SteveShannon

It’s probably just one of my own biases, but every time I consider the Larsen mount I shy away from their use of zinc alloy.

The Alinco MD5 is an 878 on the inside. That’s what I bought when I first got into DMR. It’s very slightly smaller and only has room for 500,000 contacts and 4000 channels, but if you can live with that it’s only $290 from the major ham radio companies. https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-018082

That’s defiantly true!

The kg1000g makes it pretty easy to adjust squelch. Just press the squelch hotkey on the mic and then use the up or down buttons to increase or decrease the squelch level. The db20g has a similar squelch adjustment, “fun” key, “1” key, then up or down buttons.

I don’t think you’re alone in wanting a more accessible squelch adjustment, but apparently I fall on the other end of the spectrum. I almost never adjust squelch. I set it once, when I first get a radio, and almost never have to go back in and change it, which makes me curious why some people adjust it frequently and others very seldom do.

I’ve seen bad earphone jacks cause that.

What did you have to do?

That would certainly make sense. Unfortunately it’s not what I experienced on our repeater. I wish it were because I could understand that.

@WSGL997 - I’ve had similar results where I have used a repeater and some people could hear me and others couldn’t. It didn’t seem logical to me because if the repeater was retransmitting my transmission shouldn’t everyone who hears other things on the repeater be able to hear mine? Or was I maybe transmitting on the wrong frequency? But it definitely happened. Radio isn’t always understandable.

Because repeaters are operated strictly under an individual’s license in GMRS, unlike ham or commercial radio, what’s welcome behavior on a GMRS repeater is entirely up to the wishes of the licensed operator subject to the rules of the FCC. Thus you’re apt to see GMRS repeaters that welcome rag-chewing and you’re also apt to see GMRS repeaters that prefer no reg-chewing. A significant number of GMRS users will tell you that GMRS is not intended for random conversations. Another bunch will happily participate in random conversations on GMRS frequencies. Enjoy the ride! Welcome to the forum!

Send the radio back. Or at least try a different radio to see if the problem persists.

Higher resistance also limits the current. I don’t believe that there have been many (if any) cigarette lighter plugs on db20g radios that have melted.

I’ve seen batteries that were stuck hard. Sometimes they’re swollen and sometimes they’re poorly manufactured and sometimes something has been spilled on them, basically gluing them in place. You might have to strong arm it somehow.

That helps. Does it only happen when the jeep is running or also when everything but the radio is turned off?

Here’s a video that very briefly shows it at about 30 seconds.

Are you operating from a vehicle or as a base station? You seem to be describing two different things: “static interference after releasing the PTT” and choppiness and poor quality audio while transmitting. Let’s take them one at a time. First, static interference. Do you mean that you hear static immediately after letting go of the PTT? How long does it continue? Static is always present to some extent. The squelch control turns off the audio when the signal strength is below a certain threshold. Turning up the squelch increases the threshold. Have you tried turning up the squelch?

Horseshit. There’s nothing wrong with people getting together in a club (or perhaps even a forum) to discuss, learn about, and share enjoyment of GMRS.

Exactly right. Almost every car comes with a power port that accepts the cigarette lighter plug. Although the cigarette lighter plug isn’t what many of us might eventually use, it’s the closest thing there is to being universally available and works well for these low power radios allowing them to be used immediately.

Not really. There is no QRZ for GMRS. You might be able to check to see if the repeater operator is also a ham (https://gmrs.app/?) and then look on QRZ, but email addresses there are only there voluntarily. But you could always look them up on the FCC site and send them snail mail.

Comet CA-GMRS https://www.gigaparts.com/comet-ca-gmrs-base-antenna.html?utm_term=sku-zcm-ca-gmrs&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_py5EKZQxij1cmldY7F8FS3Vn42&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyoi8BhDvARIsAO_CDsBPolyUSP6EAjfHgLTgAmTPj__UDbKhG2y8DMvRLwgdMx9xjiUbKR8aAgAQEALw_wcB

It really depends on the radio, but it could. If the Surecom 102 is right at the edge of its ability to detect reflected power (which it very easily could be at an SWR of 1.1:1) it really might not be able to accurately tell the difference between 1.11:1 and 1.39:1. Even Bird meters are only represented as reading +/-5%. Most inexpensive meters are more likely 20%. Are these readings all taken on the same transmit frequency? Does your radio have an ALC circuit that adjusts to SWR? Show us a picture of your sw-102 for both antennas so we can see all of the readings, please. There’s a lot more information than just SWR and power. Can you spot the errors in the following photo from the Radioddity site?:

Are you confident that your SWR/wattmeter is correct and sensitive enough? Many inexpensive ones do a poor job of differentiating between very slight reflected power levels, especially at UHF. What does an antenna analyzer show for the two different combinations?

This is exactly right. In my defense, because it is a GMRS radio, the channel should have the offset baked in to the channels between 23 and 30. Or did I misunderstand it being a GMRS radio?

John, We must both be equally dense. It looks like you have it set correctly. Try getting closer to the repeater.

Why? If the goal is an honest comparison of the potential of two different services, why constrain one in such a way that it cannot achieve its potential?