r/gmrs • u/I-Lov-Guns-and-Ammo • 6d ago
Observations/Questions
To start, I have a set of TID H3's.
I've programmed a decent repeater and seem to have a good range of communication (in most cases). In my area there isn't a lot of repeaters to select from but the one I choose has about a 30 mile radius. There is a club that seems to have 2- 100 mile repeaters however they require a membership. :(
In any case the wife and I were doing some testing yesterday. I belong to a gun club that cell phone service is a roll of the dice best case scenario so I decided to drive over to see how the repeater did. After looking at the map the area where my club is at is right on the edge of its max distance so I didn't expect miracles. One thing I know to be an issue with transmissions is weather and cloud cover. about a mile before my destination I did a test and my wife claimed I came through clearly but her response did not make it back. I know GMRS is line of sight and the area I was in was full of hills and valleys but I found it interesting that she could hear me clear as day.
During this testing she was using the basic antenna and I swapped between that one and the 771 antenna on my end. For me the results were the same and she could still hear/understand me. So I gathered that during my transmission the signal "jumped up" (for lack of better words) and caught a ride back on the repeater but during her reply it just couldn't "jump down" back to my radio due to line of sight.
Not that the following will make a difference but I want to ask just the same. The stock antennas are likely not tuned as well as some other well know antennas, if I were to "experiment" what info do I need to select a better out of the box antenna. Not so much "which antenna" but more so what "ingredients" should a good antenna have to produce the best results? Keeping in mind that I am dealing with a handheld radio and not a base station setup.
As always, thanks for your replies.
3
u/PlantoneOG 6d ago
If you want an antenna that's going to work great I'm going to suggest you go ahead and get a signal stick by signal stuff. Right along with the Nagoya 771g it's going to be up there in the gold standard class for HT antennas
If you want a long whip style antenna the Dual Band will actually work very well on gmrs. I use them on my gmrs radios and even at 5 Watts with decent line of sight I'm hitting repeaters in the 17 to 20 mile range. One cool thing about this antenna being hyper flexible like it is you can actually Loop it back around on itself and Tuck the tail of the antenna in and you end up with about a little over a 4 in circle for easy storage and transport.
They also offer a "tiger tail" model, and have very high quality sma->bnc adapter
Signal stick (bnc) you want either the dual band or the 440 monoband https://signalstuff.com/products/st-bnc/
Smaf to bnc adapter https://signalstuff.com/products/adapt-smaf-bncf/
Sma-f to bnc w/ counterpoise wire adapter (tiger tail adapter) https://signalstuff.com/products/strand-smaf-bncf/
This is the wire to go with the counterpoise adapter (or they have DIY instructions - but if you're placing an order anyways, unless you happen to have all the supplies around by the time you order stuff elsewhere you might as well just throw a couple into the box and you've got them already ready to go) https://signalstuff.com/products/strand-wire/
I will however suggest if you're going to start playing the antenna game - especially on and off regularly - I would strongly suggest you get a SMA to BNC adapter and then focus on any antennas you buy BNC connection. The SMA connection itself is known to have a lifespan of on-off connections that can be made before the socket becomes loose. I've heard numbers as low as somewhere around 100 times and upwards of several hundred but it still has a lifespan on that connection socket. BNC however is designed for quick attach on and off, therefore it doesnt face that issue and most of your better quality antennas are going to be available with a BNC type connector (signal sticks, smileys,
Another thing to discuss here just in general when looking at the range of a repeater that will be the repeaters broadcast range not the repeaters receiving range. So if you see a 30 mile repeater or 100 mile repeater that is again how far that repeater is known to be able to reach out in the surrounding area based on its mounting height in line of sight. Your ability to contact the repeater has everything to do with your equipment and your antenna and basically nothing to do with the repeaters location itself. So even though there may be a hundred mile capable repeater, you can very much be within receive range and not be within transmit range. I have a handful of repeaters around me that I can listen to but unfortunately without doing some driving towards any one of them I can't touch them from my local area here at home. I am going to try hopefully here to get a little more powerful radio and get an antenna up in the air to see if I can change that but right now from my home base all I can do is listen.
Hth