SteveShannon

Here's a pic of the old overcrowded tower. The GMRS antenna, a Tram 1486-B, is on the left rear side standoff. It's time to get the second tower up if ever I get off my lazy butt to do it. One day it will go up.  Nothing worse than leaving 120' of tower unused  and unloved.
 

This works fine for me. Not even a flicker on the TV when I key up my 20w base.

That’s a hard question. In terms of greatest likelihood of helping you hear weak signals, the antenna on the house is best, but what if there’s nothing to hear. 
I wouldn’t invest in a more powerful radio without hearing something first; a more powerful transmitter won’t fix your inability to receive. 

If I have added anyone to my ignore list, it’s certainly not your fault and it wouldn’t be entirely due to this thread anyway. 
And now we know that we all have the tools to ignore others’ signatures.

No. You would need to cut/trim the main (up and down) portion to get it tuned for GMRS. If you cut it too short, it could then be 'damaged', at least for use on GMRS.  I would not attempt this without an SWR meter.

I would leave it alone. To trim a dual band antenna for another frequency involves more that just shorting the radials.
I would recommend you look for a GMRS specific base antenna. Members here have some very good recommendations they can offer.

I always liked the hum of 192.8 Hz PL tone.

The radio that receives them filters them out.

I’m currently reading this book. It sticks with code, but refers to many other things/ concerns as well.
It stresses that you also need to comply with your local building code. Especially since you’re mounting this on someone else’s building. For insurance purposes along with public and fire safety, you need to do everything possible to protect yourself from liability.

Pretty much any service that is not broadcast AM or FM limits the voice band to approximately 6000Hz (Amateur AM and any remaining shortwave broadcasters run in a 6kHz bandwidth when including both sidebands, single sideband often runs less than 3kHz -- 2.4kHz is one of the settings on my rigs, or 2700Hz minus 300Hz). The services are designed for communication, and most vocal formants fall into the octave of 300-3000Hz -- they are NOT designed for musical fidelity (and definitely do not pass all the higher harmonics in the 3000-30000Hz octave [note: I'm using octave in terms of order of magnitude: 30-300, 300-3000, 3000-30000, even though the 20000-30000 is pretty much inaudible to humans... NOT musical octave where an octave is a doubling -> 440A to 880A, etc. 300-3000Hz covers about 2.5 music octaves]
Broadcast FM has a 200kHz channel spacing; not certain how much is actually used for signal deviation. Broadcast AM uses 10kHz spacing (5kHz per sideband -- so just one sideband is almost the entire width of shortwave double-sideband AM).
 

Clearly I am responsible for causing this thread to take a downward turn, and for that I apologize.
Since the US is neither socialist nor communist, I didn't, and still don't see that the content of the phrases that I co-opted into my signature temporarily were actually all that objectionable.  MichaelLAX is correct however, that political statements such as the one I made, really have no place on this board.  
No one should be ignoring, blocking, or cancelling valuable input from others due to my poor judgement.  
Onward and upward...including the temperature please!
 

Wow this is great information. Thank you for taking your time to retrieve this info for me.

That site is a great resource...we've been half looking at houses, and I've been running potential homes against that to see what i'd be be up against for the hobby, both figuratively and literally.

For the win!

Wow, someone voted down my comment? Sheesh... so much for trying to help. Guess someone missed the "don't get but-hurt' part.
 
As far as your comments, Steve, I agree. Unfortunately true communism as you mentioned would be perfect, but human beings are inherently selfish and lazy. I guess that's why it has never worked.
 
And yes, ignoring it or a PM would be better, for sure.

Have I mentioned my poor impulse control? LoL

At our last ham club meeting we had a presentation about terrain assessment and antennas. The website https://www.heywhatsthat.com  was brought up.  You can put in your location your antenna height above ground and see how far you can "see".    Because of my location, I can hit repeaters east of me  with not much height but I found out I can put an antenna at 50 ft and still not go west.

We have people in Minnesota and North Dakota that's as close as I get to -12 so you won't hear me complain about the cold.... wait, what? -34!!! Real feel -31? what kind of weather app crack is that? It's -34 but at least it feels like -31?  The app should just say warning stay inside.  As usual the site is restricting my number of likes so Happy Monday and stay warm. I removed my weather info out of respect to you both. ?
 
 

Happy Monday, my butt. It’s cold outside.

You’re absolutely right.  I should have ignored @MichaelLAX; it wasn’t my place to react. I have no excuse.

@Sshannon I find to be a good example of how to be on the forum, helpful as often as possible and almost always one to take the high road. @MichaelLAX I have also witnessed being helpful to others here including me. I don't always agree with his approach, I will say you know where he stands. The signature as I see it was intended to provoke, push buttons. Mission accomplished. So respectfully sure you could ignore it and by that theory you could ignore @MichaelLAX's response. I thought @Sab02r was being a big person in removing it. As for "I don't make a habit of kowtowing to the perpetually offended" That just proves what the intent was in the first place. And that is the problem as I see it.  Be good humans or don't, your choice. Why do I bother with my thoughts here? I enjoy the community and I like learning and helping others. That is what I enjoyed in my work before I retired. I like radios. The stuff in this thread... not so much. 

What you are hearing is a digital transmission, probably DMR.  DMR is not permitted on GMRS, but that doesn't mean someone isn't using it.

I will put together some programming worksheets for you to complete and I will email them to you. I doubt that the Motorola or other shops are willing or have the ability to program the codeplugs for these radios for you. You may want to make some calls to see if anyone can and/or willing, I can email the codeplug file(s) to you for to take to the shop.
Is there any chance you can provide me with the model numbers of the radio(s) you want to program to see if I have the same model and feature set so I can build the codeplug file(s) without your radios at first?.
The MT2000 radio comes in two versions, 48 channels or 160 channels. The 48 channel radio has a top six digit display and is referred as the A4 version and the 160 channel radio has a front face display with a full keypad and has a twelve digit display and is referred to as the A7 version. The display can be configured with either or both the Zone and Channel names with adjustable number of digits not to exceed a total of twelve. I.E., if you elect to have the Zone name with four digits than you can only have the channel name with eight digits.
If you elect to have the top rotary knob as the channel selector than you will be limited to 16 channels per Zone. You can have as many zones as you want but, you can't exceed a total of 160 programmed radio positions. You will have the ability to select your zones through the keypad and/or the first three zones with the top A/B/C with if you elect to have that feature switch enabled.
Food for thought
I'll try to express your programming features options in the worksheets.

There is a small gray x on the right hand side of each person’s signature. Just below the reaction button. It removes just that person’s signature from your view. I never noticed it before now. 

Don't go buttering me up just yet MichaelLAX, 
Though I am not unreasonable, I don't make a habit of kowtowing to the perpetually-offended.