Gmrs radio doesnt pick up noaa

[Guest john]

So i recently purchased a wouxun kg-xs20g. Wich i installed in my car. I have it connected to a midland 3db bull bar antenna wich is mounted to my bull bar.my issue is that it doesnt pick up noaa weather at all. But yet my baoefang gmrs ht will when im sitting in the driver seat. Any help would be appreciated. 

[Guest]

Do you have the noaa frequencies programmed in correctly? 

[WRUU653]

17 minutes ago, Guest john said:

So i recently purchased a wouxun kg-xs20g. Wich i installed in my car. I have it connected to a midland 3db bull bar antenna wich is mounted to my bull bar.my issue is that it doesnt pick up noaa weather at all. But yet my baoefang gmrs ht will when im sitting in the driver seat. Any help would be appreciated. 

I believe that antenna is uhf only. Your Ht likely has a dual band antenna. 

[Guest]

That really should not matter.  Just about any antenna will receive pretty well.   I receive all noaa and monitor mitts and many other vhf frequencies on my gmrs tunes antennas all the time. 

[WRUU653]

1 minute ago, WRXP381 said:

That really should not matter.  Just about any antenna will receive pretty well.   I receive all noaa and monitor mitts and many other vhf frequencies on my gmrs tunes antennas all the time. 

Yeah I hear you but I gotta figure something is making the Ht work better and the location of a NOAA station and you receiving it definitely can be affected by the antenna. I can pick up two stations where I am with a good dual antenna but only one that isn’t. Also if he can program an HT he probably can program his mobile. 

[Guest john]

17 minutes ago, WRXP381 said:

Do you have the noaa frequencies programmed in correctly? 

They come pre programmed in the mobile unit.

[Guest John]

So yes it is for uhf. But it did pick up a noaa channel for about 10 seconds crystal clear and i cant get it to pick up anything since so it makes wonder why it worked that time

[WRUU653]

I think I have seen radios come programmed with the NOAA stations in a different order. So potentially not having the same numbers from one radio to another. Just a thought but have you tried all the NOAA channels?

[Guest john]

23 minutes ago, WRXP381 said:

Do you have the noaa frequencies programmed in correctly? 

They come pre programmed in the mobile unit

[WRUU653]

How’s the ground plane? Is it possible the vehicle is blocking reception from how it’s sitting. I’m just throwing darts here

[Guest john]

So i scan all the programmed noaa channels and cant hear anything. Are there other channels im not aware of? I was under the assumption there was only a few?

[Guest john]

5 minutes ago, WRUU653 said:

How’s the ground plane? Is it possible the vehicle is blocking reception from how it’s sitting. I’m just throwing darts here

So i thought the same thing and took a grinder and removed all paint from the bumper mounting location but still no luck.

[WRUU653]

4 minutes ago, Guest john said:

So i scan all the programmed noaa channels and cant hear anything. Are there other channels im not aware of? I was under the assumption there was only a few?

No you’re correct. Have you tried just tuning to the stations rather than using scanning. If the station isn’t strong I wonder if your squelch setting isn’t running right by it. 

[Guest john]

10 minutes ago, WRUU653 said:

How’s the ground plane? Is it possible the vehicle is blocking reception from how it’s sitting. I’m just throwing darts here

So i grinded the mounting location of any paint so its bare metal and still no louck

[Guest john]

3 minutes ago, WRUU653 said:

No you’re correct. Have you tried just tuning to the stations rather than using scanning. If the station isn’t strong I wonder if your squelch setting isn’t running right by it. 

I have also went through the channels manually and have the same result. I also tried adjusting thr squelch but it doesnt allow me to do any squelch adjustments on noaa channels only gmrs channel so idk whatd going on.

[WRUU653]

I don’t know. The fact that you picked it up once indicates you should be able to get there again. Assuming you are at the same location probably not the antenna. Any chance you changed the frequencies that were programmed by accident or put a tone on them? Probably not the station itself being down as you can get it on your HT. Assuming you’re receiving other signals I would verify frequencies for NOAA are correct as @WRXP381 suggested. 

[Guest john]

27 minutes ago, WRUU653 said:

I don’t know. The fact that you picked it up once indicates you should be able to get there again. Assuming you are at the same location probably not the antenna. Any chance you changed the frequencies that were programmed by accident or put a tone on them? Probably not the station itself being down as you can get it on your HT. Assuming you’re receiving other signals I would verify frequencies for NOAA are correct as @WRXP381 suggested. 

Possibly. im going to reset the radio and start over. Thanks for the advice

[WRUU653]

If you are using software always save a copy before you start making changes so you can go back if needed.

I’m tapping out for the night. It’s been a long one. Let us know if you succeed and think about joining the forum. Good luck  

[back4more70]

Sometimes the NOAA station near me is silent for hours.  Perhaps check online and make sure it is transmitting.  I have seen outages reported for various reasons.

[SteveShannon]

Guest John,

I don’t see where you are but NOAA stations go down and come back up from time to time.  Look on their website to see if the one in your area is offline. That’s especially possible since you said you could hear it and then it just stopped. The one near Bakersfield was offline recently.

This shows their outages:

https://www.weather.gov/nwr/outages
 

[WRUU653]

47 minutes ago, back4more70 said:

Sometimes the NOAA station near me is silent for hours.  Perhaps check online and make sure it is transmitting.  I have seen outages reported for various reasons.

I’m near the coast where it seems to be constant so I had not considered this. Thanks @back4more70and @SteveShannon. 

[dosw]

Strange thing:

I turned on my UV5G with a 701G antenna on it and didn't pick up NOAA1 (I always pick it up), so I switched to the wider-band stock antenna, and still didn't pick up any of the NOAA frequencies. So I tuned my RTL-SDR to NOAA, and also didn't pick it up (using a Comet CA2x4SR). So at the moment, for the first time I've ever noticed, the local NOAA is offline possibly.

 

You can check https://www.weather.gov/nwr/outages

 

But there's no outage shown in my area.

 

As for whether it should be able to be picked up with a UHF only antenna, that really depends on distance / signal quality. I have a GMRS-only antenna (tuned to 460-470) that doesn't pick up NOAA from my home. Other antennas do. It's possible that the bullbar antenna he's using just won't pick up VHF well enough for his area.

 

(Update:) And a few minutes later NOAA came back up in my area.

[Guest john]

59 minutes ago, dosw said:

Strange thing:

I turned on my UV5G with a 701G antenna on it and didn't pick up NOAA1 (I always pick it up), so I switched to the wider-band stock antenna, and still didn't pick up any of the NOAA frequencies. So I tuned my RTL-SDR to NOAA, and also didn't pick it up (using a Comet CA2x4SR). So at the moment, for the first time I've ever noticed, the local NOAA is offline possibly.

 

You can check https://www.weather.gov/nwr/outages

 

But there's no outage shown in my area.

 

As for whether it should be able to be picked up with a UHF only antenna, that really depends on distance / signal quality. I have a GMRS-only antenna (tuned to 460-470) that doesn't pick up NOAA from my home. Other antennas do. It's possible that the bullbar antenna he's using just won't pick up VHF well enough for his area.

 

(Update:) And a few minutes later NOAA came back up in my area.

So im living in porterville cal. The noaa weather tower that i pick up on is wx l89 bakersfield. It is located quite a distance away and there is many hills in between. I just dont understand how a 28 inch antenna mounted on my bull bar wont receive the transmissions. But my ht with a little antenna will pick it up while im sitting in the car just fine. It cant be a line of sight issue?

[WRUU653]

19 minutes ago, Guest john said:

So im living in porterville cal. The noaa weather tower that i pick up on is wx l89 bakersfield. It is located quite a distance away and there is many hills in between. I just dont understand how a 28 inch antenna mounted on my bull bar wont receive the transmissions. But my ht with a little antenna will pick it up while im sitting in the car just fine. It cant be a line of sight issue?

John did you notice @SteveShannon mentioned that Bakersfield recently had an outage? 

[Davichko5650]

5 minutes ago, WRUU653 said:

John did you notice @SteveShannon mentioned that Bakersfield recently had an outage? 

Twin Cities also did - KEC65 on 162.550 was off the air for a few days