenna-mounts/nmo-mobile-antenna-mounts/270-thick-surface-mounts/292-thick-surface-mount-up-to-1-2-/1153-laird-connectivity-mabvt8-detail

In my opinion, the best way to do it is to replace that puck with something like this, but you’ll need some kind of sealed bushing to fill the hole the puck required: https://theantennafarm.com/shop-by-categories/antennas-mounts/mobile-antenna-mounts/nmo-mobile-antenna-mounts/266-permanent-hole-mounts/289-nmo-3-4-hole-mount-no-connector/1140-laird-connectivity-mb8-detail

Both of those mounts that I linked have a SO 239, which allows you to use antennas with a PL-259.

Can you replace your puck mount with this (same manufacturer) and then use any antenna that uses a UHF mount? https://www.icamanufacturing.com/shop/p/fatboy-puck-3-antenna-mount Or perhaps this would make better sense and allow you to adapt your existing system to something more widely used: https://www.icamanufacturing.com/shop/p/so-239-hardware-mount

There’s a real truth bomb!

Yeah, one of the values of a properly designed busy channel lockout is to prevent interfering with transmissions you might not hear because of tone squelch. This design completely fails.

Not really. I enjoy knowing who else is a ham. I use an alerting software when I do FT8 that watches for specific call signs. I might run into them on the air sometime. Like most aspects of life folks should simply ignore it if it doesn’t apply to them.

That’s a terrible design if traffic which triggers the busy channel lockout only occurs after tone squelch.

Two features I wish RT Systems would implement are automatic saves and automatic versioning.

Lightning is capable of jumping the gap from the earth to the sky. The gap in a burned fuse would just be ionized fuse metal and highly conductive. Watch a lineman open a switch under load sometime and you’ll immediately understand why fuses can’t interrupt lightning. The contacts would have to operate fast, open far, and something would need to quench the arc. However, I’ve heard there are lightning arresters that incorporate inductors to present greater impedance to the rapid onset of voltage along the center conductor of coax. I don’t know anything more about them. When I heard about them I thought I needed to follow up but I didn’t. Sorry.

It's better to have a ground rod right there (but it must be bonded to the service ground) and that's certainly what the ARRL would recommend, but there's no requirement to do so. Remember, electricity takes the path of least resistance (but it divides itself amongst all paths). If you have a short wire going to your house and a long wire going to your service ground, a portion of the energy could easily go towards the house. So, I would, but it's really up to you.

Nice!

What you’ll probably want to do is place a ground rod at the base of the mast. The coax will lead from the antenna feedpoint to the lead-in to the house where you will place an antenna discharge unit. A ground wire will lead back from the ADU to the mast where it and the wire running from the mast will be bonded to that ground rod using a three wire connector. The three wires are: the wire from the ADU, the wire from the mast, and the wire that then runs to the service ground which would be a single buried #6 or greater bare wire. I would make all of the ground rod connections using either crimp on Burndy style connectors or one-shot thermite connections. But I’m in Montana, unfamiliar with your local electrical inspectors, and with only a line drawing to work with. The only things I’m certain of are that your mast needs a ground rod, that ground rod must be bonded to the service ground, your ADU needs to be connected to your service ground, and I believe the NEC allows the wire from your ADU to be connected to the wire from the mast to the mast ground rod. @WRUU653 - what would you recommend?