SteveShannon

There’s no magical connection between starting up a repeater and it appearing on the map. If the owner doesn’t make the effort to place it on the map here and repeaterbook it doesn’t appear.

As long as the offset is positive, the OP is still on a GMRS channel. Channel 8 is channel 1 + 5.000 MHz. It’s also an interstitial channel which is limited to 0.5 watts. If the offset is negative the OP is down in some other service.

I guess I don’t understand your beef about memorization. The first section of the Technician test is a test on the rules of amateur radio. Of course you have to learn the rules. Learning requires memorizing. And, yes, separating the people who cannot learn the rules from those who can is the goal. People who don’t learn the rules don’t get licenses. The second section is operating procedures, such as “A common offset for70 cm is?” The answer is +/- 5.000 MHz. That’s exactly the kind of question that works well for memorization. Understanding comes with use. Section 3? How about this: Question: What is the effect of vegetation on UHF and microwave signals? Answer: Absorption Again, memorizing these questions and answers is a perfectly valid form of learning. I’m not even sure how a person could possibly memorize the answers without learning something.

One source on the internet says more than 321,000 GMRS people have GMRS licenses.

This is also untrue. The connection to the ground plane does not require metal to metal contact. It’s RF, at UHF, not DC (which would require metal to metal contact). The paint layer will add some slight capacitance, but slightly capacitive capacitors are conductive to UHF. I use the MXTA26 with a magnetic mount. Mag mounts have no metal to metal contact and they work fine.

How about a link so we can see what you saw?

It’s because their interpretations of the regulations don’t agree with the FCC’s interpretations, and although I am not a fan of linking GMRS repeaters I agree that the FCC’s interpretations seem incorrect.

Oh, horseshit. You’ve posted this many times before and you are still wrong. It will work better in some directions than others, but it will still work.

There’s a 2 meter repeater in a town near me that is still operating, even though the trustee (person who held the repeater license for the club) allowed the repeater license to expire two years ago and the license has now been cancelled (cancellation is automatic two years after expiration). Next month his personal license expires as well. The club is mostly defunct but there are some new hams there now interested in resurrecting it.

Yup, the OP hasn’t logged in since 2020.

Have you downloaded the documents? https://www.ingenieros.cl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Radio-Mobile-related-documents-English.zip

Welcome, Jeff!

I have one. I went through all of the menus and I didn’t see anyplace to inhibit transmit. Sorry. Thanks for trying to do the right thing.

Not really; the front end (RF) of the radio is on the outside of the tone squelch. That’s where the strongest signal is captured. Being open squelch allows your radio to audibly reproduce whatever the RF stage hears, but does nothing to prevent the RF stage from detecting it. The interference from the stronger signal happens in the RF stage before it ever gets to the squelch.

Just string them up on an inconel wire during the fireball.

It might be your radio, but it might also be the radio transmitting on 462.700. Perhaps it’s slightly off frequency or transmitting wider than it should. I don’t know if setting your radio to narrow on 462.675 would help but I would be curious.

On dual watch your radio might be scanning quickly between A and B. If 462.675 is quiet when the radio goes to the other side and there’s a strong signal on 462.700 at the time your tuner could capture the strong signal. There’s very little spacing between them. Try turning off dual watch, especially when both are on the same center frequency.

Do you have a typo in bullet point #4 where it says “had both on the same channel 20 (462.700)?”

Put a voltmeter on the battery to see if it’s still capable of accepting a charge. What’s the voltage? If it’s up around or above 7.7 volts it’s likely that either the battery isn’t being installed correctly or the contacts are bad or the radio has failed.

Good job! What kind of cable are you using?

Welcome! Gil (WSUU653) gave you some great tips.

Welcome! I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your questions. Your initial problem, the inability to transmit from one radio to another a foot away could have been explained as simply as desense, but it could also have been different tones or even different channels or some combination of the three. Or configuration issues. Such as when your transmit light didn’t come on when depressing PTT. That might have been on a frequency where transmissions were inhibited. Anyway, good job figuring things out; that’s the spirit that will truly teach you the most. Again, welcome!

An SWR of 3.0:1 isn’t as bad as you might think unless you’re using lossy cable. I would go by performance rather than SWR. If your antenna has a low SWR at a lower frequency and higher SWR at a higher frequency, shortening it is the correct adjustment. There’s really no other way to reduce the actual SWR of the antenna. Just don’t shorten it too much. Or consult the instructions for the antenna.

I’m tempted to give you a different answer here than I did the other thread you started. Go see it please. Welcome to the forum!

I briefly heard a very angry ham on 40 meters a few nights ago. Angry, threatening great violence, and very obscene. No ID so of course he’s not totally stupid. An equally idiotic person was baiting him by making kissing and cooing noises. He was almost funny to hear as the other guy got increasingly more angry. Perhaps they both had substance abuse issues. So, I changed frequency and heard nicer hams. Tried another frequency and heard more nice ones. I heard several nice ones and just the two acting out. They do exist, just as in every demographic; it’s up to us all to act better.