SteveShannon

I'm sorry. In the context you intended it was not snarky. I must have been overly sensitive that day.

Although Diamond doesn’t specifically say no ground plane, they do declare that the antenna will work nearly anywhere on a vehicle:

Not the radio battery but perhaps a small battery or super cap installed on the pc board whose only purpose is to support the chip that stores settings. But I agree; the failure you’re talking about would destroy your confidence in Wouxun.

I’m the worst at thread-creep, but this sounds more like the battery or capacitor than a chip failure. In a computer it would be like the battery for the real time clock.

High Frequency (HF) amateur bands have the greatest range, but propagation can vary. Yesterday I was easily able to talk to a ham many hundreds of miles away (Butte, MT to Chelan, WA), but at the same time I could not hear a ham who was thirty miles away in Anaconda, MT because our signals were passing over each other’s heads. GMRS has no range advantage over amateur UHF. Neither does amateur UHF have a range advantage over GMRS. Their ranges are practically identical. But, there are many times more amateur repeaters than there are GMRS repeaters and unlike GMRS the amateur repeaters may be linked together in networks. On Saturday I used my 70 cm handheld and talked to a repeater 30-40 miles away which was linked to a worldwide net at the time.

If a means of emergency communications is truly important, other members of the community should be willing to help pay to do it right.

I agree with @WRKC935; you shouldn’t feel that way. Hopefully my answer didn’t contribute to you feeling that way. I hope you ask more questions and I hope someday you enjoy helping others here. There will always be those people who attempt to make themselves feel better by attempting to make someone else feel worse. @Socalgmrs is one of those people. He especially relishes trolling newcomers. You did nothing wrong! One of the features of the forum software is the ability to place other users on an ignore list. SocalGMRS is on my ignore list because I enjoy not seeing his trolling.

No, I don't believe there are any part 97 rules which prohibit ham radio stations from transmitting on frequencies other than the ham bands. There is no certification of ham transmitters (except linear amplifiers). There are rules within some of the services which prohibit certifying transmitters for those services if they can be used on ham bands, and there are rules which prohibit using transmitters which are not certified for the service, but there are no specific rules in Part 97 that say a radio may not be tuned out of band.

Ahh, so it was. I apologize.

That’s not correct. A GMRS radio could be certified for multiple services. The last sentence (italics) could be interpreted to prohibit transmission in VFO mode. Here’s the rule: No GMRS transmitter will be certified for use in the GMRS if it is equipped with a frequency capability not listed in § 95.1763, unless such transmitter is also certified for use in another radio service for which the frequency is authorized and for which certification is also required. No GMRS transmitter will be certified for use in the GMRS if it is equipped with the capabilities to operate in services that do not require equipment certification, such as the Amateur Radio Service. All frequency determining circuitry (including crystals) and programming controls in each GMRS transmitter must be internal to the transmitter and must not be accessible from the exterior of the transmitter operating panel or from the exterior of the transmitter enclosure.

I thought perhaps LEARN was an acronym for Lawrence Emergency Amateur Radio Network. He might be from Lawrence County.

The FCC doesn’t collect a physical station address for either amateur or GMRS. They’ve stated that a PO Box is fine.

Welcome to the forums. Only people in the Denver area are likely to be able to talk to you because of the distance limitations of GMRS. Your best bet would be to look at the map here to see what repeaters exist in your area and look at the clubs to see which ones are in your area.

You’re just a young guy! Before Tandy Radio Shack there was Allied Radio Shack and before Allied Radio Shack there was Allied Radio and Radio Shack, two separate companies. Allied Radio was a well respected competitor of Lafayette. Not everything sold by Radio Shack has been poor quality. They even sold some reasonable quality coax but they also sold some crappy coax as well. Personally I prefer to stay away from inexpensive coax. I would rather use quad shielded RG6 for UHF, even at 75 ohms, than some of the lossy 50 ohm cable.

I don’t recall ever saying that you are using the wrong coax. I pointed out that RG8x has a foam dielectric and RG58 has a solid dielectric and that’s why RG58 is frequently used for mobile installations. RG400 also has a solid dielectric and a tiny outside diameter. It’s expensive though. A person could build a Frankenstein cable using RG400 where needed and something with less attenuation elsewhere to make up the necessary length, but the splice points reduce reliability and potentially add losses. Also, nothing I’ve said has been demeaning or critical of you or in any way personal. I’ve tried to stick to factual information, demonstrating how I did any calculations.