@Phill - MURS is good to have loaded into your radio if it is VHF capable. Just think of it similarly to FRS in the UHF spectrum.

I think I recognize one of those voices @Logic44

Anybody in here owns UV 3R plus? Can this radio charge from the uv5r deck?

Howdy

Anyone got common freqs for cenCal?

Just started getting into radios, got a Baofeng UV-5R

Been listening to fire dispatch and scanning through FRS, but not really picking up anything besides static, random beeps, and the very rare Morse code

www.radioreference.com

You're probably gonna need a trunking scanner, they are most likely on the P25 system from the sounds of it

Oh I see

Honestly didn't know the UV-5R was analog only, whoops.

To be clear, I DO receive signal from EMS and Fire dispatch, it was only the FRS frequencies that seemed dead

FRS is not what you think it is... those are the cheap walkie talkies you get from Walmart

What you are probably getting is UHF rebroadcasts of fire and EMS, they do that around me, but the main channels are up in the 700 and 800Mhz range and digital.

Use that website and look at your area and you'll see what frequencies you need to tune into for everything and if they are encrypted or not, which most likely they are out there.

Sure thing, I'll take a look, thanks

And yeah, I realise that FRS was the walkie-talkie freqs. I'll look through GMRS next time I can.

I guess I was just hoping to just catch non-professional chatter on those freqs

GMRS is the same thing, you're not gonna find any government agencies using those channels.

And any of the "side channels" formally known as talk channels are typically encrypted for the very fact that they don't want us plebs hearing their chatter.

Right, I'm not trying to find government channels on FRS or GMRS just local people who also happen to have radios


Lol gotcha, alright thanks

I'll keep tinkering with it.
My my programming cable arrives, I'll try to program into my local repeaters.

By chance, if I set my freq to listen to the repeater offset, I should be able to RX traffic through it, right?

Ah, got ya... yeah, if you're just listening until you get a callsign then yeah if programmed right you'll be able to listen.

You're not gonna catch much of FRS or GMRS except families on vacation and possibly some small businesses. But you're gonna get less than a mile of range out if them because they are super low power.

That's the plan.
I figured if I happened to catch someone on FRS GMRS, I would attempt to talk to em.

I wont attempt to TX on 2m till I understand what I'm doing a bit better

Ypu mean until you get your license and have a callsign.... don't make the fudds mad and make it harder for the rest of us. They just finally made remote testing possible.

It's a super easy course, you'll learn alot, and then you can do whatever you want in the radio and even talk around the world.

Sure thing, I'll do that

Finally got this base station mobile up and running this evening. Using it right now to listen to a Patriot leaning Net on a local Ham repeater, so far so good. That makes two mobiles I have set up now.....one to remain stationary at home and one in a Pelican that I can take anywhere and be on the air in minutes. Next will be one actually installed in my truck for true mobile use.

Nice... Harris too

I got my first ham and chest rig today

You're running a .22?

@EDDSkitz - Harris gets so much hate at times but I think they make a good product. I mean, Motorola hates Harris for taking market share away in the Public Safety market so they must be doing something right.

@Sparrow training gun hard to find 5.56 don’t wanna waste what I got. I have a few thousand.22

Got ya, just making sure that isn't your.. battle gun, hahaha.

Nah unless I’m battling squirrel or rabbit lolz

I'd probably be the type of dickhead to hunt small game with a .223 Mini-14

Is there a bookmark or other # for newbies to the comms world

I would like to second this motion

A nice faq would be fantastic

The problem is, there's so much and so many different areas

YouTube is a treasure trove of information

Start with the US frequency allocation, then how antennas work.

So i was at virginia with a few "guys" mainly a Lightfoot detachment. Our cheep chinese radios, baefungs wouldn't even communicate more than 10 feet in the area.. thoughts on why? We are no rookies to radios. I figured wattage was an issue, too much interference

We have no issues out inna woods lol

I want to get my ass into Ham more, I want to set up a base at home. I have a home based FFL, so figured why not have a radio too.. lol

Wrong offset? We’re you on the same channel or the right frequency for your environment?

Yup, we were, just didn't make much sense to us, alot of GMRS traffic... we bumped ourselves into 155mhz if I remember correctly

We should get a few with good comms knowledge and have them put together an faq, I would try and do it myself but I don't know nearly enough about this kind of thing.

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