SteveShannon

In a GMRS radio, just choose one of the pre-programmed repeater channels, 23-30 (there are 8 of them) and set the necessary tone to get into the repeater.

My understanding of the regulations leads me to believe that profiting is not allowed. Recuperating costs is though. The cost of establishing and supporting 25 linked repeaters seems like it would be pretty high though. Are you sure they’re taking a profit? They might just be pouring money back into their network and accumulating some for unforeseen future use. If they’re organized as a non-profit that’s probably what they’re doing.

I just heard that in Lebanon, reports vary from eight killed to 3,000 injured) Hezbollah fighters have been injured when all of their pagers exploded. Wow!

Keep up the good work. After seeing me participate in the local net and serve as net control my wife seems to take a greater interest in it. I wouldn’t say she’s chomping at the bit, but she has enough of an interest to ask questions and offer to help support my activities. It can’t be forced though.

General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS). A mobile two-way voice communication service, with limited data applications, for facilitating activities of individual licensees and their family members, including, but not limited to, voluntary provision of assistance to the public during emergencies and natural disasters.

Without knowing more about what you actually tried, it really boils down to this: 1. Try different channels; it won’t be the first time a radio doesn’t work on all channels. The GM-30 is capable of transmitting on eight repeater channels that the RT22, a FRS radio, cannot receive. Stay away from those. They will be named RP15 - RP22 or they will be numbered 23-30, but they are frequencies intended to transmit to repeaters which FRS radios like the RT22 don’t do. If the GM30 is set to one of those channels, it will hear the RT22 because they share the same receiving frequencies, but the RT22 will never hear the GM30. 2. Make sure both radios are on the same channel. 3. Make sure you don’t have any “privacy tones” set for either, for transmit or receive. 4. Don’t just stand right next to each other when you test the radios; separate yourselves by several feet. Some radios go deaf in the presence of strong signals. That’s commonly called “desensing”. Welcome to the forums!

This is untrue. Your disagreeing with my statements about GMRS’s primary purpose didn’t bother me at all. What bothered me was your need to take a swipe at all hams with derogatory nicknames. And what I said was barely an insult, but apparently it got under your skin. I’m just not going to waste my time attempting to appease people who lead with insults and then whine repeatedly because someone implies that their abrasive talk will result in being ignored. As you have seen there are some very welcoming hams who are interested in helping you. I was at first. I’m proud of them; I’m sorry for you.

No, not at all.

Some radios have S-meters which display the signal strength. For most people there is a somewhat noticeable audible difference between each number. Although radio S-meters are not precisely calibrated, generally speaking (and a question on the ham test ) one unit difference on an S meter correlates to 6 dB. What that means is that if 40 watts gets to S9, 10 watts gets to S8.

I’ll try to take a look at it today, sightseeing, if for no other reason. Our ham club already has a couple repeaters up 9700’ at an old forest service lookout site south of town which has fantastic coverage. We’re working on getting some electrical improvements there.

There’s a chain link fenced lot in Walkerville with what looks like an unused tower on it. I don’t suppose that’s yours, is it? Otherwise, which lots do you have up there. I doubt I could afford them without having some kind of plan, but I’d be stupid not to ask.

He does. He knows of a tower west of town he might be able to put an antenna on.

I’m glad you did because I never would’ve thought of it.

I agree. I think factory tinted windows alway use tinted glass rather than film. My wife had a 1998 Accord once that came from down south. It had a very nice aftermarket tinting job, but it really didn’t work well with my sunglasses which were polarized. If I tilted my head the window would almost become opaque. I’ve only had factory tint since then.

There’s a forum for everything isn’t there? I found a forum dedicated to window tinting professionals! Posts there indicate no issues with any metallic tint materials blocking antennas which are internal to the windows from receiving signals from outside the car. That doesn’t mean it has never happened, but it isn’t currently complained about. Actually that probably makes sense since it seems window tint material is applied to the inside of the window so it’s not in a position to interfere with antennas which are on the RF side of the tint material. I didn’t find anything that discussed the Larsen antennas on either side of a metallic tint. Honestly it was something I had never considered before and I was surprised when WRYZ926 said it could either attenuate or interrupt RF between the two halves of a glass mount antenna, but I know that with antennas anything can have an effect, so I’m not discounting the idea. I’d be very interested in seeing empirical data that documents the effect of different materials on inductive coupling.

Great Falls is way too far away from me (148 miles), but the significant metropolitan population would seem to indicate that an GMRS repeater might have traffic there. I’m not certain why none exists already, but as far as I know, none does. Our ham club has a guy who plans to put up a GMRS repeater here in the Butte area. We’re probably only between one third and one half the metropolitan size of Great Falls.

702’s answer about desensing might be all that it is, but I think it’s more basic than that. When you’re using a repeater and transmitting from radio A on the repeater channel, you’re transmitting on one frequency and listening on another that’s 5 MHz lower. So, if radio B is set to receive the repeater it will not receive radio A directly. Radio A is transmitting on one of the 467 MHz main channels and radio B is listening to the repeater output on the corresponding 462 MHz main channel. You might be able to tune radio B to receive the repeater input frequency, but then you won’t hear the repeater output.

It’s a 20 watt radio now, but eventually he might want to install something like an Icom IC-7100 which requires 20-30 amps. If necessary we’ll run the positive back to either the fuse box or the battery, but first we’ll look for an existing unused power point.

What bands do you want? I have a Diamond BB7V that might be okay if mounted high.

At high RF frequencies the signal travels along the outside of a conductor. That’s called the “skin effect.” So, the inner portion of the conductor becomes less necessary. From Pasternak: In some applications, a hollow metal center conductor can be used to decrease weight and cost while increasing flexibility. Yet this solution is specific to high-frequency applications that do not need to channel high power at low frequencies.

Feast or famine! Too much traffic or “why is everyone so quiet?”

That's what I suggested to my friend and he intends to do that. We can see which circuits have no fuses; we just don't know if there are wires coming from them into the cabin somewhere, and if so, where. I thought since the Taco is pretty popular that maybe someone on the forum had already gone through this exercise.

Exactly! And there isn’t anything wrong with wanting to have a pointless small talk with someone on GMRS.

Gee, I can't figure out why people don't want to make pointless small talk with you. Best wishes!

We were testing on 2 meter. He doesn't have a GMRS license (or much interest in GMRS) but he is a ham. He just wants to leave the power port open since it'll be a more permanent installation.