MarkInTampa
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Posts posted by MarkInTampa
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I'm looking at picking up a Surecom SR-112 simplex repeater controller (https://www.surecom.com.hk/product-page/surecom-sr-112-simplex-repeater-controller) just for giggles. Just wanted something that I can use to test my radio and antenna's range by myself by driving around between my base and mobile and this looks like it might do the trick. Anybody have one or can recommend something similar? Reviews on this one are all over the place.
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8 hours ago, WRQK522 said:
I’m thinking about getting a j pole tuned for GMRS from KB9VBR . It’s for base station has anyone have experience with this antenna? Trying to get the best range I can here in southeast Ohio. Trees and hills cover most of land . I’m at a high level I get around 8 miles maybe a little more in the winter.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I've got one. It's a solidly built antenna but hardly use it. SWR is kinda high for the simplex channels (1.77/1) but is a bit better (1.3/1) on repeater input channels. I've also hot a N9TAX SlimJim that costs about the same and adds a bar of signal on receive over the J-Pole at the same height so tend to use it more than the KB9VBR.
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Would what I call "trade speak" be considered coded illegal communication? Example, if I call out to my buddy Joe and ask if he has any "Red Raychem's" would that be considered coded? Most folks wouldn't have a clue I just asked Joe for Raychem (manufacture) F-81 RG58 (come in a red clip, RG59 come in blue) connectors. I could see how the phrase "Red Raychem" could refer to lots of things, possibly even drugs, if you were not in the trade and even then only if you use Raychem products. Just wondering...
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Anybody ever try a WaveNode watt meter? They claim 5% accuracy. It has USB interface to the computer with software that does some neat things if you want to use it and also has a programable SWR protection relay. It's been on my wish list for awhile but would love to hear from somebody who has used them before.
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FYI - I've had a page on how to program the Maxtrac using the DOS software under Windows 10 using DosBox in my bookmarks for awhile. More or less a step by step guide on setting up DosBox to use old Motorola software for the Maxtrac but should be applicable to most of the other old Motorola DOS software as well.
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5 hours ago, nokones said:
WHAT! You mean they don't have tube testers at the Drug Stores like at Thrifty's? What in the hell is this world coming too!. I guess I'm going to be out of luck if I need to test or need a tube in the future for my radio.
My grandfather had a couple of fully stocked tube testers that he had at a few local drug stores in the mid 60's to 70's. He had them sitting in his garage for 10 years and gave them to me when I was 14 or so in the early 80's. I just wanted the cabinets so tore out the guts and tossed them. I was into audio and guitar so kept the 12AX7, EL84, 6L6GT tubes and the like but tossed the rest. 90% of the tubes were for tube type TV's that didn't really have any value at the time.
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I ran by the local CB shop last October that is part of a truck stop to see if they had a 50ft antenna cable and the guy asked what it was for. Told him GMRS and he said "oh, ham radio". He didn't have a clue as to what GMRS is.
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I was searching for programming software for commercial radios last week and found a site called Radiosoftware.online (https://https://radiosoftware.online/) that seems to have a vast collection of programming software for most of the manufactures and models. Only problem is it's a $155 annual fee to use it with no monthly or single download fee option available or offered. Have no idea if they are legit or not, maybe someone here can chime in. You can browse the site first to see if they have what you are looking for, you just can't download it without a subscription.
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Let's make it a SWR scan on 4 antennas. Picked up a MFJ 1868 Discone antenna that is supposed to do TX/RX from 50mhz to 1.3Ghz at 200 watts more for a scanning antenna than GMRS but had to run a sweep on it anyway since it could TX on GMRS. Discones are really weird. Looks like a sine wave from 420mhz to 470mhz but SWR never get above 1.6 to 1.
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44 minutes ago, Sshannon said:
So, I don’t know if this will help, but I was able to find it this morning. I went to this page:
https://apps.fcc.gov/cores/advancedSearch.do?csfrToken=
And when I searched I gave just my name and my city/state/zip, although I probably could have left those off.
I had my ham license back in 1996 but let it expire. Doing a search on my old callsign (still unassigned) shows it was issued in 1996, expired in 2006 and cancelled by FCC 2008. I didn't remember anything about a FRN when I got my license or if it even existed. When I got my GMRS license in Oct, the FCC site said something about a existing FRN in my name but was tied to a email address from my old dial up provider, phone that doesn't exist anymore and a address long gone but let me create a new one so I guess I now have two FRN's. I clicked on the link you provided and searched my last name and it shows the FRN RegDate was 5/22/2001 (when I wasn't even active anymore) and the same RegDate for my dad who got his license a year or so after me in another state. If I had to guess, FRN wasn't really a thing until 2001 and they moved everyone over to that system but I could be or am probably wrong....
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You can download the 935G programming software even if you don't have a programming cable and just open it. It will be the default settings of the radio including the factory channel presets. If it looks OK to you, then reset the radio (menu 57) to factory default.
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37 minutes ago, Sshannon said:
But digital GMRS is not interoperable with analog GMRS, so they would be effectively creating another service (DGMRS or DMRS). At that point, why not use a different section of spectrum?
Fortunately for me, I live where there’s a lot of underutilized spectrum, but that also means I don’t have a feel for what you metropolitans have to deal with.
And I guess a part of me asks why people don’t just get their technician licenses and buy into 70cm digital voice. Of course the family license is probably the reason.
What would be cool is to steal 1Mhz of band (.5Mhz with an additional .5Mhz +/- 5Mhz for repeater split) from 70cm and have it be cross licensed for both Ham and GMRS digital voice use. Ham folks could use their existing rigs to legally talk to GMRS users and vice versa. Would be great for emergency use as well. And it would open up 50% more available bandwidth as well over existing GMRS. This would allow for more repeaters. Also would allow for things like APRS type services or heck even digital hotspots on GMRS for the entire family to use.
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1 hour ago, Lscott said:
The license free service they have over there, like our old FRS rules, allows them to use narrow band FM, DMR or dPMR, at at 0.5 watts.
Makes one wonder why the FCC is dragging their feet here over allowing digital voice on GMRS.
I would think that the modulation levels of digital voice would destroy any analog communication on the same frequency. Setup a nice strong 50watt GMRS DMR repeater on 462.700 and I could almost guarantee that it would wipe out receive on two analog HT's talking a block apart 5 miles away from the repeater on the same frequency.
We have a nice strong GMRS repeater in my area on 575 that also does P25. 99% of use is analog but when P25 is used once or twice a week and you are monitoring on analog radio it's so loud it will make you jump out of your seat.
I stumbled across this article "DMR Association Responds to TDMA Interference Allegations" (granted it's for VHF) (https://www.rrmediagroup.com/Features/FeaturesDetails/FID/325) and from an obviously bias organization that were complaining about:
PSCC coordinators said they will only certify TDMA coordinations at power levels that are 3 dB or more below the currently licensed analog effective radiated power (ERP), or at least 3 dB or more below the values indicated in 90.205, the safe harbor tables."We believe what is happening with the 3 dB reduction is an unfair treatment of DMR that penalizes system coverage,” Princen said. “If we would have a technical problem, we would understand it, but this is a design problem. If the system is designed properly, you can avoid this.Digital voice would be nice on GMRS but due to the VERY limited number of repeater frequencies available on GMRS I just don't see how it could be done (at least on repeater frequencies) without causing interference to existing users and repeaters on the band, at least when running 50 watts.What would be cool is to open up a new band for something like "DGMRS" (Digital GMRS) for only digital use but if it only has a handful of channels like GMRS then I'd think the FCC would have to also have to determine a standard (DMR, dPMR, P25, whatever) for digital voice as well and only license radios with that standard. Or maybe allow for digital voice limited to .5 watt on the .5 watt GMRS frequencies for simplex communications that shouldn't interfere that much with existing radios. -
1 minute ago, Lscott said:
Unless I'm miss reading the waterfall display the frequency is 442.775 MHz which is in the Ham 70cm band. That's not GMRS.
Your reading it right, tested in the early morning and there was no activity at the time on 462.xxx. There was on 442
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2 hours ago, Sshannon said:
CTCSS are analog tones.
DPL are digital codes.
There is no conversion. Nor are they interchangeable. You will have to learn how and where to select the DPL, also known as DCS, DTCSS, or possibly something else, but all meaning the same thing. It’s usually a different menu item than the CTCSS tone. I don’t have a 935, but someone will probably chime in and tell you which menu choice it is.
Under the correct menu there will be a long list of choices. There will also be a column telling whether the codes are normal or inverse.
On the 935 on the radio the DPL tones are not listed as an option on CTCSS (leave it off for DPL). DPL has its own menu item called TX-DCS (menu 12) for setting the transmit tone and RX-DCS (menu 11) for the receive tone. If you are using the Wouxun software it's under the CTCSS/DCS option, same place in the software but not the radio itself - go figure.
- WRUU653 and SteveShannon
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14 hours ago, WRUH396 said:
This is the kind of stuff we see. This one is actually on HF but we have seen this noise much higher into VHF/UHF as well but this type of unnatural spikes across the band or covering multiple channel slots is what you want to find. Look at the visible jagged spikes below.
The other thing to keep in mind, though not as likely as you mentioned you tried a few different radios, but as 935 was pointing out on my post that a lot of this SOC/SDR style, cheap Chinese radios have the front-ends as wide as a barn door and are susceptible to desensing, mixing and intermod. There is an area near where I live by the airport and county dispatch that any Baufeng, BTECH or other cheap SDR gets slammed and sometimes it is so clear it sounds like they are dispatching right on GMRS or our UHF frequency but we don't get that at all on Yaesu, Kenwood or Icoms.
I get a lot of spikes (and interference) on UHF that is caused by a mistuned or cheap antenna. See example below taken this morning about 1 minute apart (time it took to swap coax). I also have someone around here running DMR simplex on 462.700 that hardly breaks the squelch and almost sounds like static not DMR on a HT and causes slight interference with the area .700 repeater (fixed the squelch issue by enabling CTCSS on receive) but I can still use it. On my base station the DMR comes through almost full power and makes the repeater useless because of how strong the signal is.
Good antenna
Cheaper antenna
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18 hours ago, gortex2 said:
As I'm sure it will be asked the bundle does not list specification other than 10db antenna (7') and 50' of cable (Appears to be a LMR variant). I'm not convinced the antenna is actually 10db but who knows in all reality. A laird 7db gain antenna is 9' tall and runs around $200 so I think the bundle is probably a good deal.
I questioned the 10dBi antenna as well so ran the numbers for 3 Comet antennas to see how realistic that number should be against a known company.
GP-3 7.2 dBi, 6ft tall
GP-6nc 9.0 dBi, 10ft tall
GP-9nc 11.9 dBi, 16.5ft tallI guess the Midland could have a loading coil or something similar built into the antenna to up the gain but highly doubt that it would outperform a GP-6nc.
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2 minutes ago, MichaelLAX said:
Are you saying that In Amateur Radio you can set up a cross-band repeater to output on the input of another Repeater, so that I can walk around with my HT and use a Icom IC-2730 to hit a Ham repeater much further away?
That's exactly what it does and was designed for. Using different bands of course (VHF/UHF).
- MichaelLAX, WRUU653 and PartsMan
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16 minutes ago, MichaelLAX said:
For example? Some inexpensive ones?
TYT TH-9800, $210.00. 50watt VHF, 40watt UHF radio. Does quad band (10m, 6m, 2m and 70cm but only two at a time) as well. Almost half the price of a KG-1000G+
- PartsMan and SteveShannon
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24 minutes ago, Sshannon said:
But this seems too easy. What simple and stupid thing am I missing?
Even easier (but definitely NOT LEGAL) would be to slap up something like a Comet GP6-NC (Dual band MURS/GMRS antenna) and MARS/CAP modify any number of dual band ham radio transceivers that do VHF/UHF cross-band repeat out of the box and run MURS HT's crossbanding to GMRS through the base station. One antenna, one radio and done.
That's why I was questioning the legality of using a off the shelf, legal and certified MURS and GMRS radios doing the same basic thing using the headphone/mic repeater controller between them. You cold also install a UHF/VHF combiner and use one antenna. Isn't this basically what a Bluetooth headset would do, but on the MURS frequencies instead of Bluetooth? Would both radios would be legal for the band with a simple earphone/mic cable connecting the two?
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6 minutes ago, WRUU653 said:
...or a bluetooth mic for the base station?
Range if he wants to use it more than 50 yards around the cabin. MURS should get a heck of a lot more range than Bluetooth.
And another stupid question - A few posts above states:
Would Bluetooth not violate this rule?
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9 minutes ago, Sshannon said:
“Stupid questions” are sometimes the most fun to chat about!
Off the top of my head I don’t know for sure. I think there’s a rule against retransmitting between services. Of course the technical challenges would add a whole other level of problems to solve. Your MURS handheld would have to transmit and receive on two different frequencies. You would need a translator to receive MURS and connect to a GMRS transmitter and another one to connect to a GMRS receiver transmit to MURS.
It might be easier to hook it up to a cordless phone!
I was thinking more along the lines (in OP's case) of having a nice GMRS base station at the cabin along side a MURS radio with a $40 HT style cross band repeater controller (https://www.amazon.com/Serounder-Repeater-Two-Way-Controller-Communication/dp/B07QXYJRBN) that connects between the earphone and mic plugs off Amazon. Then use a MURS HT for mobile use around the cabin back to GMRS.
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14 minutes ago, Sshannon said:
I absolutely agree with @WRUU653. Setting up a repeater just to reach another repeater using RF would probably cause severe interference. In order for your handheld signal to be received by your repeater and transmitted to the other repeater you would have to reverse your input and output frequencies, but then, the signal received from the other repeater would be instantly retransmitted to the other repeater, causing a feedback loop.
GMRS Regulations simply do not permit a repeater to transmit on the “467 MHz Main Channel” input frequencies necessary to transmit through another repeater.
Just set up a mobile radio in your house with a decent antenna on the roof and configured to hit the repeater.
Stupid question - Would cross-band repeating between MURS and GMRS be legal? Legally I know you cant have a repeater on MURS, but you would not be repeating within the same band so would it still be called a repeater? I'm sure it is but just wondering....
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Saw this on YouTube this morning, Crazy Old Men On The Ham Radio - Most Craziest Fight Ever Part Two:
Simplex Repeater Controller
in Technical Discussion
Posted
Thanks for the info. Looks like a better simplex repeater than the Surecom, the reseller is in the states and they have the proper cable for my radio where the Surecom didn't and I'd have to make one. Just placed my order. Thanks again.