SteveShannon

I don’t know about the Commscope, but some antennas do have a nameplate like this one from our repeater‘s 2 meter antenna:

In my opinion, get the extra first. You can do it in two weeks of studying, especially if you just recently got your general. I say that only because it builds on the foundation you built studying for the general. CW is learned completely differently (for me personally at least) not hard, but a different part of my brain, related more to hearing sounds and pattern recognition.

Not greatly, for the simple reason that GMRS range isn’t entirely dependent on signal strength. As you have said numerous times GMRS relies on line of sight rather than output power. Mounting on the hood will definitely bias the direction of the signal, depending on which location of the hood it’s mounted.

Not everyone. Many of us have mentioned this multiple times.

I believe this is why companies use RG-58 for their mobile mounts. It has a solid dielectric that isn’t easily smashed. Cables that are designed to have less loss at uhf frequencies have lightweight foam dielectric material that would allow the shelf to short against the center conductor if smashed or even bent at too small a radius.

But with the right amplifier on UHF, just think of how clear EME could be!

Yes, absolutely. I think we’re in agreement that ham radio operators need to be open to new ways we can help.

Yes, if they’re inverted they’ll have an I following the number usually. Of course it’s possible that the repeater manufacturer uses some other convention to indicate normal or inverted.

You were doing so well until you said the above. I would agree that the role of ham radio is not what it once was, because of things like satellite communications like you mentioned, but in any true emergency, there’s always a role for yet another avenue of communications. Compared to the number of hams, satellite phones are very few. As such, they should be relegated to the higher priority tasks. But many people won’t have access to satellite phones and they will still crave hearing from their loved ones and still need to hear what’s happening in the rest of the world.

At least you have a circle. I have a tiny pie slice...

Good one! Because I’m pedantic, or hung up on semantics, he didn’t say “large-scale emergency”; he said “there is a good chance that no radio service will work large-scale in an emergency.” So my question is what does he mean by “working large-scale”? Is he suggesting all of the various bands available to hams would be congested or something else?

What do you mean by “large-scale”?

You’re welcome. There are lists of open issues and feature requests as well.

Go to this page, look at the closed issues and the date they were closed. https://chirpmyradio.com/projects/chirp/issues?query_id=3

The perfect SWR for any antenna is always 1.0:1, but an SWR up to 2.5 is acceptable if you have low loss feed line. That's true for GMRS as well. An SWR meter for a CB might not work for the UHF frequencies of GMRS. The antenna connectors for CB are usually the same as GMRS, but long lengths of cables that work just fine for CB can really absorb the power of at UHF frequencies, but you probably aren't running more than a few feet in your WWII Jeep. As far as whip length, the length of your CB antenna is probably about 103 inches or something like that; that's a quarter wave whip. The wavelength of CB is 11 meters, or around 33 feet. The wavelength of GMRS is about 64-65 centimeters or right around two feet, so a quarter wave whip would be around six inches. That would look pretty tiny compared to the long CB whip. If I were you, I would just hook up to the antenna and test it to see how it works. Run at low power at first. Modern radios are amazingly resilient to damage from high SWR. See if anyone can hear you. Or stay disconnected from the steel whip and just run your radio with a stubby little GMRS antenna hidden on the Jeep somewhere.

Are you able to analyze and trim the whip to the right length?

If you're transmitting on the 462 MHz main channels from your KG1000, your duplexer and repeater must be able to reject it, or it couldn't function as a full duplex repeater. If you're transmitting on the 467 MHz main channels that are the input channels for the repeater, then I agree with Leo, you could interfere with reception at the repeater.

This! The vast majority of people who buy and use GMRS just want to talk to each other. Most don’t even know or care about this site or repeaters, much less linked repeaters. Whether they use repeaters or not, if they end up unable to hear each other because of chatter that’s coming from linked repeaters, they probably won’t be impressed. It turns out I’m not in favor of linking, but I also don’t think the FCC is handling this correctly. I don’t think the regulations amount to prohibiting linking, even though their interpretation now says so.

It’s not mobile, it’s handheld, but it’s a real scanner designed for the air band. This will allow you to select a GMRS radio for its GMRS performance rather than worrying about including air band, but the KG1000G that Gil recommended above is an excellent GMRS radio!: https://www.mypilotstore.com/MyPilotStore/sep/15328?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_uYzJoyN5lXiCWSPx0R_fYtfIf1&gclid=CjwKCAjwuMC2BhA7EiwAmJKRrC3HmXpv8iPzAbs3NiYJFCWSdTwqoaVhXNEf37LsgmOidxGQ-ImHqhoCKU0QAvD_BwE

Welcome from Montana!

First, welcome! Suggestions? Give us more details. Do you have the right channel? Do you have the right tone? Have you ever connected? With no tones do you hear anything?

You’re in great company and it sounds like we’d like your wife too! Welcome!

Welcome! I hope you enjoy it here.

Maybe. The way I thought of this was that the connection between each repeater and a Fixed Station would be hardwired, not RF, so I don’t think it would fall under 93.303.

How does it transmit to the input on a different channel and then carry the response back to the origin? If you draw a diagram mapping the connections I think you’ll see the problem. I want to transmit to repeater A and I want people on repeater A to hear my transmission. I also want repeater B to hear my transmission and reproduce it on a channel that people can hear, right? Then, I want to hear the people who transmit back to B I believe it would be possible to create an RF link using GMRS frequencies but you must have the link isolated from the repeater frequencies. That could be done using Fixed Stations on the GMRS channels. Fixed Stations are allowed to transmit and receive on either the 462 or 467 MHz Main Channels. So you end up with two repeaters operating as repeaters and two full duplex transceivers (same as a repeater) operating as Fixed Stations, tightly beaming communications to each other for the link.