SteveShannon

I don’t know. Only Rich can answer that question.

Nice!

Here’s a video that describes programming the rt22:

I googled the manual. They’re called QT and DQT on page 05 of the manual. QT will be the tones. DQT will be the codes. I would provide more information if I had one in my hand to try the different buttons and see what does what, but I guess you will have to do that.

You most likely have a CTCSS tone or DTCSS code set on receive on the Midland that differs from the RT22 transmit.

Do a report to export them to CSV and then use Chirp to import them to your radio.

You’re wrong, Leo. Air, and what’s in it, is the conductor for lightning, not an insulator. There are better conductors and better insulators but ionized air is actually a pretty good conductor. But who’s arguing about a couple feet?

Yes, but you asked how to stop those notices that appear at the upper level and the only way to do that is to change your password at the MyGMRS level.

Yes, change your password.

The rule of thumb is that the distance between ground rods should be twice the length of the ground rod. Anything less results in minimal additional protection. The wire is used for bonding, equalizing the potentials of the different ground rods, not carrying the full current of a surge. The nearby ground system takes the brunt of the current surge. A water jet might be able to do it, but maybe cutting the asphalt is easiest.

Exactly. Best is to disconnect it before it enters the house.

If you use 8’ ground rods they should be driven every 16’. There’s no benefit from placing them every 8 feet. Code doesn’t require 4 gauge. It requires 8 awg. I wouldn’t cut the asphalt, but I would go under it. Burying the ground wire is fine, even preferable. Look at this document: https://reeve.com/Documents/Articles Papers/Reeve_AntennaSystemGroundingRequirements.pdf

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.

Welcome! Feel free to ask whatever questions you might have. That’s how everyone starts. We don’t do much one on one consulting because whatever questions you have, someone else is likely to have, or perhaps has been asked before and we can point you towards the answer.

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.

I’ve reported this to Rich.

Because the ground line of the power supply is isolated from the plus and minus 13.8 vDC lines that provide power to your radio or DC power distribution box.

Thanks! I feared that might be the case.

If you do choose a ground plane antenna, mount it to the center of the roof. That’s the single most effective place to mount an antenna, but it brings with it other challenges: is the roof metal? If not you’ll need a sheet of metal to provide the ground plane. Is the roof strong enough to withstand the vibration of the mount and antenna? Do you go through car washes? Etc.

And here it is. Antennas are tuned to specific frequencies. When they’re used at frequencies other than those they’re tuned for, the results are usually bad. Also, the cable used for a CB antenna is usually very lossy at GMRS frequencies. So, as Randy said, no.

It still appears in the database, but browsing the map it doesn’t appear. I don’t know why. I tried it with offline and stale both turned on.

You are the opposite of a “Sad Ham”. Great job!

Obviously you don’t ground a fiberglass mast, but your coax shield is attached to part of the antenna somewhere and it will develop a charge as air currents pass over it. Now the difference in potentials is between the metal parts of the antenna connected to the shield of the coax and the service ground, again going through your equipment and possibly you. One of the purposes of a surge suppressor (commonly called a lightning protector but nobody guarantees that) is to allow you to bond the coax shield to the grounding system.

Use one of the many coax loss calculators to see if the loss for that length is acceptable to you.

Let’s disregard lightning protection for a few minutes and just talk about bonding to your house service ground. Your tower is sort of grounded. We all agree with that I think. It’s embedded in an imperfect conductor, concrete, at the bottom. To improve the grounding a ground wire runs from each leg of the tower to a ground rod. But any two separate ground rods are almost always at different potentials. Whenever you have different potentials between two points in a circuit you will have electric currents flowing from one point to the other. So, the three or four legs of the tower are bonded together using a material that is more conductive than the tower itself. Otherwise you have current flowing between the legs of your tower. If current flows between the legs of your tower over time the metal of the tower will corrode. Bonding between the three or four legs provides an easier path for the current to flow which keeps the legs all at the same potential. In addition your antenna mount is certainly connected electrically to your tower and your coax shield is connected to your antenna mount. Your coax shield then runs to your radio. If you have a watt meter, amplifier, or any other device between your radio and your antenna, they are all connected serially via the coax shield. Their metal cases are all connected to the coax shield. So all of the devices in your shack are connected together via the coax shield. If a power surge comes through the shield (static, lightning, unicorn farts, whatever) it is going to cause current to flow through your equipment because that’s the most direct path. By bonding the chassis of all those devices to a single point, we provide a much better path that doesn’t flow through those devices. So that’s why we use a single point ground. But remember, that single point ground is connected to ground at the tower. You power your radio with a power supply that’s plugged into your house power. Its case is connected to the ground wire in the outlet which runs back to the service panel where it’s bonded to the service ground for the utility power coming into your house. It has to be because NEC says so. So let’s say you don’t have your single point ground bonded to your service ground. You reach out to touch your radio and at the same time your brush your other hand on the power supply. The potential of your tower ground, which is what your one hand is touching, is probably different than the potential of the service ground, which is what your other hand is feeling. And it’s DC. Your heart can be stopped by as little as 1/10 of an ampere. So you die. So we bond the tower ground to the utility ground to ensure they are at the same potential and save your life. Also with fewer ground currents in the shack we hear less noise.