MarkInTampa

I pickup television remote operations audio frequently that broadcast both the TV stations audio and the live reporting stream on a repeater. Not on GMRS though, they run 451.xxx in my area. Maybe you have something similar in your area running on a legacy license or picking up a harmonic on that frequency.

A few of us use 146.520 for a informal Friday night analog simplex net and have a blast. Guaranteed every now and then we get somebody complaining that we shouldn't be doing that because we are on the calling frequency that has very little if any traffic most of the time unless it is our group. Guess that is where the term sad ham comes from.

There is a full blown MotoTrbo DMR repeater that has been eating up 462.700 in my area for over 6 months. Running my MD-380 DMR HT with 3rd party firmware in promiscuous mode ID's it as MotoTrbo but can't get much else because it's also encrypted DMR. It forced a long time local repeater to move frequencies because of it. It sucks but not much I can do about it, had to remove the frequency from my scan list.

Just for grins I ran the stats for my zip code through the FCC database. Population for my zip: 29,629 GMRS active licenses: 23 (including me) Amateur Radio active licenses (all classes): 92 (including me) Hopefully the stats are better in your area.

I did a search awhile back for folks with GMRS licenses near me and found around 20 licensed GMRS users around me but have only ever heard one on the air in six months. If I google licensed user addresses and look at street view almost all of them have some serious 4WD trucks, Jeeps and no base antenna. My guess would be a lot of licensed GMRS users are not really enthusiasts but use GMRS for their 4WD adventures.

I'm guilty of doing this on occasion. If I hear somebody on the repeater input frequency and I catch a call sign, I'll look them up online to see how my antenna and radio are performing on receive. Not a lot of local GMRS users here and I'll do a call out to them and let them know I'm local to them. I've made a few simplex friends this way.

Stupid question.... I picked up 300ft Commscope LDF4-50A Andrew HELIAX at heck of a deal for a new antenna and 40ft tower. The tower is approx 100ft away from the radio room on the other end of the house. I can run the coax under the eave of the roof or underground but part of the roof is flat so no attic access. Distance would be equal. The game plan is to run two lines to the tower just incase or future use (I see a beam coming from Santa). In looking at Commscopes spec sheet for the cable it doesn't mention anything about being under ground rated. Looking at retail shops online at the cable I see this statement: "All HELIAX® coaxial cables are jacketed for direct burial or for corrosive environmental conditions." I'd like to bury it for aesthetic reasons but would like to confirm if it is really rated for direct burial. Can anybody confirm? Thanks!

Ran across a Tera TR-505 part 95 certified GMRS HT awhile back and was shocked to see in the product description "When purchasing the optional USB programming cable, users may program MURS license free VHF operation channels. A free MURS programming file is available for download." Always made me wonder how this was possible on a part 95 radio.

Jus To make sure you are in dealer mode, right click on a blank area on your desktop, highlight new then click on shortcut. In the "Type the location of the item:" field type this in exactly or cut and paste this line: "C:\Vertex Standard\CE27 for Windows\CE27Win.exe" -d" In the "Type a name for this shortcut:" field, type whatever you want the shortcut to be, for example "VXR7000 Dealer Mode" and click finish. Just another way to make the shortcut.

Drag the "VXR-7000 Series" icon to your desktop (create a shortcut). Right click on the icon and go to properties. Add a -d" to the end of the target line and click OK.

Digital and sat are interesting but I got my license last month just because of monitoring a few 2m simplex channels. They sounded like a good group of folks. One of my GMRS friends got his ticket, joined the group and convinced me to do the same after letting my license expire 20 years ago. Kinda cool to do VHF simplex 30 miles but still primarily use GMRS for repeaters - just a bit more relaxed than ham repeaters are. Just got my 4th ARRL letter in the mail today asking to join in a month, that is annoying. They serve their propose I suppose but come on.... To OP (OffRoaderX), you are a smart guy and know your way around radios, probably more so than 95% of other GMRS users. Hit up hamsudy.org and take a sample test and see how you do or just run through the entire test question pool a few times and I'm sure you will ace it.

In doing a quick search it looks like the Canton 700 repeater that shows offline is at the same location and same owner as the Kaufman 625 repeater that is online. I'd assume he changed changed the frequency not to long ago for some reason. I did notice the repeater owner is also vice president of the Canton Area Radio Emergency Services (CARES) club that run a dozen or so ham repeaters and two GMRS repeaters in the area. Almost all of their repeaters use a PL of 136.5. I'd take a guess that the Kaufman 625 repeater is part of that group.

The TX connector is toast. It looks like somebody tried to force a SO-239 antenna connector into the Type-N connector on the radio.

Click on the "Common" option on top of the programming screen, then select CW-ID. Change the CW-ID field to what you want sent out as code. Also check the interval timer for how often you want CW-ID to be sent. 900 seconds = every 15 minutes.

Correct.

If I had to guess CW-ID is enabled and it's sending out the CW-ID. Press the Repeater/Base button on the unit to disable repeater (LED turns off) and it shouldn't transmit while you are programming it.

I bought mine a few weeks ago for one heck of a deal with the intention of giving it away to the guy here who runs my favorite repeater. The existing repeater antenna is up 400ft or so using two old Johnson mobiles linked together as a repeater. The repeater site is 30 miles from my house and is a bit noisy at about 1/2 to 3/4 scale on my S-Meter but usable. I'm just hoping the VXR-7000 makes it a bit more usable. I've got it all programmed to go in, gave it to the repeater site owner this week and he is planning on installing it sometime this weekend. If it works better great, if not it was a $100 gamble I lost.

That's normal. If there is nothing programmed on the channel (or it is disabled) the whole line is greyed out. Simply double click the channel number to enable it.

I just set one up last week. The software will show VHF by default until it connects and downloads the config from the radio then it will show UHF. First thing is to check what com port the cable is set to in device manager or if the correct driver is installed for the cable and the software is set for the correct port. Check out this thread on programming it, it helped me quite a bit.

Here a quick cost rundown on the antenna I put up recently. I just looked up my receipts, total was around $488 if it helps. From DX Enineering: Comet GP-6NC $170 50ft pre-terminated Type-N 400MAX cable $85 Wall Mount Brackets $44.00 From Home Depot: 30ft Aluminum Flagpole $167 Sika Fence Post Mix $14.00 Ground Strap $8.00 (already had a ground rod and wire)

Kinda sorta. They don't rebroadcast the actual alert but they do read it line for line as it's put out. It is a pretty cool network of 70cm ham repeaters that link across Florida's DOT microwave and fiber networks and covers most of the state.

Don't see the need to use NOAA at least here. Any weather alerts are usually broadcasted out over the Florida Statewide Amateur Radio Network (SARnet) repeaters and I do monitor those.

Out of curiosity, I've got a late 80's Cobra 148GTL-DX somewhere in the shed I haven't powered up since the early 90's. Is the FM mode on the old "export" radios based on this chassis compatible with the new FM standard for CB?

Is this what you were looking for? If you can't get to set mode it may be locked out. See this pdf to enable set mode https://manualzz.com/doc/19316255/fr3000-repeater-set-mode-adjustment.pdf

Works for me. Searching the database actually seemed a bit quicker. Just wish the FCC would state what the problem was. If it was just a corrupted database, that's fine. If they were hacked, I'd like to know. I just did a credit card payment a few weeks ago and would like to know if the card was possibly compromised. I have a debit card I usually use online that I keep $20 on. I transfer money to it and use it for anything I purchase online. The one time I didn't do this was with the FCC, just forgot.