Viewer Comment: Making a contact on VHF - Repeaters vs Simplex Operation - What you need to know 

CQ on simplex is perfectly fine. CQ literally means "calling any station." That's not the same as keying up the local repeater where it's assumed that there are a number of stations already listening, and therefore just stating one's callsign is sufficient. Things will proceed from there, of introductions, welcome to the activity, a short QSO or just a signal report. I always welcome newly qualified ops, as does every other ham I've ever heard. If this fellow's radio has not been setup properly, offset, tone -- all that stuff, then it can be frustrating. Best bet is to find an "Elmer" who can show & tell, all that stuff. Which you have just done. 73, VE7EZI.

I really had a similar problem. I finally got my callsign and had a 50w rig with a decent antenna. All 5 out of 10 repeaters near me were usually active pretty good throughout the day. But every night after work when I got on looking for a radio check it’s like nobody could hear me! So I had some family members help me test it out with the use of my other H/T that I had, to make sure I was actually hearing the repeater on the downlink frequency. Turns out there was just nobody catching my transmissions later in the night around 8-9pm. Point being, just don’t give up and keep trying and double check your connections and your settings and somebody will get through to you. But i highly recommend upgrading from an H/T if you live 10+ miles from a repeater. KK7HRO

Looking forward to this. I just made my first contact today via repeater on a local net.

Nice explanation that really helps clear things up for me. Thanks for taking the time to do these videos.

Great video. Lots of useful information, you gave. I have a 4 element Yagi on top of my roof and talked to a fella about 250 -300 miles south of me. He was in North Carolina, and I live 2 miles south of the Delaware state line.

I'm in a northern Canadian city of 78,000 population within range of 3 repeaters. Noone is ever on air except for one net per night on the biggest one and 1 net per week on the smallest one. Otherwise dead air.

I am a new techie and when setting up for my first repearter i did it while in vfo and ended up setting an offset for the entire band so simplex i would transmit 5k up or down from the recieve lol. now i put all freqs in memory and set each one up seperately... and then test out the vfo side to ensure i didn't mess it up for simplex. Saving to an Sd card really helped.

This may sound obvious, but as a new ham he (or she) may "assume" that the radio is already set for 5 watts. Maybe it wasn't. That's the first thing I would of said. As for the rest of it, what you said in full is spot on! Keep up the good work!

Another good show brother

Good stuff, as always... The one thing I might add would be to check out the Repaterbook app for iOS or Android. If the person has GPS turned on, it'll give him/her a ballpark idea of how far away that repeater might be. Not exact, obviously, but it'll give them an idea.

Great video for us newbies. 👍 Thank you

I would think that club members could help a lot! Finding a good club is very good.

Well done man!

Great video and explanations on how to work with a repeater or simplex. Will take a look at your other videos! 73, PD4GR

It would probably be best to refer to tones as CTCSS tones instead of pl tones because CTCSS is most commonly used in manuals and on radios.

Doesn't "CQ" mean "looking for a contact?" Why is that frowned upon?

One thing I didn't hear was the deviation setting, the FT79 does default to wide (5kHz) but some I have gotten default to 2.5kHz. Most of the US repeaters in regions I been in use 5kHz. If set to 2.5kHz one can still copy but their audio will always seem low and can be hard for some to copy.

"Should' is a good word. Did it work? No. I put in my ZIP, but it says I have to put in the coordinates. It doesn't tell me what the format for the coordinates is. Finally, after several attempts, it comes back that there are NO repeaters within 25, or 50, miles. I know for a fact that there ARE a few repeaters within 20 miles. Glitch? Why does everything seem to be so difficult? There's rarely a straightforward answer or procedure.

Just got my tech license. No contacts yet. Newbie question.....If CQ is not necessarily recommended for simplex, and not typical when using a repeater then when is it used.?

4:31 - If you use Chirp to program your radio, will it add in the pl tones and offsets automatically?

When you say getting your antenna up about 20ft where are your measurement points? The ground is one, but what about the antenna end. I have an Ed Fong J pole on 5ft mast on top of a roof ridge at about 13ft. So, my radio at 18ft or is measured from the center of the J pole which would be another 2.5 ft? I'm newly licensed so I am still working the kinks out up basic understanding. Looking forward to a reply, from anyone, just be nice okay? 73

2 Meter Offset is .6 Mhz or 600 Khz, not 6 Mhz. 6 Mhz puts you out of band.

2 meter repeater users seem to be rather hostile, where I reside.

On 2m simplex I've read that the calling frequency should be held for emergency communications. What's the correct answer here as there seem to be some varying ideas about its use and my area doesn't have much activity except around net times.

I'm a new FT-65R owner (and licensee) and I had the same issue. I found that I did not have the SQL Tone Type setting correct, so even though I could receive the repeater(s) output , the repeaters that I was trying to hit, were all "deaf as a post" to my transmit, due to the incorrect setting. Check menu option #29 SQL Type and make sure it is set to T-tone for the repeater frequency entry. In the Yaesu programming software, its "SQL Type', in CHIRP it's called "Tone Mode". The Yaesu settings are confusing because there are two Squelch settings in the FT-65R menu, #26 RF SQL and #29 SQL Type. The SQL Type is basically your key into the repeater. The Yaesu programming software sucks, the FT-65R is now supported by CHIRP and I highly recommend using it over the Yaesu software. The CHIRP software pops up a warning about it being experiment for the FT-65R, but that's an old message back from when they were still working on adding the FT-65R to CHIRP... they need to get rid of that message, as the CHIRP website lists the FT-65R as a supported model, and it works fine. The Yaesu manual that comes with the radio also sucks, if you haven't done so already, down load the advanced FT-65R manual from Yaesu: www.yaesu.com/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=13235&FileCatID=151&FileName=FT%2D65R%5FE%5FAdvance%5FManual%5FENG%5F1710%2DC.pdf&FileContentType=application%2Fpdf +1 on the adapter to BNC. It gives you more flexibility to switch antennas... be it to try a different one on the radio or to connect to an outside/portable antenna. I plan to put up a J-Pole, so the BNC will make it easier for me to switch between the HT mounted antenna and the outside antenna. And here are some great SMA female to BNC female adapters, the fit on the radio looks like they came that way from the factory: www.amazon.com/dp/B00CVQK466?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details 73's KN6VMK