MarkInTampa

I've got a HT with a female SMA antenna connector and the center pin on the antenna broke in the connector somehow. The broken pin is buried deep enough that you can't really see it much less pull it out with tweezer's. I tried a kind of strong refrigerator magnet but that didn't work. Anybody know of a way to pull the pin without having to disassemble the radio?

Were they delivered by Amazon?

If the school already has existing Hytera DMR and Motorola radios they are probably already licensed for the commercial band. I'm assuming you are in the Matanuska-Susitna area based on your call sign and the FCC shows the school district having 16 registered frequencies in the UHF band. I'd call the school district contact for the FCC license, Chris Remick and ask for his advice. Also let him know according to the FCC licensing system they are up for license renewal, they have sent 3 notices.

Don't know of any radios that have it built in but you can run a Argent ADS-SR1 simplex repeater on almost any radio. Runs around $90 plus $10 or so for a premade cable for your radio. It does a bunch of cool things like CW-ID, Voicemail boxes and Voice-ID. I just run mine as a straight simplex repeater on occasion on the base station for testing out radios and antennas in the field by myself, works great for that.

Yes. About half of the DMR traffic on the commercial bands around here are encrypted and can't be received without a encryption key or your radio being authorized on the repeater. You can still do "fox hunting" as long as there is traffic on the repeater but you can't count on traffic in this case. Folks around here have tried a few times for the repeater he mentioned.

Nope. I've got a MD-380 in promiscuous mode that I can use to monitor most unencrypted DMR transmissions as well as a SDR dongle on the computer but if it's encrypted you are basically out of luck.

Ah the infamous Tampa .700 DMR repeater. Somebody is running encrypted DMR with GPS tracking enabled but can't find much more about it since it's encrypted on my SDR setup. Sometimes very little traffic, other times more than all the other GMRS freqs combined. The analog .700 repeater had to move to .725 because of the interference from the DMR crap. Then he moved from .725 to .600 (now the Tampa 600 repeater) but sits on the same frequency as the Pinellas .600 repeater and has all but wiped out the Pinellas 600. Gotta love GMRS life. The DMR station has been reported countless times over the past year to the FCC but it's still there.

I spotted this tidbit on the information webpage of a GMRS repeater and thought "what?"..... "GMRS as a Bridge Mode: o GMRS Allows Non-Hams to talk to Hams (i.e., licensed amateur radio operators) o Hams can communicate with non-ham-licensed family members, friends, and community members"

A SignalLink USB adapter perhaps? https://tigertronics.com/slusbmain.htm

5A on transmit, 90mA standby

Usually the monitor button allows you to listen to the frequency you are currently on with no squelch or tone on receive. Handy if you see a signal on the s-meter but don't hear the audio.

Don't know about that exact model but every radio I own will stop a scan as soon as you press the PTT (transmit switch).

I used to listen to the old analog 800MHz cell phone stuff back in the day. Still remember a guy talking to his mistress and she was ticked off because he had the nerve to "sleep with his wife". More recently while scanning GMRS/FRS I picked up a transmission from a guy that said "Honey, next commercial break can you please bring me some toilet paper? I'm waiting". I just had a sip of beer at the time, laughed so hard it came through my nose.

It's not just the one repeater, the performance is off on most of the more distant (greater than 15 miles) repeaters. My terrain is is such that I know I'm not getting very far going to the north or north-east but any other direction should be fine. The GP-6 had no problem hitting another repeater 46 miles away in another direction but the GP-9 doesn't like it at all. The GP-9 is tuned OK for GMRS, around a 1:1.2 SWR at 467MHz, the GP-6 is is outstanding with a 1:1.05 SWR at 467MHz. I'm in the Tampa area, pretty flat for the most part.

I was running a Comet GP-6NC (MURS/GMRS) antenna with really good results at around 35ft with 50ft of LMR-400. Swapped it out a month or two ago with a Comet GP-9 and am disappointed. VHF performance went up just a tick but UHF/GMRS performance went DOWN. I mean noticeably down. One repeater I use 35 miles away went from full signal strength to about half. Other than the occasional band opening, I don't think I've ever heard anybody hit that repeater in my neck of the woods and folks on the repeater were amazed that I was hitting it at all much less full quieting. I was kinda proud of the GP-6's performance. The repeater can't be heard on a J-Pole at all. Don't know if its the radiation pattern of the GP-9 vs the GP-6, the height of the antenna, the huge oak tree 30ft away from it, my terrain or a combination of those and other factors. This mornings project is putting the GP-6 back up.

Motorola acquired Vertex Standard in 2012. In January, 2018, Vertex standard radios were rebranded as Motorola radios.

Youtube video just for your radio if you haven't watched it yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7GBHx_t0Xs

Just guessing on the SWR But even with perfect SWR or dummy load, not much different I'd guess the Bulkhead Lightning arrester might have a bit of loss. Don't know. FYI: https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/

Stupid question, what is the difference between a base station and a fixed station?

There is a emergency weather net around 20 miles away from me (huge retirement area, Sun City Center in FL) on 462.550 that has a bunch of users that check in using a color and unit number. Something like Unit Blue 1, Unit Blue 2, Unit Red 1, etc checking into base. All I can hear is the base station running the net just above the noise floor (NOT a repeater), the HT's are way to far away to hear any of them but in listening to net control there must be at least 40 units checking in during their weekly net. I have no idea how they are licensed though. My guess is the base unit is a licensed GMRS radio and operator. Since you don't need a license for FRS as long as your radios are the legal 2 or .5 watt depending on channel the HT's are probably FRS and you can identify yourself however you want. I don't know the legality's of a licensed GMRS base station talking to legal FRS HT/Users but I think that's what they are doing.

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.