SteveShannon

“Only?” That’s one of the best and most rugged handheld radios around. Nice choice! I’m sorry you have encountered some hams who are poor ambassadors of amateur radio. I hope you run into some others who are encouraging and welcoming.

It sounds like you’ve done all the right things. Obviously you have the cable and computer working. The only thing I can think of that would be specific to the second radio is two pin speaker/mike port on the second radio. Is the volume turned up enough? Is the two pin plug pushed all the way in? I’ve seen some radios where they seem to stop and it requires a harder push to seat them fully. If you have an external speaker/mike, see if it works on that radio. The speaker and microphone jacks are mechanical and could be faulty. Otherwise, yeah, I think a call to customer service is next. Like @OffRoaderX, I don’t recall hearing about many (maybe any) Wouxun radios arriving dead. And this one isn’t truly dead; it just has a problem with the speaker/mic jacks. Sooner or later every manufacturer has at least one problem slip through. I read through the manual while looking for anything that might be helpful for you. Obviously I didn’t find anything, but I am impressed by the quality of the manual and the features of the radio. I might have to look at one of the ham variety.

However, (with great affection for my friend Marc) I also have experienced way too many people who don’t speak up when talking into the microphone. That’s equally problematic. So, speak up but don’t yell.

See if this video helps explain things.

Back to the title of the thread, one thing all new hams should know is to keep your handheld antenna vertical.

Here’s a photo a friend of mine took of the Spaghetti Nebula. She did some processing to make things more visible. I put the details beneath the image : SH2-240, The Spaghetti nebula The Spaghetti Nebula is a large supernova remnant. It is 3000 ly away, and spans roughly 160 ly. It is estimated to be about 40,000 years old. It is believed that the stellar explosion left behind a rapidly spinning neutron star known as pulsar PSR J0538+2817 in the nebula core, emitting a strong radio signal. WO Pleaides 68 ASI 2600MC DUO AM3 ASIAIR EAF Antlia ALP-T dual narrow band filter 132x 300 sec exposures 11 hour total integration Processed with Pixinsight and Affinity Photo

Help me understand , please. You were able to hear voice transmissions on the db20g without an antenna, but once you connected the coax and antenna you no longer could hear voice transmissions (annd you made no other changes?) Go back to a configuration that works, even if that means listening without an antenna. Then change one thing at a time so you can eliminate distractors.

Congratulations on becoming a ham! Great job diving in to help with REACT!

Congratulations on becoming a ham! A home base would have more power, but one of the first things you’ll learn is that power is one of the least important aspects of a radio, especially on VHF and UHF. Power isn’t totally unimportant, but the range of a VHF or UHF radio is affected much less by power than a person might expect.

Hear hear! A person always needs a handheld radio to throw in the pocket of a coat. You can use a handheld radio with a mobile antenna or a base station antenna for many basic purposes. Beginning with just a base station or just a mobile station doesn’t allow the same flexibility.

I have a TYT UV-380 that I replaced the firmware with the firmware from the Open UV380 project. It works well as both an analog and DMR radio. Fit and finish seem to be good and one of my friends tells me it has the best sound reproduction of any of my handheld radios. I like it. I haven’t tried the TH-UV88, but the review that @WRUU653 provided will give you an idea.

Handheld plus a spare battery at first, preferably inexpensive and simple. The Baofeng UV5R is a good one to learn the basics. Then, as you learn what appeals to you you can always get something else.

Usually we hear reports of it going the other way or swapping low and high power.

Last time I checked it still wasn’t available in Chirp. That has been a month probably.

Go back to the original antenna.

I have two db20g radios. To answer your question, no I have not heard of problems receiving like you described. Desense is a real possibility, but I would not expect it if you are 60 yards away from the db20g while transmitting. I understand you’re 100% sure of your tones, but it would be an easy thing to test. Turn off the receive tone on the db20g and see if that helps. I have seen radios that transmit everything except the voice sounds. That can happen when the microphone hole is plugged or when the microphone signal wire is separated somehow.

You wuz took! Actually, if you bought it as a GMRS radio (single band) there’s probably no need for a coil and capacitor. They’re there on my antenna because it was a dual band antenna.

Really they’re a GPS with a sunlight visible screen, a full set of topo maps and a GMRS radio . Several members of my rocketry club got them because Garmin pioneered sending locations between GMRS radios. In our hilly terrain it means we can find someone who might have gotten hurt. Also, I think my Midland and Motorola GMRS radios were from Malaysia rather than China. They were not $20 radios, but they weren’t $400 either, maybe $100 for 2? I guess the moral is this: if you want a $20 radio, it will almost certainly come from China. If you want a quality radio from somewhere other than China, be prepared to pay more money. They are available though.

Garmin radios are still made in Taiwan I believe. Mine was anyway.

Mine didn’t until the radio it was on fell and landed on the antenna and the white core the wire is coiled around broke. It gave its life so we could study it.

Mine was a TidRadio 771, but it has a coil and a capacitor from partway up on the coil to the shield. Here’s my picture. Notice how thin the coil wire is? I bet yours has a coil under a layer of insulation and it’s just not visible.

2.15 dbi is exactly the same gain as a half-wave dipole. Yes, it’s low gain. What makes you think that you need to upgrade the antenna that your radio came with?

Different radios require different spacing. I’ve heard of desensing out to 50 feet. I’ve seen it at eight feet or so with Baofeng radios. My Yaesu radios work fine even though they’re next to each other. I suspect Motorola commercial radios can handle it fine.

It’s not unusual at all to transmit from radio A to a repeater but be unable to hear your own transmission on a nearby second radio, radio B. B is desensitized by its proximity to the relatively powerful signal from A. As long as others can hear you don’t worry about radios in the same room as you.

Mobile units could be designed to have lower output power, but the regulations specifically limit transmission on the 467 MHz interstitials to handheld portable radios, so there's no reason for the manufacturers to do so: 467 MHz interstitial channels. Only hand-held portable units may transmit on these 7 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 467.5625, 467.5875, 467.6125, 467.6375, 467.6625, 467.6875, and 467.7125 MHz.