kmcdonaugh

I would just like to thank everyone in this thread for the 20 minutes of entertainment you guys just gave me.

Usually if you just tag @rdunajewski he will get it removed within a few days. Not too many admins here and people lives to live. Give them some time.

Flintrock Hill repeater in the Austin, Tx area easily has the most coverage, I've personally hit it 40 miles away and other people have claimed to hit it up to 60 miles

Wait until you find out how much your cell phone is spying on you

I literally read this entire thread purely for its entertainment value.

Are you within range of a linked repeater? Keep in mind not all repeaters are linked

I would tune it to 465 MHZ, which means cutting it to the following lengths. L1 needs to be trimmed to 15 3/8 inches L2 needs to be trimmed to 9 13/16 inches However, do not try and trim down to the specified length at once. (Trust me I know, I screwed this up once), Cut a little bit off at a time toward the desired length. After cutting L1 and L2 a little bit each time, re-attach them and measure the SWR again, and then cut again, etc. You will slowly see the SWR starting to come down. The reason for doing this is to not accidentally cut it too short, in which case there is nothing you can do. Side Note: You can get a really good SWR, DO NOT try to get a perfect 1 SWR. Is it possible? Yes. Is it easy? No. Most people consider any SWR lower than 2 as a " good" SWR. Me personally, I try to get it close to 1.5. Also having said this, do not do it immediately! Some one else in this forum may have a better way than I know of. There is a wealth of knowledge here!

This is the correct answer. If you have a long enough cable between the receiver and the transmitter, you may be able to get away with it, but having said that, if you are using a short cable to connect the two, due to most radios having very poor shielding, your transmitter will most likely drown out your receiver, and you will get very poor results.

Mygmrs.com and forums.mygmrs.com are two separate websites with two different log ins. If you log in to forums.mygmrs.com and then go back to the maps on mygmrs.com, you are still not logged in to mygmrs.com. It gets confusing the way it is set up. In order to see the tones, you will have to have an account and log in to "mygmrs.com" NOT forums.mygmrs.com.

The only linked repeaters I know of are in San Antonio and Houston. Houston is the mygmrs linked network and San Antonio is the Alamo linked network. So even those two cities are not on the same network. Side note: There is one linked repeater on the mygmrs network in Mexia, Tx.

I actually already have a pi 3 model B that I haven't used for anything. I tried to get a node number and password to link my repeater, but haven't heard anything yet

If the repeater owner does not log in and "update" the repeaters after 365 days, the repeaters go in to "stale" status. In order for them to show up on the map in "stale" status is to go to settings (gear icon), and turn on "show stale repeaters"

A better question is if they will ever get the linked repeater package back in stock or even just the SD cards

Cell phone towers, specifically new 5G towers. Probably still has 4G as well. But 5G has much higher bandwidth, but does not have as much range

Not everybody wants to get an amateur license.

Nice! That is good. I'll have to look up what firmware version was running on the UV5R for the guy who said it wouldn't work anymore when he tried it.

Nothing major that takes away from the radio. But they removed some of the amateur specific settings that weren't really used a whole lot in GMRS. But considering these are also amateur scanners who knows. From Wouxun. -"The menu, button and function names on the original KG-1000G were consistent with similar amateur radio models. Some amateur features remained in the menu even though they weren't useful for GMRS, and some button and function names were somewhat cryptic and difficult to understand without a manual." Same thing with the UV5R from Baofeng. The original UV5R came completely unlocked. Then they started locking them. And we all know about the "unlock" for the newer versions of the UV5R. However as of last week, this unlock function appears to have disappeared on the newest models (I have yet to test this myself). Like I said, probably because the FCC yelled. And I get it the FCC is going to do FCC things, not arguing with that or saying they are wrong. Just saying its a bummer

You are completely right. A repeater that will give good range will have a cost associated. And those costs add up. Repeater, cable, tower rental, space in shelter for repeater, paying someone to climb the tower for install, maintenance. Not to mention most of these sites do not have any backup generator and if they do they may only last for an hour. But once you add up these costs it gets very expensive. And I just can't imagine a whole lot of people taking the time and paying the money out of pocket to get GMRS repeaters up the way ham is. Most of the GMRS repeaters that do have really good range, usually belong to some sort of club

So I have had some people swear up and down that LMR-400 should not be used on a repeater. That after some time the sensitivity will degrade and it "will cause noise". Now for what I use mine for, it is probably good enough. But I have researched a little bit, and found that yes, for repeaters that experience heavy use this could eventually become an issue. However, it seems that is the case for regular LMR-400. I have found that this noise is actually from wire braid coax, and that you can actually buy LMR-400 that isolates the the two shields so the wire braid is not touching the foil, and does not cause the noise. My question is, is this a serious enough problem for the average repeater owner to even care? My opinion is no.

This sounds like a good way to need a new windshield

A lot of people seem to underestimate what a better antenna with just a little bit of a higher gain can do for them. And of course just getting the antenna higher. Height is might.

Most of the plus models I have seen though actually limit the radios more than they actually open things up though. Per the KG-1000G and the KG-1000G Plus. Probably due to getting yelled at by the FCC about something

I have the Retevis RT97S in almost exact same set up you have. The main difference, I do have an external antenna, and I get 20 miles coverage out of mine

That is the opposite of a problem

In their defense, some companies make it awful to try and program an offset in to the radio, because they won't just call the setting "offset" or "Tx offset".