SteveShannon

It’s always a good idea to go through your passwords from time to time, but that’s not what is needed to prevent someone from stunning or killing your radio. Your radio has an ANI. By default, all radios of that model are programmed with a factory default ANI. In order to stun or kill your radio two things must be true: 1. The stun or kill function must be enabled in your radio. 2. The person sending the stun or kill command must send it along with the ANI that is programmed into your radio. That’s especially easy if you never changed the ANI from the factory default. All someone would have to do is send out the stun or kill command with the factory default ANI. So, you should use Chirp or the factory CPS to change the ANI to be different from the factory default. Also, unless you have a reason, disable the ability of your radio to be stunned or killed.

I wouldn’t add Loctite unless the directions call for it. But I doubt it’d cause continuity issues. The aluminum oxide layer that forms almost immediately on aluminum surfaces is already a pretty good insulator but we’re dealing with alternating current in the UHF which waltzes through very thin layers of dielectrics.

The only way to do digital is to make a complete switchover. After some date stop certifying new products for 95B and 95E. People who have them can continue to use them but there will be no analog replacements available. There ought also to be a complete overhaul that does away with the convoluted mess of channels we now have. Get rid of FRS and GMRS completely and replace both services with a single unlicensed digital service. There might even be a very simple digital mode that is selected for this that is represented by a simple channel. I.e. no color code, no time slot, no encryption, etc, just a way to carve more very narrow channels out of the existing section of the spectrum.

It’s probably automated anyway. I’m a Volunteer Examiner. Our coordinator electronically turns in test results for ham radio candidates after 10 pm MST Thursday, which is after midnight in DC, and people get their licenses that day (Friday).

Sounds like the perfect reason for a business license.

There’s no need. That’s part of being a ham, getting to try different things.

DPL is just another name for DCS or even DTCSS. PL is just another name for CTCSS. Not all radios use the same numeric designation for either DCS or CTCSS, so you’ll have to look at the manual for your specific radio. For some radios you choose a numeric designation; for others you actually choose the code. Same for CTCSS; for some you choose a numeric designation and for others you select the actual frequency from a list. Yes, in the list you included 32 denotes DCS 205N. (There’s also inverted codes which would be like 205i). I don’t know how either of your radios require them to be entered, but the menu probably only allows one way or the other. Just try it.

Yes, they can fail. They can also have components that fail resulting in lots of electrical noise. That’s true of either the power supply or the radio. You could also have a speaker that starts sounding terrible. Plugging in headphones can rule that out. Or something in your house may be creating noise. LED Christmas lights are a prime example. Something hams will do is run the radio from a battery to eliminate external noise sources. We even go so far as to turn off the circuit breakers to the house one by one to determine what circuit is causing noise. The radio is probably least likely to generate the noise. Figure out a logical order to eliminate potential problems until you find the actual problem. Don’t just randomly check stuff. I would check the power supply first, then the house circuits.

The kind of contacts you’ve described are typically done using an HF radio on the ham bands. VHF and UHF (like GMRS) are really not great at making long distance contacts and for the most part the GMRS service is really not intended to make long distance contacts, although there are a few people who get on some of the networked repeaters on GMRS. If you just want to make quick contacts without actually talking to someone you might enjoy one of the digital modes, like FT8, where your computer decodes a list of incoming calls and you attempt to connect, just long enough for your two computers to exchange signal reports. If you actually wish to talk to someone HF phone or a digital handheld and a hotspot might be more interesting. There are a lot of us old men (I’m not offended at all, I’ve heard some conversations that really do nothing to attract others to the hobby) but not everyone is an old man, and with a little persistence you can find others who share your interests.

I have used simplex DMR on 70 cm amateur radio. It works well and gives me a fairly wide segment on radio spectrum to operate uninterrupted. Like RadioGuy, I don’t understand the desire to make GMRS something different when ham radio offers so much variety. The only thing it doesn’t allow is operating under the familial license.

Because GMRS is for common folks to buy off the Walmart shelf and use fairly informally. Part 90 radios and location specific rules make sense when commercial radio shops are in charge of configuration and sales.

Yeah, I have one of the ft4x radios also and I really like it. It’s small enough that I can easily carry it in a pocket. I put a stubby Diamond antenna on it too. That doesn’t improve the reception, but it’s sure convenient.

Almost all of the bands have a portion reserved for phone (voice) and a portion reserved for CW (carrier wave - which is very effective for Morse code). The use of phone or CW is also limited by class of amateur license (Technician - most limited, General, or Amateur Extra - least limited). A generic chart showing which class is allowed and where for each band is called a “band plan.” Some states have slightly different band plans as well. I’ll post the general band plan here: https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Regulatory/Band Chart/Band Chart - 11X17 Color.pdf

I have one. It’s a decent handheld radio. Yes, it can be unlocked. No, it’s not superheterodyne, but way more is made of that than makes sense. There are some extremely high end ham radios that are direct conversion. If you pay $125 you’re paying too much. All the ham radio outlets (not Amazon) probably have it for much less. Here’s an example of it for $90 at HRO: https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-015573

I have no idea.

What is generating the Morse code call sign? Is that integrated with the radio pair you’re using for a repeater or are you using a separate system like an id-o-matic?

So, looking at the protocol specification: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/10236101/02.04.01_60/ts_10236101v020401p.pdf it only makes sense that the payload is the only portion of the communication that’s encrypted. That means I’m very probably wrong in thinking that encryption would affect repeaters.

I might be misunderstanding. Is the entire data packet (including the Brandmeister ID) encrypted, or just the digital output of the audio codec? For example, the Brandmeister network requires a Brandmeister (BM) ID or it will ignore a transmission (I assume). If that BM ID is encrypted, the Brandmeister network wouldn’t be able to recognize it. Same for the talk group. So if that’s the case, (and maybe it’s not; maybe only the digitized audio is encrypted) then encryption would break the network connections, I would think.

I would think that encrypting a transmission at the transmitter would make it impossible to be received by a repeater in digital mode.

@Amagnono Welcome to the forums! Happy Thanksgiving!

I think all of the DMR repeaters in Montana are 70 cm. Our ham club is planning to replace our analog vhf repeater and we might include DMR.

It’s common for GMRS radios to transmit different power on different channels even. Getting wound up over a watt of variability is an exercise in obsessiveness and frustration.

It has sold out: https://www.radioddity.com/collections/business-radios-mobile-radios/products/radioddity-db20g but they also have this model, the db25g. I don’t have experience with it but others here do: https://www.radioddity.com/collections/business-radios-mobile-radios/products/radioddity-db25g

I bought two mxta26 antennas directly from Midland earlier this year when they had a sale for $39 each. Both have rusty set screws.

No. 1. Lightning arrester goes at the wall of the house at the other end of the coax from where you depict it, where the coax enters the house. You don’t need anything where you show the lightning arrester. I also would be very careful about those right angle coax connectors. Cheap ones can cost you 75% of your signal. 2. The ground wire goes from the lightning arrester to the utility ground, which is usually located below your service entrance. Almost no houses nowadays use a pipe as the ground. Feel free to post a picture of your service entrance and I’ll try to point out what to look for. I have a ground terminal block that I can connect to but if your electrical service hasn’t been worked on in the last 20 years you probably don’t.