SteveShannon

No, they won’t expand and start to make poor contact. They can wear though and it’s not a bad idea to lube the threads of the connectors. Some people (including me) place a BNC adapter on the radio and leave it on the SMA permanently. That requires that you also replace your antennas with BNC antennas which can cost . But if the BNC connector wears out you just replace it. But honestly, having converted one of my radios to BNC, I really don’t think it is worth it

If you do get into DMR, there are several good videos for it. What’s important to remember for the Anytone is that each “channel” consists of a single talk group programmed for a single repeater. The repeater information includes several items, such as frequency, color code, and time slot. If you want to listen to five different talk groups on a single repeater you must program five different channels. If you want to use five different DMR repeaters and be able to listen to those same five talk groups that’s 25 different channels, five for each repeater. DMR allows every channel to be included in at least one zone and the zone must be selected before you can use a channel, so it’s possible to do a perfect job of programming a channel but be unable to use it because it hasn’t been added into a zone. That has happened to a lot of people at first. But being able to separate channels by zone is really convenient because you can separate channels geographically. You could have a zone for each state, or in populated areas you could have a zone for a region. I program code plugs for a few different friends. One has 25 different repeaters with probably forty or fifty channels programmed for each repeater . Because he’s blind we had to come up with a way to duplicate the assignment of channels per repeater, so each repeater is a block of 100 channel numbers. For instance, LAX might be 2200-2299. Not all of the channels in a block are assigned, but those that are are assigned to the same channel in every repeater . For instance, the worldwide talk group is 91. So for the LAX channel, talk group 91 in block 2200-2299 means I assigned it to 2291. (Most talk groups have more than simply two digits, but that one is just an example.) Because he’s blind, he can simply select the numeric channel 2291 from the front panel with some confidence he’ll end up on the right channel. If he’s not in the right zone he receives a tone that indicates that channel isn’t available and he changes zones and tries again. At first we had all of the DMR channels in a single zone, but still in the same blocks, but we ran up against the limited number of channels that could be assigned to a single zone, so now we have a (very) few different zones. It would have been nice to put each repeater into its own zone, but that didn’t work for him because the Anytone/Alinco doesn’t announce the zone and he can’t see the screen. The Anytone 878, and I presume the model you have, support roaming zones also, which can be programmed to follow your location. I haven’t played with that but it looks interesting.

I’m curious, what mode was it in that it had no GMRS frequencies, yet wasn’t in ham mode? What frequencies were available in that mode?

Welcome!!

For all the same reasons anyone else would want GMRS: I can hand radios to my non-ham family members and I have a lot of non-ham rocketry friends who use GMRS; I can talk to them.

A $25 five watt Baofeng will transmit exactly as far as a $650 five watt Kenwood. But it might have a messier signal. It probably doesn’t receive quite as well. It might be more susceptible to desensing in the presence of a strong nearby signal. But those are pretty subtle things.

I would try to reach out to the owners again. One month ago was Christmas which can be very busy time of year. In the meantime, listen to the repeaters in question and if you hear someone politely ask them.

There is absolutely no group of people that doesn’t have its scofflaws. It’s inevitable. Everyone has a level of compliance that they set for themselves based on whether they think specific rules are necessary. For some compliance is very unimportant, for others it’s very important. Most of us occupy a spot along the spectrum between those two endpoints.

I have a blind ham friend who recently got the UV5R mini. He’s used to Yaesus and Alincos, and he didn’t care for the TYT MD-UV380, but he wanted to try the mini. I really anticipated that he would hate it, but I was 180° wrong. He really likes it.

That’s where an SWR test can be helpful. SWR test the dual band antenna on the roof mount on the car just as you would use it using GMRS frequencies. If it’s 2.0:1 or less then I would just use it. If it’s high, like 3.0:1 or higher then I would probably get a dedicated GMRS antenna. If it’s in between 2.0:1 and 3.0:1 then I would test it to see if you get decent range. You shouldn’t damage your radio at that ratio, but you’ll attenuate power in your transmission line.

Don’t waste your time trying to measure the SWR of handheld antennas. Their measurements almost never make sense.

There’s a bit of an arc to this ham radio hobby. People join and they say “I only need one radio”. Pretty soon they have two, then four, etc. Likewise, they say I can’t imagine spending that much on a radio. If their financial situation supports it (and often even if not) the threshold moves higher, then higher. Eventually, old, alone, and unable to move further than the shack, but with money in the bank, the ham buys the $9,000 radio he or she said they’d never buy and an 80 foot tower with a rotator and beam antenna.

That looks like it will be a lot of fun! For the price you can do a lot, yet it’s inexpensive enough that it won’t keep you from buying the next new radio. I bought one of the kits to build a (Tr)uSDX but I haven’t built it yet. When I went to Amazon to see the radio you posted, I found the case for it. So now I have to decide, should I order the case and build the radio kit or give away the kit and move on. I guess I can always give it away after I build it if I don’t like it.

I understand. The sharp square corners on a large sheet metal case don’t scream portable or rugged. I don’t take my ftdx10 either, but I would the FT-1x.

I predict your attitude will change. Most of us at say something like that at some point in time and then change our mind as we get further into the hobby. Take a look at the relatively new Yaesu FT-1X Optima. $1900 and built for portability.

Very nice, @TNFrank!

A lot of people drill out the tiny hole in front of the microphone on those speaker-mics. Sometimes they’re too small. Sometimes they’re plugged. We even had a guy on a net who had plugged his accidentally with food. We could hear him key up but nary a word of speech.

Meanwhile, here in the mountains of southwestern Montana it’s 13° and almost no snow on the ground.

You have a G90, right? Sweep the SWR for each band to see what the vertical antenna response looks like.

@WRYS709, what’s your ham call sign? I’ll add you to my grid tracker alerts for ft8. Thanks!

Some things to consider: It’s high Q, meaning it tunes (by sliding the adjustment on the coil) to a very narrow portion of the band you’re working. All coil loaded antennas are high Q. Because it’s high Q having the ability to sweep the SWR, which a G90 or IC-705 can do internally or an antenna analyzer can do separately, becomes more important. Otherwise you’ll need to play around a little to get it tuned before you start transmitting. Once you find where the adjustment is best for the favorite frequencies you want to work, mark it somehow so you can return to that spot more quickly. The kit makes it very convenient for portable use. It’s a nice antenna for a go-bag. It’ll never replace a good low Q beam or wire antenna for permanent use. I would look at this video by K9VBR first and then the second video:

You’re right that NVIS is the way to make contact with people in your skip zone, but the problem with NVIS here is that although it works well for the lower HF frequencies, it becomes much more difficult as the frequencies increase, to the point where 28 MHz NVIS is very difficult. @TNFrank is limited to 10 meters for USB phone privileges.

No, reducing your power would not do anything to improve your reception by nearby stations. Propagation doesn’t improve simply by reducing power. Ever.

Yes, a vertical on that tripod, assuming it has the necessary ground plane, would probably help.

Yes, probably, but raising your wire antennas higher will usually flatten the pattern also.