SteveShannon

I appreciate your reply. Thank you 

Funny story (since the statute of limitations has long expired) - in the mid-1980's a fellow ham and I drove his lemon yellow Vista wagon (think "That 70's Show") to Ohio, which was the closest place to buy legal fireworks at the time. We picked up an entire car full of commercial-grade ones (packed to above the window lines), put some blankets over them and drove back to New Jersey. Just after crossing the Delaware River back into NJ, the car conked out (again, think "That 70's Show"). We had a bag phone and called for a tow to bring us the whole 60 miles back to Wyckoff, NJ. We kept getting "helpful" police pulling over and asking us if we needed help, and we were "Nope - all good - called for a tow" and showed them (newfangled at the time) Mobira bag phone to distract them.

The tow truck finally came and brought us to Wyckoff. We paid the tow truck driver and let him take whatever he wanted of the fireworks as a tip.

We had enough to last several years. The second year, 2 friends and I went in a windowless van to see the official Holmdel (near Bell Labs) fireworks show. We thought the official show was pretty lame, and had a van full of fireworks, so... we set up our own show behind the bleachers. The people putting on the official show began to notice that people in the bleachers were looking behind the bleachers at our better show, and eventually some burly guards came strolling over. We packed up everything into the van and took off back to the house in Holmdel. As we were driving away, I remarked to my two friends that "I just realized I've become the person my parents warned me about".🤣

This is the perfect place. I’m glad you’re feeling better and I hope for the best for you. 

Terri,
Again I want to express my appreciation for your calm and thoughtful comments and informative posts in response to curmudgeonliness.  Happy Independence Day!

I want to thank everyone for their help! I have not been on here for quite a while! I have stage four brain cancer and it has really taken a toll on me! I am feeling better for now thanks to the treatment! 
I still have difficulty with simple things, I am not sure I am putting my thanks in the correct place??? But everyone on here has very helpful with my questions and I see I have been on here for a year! Doesn’t seem like it!!! 
anyway my thanks to everyone! 

Thank you very much!! 

Best wishes for you 521. I'm glad you are here to post.

Oh, my! That sounds serious!
Can you tell us more about what will happen if he (or anyone) makes a pest of themself?

Terri,
Again I want to express my appreciation for your calm and thoughtful comments and informative posts in response to curmudgeonliness.  Happy Independence Day!

Yes. They have a very nice couple of GMRS radios that have full maps and display your buddies on them.  You can send messages as well.
https://www.thegpsstore.com/Garmin-Rino-755T-Handheld-GPS-with-FRS-Radio-and-Topo-Maps-P4959.aspx?gclid=Cj0KCQjwiIOmBhDjARIsAP6YhSVYNu1RFB0RsbBYg5hgBllGY173cGXr7mVRm5gnkIV5O9UDmFi1_CEaAheNEALw_wcB

It sounds like the Baofeng just doesn't have the "legs" to reach the repeater. Even given the same nominal wattage, some radios just have a little better reach than others.

That's about as close to a smoking gun as you're going to get from the FCC. They are aware that people are using surplus Part 90 equipment - and they don't intend to anything to stop that use.
 
As others have mentioned, there's never been a single enforcement action by the FCC against anyone for using Part 90 equipment in Part 95.  If you've been around the block with the FCC a few times, you begin to realize that many of the rules have been written after the fact.

Terri,
Again I want to express my appreciation for your calm and thoughtful comments and informative posts in response to curmudgeonliness.  Happy Independence Day!

Hi Steve

I am new to GMRS, that being said I don't understand LOL. Im using chirp now cause the WOUXUN programming software was giving errors on my windows 11. so I feel lost on what settings I should be using


Thanks
 

Its easiest to start with the pre-programmed channels so you can see what they look like in CHIRP.. Once you figure that out you can then create your own new, custom channels.
Re Tone or TSql, i believe @SteveShannon already answered that question in your other post, and because he is an officially-recognized HERD, you should listen to what he says.

The output power isn’t meaningless, but it has much less of an effect than the antenna height and gain. A 20 watt radio can easily transmit 100 miles if there are no obstructions, but obstructions are common.  A fifty watt radio cannot overcome obstructions, but it can power its way through vegetation which might attenuate the signal of a less powerful radio until it cannot be detected. There are lots of threads which discuss which antennas work well and how and where to mount them. And attenuation affects signals in both directions.
So, more important than the output power is the cable, the antenna gain, the antenna mounting position, and the antenna height. Personally I use a db20g radio with a Midland MXTA26 antenna on the center of my steel roof using a magnetic mount from Midland.

You spelt farz wrong.

IIRC something like this will occur if you are using the 935G software instead of the software specifically for the 935G PLUS radio.. are you sure you are using the Plus version of the software and not the regular 935G software?  
You can download it here: https://www.buytwowayradios.com/downloads/dl/file/id/1572/product/5920/wouxun_kg_935g_plus_programming_software.zip
If you are already using the correct software then my only other response is "this sounds like a Windows issue".

Less risk, but not no risk.  The coax might still be at risk. What’s the breakdown voltage for the insulation of the coax?  A long piece of coax exposed to a high voltage pulse at one end but disconnected at the other end can still be damaged.  And what about the center conductor?  It isn’t grounded unless you have done something to ground it.  Depending on the design the antenna radiator elements are not usually connected to ground.

That won’t protect the radio at all. Electrons don’t stop instantly and between the antenna connector and the power input there’s a lot of components that are at a different potential than the coax shield and center conductor. 
Yes, it’s not cheap. 
Tying all of the legs to a single ground rod requires changing the path of the discharge. Having a ground for each provides a straight path to ground, plus having more rods reduces the impedance going to the ground. In an engineered ground system such as a substation you might even see a ground mat, chemicals, and other things done to minimize the resistance and create a large bed of equal potential. 

Remember that I personally work in the commercial two-way field.  Ham's and GMRS folks have the ability to disconnect their gear.  Police and fire don't.  And again, a public safety dispatch site really can't.  They need stuff up and operational all the time.  The stuff I am talking about is what gets done with their setups and what keeps them on the air. 
If you disconnect your antenna line from your radio then it's no different than leaving it connected IF everything is properly grounded and bonded.  Because the lines, tower, and equipment is all still grounded. 
Something I forgot to mention with grounding and bonding.  And the reason you bond the coax cables to the tower at the top, every 100 feet down and then at the bottom where the cable turns out of the tower and goes to the building is the magnetic pulse that happens if the tower does get hit.  Due to the extreme currents that are present during the event (strike) there is a significant magnetic field that surrounds the tower.  We all know that a wire will have a field around it as current passes through it.  It's how motors work.  Now crank that from a 6 volt battery to lightning.  EVERY conductor that's around that structure taking the hit is exposed to that field.  And remember that we pass coils of wire in magnetic fields to generate power.  Again, little DC generator hooked to a light bulb with a couple small magnets will light a light bulb when we spin the generator with our fingers.  Turn that up to lightning power and magnetic fields.  So we BOND the coax shield, since it's a conductor back to the tower to equalize that induced current and voltage and shunt it back to the tower and ultimately to ground.
There is a LOT of science to bonding and grounding of towers and antenna systems.  There are some of use that have went down that rabbit hole and have a reasonable understanding of this. 
And I will say this, keeping it simple.  Cars get hit by lightning, even though they are on rubber tires.  And the reason is that 6 inches of rubber ain't enough to keep an arc that's thousands or tens of thousands of feet in length from hitting a car with 4 inches of rubber.  And they get hit because they aren't grounded.  You ever get a bite from a car getting in or out?  It's a thing. But a glass jar isn't gonna keep that genie in the bottle any more than 4 inches of rubber is gonna keep your car from being hit.  IT has to be grounded properly or you are INVITING a strike.
 
 

Terri,
Again I want to express my appreciation for your calm and thoughtful comments and informative posts in response to curmudgeonliness.  Happy Independence Day!

I think radio waves are the same as audio frequencies - resonance....either you are in tune or not.
Something we are all familiar with

Happy Independence Day!

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, and since this is a (mostly) GMRS group of users, I don't know that you'll find [m]any dissenting voices here.

I'll just point out that BTECH had working, final BF-F8HP Pro hardware in April 2024 at firmware version 9 when I came on board, and my continuous "here's a bug", "we need to make this better", "we need this new feature" meant that the radios shipped 6 months later at the beginning of October 2024 at V29, including a complete re-write of the menus by me to real US English.

V33 was released in the middle of November, 2024 to fix a few bugs we knew about (the radios had to be initially programmed during manufacturing) and we managed to get in fixes for a few user-reported bugs and quite a few user-requested features within the 6 weeks between V29 and V33. V44 shipped in mid-April, 2025 with the CPS 1.2.5m that supports all of the new V33 and V44 features being released at the beginning of June, 2025. V44 and its CPS add quite a few features requested by users and lays the foundation for additional improvements.
These radios are updatable by the user, with the same cable used for programming, and any upgrade problems will either be addressed by support email (when possible) or via warranty replacement( (if needed). I'll also mention that nobody has ever bricked a BF-F8HP Pro while updating it (and believe me, I've had many chances as I've done every firmware release from V8 through V44, across 9 radios (ranging from hand-built engineering samples to pre-production units to early production, and then finally a bunch of production units). Many of these firmware features are exclusive to BTECH, either in perpetuity or for various numbers of years. There's no 'generic' version of this radio and there won't ever be. The user-updatable firmware means that a radio you bought on release day, today, or in the future will all be able to run the latest firmware.

Even before V29 and the radio's release, I was showing it to select users (it had no labeling except for some marker dots in the battery compartment, and I changed the official boot screen to an actual picture of a boot to not give away where it would eventually be coming from). The universal response was "Wow! A Baofeng that doesn't <bleep>!". Before you dismiss it, take a look at the Release Notes below, which shows what has changed in the firmware between V29 and V44:
vers-old.pdf