WRTT642

This sounds like the way to do it. Thank you so much for the info!

Thank you for the info. Our schools have pretty good security and I believe the principals, at least at some of the schools such as the high schools, do have one dedicated radio for local law enforcement locked in their office for emergency purposes. Without getting into too much detail our district has done some very good work for our schools as far as security and safety are concerned. My guess about the staff radios as to why they are not making a bigger issue about it at my school is that maybe other schools are not having the same problem. I don't know all the specifics about the comms situation at our district and the principal just brought this up to me so I have only been trying to figure this out for the past couple of days. This is why I bring it to you all because after using the Baofengs and that they worked as well as they did I kinda just scratched my head and said I have no idea what is going on here lol.

I agree. I don't think Baofeng is a suitable replacement. I only used it to get an idea of what could possibly work. It is the only set of radios that I have on hand that we can transmit in the building to see a comparison. I'm not sure of the exact size or square footage of the building, but it is a decent-sized building and one of the bigger ones in our district. The entire building is pretty much made of brick, which I suspect is the cause for the interference, but it still doesn't make sense to me as to why the Baofengs worked so well, but the Hyteras don't. There is one location specifically that the principal has concerns for and that is the location where the students who are in I.S.S. (in-school suspension) as well as students who are being sent out of class for disruptive behavior. The room gets very poor reception even with cell phones and the Hytera just sends static, but again when I tested the Baofengs from that room to the front office and cafeteria, etc, they were loud and clear. Anyway, I do appreciate the help and information, I will compile all this info to give to the principal and continue to do more research on the recommendations you have all given. Thank you very much!

Thank you for the info. Yeah, not sure why the Baofeng works better than the Hytera, but it did with multiple people including myself saying it works much much better throughout the whole school. I was very surprised as well. Anyway, I will pass the information along and see what we can do. Thank you again for the help.

Hello all, I am a teacher at my local middle school and I am in the process of starting a ham radio club for the kids. It has piqued the interest of students, parents, and staff alike. In doing this the principal has been asking me questions about the radios that the staff use for the building. They typically use them for communications in locating kids, lunchtime duties, bus duty, etc. The principal has told me that the radios they currently use are horrible and that they have a hard time reaching across the school. The radio that the school is using is the Hytera PD362i, and we have about 8 of them along with some no-frill, basic Motorolas. When I asked him about who runs all the radios for the district and his experience he stated that the individual is IT guy and his knowledge of radios is very limited. The principal does not know why they use these radios specifically, but that was what was given to them. He has made complaints to the district about the radio not being able to reach all around the school and even within closer proximities. When he asked me to find out what radios would be good to have for the school and brought a couple of Baofeng UV-9g's to school and ran a couple of tests to gauge the distance and sound on them. I was very surprised that the UV9g's could be heard loud and clear on FRS frequencies everywhere in the school as well as outside of the building yet the Hytera's could not even make half those distances. I am not a professional in this field and my knowledge in doing such things in this capacity is almost nonexistent. I did tell the principal I would look into it and see what I can find out, I am a history major so business comms is not in my wheelhouse of expertise in any way. So I come to all of you who are experts in such things and know way more than I do in this subject. Any feedback or help would be greatly appreciated. The answers the principal got was that they were going to need to set up a repeater in the school and for some reason was going to cost them $10,000!!!! So as you can see this has been a touchy subject with admin because of the cost, yet these radios are vital for communications around the school. If anyone is willing to help us out and give us some info or if anyone is willing to volunteer their time for a consult over the phone with the principal or just point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Awesome!!! Thanks for putting up a new repeater in the area, it is much appreciated. Next time I'm in Anchorage I will drop by and say hello over the repeater.

Oh, ok, I understand, yeah that makes sense. Yet, for individuals like myself, which are probably many, why would I need a commercial radio for if I am only using radio for personal and educational use? I looked into P25/NXDN and to be honest, it's just too much for me personally and seems pretty restrictive. I could just be totally misunderstanding its purpose and use, but for the general market DStar, YSF, and even DMR are more viable options for the average user with my much better pricing and accessibility. So, I definitely get your point and you explained it very clearly for a slow person like myself, but I still don't see the practical use for the average consumer to get into the commercial side of radio and maybe that is why Kenwood stuck with DStar.

Just curious. Since they already make the NX series that do DMR, P25, NXDN, FM, then why not make one that does DSTAR as well? I mean wouldn't that just make Kenwood a go-to company for your digital needs regardless of which mode you use? I personally use Dstar a lot and love it, others don't and that is perfectly fine. But at least Kenwood would have whatever you want and offer it all. Not sure if Icom has multi-protocol radios.

HAHAHAHHAAHHAHHAHAAA. Love it!

I am personally willing to pay ID52 prices for the new D75, but anything over that will be a no-go for me, yet I find it hard to believe that they will sell this unit for my then 5-600 dollars. With everything coming out on this I am very excited to see more about it. Looks to be a very big contender in the HT market and hopefully will cause the other companies to up their game.

Yeah, I saw that. They have a really good price for it right now, just never really been a fan of Yaseu, don't ask me why lol. But a great price nonetheless for a good HT. Maybe Yaseu will have some new goodies to announce at ham.

Yeah, I have the Icom ID-52a and I absolutely love it. I also quite enjoy D-Star and run it with a hotspot and it works great. This new Kenwood has some features that the Icom doesn't which has me so interested in it. As much as I love my ID52 I would very much be happy with going over to the D75a if it really does have all these features, the only thing that would hold me back is if they are asking some outrageous price. I won't pay more than want I did for my icom and that thing was as high as I would go for a HT.

It is my understanding it is a tri-band HT. Not sure if the FT5dr is, and also does Dstar, but again that depends if you like Dstar over YSF, which personally I do yet that's a subjective issue and with the hotspots out today you can basically do most digital anyway for the most part. I think it looks great and am very interested to learn more about its capabilities. Hopefully, they will showcase at hamvention so we can learn some more about it.

Heard about the new Kenwood TH-D75A and saw it posted on gigaparts. Was curious about your guy's thoughts on it. I am seriously considering getting it as I always wanted the D74, but was unwilling to pay the inflated prices for a used HT. What say you all?

There is a N.C club page under the clubs tab. Maybe check in with them and see what you can find out. Hope this helps.

Glad to have you here. I am new to this as well, but there are some very knowledgeable people on here and that live in Alaska. I live out in Meadow Lakes so not too far from you. If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Awesome! Good job sir, thank you!

Yeah, I would still like to, but it seems like everyone here is too busy at this time. Maybe in the summer might be better, but I am up for meeting in Eagle River.

Really? I did not know that. I will look into it. If you find out anything more please let us know.

Hello all, I was just curious, what radio do you all use for your daily driver? How do you typically use it? I know there are hams on here as well, so I would be curious if any of you hams have MARS modded radios and use it to monitor GMRS/MURS/FRS while using it for ham activities? I have a MARS mod Icom ID-52a and use it for regular ham and Dstar activities, but I also like to scan the GMRS/MURS/FRS channels while I am in town. When out camping and hiking with family I have four Baofeng UV-9G's that I give to my wife and kids so we can all talk together and also so I don't have to use my Icom and risk it getting broken while out in the Alaskan wilderness. So, what radios do you use on a daily basis and do any of you hams use modded radios to listen to GMRS/MURS/FRS channels?

Hello everyone, Hope you all are having a fun and safe winter. So, a couple of us had made mention of all of us getting together and finding ways that we can all work together and get as many repeaters up and running as possible and getting to know each other more and our areas of expertise and what equipment we are all running etc. If any of you would like to meet up next Friday which will be the 17th of February please let me know. Or what day would be good for you guys. I am not sure where everyone is located and I want to make this as inclusive as possible for everyone. I know some of you are in Anchorage and Eagle River and some of us are out here in the Valley, I would like to get a consensus from everyone as to who would like to meet up, what day works best, what time, and where. If anyone here in the Valley needs transportation or want to car pool I don't mind picking a few people up. If we can all work together we can get this done. I was thinking of maybe meeting up at a Starbucks or something similar so we can have a coffee and snack. I would say maybe 2 hour slot will be great, if we need to leave early that is fine or if we want to hang out longer then that would be great too, but again, I would really like some feed back from you guys to see what everyone thinks about this. So please leave you comments below on what you think about meeting up and the specifics of it.

Welcome! I'm glad you found our little group here. I am completely new to radio for the most part. I first received my GMRS license last year then I took the amateur radio test and passed the technician exam. So I do both now which I love doing. I am still trying to learn more about radios and how they operate as well as repeaters and antennas. I recently joined my local ham club here in the Valley called MARA, and I met some really nice people that have helped me out with understanding radio more. Recently went to club meeting a couple days ago and it went great and made some new friends. I really hope to maybe get all of us together here soon, we talked about maybe meeting up mid February, and we can all bring our radios and start getting something going with getting repeaters up and running to connect us all together. I will make some more post about it and start contacting everyone by the end of the first week of February. Hopefully there will be a day we can all meet up. Seems like you have a lot more experience in this then myself which I am open to any feed back you might have on how to accomplish a common goal here in Alaska. Any knowledge you have will be very valuable to us all so please feel free to post on here as much as you like. I stay up on the site and active a lot more now. Hope to hear from you more and any ideas you might have will be much appreciated. As myself being so new to radio there is a lot I am still learning and any knowledge you can pass on will be greatly appreciated and this goes for anyone else in our club. Sounds like everyone of you have more experience than me in this field so please feel free everyone to post ideas, thoughts, and comments on how we can get something going. Even though I started this club I don't take it as I am the owner of it, this is a group effort and see everyone of you as equal owners.

I'm game. It will have to be in a couple weeks though. I have a A LOT of stuff going on right now, but maybe sometime mid February? That should be enough time for everybody to think about it and get it planned. What do you think?

? Not sure if anyone will buy that.

Interesting ?