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As has been said, you may get SOME additional punch through trees and what not at 20W over 5W, but the biggest thing is putting the antenna outside of the big metal box. The nice thing about it though is that with the antenna on the outside, not only does it improve your transmit range, but you'll be able to hear them from further away than you otherwise would as well, with a handheld inside the car without an external antenna. All that said, if staying in touch is super important to the group....if a large separation happens, have a plan for correcting that / regrouping.

Did you order one yet ??

yea,,, and i still eat candy at my old age..

i can give you my experience while RV' ing with RV friends. Most of the time we travel in groups of 3 to 4 other RV's on the road. We all have GMRS radios and we all started out using HT's. After the first time together using HT's we discovered communicating with HT's pretty much sucked. We were lucky to reach each other when we got separated by as little as a mile. The low profile HT antenna and fact we all were pulling huge signal blocking clumps of fiberglass and steel was the problem. Once we all got mobile radios this problem pretty much went away. With the mobiles we can stay in touch easily as far as 20-25 miles apart and sometimes further, especially when we are hitting repeaters. Traveling through canyons is a bit of a problem even with a mobile but dependable within 2 miles. I will say one of they guys in our group 'was' using a Midland Ghost antenna, which worked pretty good for the most part but he was the first guy we lost in the canyons..... Early on i did adapt my HT to a Mobile antenna, which helped a little but no comparison even close to using a good 50W Mobile.. In my case i use a Hytera HM782

Really? Even at club level road racing (SCCA / NASA) I've seen a mix of mobile and H/Ts. Once you get up into your IMSA / WEC / World Challenge, even the lower tiers, it's basically all mobiles. I haven't spent enough time crawling around circle track cars to tell you one way or another in that world.

UHF is line of sight until it is reflected or refracted by some atmospheric condition. Google Tropospheric Ducting. Physical features such as mountains can also cause reflection or refraction.

I figured it was that easy, maybe I am not close enough to the repeater, I am in the estimated range, I will try to get closer. Thank you for your help

Is the UV32 nearly the same radio except without DMR?

OK, here's one for the folks that actually understand how EM propagation works in practice: A couple of years ago, the current distance record was set for LoRa at more than 800 miles. The communication was between a fishing boat and one of the buoys in its fishery across open ocean. https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/new-lora-world-record-1336-km-830-mi Frankly, I'm confused as to how that happened when, by my best guestimates, the unit on the buoy has a horizon at around 4 miles. The one on the boat, due to its greater height, had a horizon at more like 15 miles, but that still doesn't make it better! Now, I was under the impression that signals in the 800-1000 MHz range sere strictly line of site, with neither ground nor sky propagation. Nonetheless, this event would imply that either I'm completely wrong about how EM propagation works, or somebody's fibbing...

I've seen a few in road race track racecars, but not in oval track racecars. Mobile radios are common in off-road race type vehicles for obvious reasons.

Saw those the other day. Pretty dang cool. About the only DMR/Analog HT I've seen that does cool analog stuff I've been missing in HT's like my MD-380. Things like tone scan, add/remove channels on the radio without a PC, etc. It's almost like a standard analog radio with all the analog features one would want that does DMR instead of a DMR radio that can do basic pre-programmed analog but with no real analog features.

The UV-5RH Pro GPS is almost the same radio in terms of features and function. It lacks the support and updatable firmware of the BF-F8HP Pro, and those things do matter, but it's 1/4 the price. If I were going to have only one HT and use it for many years, I'd probably go with the F8HP, but I bought the 5RH instead. There's not really one right answer to the question of what radio is "best". It depends upon how you think you will use the radio.

If nothing else the 20w radio will sound louder. You will have the clear commanding voice.

You might get a couple extra yards of farz out of the extra power, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Nope, nope, nope not going to even look

I don't think so. The probability of getting separated is about the same no matter what radios you have, but with the mobile, you at least have a chance of getting a message to them even if they can't effectively respond. One-way is better than no-way, IMO.

Prior to moving from Northern California in 2019 where 99.2% of the public safety systems were analog conventional VHF& UHF systems, I would get several requests to program various vintage Mototola radios because no one had the capability any longer, with public safety and/or Ham freqs. Some of the people said they were either volunteers or reserves, but the radios were privately owned. I refused to program any public safety freqs. As for the people that wanted Ham freqs, I also to turned them away for a couple reasons, one for not having the HAM channel information to be programmed and/or for the HAM freqs being out of the operating band range of their radio. One genuine Einstein even brought me, I think was a MTX9000, that operated in the 900 MHz band with a operating band range above the 900 MHz Amateur band, and he wanted both 2 Meter and 70 cm freqs programmed in the radio. And this guy also didn't have any programming channel information. I guess I was supposed to look that up for him. After moving to Arizona in 2019, I only had one guy show up driving a Black Crown Vic with spot lights requesting a vintage Motorola radio programmed with both GMRS and a couple police UHF freqs. The radio was a VHF radio that I suspect was an old LAPD VHF radio. I don't get too many real Einsteins wanting public safety freqs programmed in their privately owned radios since every agency in the Phoenix area operates on either Phase 1 or 2 Digital Trunk and encrypted 700 MHz systems.

Probably, but not for the reason you think. The biggest factor is that the antenna of a mobile radio is outside the vehicle while the HT antennas are inside the vehicle -- essentially a Faraday cage. Transmission and reception will both be adversely impacted by being inside the vehicle. Second, a mobile radio antenna is usually a better antenna in general, because it doesn't have to be short enough to be easily carried. Third, a VHF or UHF radio signal is significantly impacted by obstacles -- mostly hills and buildings in the case you're describing. The rule of thumb is that in order to double the distance of the signal, you have to quadruple the power of the radio. All other things being equal, your radio should yield about twice the effective distance of the HTs, but all other things are not even close to equal in your case. Short answer -- yes, I would expect them to hear you further than you can hear them, but it has less to do with power than with other factors. You could learn a lot by simply doing the experiment. Try communication between your mobile and an HT under different conditions and see what you get.

I'm still fairly new to radios and GMRS and trying to get my mind wrapped around the technical concepts. My intended use is for communications between multiple drivers transporting a group of young men to camping outings (we're a Trail Life USA troop). I'm contemplating getting a 20w mobile to install into my car (because, or course, I'm attracted to the possibility of farther range ). But most of the other dads would likely be using 5w handhelds in their vehicles. My question is: I, with my 20w would be able to transmit farther (in most conditions) than the 5w handhelds -- so does that mean that if we got separated a number of miles on the highway, they would be able to hear me from farther away, but that I would probably NOT be able to hear them calling back, due to their lower power? For transportation communications like this, would it be better for all of us to have the same power handhelds? Thanks for any help and insight you'all could give me.

Telling the truth about rules and consequences is much closer to being a steward of the service than spreading lies and misinformation about it.

I have yet to see a mobile radio in a race car. Every radio I have seen is a portable with an antenna adapter. I dont know if indy or F1 is different but at least in the nascar world its all portables. Rarely do you even see a mobile in a safety truck either. If you are doing a mobile I'm with others get a quality LMR radio with limited functions.

Whats really sad is the amount of folks on this forum that encourage folks to break the rules. Regardless if its uncertified radios, using non gmrs frequencies like ham. Then on top of it it we tell folks dont worry no one cares or can do anything. What happened to be a stewardess of the hobby/service ? Lately this forum isn't much better than the prepper forums out there.

Yes: repeaters use an “offset” to receive on one frequency and then retransmit the signal on their main output frequency. For GMRS, that offset is 5 MHz and the DB20-G is preset for that offset on channels 23-30. So when you transmit on Channel 15 it both transmits and receives on 462.550. Whereas on Channel 23, it also receives on 462.550 but transmits on 467.550. The tone is used by the repeater to determine if your signal should be retransmitted by the repeater on the offset frequency or not.

This should get the job done. This is an extract from the csv version, but it gives you an idea of what you need

Sure, if I want to eliminate one of the main repeaters in the area. I run 2 different scans on my KG1000. Police, EMS and fire on one side and My repeater, Holyoke, Enfield and Glastonbury. Glastonbury is the one that has the DMR break through. But I have DMR interference on all frequencies 1-22. Seems to be pervasive in my area. The emergency frequencies rarely have any interference.