SteveShannon

I’ve heard of it happening with ham radios but usually higher power than MURS. You might check to see if your GFI is truly grounded. Sometimes GFIs are installed in lieu of a ground wire in older homes.

What do you mean by “team drill”? What mount do you like?

But really I’m just building up the nerve to install permanent NMO mounts in the roofs of my pickup and my 4Runner. I saw a comment on a YouTube video yesterday where a person attempted to denigrate the YouTuber for punching a hole in the roof of his new truck. It made me wonder again why we own vehicles. Aren’t these vehicles supposed to improve our lives? I would argue that in at least an incremental way, having an antenna permanently mounted, with neatly hidden coax and a nice mount for the radio makes our lives better than having to worry about the coax whipping around in the wind at highway speeds.

A GMRS repeater is no different than a ham UHF repeater. Any ham familiar with setting up a ham repeater would be able to set up a GMRS repeater. Here’s what you need: GMRS license. Knowledge of regulations (read https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95/subpart-E?toc=1) GMRS repeater configured to the channel you intend to use and configured to auto ID. Duplexer tuned to the same channel. Antenna tuned to appropriate frequency. Appropriate transmission line, probably hardline. Power supply (consider backup batteries.) Tower. Assorted hardware to mount antenna, support transmission line, etc. Lightning protection and ground system. See https://reeve.com/Documents/Articles Papers/Reeve_AntennaSystemGroundingRequirements.pdf (or more complete Motorola R56 document) A place to put it all.

That’s it. Every vote sends a message. Collectively the message can be heard.

I’ve had decent results with the Midland mag mount. My friend down the street picked up a Comet mag mount and it seems to work very well also. Both of us use the Comet SBB5 for 2 meter and 70 cm and I use the Midland MXTA26 for GMRS.

I also haven’t given up hope and I’ve been voting for nearly fifty years. During that time I’ve seen both good and bad candidates from both parties, but I’ve always felt like my vote counts. And I’ve seen the difference in results, especially at the local and state level.

Look, I didn’t tell you that to start an argument. I did actual work on the generator syncing and transmission protection systems for generators in four different utility power plants and visited several others. Every one turned the generators at 3600 rpm when generating. The prime movers varied from hydroelectric turbines (the Nisqually project in the nineties), to coal fired steam turbines (Colstrip power plant from 2005-2008, largest thermal plant west of the Mississippi at the time), to dual fuel gas/diesel turbines at the David G. Gates plant until I retired in 2015. All of these plants spun their generators at exactly 3600 rpm. They would trip offline if they sped up or slowed down. All were three phase system with the Colstrip 3 and 4 units generating 740 megawatts each. That’s how utility generation works. Each winding adds a North and South Pole and gets you another phase. If you insert a second winding in a generator you get another lobe of generated power that is offset by some number of degrees. If you add a winding that’s perpendicular to the first winding, you end up with a full AC wave in each winding and each wave is separated from the other by 90°, but you don’t double the frequency of a single AC system, regardless of what your article says. Each winding is its own AC system. I don’t understand what kind of generator they’re talking about when they say they can add a set of poles to generate AC at 120 Hertz. Four poles would result in two sets of North pulses followed by two South pulses. Because the poles must be diametrically opposing you can’t arrange the windings to get a north pulse followed by a south pulse followed by another north pulse followed by a final south pulse, and if combined they won’t look like the clean 120 Hertz sinusoidal AC power that electric machines require. I think they would only be useful for generating DC and then fed to an inverter. So, as I said, I just don’t understand how the generators cited in the article you pasted work as described. That’s not to say it’s not possible because there are clever engineers out there, it’s just not the way it could work in any AC generator whose controls I ever worked on. Now in a car alternator they do keep adding poles, but the goal isn’t to generate higher frequency AC. They’re rectifying the power produced by each pole before combining it for DC.

You can scan for the output tone and try it for the TX tone. Many repeaters use the same tone on input and output. Or you can get closer to the repeater and listen on the input frequency and scan for the input tone.

Give it a week.

By the way, your third row has the right setting for DPL. D065N

That’s okay that it’s not certified. Lots of people use non-certified radios. I’m not gonna point fingers. There are two ways to program the right transmit frequency. One is to simply insert the two different frequencies into the RX frequency and TX frequency columns if the software accepts that. The other is to insert the RX frequency into that column and then insert an offset frequency of 5.000 MHz into the offset column and hopefully the software will add the offset to the RX frequency and put the right frequency in the TX frequency column.

I’ve got to go work on my cabin. I’ll be back tonight. Maybe someone else can explain it better than I did.

Those all transmit on the wrong frequency. They must transmit on 467.650 MHz. GMRS repeaters receive on the 467 MHz frequencies and transmit on the 462 frequencies. That’s why I keep asking what channel you’re on. If you’re using a GMRS certified radio there are repeater specific channels (either 23-30 or sometimes RP15-RP22) that automatically adjust the transmit and receive frequencies.

That’s the receive frequency. You must transmit on 467.650 MHz.

Yes, every fifteen minutes while in use. But not all repeater operators have that set up. Repeaters used by a group of people who are all authorized to use the same call sign are not required to self-ID iff the users all correctly ID.

What channel are you on? More to the point, what is the transmit frequency?

A repeater is only required to ID itself when people are using it. So there’s no reason to expect that it would randomly ID during quiet periods. Are you certain that the people could hear you? Are you sure you’re transmitting on the right frequency and transmitting with the right tone? Also, on GMRS repeaters, people are less likely to respond to random stations. You pointed out people who are busy opening and closing gates. They’re working and might have zero interest in engaging in a conversation with some random guy. I know that mightsound harsh, but engaging with an unknown someone on the radio is much more of a ham radio pursuit. It’s not wrong for you to try, but a lot of people don’t respond well.

How are you testing the power output? What is the output power when the radio is set to low power? There have been reports of Chirp swapping the high and low power settings such that higher output power is observed when the radio is set to low power. I have not seen that myself.

The bold sentence is incorrect. I understand why it might seem like that but each set of poles (North-South) simply adds an additional phase. Added phases cannot be combined to increase the frequency because they are out of phase with each other. A four pole generator will simply generate two separate phases of 60 Hz AC, presumably 90° out of phase. Three phase generators have six “poles”, three north and three south, but each North-South set is 120° from the other two. Automotive alternators have either 12 or 16 sets of poles. As you correctly pointed out earlier the only practical way to get 60 Hz AC from the output of a car alternator is to rectify it and filter it to establish DC, and then run the DC through an inverter to make AC.

I have no way of knowing, but if you’re truly interested in finding working repeaters, listening is required. There are only eight repeater channels. Just set your radio to scan them all with no tones and if there are any working repeaters in your area you’ll hear them eventually.

Have you tried this repeater? https://mygmrs.com/repeater/9104

Several months ago Rich announced that people can now change their names by themselves. It’s the bottom announcement on the front page of the site (you won’t see it if you come directly to the forum like most of us!) Click on this: https://mygmrs.com and go to the bottom. Basically you’re editing your username in the site account rather than the forum account properties and it carries through.

Are you asking about the executable or the data file?

I don’t see anything there that makes me cringe. The radio is as good of a GMRS certified radio as you can get. The Midland mount is okay. It’s nice to install because it only requires a 3/8” hole. It might not be “commercial radio” quality like a police car or ambulance would get, but it should be fine. If it fails then ask one of the guys like Kenny what NMO mount they use in a public safety vehicle where price is no object and reliability is the only concern. The Melowave antenna is not one I’m familiar with, but I have seen them sold on one of the buy two way radios websites. There’s no reason to doubt it, but as far as I know it’s strictly GMRS.