SteveShannon

The TYT MD UV380, when loaded with the open source OpenUV380 firmware does an excellent job of speaking menu words that are in its vocabulary, but spells everything else, letter by letter. I sent mine to my blind friend after loading the firmware and I don’t remember for sure whether it spells channel names or speaks the channel number.

“Off with their heads!” cried the red queen.

Yes! Sorry, I thought I included the phrase “all other things being equal.“ I meant to anyway.

Because RF is emitted in all directions equally from an isentropic antenna, one way to compare the range of different power outputs is to think in terms of the volume of a sphere: Two watts fills the volume of a sphere of a radius of 0.78159 (the units in this case end up being the cube root of watts.) Five watts fills the volume of sphere of 1.06078. So, all other things equal, the range of a 5 watt radio compared to a 2 watt radio, to produce the same RF strength, will be approximately 36% further. Increasing it to 10 watts (five times the power of the two watt radio) results in 70% greater range. Increasing power to 20 watts gets you a little more than twice the range of the 2 watt radio (2.14 times to be exact). Finally, increasing it to 50 watts gets you less than three times the range of the 2 watt radio. (a factor of 2.917). Hopefully this illustrates how little/much RF power actually matters.

I can answer your questions on electronic theory if you need.

Why not just get into ham radio? There are DMR repeaters all over the world. You can even target an individual user. Nothing is private of course, but the Brandmeister network allows you to connect to a talkgroup or an individual radio. All it takes is a technician class ham radio license and a DMR radio. The TYT MD-UV380 is under a hundred dollars. I recommend loading it with Open UV380 firmware.

Yeah, apparently I missed the original post too. Such hubris.

Good for you! I think home brewing antennas is one of the happiest aspects of ham radio and I am interested in your results for GMRS. It’s so much easier for 462 and 467 MHz than for anything in HF.

Welcome!

Yeah, no matter what you do some people will complain.

I have the ft5d. It works great for me, but a blind friend has the ft3d and a touchscreen is extremely difficult for a blind user. He’s great about learning to use keyboards. A sighted vendor tried to talk him out of getting a vx-6. He thought it would be too difficult, but I sent him mine to try for a few weeks. He loved it and bought one for himself. He still has the ft3. Sometimes he’ll FaceTime me so I can steer his fingers to use the touchscreen. Lately I’ve been wondering if the ft70 would work better for him for fusion rather than the ft3.

Fortunately the FTM-500 can easily be used as a basic analog radio. Dual receive and the dual display could be temporarily disabled to reduce a little confusion and then re-enabled as the user’s skills grow.

And unfortunately that’s sometimes the issue. People buy an expensive high end digital radio that’s so difficult to use for regular analog communications that they get frustrated and give up (and as a bit of a confession I realize my statements don’t make him feel any better about it). I almost think he might be better served by boxing up the FTM-500 temporarily, picking up a basic dual band radio such as one I mentioned, and learning all he can about basic analog communications.

I agree there’s nothing wrong with wanting, or even buying a really good radio. One thing I see though is people buying something that is way over their heads when they’re just starting out instead of getting something simple at first. I absolutely understand wanting to buy something that’s quality made; nobody want the bitter taste that accompanies a poor quality piece of crap that other people deride and which fails prematurely. But as your VEC pointed out and you and @WRXP381 are correctly passing along, there are some inexpensive basic radios that are great starter radios and which will do a great job of allowing a person to learn the basics without getting lost in the extra features. A radio that uses DMR, YSF, or D-Star is just about the worst way to advise someone. If a person wants a mobile ham radio to use as a stepping stone, there are some really decent ones that can always be converted into go-boxes as they grow into more expensive radios with more features. And if a person wants to buy one radio that will be the only radio they ever need, they should prepare themselves for either a steep learning curve up front or being frustrated later on because when you first get into ham radios you have no idea what will interest you later and you don’t know what you don’t know. For a new ham wanting a name brand dual band radio that will be a workhorse for many years, the Yaesu FTM-6000, the Icom IC-2930A, or the Alinco DR-735 would all be very reasonable as starter radios that will continue to give great value over the years. The FTM-6000 is only $210 right now! If a person doesn’t feel the need to buy name brand, things like the Radioddity db20g can easily be a great starter radio for either GMRS or ham radio.

We are in a sense. We hang out at the same forum. Stop in for a coffee, pop, or even a beer!

Better yet, watch this video:

DTMF frequencies are in the range of voice frequencies. I wouldn't expect something to appear in the specifications. As all ham radio folks say: Try it!

A configuration that receives and retransmits is a repeater, even if you call it two base stations. But if you’re asking about using two duplex Fixed Stations to extend communication (rather than any kind of “network“) between two repeaters that might be acceptable to the FCC. At this point since the FCC’s interpretation has flipped in the past seven years (see the post by @WRKC935 where he included a communication from the FCC saying it was fine) I would make sure to get an interpretation before going down that path.

Are you saying that the Retevis RT-97, RT-97s, and the equivalent equivalent Midland repeater will not pass through DTMF audio?

Welcome!

@WSDW477 Let’s get back to basics. If radio A transmits with a tone of 67.0 Hertz (not MHz!) radio A will have T-CTCSS set to 67.0 Hz. Radio B will only reproduce transmissions from radio A if all of the following conditions are met: It’s on the correct channel, It’s in range (but not too close because of desensitization, which is when a receiving radio is swamped by the transmission and becomes deaf.), AND Either It is set to break squelch when a matching CTCSS tone 67.0 is continuously embedded in the transmitted audio (Tone Mode = TSQL and R-CTCSS = 67.0 Hz) OR it is set to disregard transmitted CTCSS tones (Tone Mode = TONE, doesn’t matter how the R-CTCSS is set), in which case the radio will break squelch (audibly reproduce) for everything it receives on the channel. If you want fewer interruptions (which is one definition of privacy) from other people on the same GMRS channel, you must set the receive tone (R-CTCSS) to match the transmit tone (T-CTCSS) (condition 3 above) of the radio or radios you want to hear and you must set Tone Mode to TSQL. But keep in mind that’s only one aspect of privacy. Others can still hear you and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.

This is one of the best posts I’ve seen on this subject and should be pinned.

Shawna, The quoted message from Boxcar is one of the best posts I’ve seen on this forum. It doesn’t over promise but it’s accurate. If you can get in with one of the local ham clubs and learn about emergency messaging, which is an important aspect of ham radio, you’ll have a better chance of getting through to your daughter if something bad happens.

Do you have anyone to talk to? Using the radios and then asking questions is probably the quickest way to learn. I would recommend finding a ham radio club, even though GMRS isn’t ham radio, because everything you need to learn about your GMRS radio is exactly the same for beginning hams who just want to use vhf or uhf radios, except for the frequencies and license. Watch videos on YouTube by Notarubicon. There are many and they cover every aspect. If his humor bothers you I’ll find some other channel for you.

R-CTCSS is used to filter out what the radio receives, but on most radios you also need to set the “TONE MODE” to T-SQL, meaning stay squelched until the tone that matches R-CTCSS is received. So, of course any radios that you want to hear must transmit with a T-CTCSS to match.