SteveShannon

It might be!

Still, a belt pouch might reduce the stress on the battery clip by supporting the battery.

You just acted like a hors’s ass to one of the nicest and least pretentious members (WRUU653) of this forum. Thank God for the Ignore list.

I had influenza A right after Christmas, then something that followed right afterwards. For two weeks I was pretty worthless (here’s your chance @OffRoaderX). I hope you get better quickly.

At the bottom of each post is the word "quote". Click on that and you will have a reply window that includes the message you're replying to in a quote box, like above.

20 kHz is 0.02 MHz. 200 kHz is 0.2 MHz. I don’t know if that helps at all or just demonstrates my pedantic nature.

This relatively simple article does a good job of explaining what is required. There are also some pretty good YouTube videos that I can recommend if you want. https://reeve.com/Documents/Articles Papers/Reeve_AntennaSystemGroundingRequirements.pdf The most important thing is that everything is grounded together and to a single point. That helps prevent current flow along other paths, such as your coax and house electrical system. And you certainly should also ground your coax at the base of your tower and then connect that ground to your system ground using at least #8 awg. But you should still want to install an arrester right before your cable enters the house. Why there instead of four feet away? Because if anything happens in that four feet, such as a power line landing on your coax, having the arrester right at the entry to the house is your last opportunity to divert it to ground. Arresters aren’t perfect. They simply represent your last best chance to keep the surge out of the house and divert it to your system ground. You certainly can disconnect your coax to prevent lightning from following it inside, but if you do, do it outside, not inside. Putting it in a mason jar on the inside is silly. If that lightning jumped a few miles in the air, bringing it inside and then putting it in a glass jar will do absolutely nothing, except create glass shrapnel for the firefighters to wade through.

I absolutely agree that in your situation leaving the receive tone off would cause problems. But if you have that many people actively sharing each channel, even with tones to prevent the constantly breaking squelch, you will have RF interference. Tones don’t prevent that. Ideally you need something with more channels.

Almost everything about this post is wrong. Whether you like it or not your radio is connected to a ground. Lightning travels miles through the air to get to ground and your antenna and tower are just a convenient path for it. Current will follow your coax (either the shield or the center conductor or both) until it finds ground. That’s why you place surge arresters outside the house and connect them to your house ground system, to give static charge an easier path to ground. You don’t have to open the electrical panel or hire an electrician to do any of this.

Great! But I'm confused. You said that the repeater was split tone: "where Tx is DCS and Rx is CTCSS." But now you say you're in D Code, which uses DCS for Tx and DCS for Rx. That's not split mode. What did I miss.

So I assume you would need your radio to be in mode “T DCS”, which I believe transmits a CTCSS tone to the repeater and expects to receive a DCS code from the repeater? If that doesn’t work then I would try “D Tone” in case it lists the receive mode first.

Makes sense. So what happens when you try to program split tones? Is the programming giving you a problem or does it simply fail on the radio?

Yes, you have it right. Welcome here!

I haven’t tried it, but you can always just leave the tone out for receive and it’ll work.

Be careful of the trap of spending more and more money chasing traffic that just doesn’t exist. Ham radio might be a better service for you if you are interested in making contacts with others on the radio. Many of us here do both. I could leave my GMRS radio running all the time and pick up very little, but I can hear transmissions from both people near and far on ham radio.

No chop-busting needed. Welcome here! Are you sure there’s anything to receive? In some places there’s just not a lot of traffic. Are you scanning? If you have any tones set on Receive get rid of them so you hear everything. Yes, it’s possible that your antenna isn’t optimum, but it should work well enough.

This site does have a classified ads section. Only premium members can post there, I believe. Or someplace like Craig’s list. I don’t know of any other places, although I’m sure there are probably groups just for selling radios on Facebook.

I don’t have the radio, so maybe this doesn’t help, but I looked up the radio out of curiosity. The frequencies advertised for this radio are as follows: 7-Band receive frequency range: 76-108 (FM Radio), 108-136 (AM), 136-180 (FM), 230-250 (FM), 350-400 (FM), 400-512 (FM), 700-823 (FM) If that is a literal representation of coverage limits baked into the firmware, then it would appear that you can only tune to AM frequencies from 108-136, but above 136 the radio only does FM. The airband extends from 108-137, so if the 108-136 MHz coverage listed above truly reflects firmware boundaries then you just can’t get there (136-137 MHz AM) from here.

I agree that antennas don’t create power and I understand gain. I use my radios with the antenna vertical. For me, having a spherical pattern, like an isentropic antenna, would be wasteful because I don’t typically communicate with something directly above or below me. But I understand your point that having a high gain antenna with the radiation directed in the wrong direction can be even worse. I also agree that a low efficiency antenna is a bad thing. Unfortunately most of us (definitely me) don’t have an easy way to assess efficiency. Real world testing like I conducted are the best I can do.

And if you look at the “Who’s Online“ page you’ll see the call signs listed below the login names for the members who are currently online.

All it does is temporarily (while pressing the button usually) disable squelch for receiving. It does nothing to remove the tones for transmitting .

DMR is allowed on commercial radios and ham radio bands, but not GMRS or FRS (except for some experimental sites). So, you would need to use these radios on an appropriate service. Also, except for amateur radio radios usually must receive FCC certification. I don't know if these radios are certified for any service. I would be skeptical.

The proposal mentioned in the first post of this thread is not something supported by many hams, as far as I can tell. I certainly don't support it. I don't want or expect to be given access to GMRS simply because I'm a ham. I can (and did) pay for a GMRS license just like anyone else. Nor do I want GMRS to be made more like amateur radio. Personally, I want GMRS to remain mostly as it is, easy for anyone to become licensed, simple to access, compatible with FRS, and with reasonable limits on power output. If people want to experiment in order to learn more about radio than needed for GMRS, they should study, take the test, and get their amateur radio license. And quit whining about the tests.

Just leave the receive CTCSS open. I know it doesn't fix the issue, but it'll allow you to operate without issues.

It's just fine. I used my first initial and last name,but most places I use my first name and last name.