SteveShannon

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?

Repeaterbook lists one on 550 and one on 725: https://www.repeaterbook.com/gmrs/location_search.php?state_id=19&type=city&loc=Des Moines

RF repeaters can repeat any type of radio signals, such as television, data, or voice.

I don’t know why, but I’ve seen it most often with old stored equipment, including old new stock UPSes. That may be because it’s very recognizable when you plug in a piece of equipment and a cap fails, whereas when they’re being used it looks like it just wore out.

Most mobile radios like to see 13.8 volts. Transmitting requires more current, sometimes a lot more. If your power supply cannot provide that much current the voltage will drop to the point where the radio will reset. I suspect that’s what’s happening. Watching the input voltage like I suggested above would tell you if that’s happening. PUC 1.00 sounds like it could be a firmware revision, which would seem reasonable to display on startup.

It would be nice to have a listing of error codes, wouldn’t it? It appears to show PUC100 whenever it’s first powered up. Might simply mean that it’s passed its power on self test, or maybe it means something else entirely. I think Screech probably hit on it. Put a voltmeter on the power line input to see what’s happening when you transmit. See if it’s dipping low. Then try adjusting the transmit output power to its lowest setting. Does it still reset when you PTT?

Most hams I know use GMRS and are licensed for it, but most people I know who have GMRS radios are unlicensed and are not hams. I see them as complementary services. Because I have a GMRS license my entire family can talk legally when we go on an outing. My ham activities are for me to learn and explore much more than simply talking on the air. In fact, other than weekly net check ins I do very little actual talking on the air in ham radio.

Recently I’ve been enjoying 40, 20, and 17, but I’d have to pick 20. I got an FT8 qso from Scotland there the other day which was kind of fun for a noob like me.

That sounds very orderly, and it sounds like that’s what your Association needed. May I ask how you restrict access to an analog system? Obviously, if you have the ability to block access to someone who has had it, it must be something more than CTCSS or DCS. Edit: It appears you’re using MDC. Does that simply work with any radio that uses PTT ID or ANI or are your users limited to specific radios?

Here’s the instructions for that Workman 104:

Here’s that thread:

There are also inductively coupled glass mounts that don’t require cutting. There was a guy with a Ferrari a month or so ago. I’ll try to post a link to his thread.

No, unfortunately not. Here’s what the description says: Requires a non-ground-plane (NGP) antenna such as the Rugged Radios VHF-1/2W-SPR and Rugged Radios NMO-MT-U, our most popular NMO Cable Mount option with 13' of cable.

How about a suction mount like this: Rugged Radios NMO-SC Suction Cup Antenna Mount with Swivel Base by Scosche https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08177PQPH/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_EY7P0RD2WGH3PPQ4NFE9

If you’re trying for perfection, you’re fighting a losing battle. Raising the antenna might affect impedance and thus SWR. Lowering the antenna might affect impedance and thus SWR. The size of your ground plane will affect SWR. The length of your feedline can affect SWR. The length of the element isn’t the only variable. You can even have near perfect SWR and still have an antenna that nobody can hear. SWR is important. High SWR is to be avoided because of the power that’s reflected back into your transmitter, but 1.75 isn’t high SWR.

Everything affects everything with antennas. I have no idea if the top can be trimmed. I would stop at 1.75:1 and live with it for a while to see how well it works.

That may just be the best you can achieve with that combination of antenna, mount, and feed line. Did you check to see what the SWR was at the original designed frequency?

See if this helps. This appears to be a popular question. Someone else answered it earlier today in this thread:

Sorry, I thought that would be it for sure. I got the ft65 and it definitely allows different dcs tones for transmit and receive.

Edited to correct: You can set one to DCS and another to CTCSS, but the ft60 cannot have different tones for xmit and rcv. See pages 22-25 in the manual.

It’s absolutely his right to shut it down, but it might have been a little less “scorched earth” if he had simply found a way to block the complaints from the repeater user who was whining about outside traffic. There’s no point in owning and operating a repeater if ownership causes such misery. At this point his repeater users might not consider the repeater reliable. If he has gotten to the point of shutting it down completely (for his own peace of mind or any other reason) he might as well sell it to someone else or convert it to a 70cm DMR ham repeater so he can control access.

I think your post did help, Marc. If nothing else it took the edge off. ?

No, but a GMRS callsign is. The ham call sign is optional for those who have one.

I don’t mind OffroaderX proposing this (In fact I enjoy his videos), and I don’t mind having it discussed again for people who have recently joined the forum. I just happen to disagree with it because of Line A. However, it really won’t ever affect me to be honest, because I live near Line A and because I don’t expect to drive around with my GMRS radio on anyway. If I ever do it will be with a group of people and we’ll select something else so we don’t interfere with the Road Channel.