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My god man, is there anything that can be done that is not an affront to you? Thank you for your permission as to what I may call my group/club.

73 SeaScholar, it seems you are now changing the format or definition to something that seems to be directly competing with this site. Of course that is allowed, but it's a different can of worms. If you call your group something like SE Minnesota GMRS Club then we can let it rest as you wish. (But on this site everyone likes to get the last word, especially the attackers. So be prepared for it go on for pages more.)

See? This is what I mean. There is no need to act like your antenna is larger then everyone else's. Looking past the obvious bait, I will state that even with a forum like this, one must have thicker skin. If you value the opinion of complete strangers that you will never met, then by remaining on the forums you are in truth doing it for yourself and will garner no sympathy from me. Please state where this is going on, give club details. What is deemed as short distance to you, in miles. Also how do you negate propagation? Your radio has a on/off setting. Turn off the radio. There, see how fast that goes away? If you are not making up rules, then why are you concerned about the rules?

Great question, but are you saying this is THE ONLY place we can do that? ie, gatekeeping? EDIT: No other club is required to only be on here. I only put ours on here in case there were people who wanted to go to other places. Like Discord, where we have other tools to 'hangout and chat' when not on radios somewhere.

Isn't that what this website/forum is for?

It seems that some of my posts didn't quite clear the air, and some folks are still spinning GMRUS into a big, complicated deal. My apologies if the language was too formal. Let me try again and be as simple as possible. We're just a club. That’s it. A place for people who like GMRS to hang out and chat. myGMRS is a great place for people to chat, too. This is just another place, with different tools, if people want to join. Nobody is forcing anyone. The only reason the word "national" is even involved is because our clubhouse is online, so anyone can join the conversation, even if you live on the other side of the country. GMRS is a local thing, we all get that. But the people who use it are everywhere. The whole point of this is to have a place to connect with others outside of your immediate radio range. It's a way to swap ideas, ask questions, and see what other GMRS users are up to. There is no big agenda here. There never was any intentions to be the GMRS police, we're not lobbying anyone, and we are definitely not trying to be in charge of anything. It’s just a group of people who share a common interest. And thank you for the constructive criticisms, even if some of them are far off base. So, let's put this to rest. It's simple: you don't have to join, and it won't affect your life or your radio use in any way if you don't. Please, stop trying to turn this simple club into something it's not.

I don't know what you're referring to. I started this thread. And I only comment on the topics that interest me. I respond to hostility with the same. (You don't see all the crap that I ignore.) Based on how things have gone on this forum, I will never go back to being meek and mild, sugar and spice. It's either fight back or be scared off. I'm a dyed in the wool Confederate - we don't run from a fight. But none of this is relevant anyway. Yes, if the nets were local, and limited to mobile and handheld only as the regs require, then I would agree. What is happening around here is repeaters have been put up on the same mountains where ham repeaters are, with similar wide coverage areas. And people are checking in from base stations 50-100 miles away and bragging about it. GMRS is intended for local, short range comms. per FCC. Maximizing distance, check-in nets that accomplish nothing, long rag chews about meaningless crap - I think you can fill in the blanks. I'm on my own; I'm not making up any rules. I can damn sure speak out on what concerns me, and yes that includes breaking rules that the agency in charge made - like it or not.

I have it always on a tab. I use it frequently. Even if the person I’m looking up isn’t in both services it’s a quick lookup like QRZ.

I've got that site bookmarked, didn't even think about using it for some reason. Thanks for the reminder!

Good job. FYI, there’s an easier way. This app does that for you. Enter a call sign for either service and it will tell you: https://gmrs.app/

Lately? It was that way when *I* got here... https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/3842-radio-hatred/ Nerd stuff always draws gatekeepers and jackasses people with deficient social skills. And since those are the folks who like to run their mouths the most, they're the ones you hear.

I figured I'd do a quick check on that for giggles. I looked up the last 10 GMRS licenses issued in my city and checked if the FRN also had a ham license. 4 were dual licensed and 6 were GMRS only. Your results may vary.

We might think the same, however our approaches are vastly different. I do not believe in charging into a conversation then act like my Dipole is the largest in the room, and there is more then enough room to have people disagree with me. I find people are more open to talking with honey, not talking with vinager. Well this is where I will disagree on your opinion, solely based on if the check-in net is tolerant to people just learning how it is done, then this could be a secondary tool in the tool box for when a natural disaster occurs. As I wear three hats (CB'er since the 90's, GMRS, and Amateur Radio) I am very interested to know what antenna's are being used, and how far propagation wise one could reach. Can you please specify "trying to use it like ham" for me. There is a multitude of ways I can take this, however I want to be clear in how you meant it. I will state a overall impression which is you are stating the GMRUS is trying to be authoritative, yet it appears you are doing the same. Why become that which you have issues with?

In my experience, the purpose and use cases for 2 meter/70 cm is exactly the same as GMRS, except that with GMRS the entire extended family can talk and no technician test is involved. People use handheld radios to talk to each other, sometimes while doing something else.

I don't follow. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of GMRS users *aren't* hams...

Welcome to the forum. Yes, if you didn't see/feel those red flags, you would be like the majority of the public. I believe we are mostly thinking alike but I do want to make a couple of points. GMRS is already being turned into ham, with check-in nets and bragging about how far away they are using an antenna in a tree, etc. There is currently nothing being done and no way available to us to correct this. The group's wording emphasizes education. That might help people that don't know how to program and use their radios. But to put it simply, that won't work for the biggest problems. The regs are freely available to read (carefully to get the meaning). However, the guys (and some gals I guess) who are trying to use it like ham don't care because they can get away with doing what they want. I don't see anything in this group's plans that will fix that. Only FCC can punish rule breakers and they (FCC) are aren't even trying. SeaScholar says this is a club and he didn't need permission or even discussion to start it. Well, it isn't just a club in the normal sense. It's a national organization that wants at least influence, if not control, over the service*. (If there's no control/authority, then where is any real value?) With how other national organizations have behaved, it is appropriate for us to be concerned over any such "club". Even though I am not going to join, it definitely could affect my use of the service. And my 35 bucks got me the same license he or anyone else has. So, as was my first reaction, I still feel who put him in charge. *I don't like calling it a hobby, it can be if you make it that, but it's foremost a form of communication used like a tool. And to me, that applies to ham too, despite the guys who make using it a hobby.

I mean, given how aggressive and rude all your posts *here* are, I assume they ignore you because they want nothing to do with you. Maybe someone with manners and a good attitude would do better? I'm sure they couldn't do worse...

It's surprising how far you can communicate with a good line of sight. My personal best HT-to-HT is 22 miles, but we were both on elevated terrain features with apparently little or nothing between us. In Alaska, I had a cabin in a remote riverside location accessible (barely) with a 4WD vehicle. There was a lodge 12 miles away on a mountain that had phone service, and they monitored (as far as I could tell) every radio service known to man. When I got there, I'd flip on my repeater and check in with them. I couldn't directly communicate with an HT because of the trees, but by running an antenna into a tall tree, I could reach the repeater and thence the lodge from any reasonable distance with my HT. On the other side of the valley, some 60+ miles away, people on another mountaintop could talk to the lodge easily with an HT. I don't know how far a UHF signal has to go before it begins to degrade just due to distance, but it's a long way. Theoretically, it would be readable forever, but a radio wave isn't perfectly coherent. It will eventually begin to spread and scatter from things as minor as water vapor or dust in the air.

I am getting the same error under Windows 11. I had to do many times to install the Silicon Labs driver because 11 kept rejecting the driver (it was straigtforward uner Windows 10). Afterwards, the KG935G programming software gave me the debugging assertion error listed above when I assigned the port (COM5). I did an "ignore" and the software seems to read from the radio ok. Of course, I would rather not have the error. These errors did not occur under Windows 10. WRYF584/K7YFM

It's not the cables so much as the different chargers for my various Part 90 Icom LMR h-t's I have to admit, I was lucky when I purchased my 1st Alinco Part 90 h-t years ago [DJ-MD40], it was on sale, & included the cable I don't use DMR, but I'm glad that my Alinco DJ-MD5 uses a standard micro-USB cable I don't remember if one was included or not

Just a note on DMR encryption. This thread on another forum might be of interest. https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/official-standards-documents-for-dmr-encryption.399358/ I think the only encryption that fairly interoperable between manufacturers is ARC4 (RC4) 40 bit. Some DMR radios don’t offer AES or DES levels. I do have a few Motorola XPR650’s with RC4, https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/261-motorola-xpr6550jpeg/?context=new and I have it added to my Kenwood NX-1300’s. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/290-nx-1300duk5/?context=new They go by different names but are the same thing. Motorola calls theirs "Enhanced Privacy" and Kenwood calls it " Enhanced Encryption" or "RC4". I believe Hytera radios use it as well. https://www.hytera.us/resources/what-is-two-way-radio-encryption/ Then the Anytone D878UV's have RC4, AES and their own spin that only works with their radios. This is an interesting topic and could use it's own thread.

i think you are right.. Couldn't play tonight, my friend with the other radio got drug out to dinner by wify.. ... will try tommorow.. I just found out the one i bought (from RadioDitty) came with a European Charger... Been charging it on my labtop cord and had to dig into the factory unit tonight. One more surprise

Here is the line of sight tool. I know that area. That is a good reach for sure.

Not only that, but I also misread your post.