TD-H3. Operator error???

[Santiam]

I have 2 H3's and convinced my brother to get one on the Amazon sale.. It came quickly, but inadvertently he bought the Ham version.. No matter, I know how to change it over to GMRS... Got it changed over and programmed to our repeaters and such.. Went smoothly.. We just couldn't get it to work right.. It would receive somewhat but transmitting was a problem.. I finally decided it was defective and we boxed it up and asked Amazon for an exchange.. The exchange came today, got it programmed and zilch.. Recieving, but not transmitting at all. Same problem as before except maybe worse..  . Hooked it up to my fars-o-meter and get nothing even though the radio's meter shows all bars.. 

  Now I think I may be missing something  on the switch from Ham to GMRS.. Seems easy enough, but what the heck?..

 

 

 

  

 

[LeoG]

Possible you got 2 duds.  If you have nothing showing on the meter likely it's showing correctly.  What does the working radio show?  If that shows 4-5 watts and the other shows zero then you got a dud x2.

I've gotten 2 duds out of 16 radios.  And they would transmit about 1000 ft or so before getting static and wouldn't reach any repeaters.

[hxpx]

40 minutes ago, Santiam said:

I have 2 H3's and convinced my brother to get one on the Amazon sale.. It came quickly, but inadvertently he bought the Ham version.. No matter, I know how to change it over to GMRS... Got it changed over and programmed to our repeaters and such.. Went smoothly.. We just couldn't get it to work right.. It would receive somewhat but transmitting was a problem.. I finally decided it was defective and we boxed it up and asked Amazon for an exchange.. The exchange came today, got it programmed and zilch.. Recieving, but not transmitting at all. Same problem as before except maybe worse..  . Hooked it up to my fars-o-meter and get nothing even though the radio's meter shows all bars.. 

  Now I think I may be missing something  on the switch from Ham to GMRS.. Seems easy enough, but what the heck?..

Flipping between ham and gmrs (and unlocked) modes shouldn't break anything. One of my two GMRS-mode radios is a ham model, and my ham radio is a GMRS model. (Why? Because I wasn't paying attention when I was setting modes and I'm too lazy to swap antennas/modes, that's why)

Two of my four radios (one ham, one GMRS) are warranty replacements, and I have a fourth radio that's dead somewhere. All of them read 0W on an SWR meter but could still TX to a nearby (i.e. in the same room) radio after they died. Assuming you have all your settings correct (allowed frequency/channel, correct offsets, etc.) and still can't talk or it shows 0W, send it back or contact TIDRadio support and have them ship you a replacement. Or get a different radio. I think I'm done buying H3s after this and will be switching brands when my remaining radios start dying.

[OffRoaderX]

You got 2 duds.. I've been seeing more and more reports of this (here and on the big GMRS Youtuber channels in the comments).. getting more and more common with the H3's.. 

[amaff]

That seems to be A Thing with these, unfortunately. When they're good, they're great, and I guess I just got lucky with the 4 I bought. But they seem to be having some pretty serious QC issues.

[LeoG]

They seem to be a very popular radio and I'll bet they cranked the assembly line up to 11 to make more radios and many more are failing.