SteveShannon

I saw that, but the way I understood it, the RPT-TONE setting eliminates the tone that your radio sends at the end of a transmission, which eliminates the squelch tail for someone listening to you. It isn’t there to prevent you from hearing a squelch tail. Rather than seeming like a placebo, you might hear a difference on a radio held by someone listening to you. if they have a similar setting that would help you, but only for transmissions from their specific radio. Do the bubble pack FRS radios have a way to be configured or are they just PTT, channel, and volume? I still think there should be a way to prevent the squelch tail on the 935, but maybe it’s just an artifact of those particular FRS radios. Have you listened to any other radios and if so was the squelch tail as bad?

That’s called squelch tail. I’m not familiar with all the settings on the 935, but using PL tones can result in a longer squelch tail than using no tones.

Although 1.39 is better, 1.59 is a low enough SWR that you can use the antenna without fear of damage to your radio. Based on reports here the Surecom 102 is notorious for being inaccurate for its power output readings, but as long as it’s measuring a near minima for SWR it’s somewhat useful. I would just use that antenna and enjoy it. You can go broke and crazy chasing low SWR without making a real world difference in range.

Fortunately it’s not like that everywhere. Although our ham club is mostly older guys (including myself) we have very smart and forward thinking young people involved as well who are doing great things with real repeaters that they are monitoring using things like 5GHz links. They’re playing with SDR dongles and squeezing a lot of interesting listening out of them while monitoring public safety communications. They’re setting up WinLink connections so they are able to send long distance emails and data files in case the internet fails, which would complement HF for long distance voice communications. Yes, some of us do have our hotspots. I think of them as training wheels while we learn how to set up our codeplugs. I first assembled my hotspot so I could play with DMR, but last week I got a new Yaesu FT5D radio and by flipping a single bit I was able to turn on YSF support so I could learn some of the ins and outs of System Fusion digital communications. When I was learning how to build my DMR codeplug I thought that was very confusing until it finally clicked and now all makes sense. I’m at a similar point on the learning curve for YSF. At the same time our club members are helping provide communications by volunteering with Search and Rescue, the Sheriff’s Department, and county emergency response as well as providing communications for runs and bike races through the mountain trails where cell service is nonexistent So, the radio portion of ham radio is far from being eliminated in my area, but there are always some who don’t see what’s really going on who think it is.

That looks correct, but I agree with MichaelLAX that setting the downlink tone off is something to resort to in case you don’t hear anything.

Unless you are above Line A, you can use channel 19 for anything your GMRS radio can do. I wasn’t aware that 18 and 20 were reserved for emergency use. Where did you learn that?

I see what you were asking. Yes, a parrot function is nice to have. I have a couple digital radios and I use parrot rooms to test them without having to ask for a radio check. For a repeater that processes voice transmissions in software and which has some small amount of memory, a parrot function which could be activated somehow would be a nice feature.

I thought he was simply saying that if spread spectrum were implemented many more people could simultaneously use a GMRS channel without interference from others on the same channel.

Maybe it’s not something you did wrong. Best wishes!

Well, I sent a report to Rich. He’s good about seeing those. I’m sorry I can’t help you.

Well, you’re obviously logged in to the forums, so that seems to be okay. The other portion of the website requires a separate login. Is it possible that you didn’t set one up there?

I’m sorry for your troubles. Sometimes it takes a while to import new call signs from FCC. I don’t know if your call sign is recent or not. You don’t know me from Adam so I wouldn’t be insulted if you said no, but if you want to send me your phone number in a private message I would be happy to try and set up your account, then all you would have to do is change your password to something only you know.

There are patents for new glass couplers that cite the high losses of capacitive coupled devices. Apparently there are at least four different ways of through glass coupling. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6661386B1/en You also must consider that an antenna connected that way doesn’t really have a ground plane (I presume) so it’s starting with a disadvantage anyway. But as they say, “Any antenna is better than none.” Use it and see if it works well enough.

There’s probably a way with a field strength meter, but I that’s beyond my experience. Is there no way to remove the antenna element from the other half of the coupler? I doubt that the losses are great there anyway. There’s no heating, right?

If you put a watt meter at the antenna connector on the radio and compare the power there to what a watt meter measures when connected right at the antenna you should be able to measure your losses.

I agree with nearly all of this and I especially appreciate the tone much more than the one you typically take against CCRs and “shitty Wouxuns”, which comes across as more of a condemnation of the people who buy them. We should be able to discuss the things that make radios great without needing to constantly denigrate less expensive radios and all who own them. I’d like try a high end Motorola someday to see what it’s like. Instead I have a really nice Garmin that works best for my purposes with it’s built in mapping of other Garmin users and I have Yaesu and Alinco analog/digital handhelds for 2m/70cm. I did buy a couple Baofengs to see what all the hoopla was about and learn Chirp, and they work, but I rely more on the other radios. The Baofengs are good to give the grandkids. I also have some older Midland GMRS/FRS handhelds and a pair of Motorola Talkabouts that were their highest power bubble pack radios at the time. But I don’t have a Wouxun, yet. Thanks for the pleasant post.

Watch these two videos. Really the only thing you need to know at first is power, volume, channel, and push to talk. You can find them all in the manual. Don’t change anything else for now. Then practice. Don’t wait until you need them. Eventually you’ll need to know about tones, but you shouldn’t change them right away.

No. Argentina is in South America (a continent). Argentina is in the Americas (a land mass consisting of two connected continents: North and South America and their surrounding islands. Argentina is not in “America” as the term is commonly accepted. When you hear other countries refer to the USA they frequently interchange “the United States” or “America”, specifically meaning the United States of America.

America is also commonly used to mean the United States of America. From Wikipedia: The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States(U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America.

So here’s the official answer to this question. The only two Yaesu handhelds that support different tones for transmit and receive are the FT-4x and the FT-65R. It’s at about 5:43 or so in this video. https://youtube.com/nyF1bXAAX6Q

Just buy two yagis, two coax cables, and an antenna switch. It still won’t be cheap but you won’t have to deal with 50% signal losses.

There’s absolutely never been a doubt in my mind that Motorola radios have better receivers than Baofeng. My point was (and remains) that most recreational users of the GMRS would be better off with a set of radios they can just buy off the shelf and use, such as some of the Wouxun models or even Baofeng models. They are not well served by suggestions that they buy a used commercial radio and have it reconfigured to work for GMRS. They may not even know what to request, much less be able to find the right CPS, and certainly not aligning a radio. Now for a person who’s interested in radios, a true radio aficionado and especially if they’ve invested in the tools and software needed, these second hand commercial radios are excellent opportunities.

You can do that but it’s much easier to just log in using your FRN and look at the list of licenses issued to you. It’ll show up there immediately.

Have you been under the weather? The vitriol wasn’t flowing quite as strongly over the past three weeks and I was worried about you. I have heard your rants many times but frequently during our network checkins we hear someone really clearly from 30 miles away and it always makes me smile when the net operator asks what mobile they’re using and they report they only have a Baofeng UV5R with a stock antenna. As Randy pointed out you’re full of your own opinions. Not everyone needs a Motorola and those who don’t have one can get just as much use and enjoyment out of their radios. Good luck to you. Being miserable is its own punishment.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your phrasing. When I hear “We deploy with professional equipment. This is just for our weekly training” it makes me think that you’re training differently than you expect to actually deploy. Why wouldn’t you train with the exact same equipment you would deploy with? Or am I misunderstanding?