SteveShannon

It’s not uncommon for antennas with less gain to work better over a wider variety of locations than a high gain antenna.

It is true for anything, but unfortunately many people don’t understand it and compare the price of American made goods to Chinese made goods and use the price comparison alone as proof of comparative value. That’s a trap that people should steer clear of. There absolutely is a difference in quality between some things made in America and some things made overseas, and that can result in an even greater price difference, but the myth about all Chinese radios coming out of the same factory, of universally poor quality, with only the label differing, is nonsense. Sixty years ago Americans felt the same about Japanese products and became complacent about quality and innovation. We cannot afford to repeat that mistake.

Not that I know of. There are only a few GMRS repeaters in the entire state of Montana with the biggest share near Billings and Wyoming probably has fewer. There are ham radio repeaters though.

I looked at several different sites that sell the antenna. I found only one (https://www.tessco.com/product/450-470-mirage-antenna-black-68593) that actually gives the antenna gain using meaningful units. All the others said either “unity gain” which means the effective power is multiplied by one, which is mathematically the same as 0 dB added, or simply said 2 dB, which has no reference and is thus completely ambiguous. Tessco properly expressed the gain referenced to an isentropic antenna (dBi). They list the Larsen as having 2.15 dBi, which is exactly the same as 0 dBd (decibel referenced to a dipole), meaning it has the same gain as a dipole. A dipole always has 2.15 dBi. Gain dBi (dBi) 2.15 dBi

Can you please explain how that works? I agree that a single large coil will have an inductance, but how does that draw lightning?

Unfortunately, price isn’t always a great determiner of value. A highly skilled engineer working in a country where wages are a fraction of another country is capable of designing a high quality radio for much less than an equally skilled engineer in one of the countries where engineers are highly paid. American engineers don’t have a monopoly on scientific knowledge. Statistically speaking, taking two competing products, both designed in the same economic area, the one that has a greater dedication of resources (for design, manufacturing, QC, and support) will generally reflect a higher customer satisfaction and have a higher price. Sales price for mass produced items will be largely dependent on the cost of production and after sales support, once the sunk cost of design has been covered. Despite our national pride, very high quality items can and are produced in countries with low labor costs. So, unfortunately, price isn’t an easy predictor of quality. A company’s (recent) reputation is a more reliable predictor.

It’s the code number that user WhiskyCharlie described in the post dated May 20.

No, it’s very easy. 1. Google “GMRS lookup” 2. Or simply use this FCC site: https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchGmrs.jsp 3. Enter the GMRS callsign. 4. Hit enter. 5. Wait a little while. 6. If you want more, click on the callsign.

It was only granted yesterday. The database might not be updated until this week sometime.

If you really want to get more gain, pick a different antenna. All phasing would do is change the pattern of the antenna. That’s what gain is, a change in the propagation pattern that favors certain directions at the expense of others.. Usually you would use antennas that are designed to take advantage of it. But if they aren’t designed for it, you might be surprised at the effects. Using two antennas in parallel without doing anything else drops the impedance in half, which causes a change in SWR. That’s great if the antennas were a high impedance type tuned for phasing in the first place, but if they’re tuned to present 50 ohms each to a connected radio, like most antennas are, now you have a 25 ohm antenna system and an SWR of 2.0:1 if it was perfect in the first place. There’s much more that goes into phasing two antennas than just hooking two or more in parallel. What kind of pattern are you looking for? Phasing two antennas by placing two on the same horizontal plane can increase signal strength forward and back, but it does so at the cost of sideways propagation. That might be what you want if you’re driving on a long piece of interstate, but might be bad if you’re on a jeep trail.

It was a three year old thread.

It wasn’t “starting to sound” like anything but crickets. You’re trying to stir up a thread that was dead almost exactly two years.

Go to this page and click appropriate buttons:

I agree completely.

If you leave the tone out of the receiver side you’ll hear everything transmitted on 462.675, regardless of the tone they use to transmit. For that reason I recommend leaving it out for new users. The downside (if it is one) is that you hear everything on the channel. That’s useful though if you’re just learning. If the station you are transmitting to has programmed its receiver to require a tone you must transmit using the same tone.

Fixed it for you.

Antennas are funny things. I completely agree with @tweiss3 that what you're suggesting with running a ground wire wouldn't be the same as a ground plane. He's absolutely correct. But I'm not 100% certain that your bike rack wouldn't satisfy the need for a ground plane. There are many ways to satisfy the need, with a counterpoise, radials, or a sheet of RF conductive material. I would at least try it if you already have the parts. If you don't have the parts already then I would go with what's tried and true, which is what he suggested. But understand that I am a ham and I like trying different things with antennas even if they waste many hours.

Two weeks ago I discovered that my RTS software corrupts memory when using the features that RTS built into the software. I was editing a DMR codeplug and I used the built-in editing functions to edit the order of channels. To its credit, when the corruption cause the editor to throw an error it offered to send in the stack dump. The next day I received an email that basically said they could see what I did that caused the error: I used the functionality in the editor. I truly appreciate the responsiveness of their customer support. I like their editors (I have six of them) when they work, but I lost a lot of confidence in using their editors for DMR.

One caution about hiring “handymen”, be sure they are licensed, bonded, and insured so that in the event of an accident they or their estate don’t sue you.

Is that 1200 feet above the users of the repeater? How close are they? Commercial antennas are frequently phased arrays of folded dipoles. A coax feedline leads to a phasing harness. By manipulating the harness the pattern can be aimed downward to give better coverage. Our 2 meter and 70 centimeter repeaters have such antennas. They are attached to a tower that is erected at an old forest service lookout site on a mountain about 4400 feet (actual elevation 9700’ MSL) above our city, which is about 5300’ MSL. The downward tilt provided by phasing gets us great coverage.

It’s also really important to realize that 2:1 isn’t really terrible. The power still goes out the antenna. In fact you might not even be able to tell the difference between an antenna with 2:1 versus 1.0:1 SWR.

Good luck!

It might not stick magnetically, but it certainly will capacitively couple. All that’s required for a capacitor is two conductors separated by a dielectric material and aluminum is a very good conductor. Stick-on steel disks are available to attach magnetic mount antenna mounts to aluminum bodies.

Here’s what the FCC says:

All they really need to do is increase the diameter of the ground plane adapter to the same diameter as the antenna at its base.