WRQC527

It's very common to hear political banter on our ham repeaters, and the problem is that as soon as it happens, jammers come out of the woodwork. We have one who plays endless Trump recordings, and some who simply key down when politics comes up. We often avoid politics simply to avoid being jammed. It's a harsh reality when someone interferes with our freedom of speech, but anyone with a $20 Baofeng can cause no end of mayhem.

My wife and I go by Olive Oyl and Popeye.

Before you make any conclusions, try separating the radios like they would normally be used, like a hundred yards or something, and see how they work. Radios aren't really designed to work that well that close together.

Lol ya I should have clarified, because I had one too. There's a new crop of AM/FM CB HTs from President and Wouxun, and probably other clones.

I would say that user knowledge is required from a standpoint of how much power can be used on various frequencies, antenna height, identifying by call sign, usage rules (business vs personal, etc), who is covered by a license, etc. Not that everyone goes by all the rules, but by having a GMRS license, you have entered into an agreement with the FCC that you at least know the rules.

Yes, SAT phones are an excellent option. A little pricy to buy, but they can be rented for short-term use if I remember correctly.

I'll throw this thought out there. Every year here in southern California, hikers get lost or hurt in our local mountains. Most of them have no way to communicate, because they think their smart phones will save them. Where we go there is limited or no cell service. My ham friends and I never go out without radios. We have pre-arranged simplex frequencies and repeaters so we know that when 20+ people in our group get spread out on the trail, we can always communicate. If these hikers in distress had any kind of radios, ham, GMRS, MURS, FRS, or even one of these new CB HTs, they would have a much better chance of being located sooner, or possibly not getting lost in the first place. Getting hung up in an endless debate is rather counterproductive. Use whatever services you want. They all have pros and cons, so pick what works best for you and the people you want to communicate with.

I'm a ham because I enjoy the technical and experimental aspects of radio, and I enjoy making contacts around the world on H.F. I also like using it locally for communication with my many like-minded ham friends during outdoor activities like fishing and hiking. I use GMRS to communicate with my wife and other non-hams when I'm out hiking. That's why I got a GMRS license and GMRS gear. I'm not moving away from ham radio, I'm including it in my "tool box", as it were. Hopefully I'm not destroying both services by using both services.

Wow.

I mentioned to my wife a few days ago while I was running a net that ham radio was invented by wives to keep their retired husbands out of their hair. I'm 62, not yet retired, and I'm beginning to think she's right. GMRS appears to appeal to a somewhat different demographic than ham radio, although in some ways they do overlap.

I use GMRS because my wife and I can communicate with it. I'm a ham, she's not, so it works for us. I don't use 440 on ham frequencies because there's not much activity on it where I am. My ham friends and I use two meters all the time. There shouldn't be animosity between ham and GMRS, because it's simply two different methods. There's bad eggs on both sides. Don't be one, that's what I think.

That's some top-drawer drone footage right there!

In my experience, if you try to run a 1/4 wave, or especially a 5/8 wave antenna without a ground plane, the SWR is quite high, which at best will kill your signal, and at worst is not good for the radio. There is no real difference in performance between a 1/4 wave and a 1/2 wave if the 1/4 wave has a decent ground plane. In reality, a 1/4 wave without a decent ground plane will "underperform" a 1/2 wave. The 5/8 wave should outperform both the 1/4 and 1/2 wave antennas if it has a good ground plane because it has more gain. Antenna theory is voodoo science at its best.

I have a pair of Baofeng HTs that identify as BTech MURS-V1s. My wife and I use them for short-range comms when we're at our favorite cabin and I go off hiking myself. We're pretty much assured that absolutely no one will hear us or interfere with our comms because so few people know about MURS. It's supposed to be limited to 2 watts. I'm surprised it isn't more popular. There's actually quite a few decent radios out there, mobiles and HTs. Maybe the 2 watt limitation turns people off, but it's surprising what 2 watts on VHF can do. Not sure if I would run out and buy a $370 Wouxun KG-1000M, but a couple of HTs with mag mount antennas make a pretty nifty car-to-car setup, like CB without all the noise and idiocracy.

First, welcome in to the world of radio. It's a lot of fun, you can meet some very interesting people, and as you have already seen, the airwaves (especially repeaters), can be infested with troublemakers. The moderator on the roundtable you were on made the mistake of engaging the troublemaker by issuing "several warnings to stop acting up". This rarely works, the reason being that troublemakers are difficult to locate and they thrive on the attention. They love disrupting communications, and the more people complain, the more they do it. The only way to get them to stop is to ignore them completely, and not even mention the fact that they are making trouble. This comes hard to a lot of people. I've heard troublemakers on roundtables and nets for years on both amateur radio and GMRS, and as a moderator (net control) for some of them myself, it frustrates me to no end when people (especially moderators who should know better) engage them and try to talk them out of making trouble. Taking repeaters off the air when they are being jammed is a necessary evil with linked repeater systems to protect the rest of the users from jammers. Finding troublemakers is a very painstaking, time-consuming process, and it's only possible when the troublemaker is transmitting. And once they're located, there is not much, probably nothing, the FCC or anyone else will do unless it involves jamming of critical communications like law enforcement, emergency services, commercial users, etc. Don't give up though. Listen in, chime in when you can. It's always great when new people get involved. By the way, here's a fun fact, 62 years ago, I was born in the city you live in.

Good news that your noise is gone. I had this issue with a VHF/UHF radio installed in my Sienna, even after bonding everything. For those of you with chronic alternator whine, one way to tell where the noise is being fed into the radio is by removing the antenna from the radio. If the alternator noise persists, it may be coming in through the power leads, even if they are connected directly to the battery, which mine are. I ended up building a noise filter out of a Quick Link, 20 feet of 12 gauge stranded wire, and a 47k uf capacitor. It knocked out 99+% of the noise. Some will say my alternator is bad, but it's much cheaper to install a $20 filter than it is to drop $300 to replace a working alternator with a working alternator. Here's the link to the build: http://www.sanantoniohams.org/tips/whine.htm

All legality issues aside, since there is no end of debate over FCC rules, some very good multi-band UHF/VHF tranceivers that come from the factory (Yaesu, etc) locked into the ham bands can be modified with a simple MARS/CAP modification that will enable expanded transmitting, including GMRS. Google is your friend here.

One thing is for sure, having my ham call on my license plate makes me think twice about taking part in road rage. It helps me drive more courteously than I already do.

Same here in California. Ham plates cost $20 at the time of application, and you send a copy of your license. Unlike normal vanity plates, there is no additional yearly fee. The way California is set up now, the way to get your GMRS call sign on your plates is through the normal vanity call system, and pay an additional amount yearly when you renew your tags. I don't see California adding GMRS plates to the list of special plates like ham plates are.

It's also interesting to note that some plates that fall into the California "Special License Plate" category take an inordinate amount of time to process. Mine took 9 months, as well as several phone calls. If you're going to order them, do it right after you renew your tags so you have a full year to wait. If anyone really wants their GMRS license on their plates, maybe try getting it as a normal vanity plate.

Absolutely. The good thing is that from what I can see, it rarely happens. I hear more of my ham friends worrying about "what if the cops don't recognize my plates as ham radio plates and pull me over" than I do actual stories of people getting pulled over for it. Of the dozen or so friends of mine with actual ham plates, (not vanity plates with their call sign, there is a difference), only one had an issue.

I have four 12v 7 Ah PowerSonic AGM batteries in an ammo can, with a cheap solar charge controller. I keep it on a float charger, but I also have a 7 watt solar panel that will keep it charged. It'll run my ham and GMRS base radios for many hours. I had the chance a couple weeks ago to run my ATT home wifi gateway off this setup for about 24 hours through a cheap inverter during a power outage. 28 Ah isn't much, but I can use it to trigger the electronic start on the gas water heater, run the gateway and radios, and charge the phones. The batteries were sourced locally from Batteries Plus Bulbs, the rest of the stuff (ammo boxes, charge controller, float charger, solar panel, inverter) are from Hazard Fraught.

Mayyyyybe a little. I hesitate to say "in agreement", but to put it in terms of Venn diagrams, the MichaelLAX circle and the WRQC527 circle are perhaps touching. Exaggerated doesn't mean they didn't happen, just not to the extent that people claim they did. I only know of one case that actually happened. I've heard of many dubious cases, because they're "documented" on the internet by "reliable" sources. I actually think it would be pretty comical to get pulled over for that reason.

You're probably right, hence the "some,(if not all)" qualifier, bot since I heven't seen every repeater, I can't say for sure if there's not someone out there with some goofy homemade repeater made from a couple of Baofengs with a non-standard offset. I meant 5000 khz, or 5 mhz, thanks for noticing. I'll take the correction on that.

I only live in California, so I can only speak for California. Ask MichaelLAX. He assumes to know everything.