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So I was right. Basically normal landers without the height you have. I guess normal for you and I would be different because of our landscape situation. LOS makes a huge difference.

My experience is at home, with the high ground, FRS ~1-8 miles.. GMRS 3-20 miles. While off-roading, in hills, mountains and rolling desert hills, FRS, with its tiny little antenna has never performed as well as any GMRS radio after ~1 mile or so.

FRS 1/2 to 3 miles under normal conditions. Maybe 5-7 max. GMRS 1/2 to 5 miles under normal conditions. Maybe 7-9 max. Both in simplex. Expand on your experience. You live in a mountainous region on the high ground. I live in hilly territory where at any time you may be on high or low ground.

In my real-world experience, this is not correct.. at all..

A "real" GMRS radio isn't getting much better than a FRS radio either. Unless you are using repeaters.

I always have to laugh when folks come into work(Sportsman's Warehouse) looking at our Bubble Pack Radios. "But it says on the package 36 miles?" I try to tell them that they're just cheap FRS radios that are .5 to 2 watts and they'd be lucky to get a mile with them in the city and maybe 3 or 4 miles in prefect condition out in the wide open country. I always try to point them to a "REAL" radio and tell them they can get a much better UV-5R for $20 bucks on Amazon. I get a few folks thanking me for them not wasting their money on the bubble pack stuff.

You asked for 95E radios. At one time or still do Motorola did/do offer a FRS radio that had a removable antenna, thus has to be a 95E type-accepted. Those radios were only 2 watts. Some of the Cobra radios have removable antennae and have to be 95E Type-Accepted. I'm not sure if those radios are only 2 watts or 5 watt radios. Just because a radio is made in China doesn't make them a China radio. Midland, Cobra, and Motorola are an American Owned Company and they design/engineer the radios right here in the United States and outsource the building of those radios to a company in China and have them built to those specifications.

My bet would be if they WERE using radios they'd be the cheap bubble pack FRS radios you'd get from WalMart. I don't think they'd be intelligent enough to get real GMRS radios and use them. If they were they'd not be protesting in the first place.

When you're ready to move up take a serious look at the AR-5RM or if you want/need GPS the BTech/Baofeng BF-F8HP Pro is an awesome radio. Welcome to the Crazy World of GMRS.

the UV 21 uses the USB charge option so its not the same battery as UV5. The BFH6 looks like a Uv5 and not sure what the difference is between them. It's not a bad radio, been playing around with it for a few days and i like it.

I don't know of any USB-C chargeable batteries of the UV-5R type. At least some extended (3800mAh) batteries for UV-5R are chargeable with a cable rather than using the charging stand. The cable has a small round plug that fits the side of the battery. But other than having another cable to keep up with, it is (IMO) just as good as USB-C.

These are all made in "pandaland". Motorola doesn't even make a part 95E (GMRS) radio, only FRS radios, or business, and their FRS radios (and alot of their business radios) are China. So are Cobra's that I've seen and all the midlands.

Midland, Cobra, and Motorola.

Yes, I know. In CHIRP you'd enter 462.725 and it'll automatically offset to TX to 467, my radios don't work with CHIRP, might be a WINE/Linux deal or something. In the Stock Software you enter 467 as the TX and 462 as the RX.

Yeah that looks correct. I'd try putting another one in with the DCS tone just to try. I still don't know why it wouldn't be giving you the "I can't do that" tone on GMRS 18 tho.

That doesn’t surprise me that an “upgraded” model uses a different battery. More money to be made from selling more batteries. I may have said this before, but my favorite “open” radios are the Baofeng DM-5R a/k/a Radioddity RD-5R which are also DMR and use UV-5R batteries! Now I just need a couple of USB-C chargable batteries to compliment my collection.

Dude - Your Transmit Frequency For The Repeater Should Be 467.725MHz / CTCSS 100.0 - Not 462.725 MHz. Re-check Your Programming.......

We're moving the club's Wednesday night nets to the Brentwood repeater at 462.600. Tone is 123.0 in/out. Everyone that can hit the Brentwood Grasslands repeater at 462.650 (former location of the net) should be able to hit the Brentwood repeater at 600 just as well. See everyone at 462.600 at 8pm on Wednesday night for a quick checkin net.

Double and Triple checked my settings for the local Repeaters and I still can't get anyone. I wasn't having any trouble at all getting Shaw Butte but now, NOTHING. It's just crazy. Can anyone else in the Phoenix, AZ. area hit the Show Butte repeater and get a reply, 462.725/ TX CTCSS 100.0, none needed for RX.

I've generally always spelt things like they sound and some words just sound so strange that it's hard to figure out how to spell them. LOL

Uh....can you give an example of a part 95E radio that is not a "pandaland" radio?

I thought I read somewhere the audio popping was due to the DSP core on the radio chip switching digital gain control settings. Apparently some manufactures have figured out how to mitigate the problem. The attached files are for the ROC, radio on a chip, used in the UV-5R radios for reference. Note other well known radios use a similar radio on a chip design, but with much better front end filtering etc. Examples are the Motorola XPR7550's which some won't use anything else, and the newer Kenwood NX-1K series. RDA1846 - Edited.pdf RDA1846 Programming Manual.pdf SCHEMATIC Baofeng UV-5R.pdf

10-4, Thanks for your guidance.

It doesn’t matter as far as a ground plane, but if you use steel you can use a magnetic mount.