MarkInTampa

Try disabling tone on the repeater input. At least it will rule out incompatibility of the tone settings between the radio and repeater.

It is, or at least the backlight timer is! Menu setting 8 (labeled ABR - don't know why) is the Display Backlight Timer. If set to 0 backlight is off. Setting are 0-50 seconds, make sure this setting is not at 0.

You are around 4 miles from one of the strongest repeaters in the area on 462.675Mhz with a 50 mile radius. I used to be able to hit it from Pensacola on occasion. Channel 6 is only 12.5kHz away (462.6875Mhz). If the repeater is running wide band, running slightly off frequency, your receive is off or sensitivity/selectivity sucks, etc.. it could sneak through. Is the id the same as the repeater on 462.675?

I did a server upgrade for a Dentist years ago. After installing the server, software and transferring data everything worked fine EXCEPT the way the teeth are counted/labeled was all wrong. I called customer support and found out that Dentists in England label teeth differently than those in the USA. The fix was to change the default installed language option from "English" to "American".

I know Goldstone very well. My dad was worked there for 35 years and was the head of R&D for the DSN (Deep Space Network). I loved going to work with the old man as a kid!

Fort Irwin is kinda limited on what they can do radio wise. Lot's of restrictions because of the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex being adjacent to the base.

Why not? I was wanting to do the same thing on the base station. If I'm sitting at my PC with speakers on ether side of my monitor for the computer, it would be nice to route/mix the radio output to those same speakers. Back to the OP: The -V2 should have came with a RJ-45 accessory/breakout cable. You can change the speaker output settings in the menu to "EAR" (earphones) or "EAR+SP" and run a 2.5mm patch cable to the audio input/mic jack of the PC and you should be fine.

I'm running a 30ft flag pole from Home Depot for a mast with a GP-6NC. For a bit more stability it's also anchored to the house. I ordered a telescoping flag pole but they sent me a sleeved sectional (6 5ft 2-1/4" sections) by mistake. Didn't send it back, figured it would be more solid than the telescoping version and by loosening the clamps on the house I can remove or add sections by myself so it wasn't a big deal. I thought I could get away with no guy wires but it seemed to sway a bit more than I would like at 30ft so added some. Dropped it to 10ft or so with the antenna attached and it made it through a direct hit from hurricane Milton.

Not field complaints to the FCC but the individual that was issued a license they didn't like, called the FCC and had the call terminated and reissued. I looked at two of the recent "terminated" license's by FRN and they have a new and current GMRS licenses.

I figured they were terminated because of licensee complaints to the FCC about their callsign so the old callsign was cancelled and a new one issued. Like I said, the only licenses (other than 1) terminated in the state had WSEX as a prefix or 666 as a suffix in the last 10 years. "Expired" is a different field and has over 7,200 results in my state alone!

The other day I did a statewide search on the FCC GMRS license search site for "Terminated" licenses ("Cancelled" is a different field). There were 10 of them but it doesn't say why they were terminated. 5 of them appeared to be legacy business licenses and were cancelled 10-15 years ago. The 5 relatively recent were kinda obvious - ended in "666" or had "WSEX" as a prefix. Somebody does have WSEX666 though!

I worked at Radio Shack when I was in high school back in the TRS-80 Model 1/3 and CoCo days. I wrote a spreadsheet with VisiCalc (long before Excel or even Lotus) to track golf handicaps for a local golf course and we must have sold at least 50 Model III's to almost every golf course in So Cal just for that spreadsheet. About the coolest thing I can remember was the radio tech that tuned my 148GTL-DX when they first came out (early-mid 80's). He had a Commodore Vic 20 with a Kantronics interface connected to a HF rig decoding RTTY and CW on the fly. I just thought that was so cool - to hear/see radio Cuba (and it's propaganda) RTTY news on a CRT/TV without a teletype in real time made a impression in my early years that last until today.

Good for you - Want a cookie?

If I bring up one of the repeaters in list view with stale/offline enabled and click on the repeater name, it will bring up the repeater info and a map view of the repeater location for what it's worth.

They do - but they don't show up on the MyGMRS map view and you have to know to select stale and/or offline repeaters in the list view.

The two largest and OPEN repeaters in my area are not listed on MyGMRS anymore. After one year of the repeater owner not logging into MyGMRS they get delisted from the map. I've talked to both repeater owners and they told me the same thing - they simply got tired of repeater requests, problems or questions. New users are welcome, both changed the MyGMRS listing to open repeater and listed the tone and don't log into the site anymore so the listings are gone.

I've been a fan of the Stanceworks YouTube channel for awhile. His latest video shows him installing his new Motorola communications system in his race car. While watching it I remembered this thread. Nice system, but don't know if it's $3000+ (uncle Sam get his cut) nice. Also wonder how it's licensed.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUMMaMSrLBQ

I'd suggest leaving the factory channels as they are. It's pretty much plug and play out of the box. Just change the tone required (in your case 159.8) for what channel (frequency) you want to use. Then go to "edit" on top of the screen and "option features" and change the default channel if you are using something other than .550 (channel 1) if you have a power outage but don't know if this step is actually required. That should be about all you need to get up and running.

That would be correct. The repeater listens on 467.x (RX) and outputs (transmits) on 462.x (TX). It would be wrong if it was the other way around.

The driver on the website is CH341SER.EXE - dated 10/6/2014 within the RAR file if that helps. I'm assuming that's what he is trying to install.

You can try just installing the software without the driver and it may or may not work. It's basically the driver for the USB to serial cable. Some cheap cables have counterfeit version of the USB to serial CH341 chip built into the cable and require a prolific driver to work. If it is a genuine USB to serial chip built into the cable Windows will autodetect the cable and install the drivers automatically. If it's not a genuine chip or a "cloned chip", Windows will show it as a unknown device. You can try plugging in the cable, bring up Windows device manager and check to see if the drivers installed properly by expanding the "Ports (COM & LPT)" and see if you have any new COM ports listed when you plug in the cable. If device manager detects it as a "prolific chip" with a triangle (triangle means no or bad drivers - Windows see's it as a counterfeit chip) next to it or "unknown device", then you need to figure a way to get the drivers installed. My guess is if they list the driver for download - it's probably a counterfeit/cloned chip and needs it to work but you might get lucky.

Try right clicking on the install file and left click "Run as Administrator".

The software is compressed with RAR, kinda like a zip file but different format. You can download WINRAR (if running windows) for free and it will extract files. Also, download in install the driver FIRST before installing the software or plugging the repeater into the computer. BTW, stopped at Beef's in Bushnell yesterday coming back from Savannah to Tampa for dinner. It will be nice to have a repeater in the area.

There are still a few pretty active linked repeaters around me. Still programmed in the radio but set to skip on scan. There is just way to much garbage - from dead keys for hours on end, kerchunking, folks thinking they are GMRS police or professors (take your pick), irrelevant out of state traffic, bad voip connections, etc. Just no real control to be had. All the problems you may see on your local repeater and then some multiplied many times over. Don't really care if they exist or not - just not my thing.

I have two FRN's. Got my ham license in 1996 and don't remember anything about FRN's. Don't think they existed, were required yet or if the club I tested at handled it all for me. I let my license lapse in 2006 and when went to get my GMRS license in 2022 I saw I already had an FRN that was registered in 2001 that I knew nothing about and had a old physical address from when I got my ham license. From what I understand, FRN's were not required prior to Dec 2001 for amateur radio so I assume the FCC created one for me based on my license details that was still valid at the time. I didn't know or care to figure out the issue so I just created a new FRN with the FCC. I got my ham license back with a new call, requested and got my old call back under my new FRN with the checkmark box clicked "expired license" as the reason. FCC didn't question any of it.