jmoylan69

you know, i cant believe it. i totally spaced it on those. and we covered that a couple months back in ham class. wow. talk about your Brain *%^*&^% and its perfect, made for the 2m to 70cm bands. i like it.

no, not directly because power is a product of current and volts. that is, watts is a product of current in amps and volts, however you could in theory devise a way to determine the amps being delivered to the antenna if you could separate the antenna from the radio, make a series connection thus leaving it connected and measuring amps. if you remover the antenna and try to key up without some load, ooops there it went. then you'd need to measure volts separately and thereby get a conversion for watts. however, this is what your antenna analyzer is doing for you. my thoughts on the issue

i've thought about getting a UV82 or another baofeng. how you liking the UV82?

I am not sure id worry to much about trees, 70CM wavelength can usually cut through and bounce around pretty good to make contact. but buildings and allot of them at street level may pose a small problem for those folks, other than that i don't think you should have much of an issue. but hey, experiment and go have fun

And the fee will effectively be eliminated LOL

look at the bright side, when the SFinally H's T Fan, there wont be very many people alive to tie up the radio anyway.

I have 5 and i have no issues with the quality of my UV5R's. This brings me to something that i have noticed over the many many years. I have NEVER heard of anyone talk about its "application", or reasoning for wanting to get what they are looking at? What in the world do you the end user want to do and what do you NEED to do? how far do you need to be talking? this means "you" and in the general sense pertaining to anyone looking to buy these. I could very easily spend well over $1,000 bucks on a ham multi band base unit in the 15, 10, 6 meter bands if i were "INTERESTED" in talking all over the friggin world. I'm not the least bit interested so dont rightly care and therefor having a radio that costs a total of 65 bucks for HT and Antenna is perfect when i can meet my needs talking 25 miles. Yet we as people tend to have our own biases and prejudices about things we like and dont like and tend to force these upon others whether we realize it or not. I dont view mine as JUNK but see it as a "application specific" unit. in this sense its not junk at all but a highly useful tool that says "why spend $250 to $400" bucks on a major leading brand radios to do the same thing you can get out of that 40 dollar unit? And if i destroy it, drive over it, drop in inside a water tank, burn it up in a wildland fire or what have you i'm not out $250 -$1200 bucks (like a bendix king). The cheaper radio's have their place and i personally feel its best left to the end user/purchaser to best decide that aspect. I feel we can be better help people by simply asking them what it is they would like to do...first, before we start recommending or giving opinions. Most come here seeking advice or information because they simply dont want to spend more money on something than they have to, or they want to know something they are interested in for "their application" will work. So from me, i don't consider them junk. To me, now, a 4 watt CB is the most worthless JUNK on the planet and an absolute waste of money and time to even consider purchasing.... so its all subjective and relative to one and only one constant that will NEVER EVER CHANGE....US individuals and OUR Personal Desire and interest!

YEP what corey said above. had to do a re edit here, i did not even notice Steve's comments. but yet yes steve and corey have it right if you look up the regs and how it all reads. SteveC just gave you the locations to look it up.

Welcome, i am not sure about your area as far as buildings etc. but here in Nevada, we've got wide open spaces and plenty of mountain ranges, i have a Ritron RRX-450 that im going to be placing up. its 8 watts 100% duty cycle. im in the process of working on getting agreements with the folks who already have buildings and antenna masts to co locate. for you i would not imagine that it would be any different. except for maybe local ordinances codes etc. should be fairly easy. hook up with a few radio guys in your area. (HAM) and they can help you. Did some checking. Conroe is 38 air miles north of Houston. and spring is about half way point. Id call these guys and ask them if they know of any businesses or shops that might be willing to allow you to co-locate a repeater. http://www.twarc.org/ keep this in mind. i use a radio with LMR-400 feed line and a simple jpole antenna. i routinely hit repeater 50 miles out with EASE...(NO Its NOT a high end radio, its made in china) i have virtually NO buildings to be in my way. I do however have to shoot over a mountain range to hit the repeater. my antenna sits about 2 feet above my roof. if it were higher, much higher id probably get 80 miles out of it. but for you i fear people on the ground level with allot of buildings may cut that range WAY down. perhaps some of the folks who live in cities areas can comment. on a side note out here. i can hit a repeater and talk just fine from one of our Ham 70CM jobs, its a solar powered 2 watt and YES they work and get out. so don't be discouraged about low power. but good feed line like LMR-400 and a high gain dipole will greatly help you in your area, even it were powered by a 5 watt handheld!!

Just to add substance (if needed) to what N4GIX just mentioned, here is that FCC reg that clarifies or states such. 47 CFR § 95.5 Licensee eligibility. (a) An individual (one man or one woman) is eligible to obtain, renew, and have modified a GMRS system license if that individual is 18 years of age or older and is not a representative of a foreign government. ( A non-individual (an entity other than an individual) is ineligible to obtain a new GMRS system license or make a major modification to an existing GMRS system license (see§ 1.929 of this chapter). however, companies in the PAST used to be able to be licensed under GMRS. you can do a search on the FCC database and see this be the case where a company name will show up, however, all that i have seen are long long since expired.

95.179 sections 1-7 do not state that immediate family must reside with you. the language is specific § 95.179 Individuals who may be station operators. (a) An individual GMRS system licensee may permit immediate family members to be station operators in his or her GMRS system. Immediate family members are the: (1) Licensee; (2) Licensee's spouse; (3) Licensee's children, grandchildren, stepchildren; (4) Licensee's parents, grandparents, stepparents; (5) Licensee's brothers, sisters; (6) Licensee's aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews; and (7) Licensee's in-laws. there is no place listed under this ruling that states they must or shall be domiciled in the same household. what is said is that you may allow those listed to be operators of "his or her system"...system would include handhelds repeaters etc. the FCC set the case for what they are declaring immediate family members, having listed aunts, uncles and nieces etc as well as "in-laws"...so how likely is it that the in-laws will be living in your house?

RTSYSTEMSINC.COM i have 7 radios and it works for all of them. flawlessly it took me no time to ditch chirp!! Chirp is a nice idea but has to much garbage and crap to deal with, all this stupid pasting and copying...i mean get real. i have one file and send it to 7 different handhelds with different firmware versions with no issue AT ALL! thats how software is supposed to be.

There is commercial power available on it already. the model i have is only 8 watts. but the repeater will sit over 9500 feet up and has a 100% duty cycle. I have my HT's that on 1 watt have no issues reaching 15 miles with ease to my jpole at the house on a slight elevation so im not to worried about an 8watt repeater that sits over 9500 feet up. Unlike most, posts i have read that want to reach waaaaaayyyyy out there. to me they need to be in the HF band. I only want moderate range but with excellent duty cycle. so i think this will work out fine.

Just purchased a patriot 450 as well for the northern nevada Battle Mountain Areas. plan on having it up and working this spring when i can get it up on the mountain top. FYI.