GMRS or HAM radio?

An aside: LJ buddy just bought a Wouxun 905G HT and asked that I program it for him. Had to do it by hand but got a couple repeaters in it for him. We talked HT-HT 25 miles between us and the repeater 35 miles from his place and not quite LOS, loud and clear all the way to his house. I think he was quite surprised; I was not. Mine is the 805G.
 
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NOTNSUV said:
An aside: LJ buddy just bought a Wouxun 905G HT and asked that I program it for him. Had to do it by hand but got a couple repeaters in it for him. We talked HT-HT 25 miles between us and the repeater 35 miles from his place and not quite LOS, loud and clear all the way to his house. I think he was quite surprised; I was not. Mine is the 805G.
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Can you use chirp on a wouxun?
 
NskLJ said:
I got

my ham license at a local Red Cross, a ham club sponsors it once a month for $5.
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Last time I'd looked the closest to me was Yakima which is an hour away. There is a club that use to meet in Ellensburg but don't know if they still do since COVID.
 
Wildman said:
Last time I'd looked the closest to me was Yakima which is an hour away. There is a club that use to meet in Ellensburg but don't know if they still do since COVID.
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you can also take the exam online. its kindof a pain because it requires both cell phone and computer to be on a zoom meeting so they can ensure you arent cheating.

Lots of options. I think my exam was proctored over zoom by a community college in Alabama.
 
Wildman said:
Bringing this back up since I was just talking about this again. While I KNOW this might now be the most popular option this radio appears to have the MARS mod built in? It also has many good reviews online on other radio sites.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012N370W2/?tag=wranglerorg-20
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My hesitation with this would be antennas. Its difficult and expensive to have a decent antenna that will respond well across such a large frequency range. It can be done, but its expensive. I think you'd be better off with two separate radios with two separate antennas - @Jerry Bransford would know more on this subject than I do.
 
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Zorba said:
My hesitation with this would be antennas. Its difficult and expensive to have a decent antenna that will respond well across such a large frequency range. It can be done, but its expensive. I think you'd be better off with two separate radios with two separate antennas - @Jerry Bransford would know more on this subject than I do.
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x2. 70cm and 2M, even mgrs freqs, can be run off the same antenna depending on what sacrifices in SWR at certain ranges you are willing to live with, but to get 6m and 10m as well you would need a different antenna unless you wanted to do something really crazy.

you could run two dedicated antennas with a duplexer or some kind of mixer with pass filters that automatically routed signal to one antenna or the other, but were talking alot of effort when you could just buy another radio. 2m70cm or gmrs is more then enough for any trail run.
 
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while it is chinese, and not a top of the line Japanese model, I have had good luck so far with the btech uv50x2 . It is not "MARS" but the upper frequency range goes beyond 70cm well into GMRS territory.

I can program my little handhelds with the same chirp plan and leave one at the camper with my wife, then If she needs to reach out to me she can do so on GMRS since she doesn't have a ham license.

I like the flexibility of being able to run GMRS on trail runs and the ham access for local weather and disaster relief stuff.
 
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My biggest like about that radio is being able to monitor CB. I was chasing something that could TX on GMRS and CB for a while just in case Jerry showed up to a trail run 😆 Then I realized the aforementioned antenna issue and quit my search. Still, being able to monitor CB then dig my CB out from the depths of my console to talk if need be would be nice. Supposedly my KG1000 was originally supposed to be able to monitor CB but they couldn't get it certified by the FCC that way for some reason so they dropped the feature.
 
I did some routine maintenance on my base GMRS repeater last week. I took some pics as I did not have any of this particular unit.

It is mounted in a Pelican box. I used Deutsch connectors for power instead of the usual T connector but that is the only deviation from standard there is.

I did this because I had a 2pin bulkhead that worked perfect and I made three separate cords, one with ring terms to connect to a deep cycle batt, one with a 12v cig plug, one with small gator type clamps to hook onto battery terminals.

The radios are old motorolas CDM1250's. Great radios and you can find them for $100-200 on ebay. The trick is finding someone with the software to set them up. I had mine set up for about $100 IIRC. The duplexer is American made, the chinese duplexers are junk.

I added a ID-O-Matic which has a lot of repeater functions like tot, voice or code ID, etc...

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Wildman said:
Bringing this back up since I was just talking about this again. While I KNOW this might now be the most popular option this radio appears to have the MARS mod built in? It also has many good reviews online on other radio sites.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012N370W2/?tag=wranglerorg-20
Click to expand...
Ok, kick in the reality of radio in a mobile config in your Jeep. You're not going to sit in your jeep trying to make long distance contacts or doing Ham stuff, so focus on a mobile unit that has options for you to grow, including GMRS, 2M, 70cm, and simplex operation. You also don't want to spend $400+ on a mobile that can easily be stolen, so my suggestion is a $100-$200 unit that is open to TX on the frequencies that matter for mobile coms. Btech has some compact options that would fit the bill.
 
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bobthetj03 said:
Ok, kick in the reality of radio in a mobile config in your Jeep. You're not going to sit in your jeep trying to make long distance contacts or doing Ham stuff, so focus on a mobile unit that has options for you to grow, including GMRS, 2M, 70cm, and simplex operation. You also don't want to spend $400+ on a mobile that can easily be stolen, so my suggestion is a $100-$200 unit that is open to TX on the frequencies that matter for mobile coms. Btech has some compact options that would fit the bill.
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Thanks that is some good advice.
 
bobthetj03 said:
Ok, kick in the reality of radio in a mobile config in your Jeep. You're not going to sit in your jeep trying to make long distance contacts or doing Ham stuff, so focus on a mobile unit that has options for you to grow, including GMRS, 2M, 70cm, and simplex operation. You also don't want to spend $400+ on a mobile that can easily be stolen, so my suggestion is a $100-$200 unit that is open to TX on the frequencies that matter for mobile coms. Btech has some compact options that would fit the bill.
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Good advice for most. I'm actually thinking of adding HF capability, complete with an extensible antenna and mast to my Jeep for emergency response purposes - but that's not the average Jeeper.
 
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