SteveShannon

While there is no official national emergency channel for GMRS, some areas have announced that they monitor a particular GMRS channel. An example is the state of Wyoming. The state has this webpage instructing people to use channel 3 with privacy code 7. The state has the area code 307. https://hls.wyo.gov/307 So, before you travel, do some research to see if there’s a local effort to monitor a channel. But if you really need reliable emergency communications, consider one of the emergency satellite communications devices.

Welcome!

Possibly non-compliant with regulations, but not “illegal”. But no part of our government has ever been able to prevent the importation of illicit substances and radios which fail to comply are pretty low on their list of priorities. Look inside the radio for the tag that says that it’s certified and then look up the certification document. You’ll almost certainly find that the manufacturer performed the testing and represented to the FCC that they complied. Unless people complain there’s no follow up. Or maybe, although the manual settings for power only include a minimum of one watt, the firmware has the ability to hold the output on those channels to regulations.

I’m sorry that happened. If it’s one of those aluminum tubes at the bottom of a comet antenna I would have thought the same thing. As far as grease, some people simply use Vaseline. Fill the connectors and screw them together. UHF connectors (plug = PL259, socket = SO239) are not waterproof at all. Water gets in and ruins the coax. Depending how long it has been you might have to cut several feet off the end or replace the entire run. N connectors are sealed much better but should still be sealed in one of several ways. It sounds like you know exactly what to do, but for anyone reading this who’s wondering, DX Engineering has kits https://www.dxengineering.com/search/part-type/weatherproofing-kits?SortBy=BestKeywordMatch&SortOrder=Ascending&keyword=Coax+Waterproofing+

Perfectly stated!

Windows 11 killed the ability to use some cables that were made using counterfeit chips. Maybe that’s what happened.

I have no idea if the UV5R cable might work, but it would still need a driver.

You must load the driver software. It is specific to the cable and creates a virtual serial port that the programming software can use. Look on the software download page for the right cable driver. You can see some listed in the center of the screenshot below:

Just build it. Dr. Fong documented building his j-pole antennas in QST magazine articles.

I think it’s just a typo. The bandwidth is greater than that.

If you’re referring to the OPs original question about using channels 15-22 for simplex, channels 15-22 are the 462 MHz Main channels not the 467 MHz Main channels. 462 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, repeater, base and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5500, 462.5750, 462.6000, 462.6250, 462.6500, 462.6750, 462.7000, and 462.7250 MHz.

A bidirectional antenna in the center might be a better choice than the omnidirectional antenna. It has both forward and reverse gain without wasting power to the sides.

Is it necessary for the receiver to use an Omni antenna or could it use a Yagi as well. That might help if interference is an issue. The other thing is that I think rg58 is more porous to the effects of interference. Again, a better cable could help with that.

You’re correct. Fldigi is the virtual modem software for various digital modes in ham radio and flrig is the CAT control layer that interfaces between Fldigi and the radio.

So if the transmitter puts out 50 mw that’s 19 mw that reaches the Yagi. The Yagi has a pretty high gain. You don’t say what the spec is but it certainly is at least 6 db and probably more, which more than makes up for the -5 db earlier loss. At 500 feet I wouldn’t expect problems unless there are other issues, such as RF interference. Is it being reliably received or is this just the design phase and you’re being conservative with the -5 db?

-5 db is a loss of 68% of the signal. Almost any cable is better than RG-58 at 900 MHz. You could do better with CATV RG6, even with the impedance mismatch. RG-6 has 6.1 db loss per 100 feet at 900 MHz compared to 21.5 db for RG-58. But the real question is, given the 5 db loss you quoted, is the remaining 31% of the transmitted signal sufficient for the situation?

Thanks!

After seeing the posts by @tweiss3 and @tcp2525, I realized I’m wrong. Flrig is the component for CAT control that I used. Fldigi was not. I apologize.

Sending text messages from one radio to another can be done easily using Rattlegram. It’s an app that resides on your phone, converts text to sounds which you play into your radio microphone. Another person with Rattlegram places their phone near the speaker of their radio and the app decodes the text.

I’ve used it as the CAT control layer for some ham radio applications. What do you want to know about it? It requires a radio that is designed for CAT control. I don’t know of any GMRS radios that are.

With all CPS software: Make sure you load the driver first, before ever plugging in the cable. Most require you to select the correct com port.

It looks like you would have to join Bluecom, but I don’t know if that’s possible. They used to have a website, which appears in the wayback machine. It appears those repeaters are solely for use by members of their group for their own purposes. Here’s the information posted: “Bluecom was established in 1997 for Military, Law Enforcement and Emergency Responders to have a means of communicating with each other if normal methods were down. Members who responded to the 9-11 site had lost cell usage but were able to communicate back with their families through Bluecom repeaters. The same occurred during the blackout of 2003. We realized that maintaining these emergency backup repeaters was worth the continuing effort. We have members in range of most of our sites who monitor for incidents in order to assist other members.” They are mentioned in several other posts on these forums, including this one by Rich, the owner of the forums:

You can try messaging @Quantum8 using the private messaging features of the forum or you can write them using snail mail.

SWR is a calculation that involves the ratio between forward power and reflected power. It’s very hard to say without putting an antenna analyzer on it, but it could simply be that the directional coupler in whatever you’re using to measure SWR isn’t capable of measuring the reflected power at the lower power setting. That’s not uncommon with external watt/SWR meters. If reflected power cannot be measured SWR becomes nearly perfect. Sweeping the system with an antenna analyzer would help.

Great job reading and understanding the actual question, something I failed to do.