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Terri, Again I want to express my appreciation for your calm and thoughtful comments and informative posts in response to curmudgeonliness. Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day!

That’s true, the owner and those authorized to use the owner’s call sign, which is limited to the owner’s relatives except in an emergency.

Nit pick time - a private repeater that carries only traffic from the owner is not required to ID as long as the owner does.

Funny that you mention this bc we had a set of 4 Midland 1050’s (maybe) used at a rural property. They worked well enough but could not quite cover the whole place. I think all of them had the batteries replaced at least once. They do have the weather alerts and they are the reason I’m familiar with the feature. The only drawbacks I found were that when on Wx alert mode, the battery life was poor and the limited coverage (I think they were <2 watt with a 2-3” antenna). Oh, and they’re camo so when they get dropped from an atv, tractor, or pocket they’re hard to find (we’re down to 2 of 4). For FRS they have been pretty good. I’m looking to get a pair of GMRS radios to keep around the house. But, you make a good point and I should dig into the GMRS Midland’s.

any FM radio replacement will work, but I suggest you disassemble it first and see what the mounting post looks like. Your reference photo has the folding style like this one from Amazon

I think radio waves are the same as audio frequencies - resonance....either you are in tune or not. Something we are all familiar with

When is comes to buying disposable radios the only consideration should be price. Not to start a Midland vs. Baofeng debate, one has to consider the facts. Midland products are extremely overpriced and the company only survive by name recognition. Remember, today's Midland isn't your grandfather's Midland. The Baofeng radio is a high quality rugged design built for rough service and high performance. Baofeng radios are feature packed and incorporate every possible feature and option available for your enjoyment. If there's a feature you think you need, you might be borderline delusional and severely mistaken. So, the choice is yours. Buy an overpriced radio with a fancy nameplate or a six pack of of Baofeng throwaway radios for the same price.

Heck, the Midland GXT 1000 has the weather channels. Since I knew nothing when I bought them a few years ago they aren't repeater capable. Looking for replacements now.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, and since this is a (mostly) GMRS groups of users, I don't know that you'll find [m]any dissenting voices here. I'll just point out that BTECH had working, final BF-F8HP Pro hardware in April 2024 at firmware version 9 when I came on board, and my continuous "here's a bug", "we need to make this better", "we need this new feature" meant that the radios shipped 6 months later at the beginning of October 2024 at V29, including a complete re-write of the menus by me to real US English. V33 was released in the middle of November, 2024 to fix a few bugs we knew about (the radios had to be initially programmed during manufacturing) and we managed to get in fixes for a few user-reported bugs and quite a few user-requested features within the 6 weeks between V29 and V33. V44 shipped in mid-April, 2025 with the CPS 1.2.5m that supports all of the new V33 and V44 features being released at the beginning of June, 2025. V44 and its CPS add quite a few features requested by users and lays the foundation for additional improvements. These radios are updatable by the user, with the same cable used for programming, and any upgrade problems will either be addressed by support email (when possible) or via warranty replacement( (if needed). I'll also mention that nobody has ever bricked a BF-F8HP Pro while updating it (and believe me, I've had many chances as I've done every firmware release from V8 through V44, across 9 radios (ranging from hand-built engineering samples to pre-production units to early production, and then finally a bunch of production units). Many of these firmware features are exclusive to BTECH, either in perpetuity or for various numbers of years. There's no 'generic' version of this radio and there won't ever be. The user-updatable firmware means that a radio you bought on release day, today, or in the future will all be able to run the latest firmware. Even before V29 and the radio's release, I was showing it to select users (it had no labeling except for some marker dots in the battery compartment, and I changed the official boot screen to an actual picture of a boot to not give away where it would eventually be coming from). The universal response was "Wow! A Baofeng that doesn't <bleep>!". Before you dismiss it, take a look at the Release Notes below, which shows what has changed in the firmware between V29 and V44: vers-old.pdf

Thank you, I will look into that.

So, did those places complain about the radios? Anyway, I never claimed there weren't places with the name. Just isn't relevant IMO. Everyone can read their own labels so no need to argue that point further. As I wrote earlier, I don't think anyone else cares. Most people still don't pronounce it correctly either. :) My opinion is BTech doesn't have any radios that are unique, just some minor tweaks and a custom label.

I’m looking at Midland HTs, the T75s specifically, for hunting, which have everything you mentioned, plus vibration alerts (handy when you need quiet most of the time, but still want to know when someone is trying to reach you). I haven’t made the purchase yet of course, so I can’t speak directly to them, but they show enough promise to me I’m eyeing them eagerly and counting pennies lol. At risk of wading headlong into the “Midland vs Baofeng” debate, for the NOAA Wx Radio side, Midland, with their engineering in Kansas City (in tornado alley), has been legendary for the best quality wx radios for a long time. I’ve relied on them for a tabletop weather radio for over a decade after some horrendous ones from other manufacturers that lasted less than a year in some cases. In other words, I’ve come to literally rely on Midland’s wx radio tech like I do a smoke detector or a seatbelt, after bad experiences with other brands. So with one of those “imho” anecdotal things, if wx radio quality is what you’re after, I’d at least give Midland’s offerings a glance, even with the higher price point. And then go with your gut, don’t just take my word for it, even if it means non-Midland for the purchase. Cuz while I might be coming down on team Midland in this thread, ultimately, you do you—no need for me to take more than a for-me-only stance in the manufacturer debate that has raged long before I entered this hobby of radio.

Premium members can run reports and download files that can be used offline.

I couldn’t quite find this topic in the forums so I started a new. My question here is I’m setting up a basic comms box (with a typical micro pc). My idea was to use the utilize this to view downloaded (if possible) repeater, location and information while away from cell service areas. I know it’s possible to save certain website data to view off-line but I’m curious if this is possible through mygmrs.com.

Baofeng is indeed a place name (in fact, several) in China. Here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baofeng_County (although that is 12 hours from the factory). Right around the factory (Changfu Industrial Zone, XIamei Town of Nan'an City, Quanzhou, Fujian province, China) there's also Baofeng Building Materials Hang, Baofeng Printing Shop, Baofeng Household Appliances and so forth. There's also a Dalian Baofeng Machinery Manufacturing Company elsewhere that makes large metal rollers. Here is the scoop on the Pofung business. I don't know what your BFF9 was. There is only one BF-F8HP Pro, it is only available from BTECH, and it went on sale in October, 2024: https://baofengtech.com/product/bf-f8hp-pro/

I tried hitting the repeater with both HTs again during the Sky-Watch net. It seems the Wouxun was able to reach the repeater, as I successfully checked in. The Baofeng, however, appears to be receiving some noise but doesn't seem able to transmit to the repeater. I tried switching the antennas, but that didn’t help. Both radios can communicate with each other on simplex just fine.

Baofeng? Or BTECH? Baofeng will private label anything for anybody, as long as they meet the minimum quantity. Baofeng also re-uses model numbers for similar or utterly different products, and many of their products have quite short production lifetimes. BTECH tries to have one product in each market segment, customized for them and available for a long time - you can still buy a UV-82HP from them if you really want one.

They're compatible with the newer full-color screen UV5-family models. BTECH has a cigarette lighter battery eliminator available for purchase now, and I believe an official BTECH extended-capacity battery is coming. But anything from the full-color-screen UV5-family models should work, even if not from BTECH. [Again, not an official position of BTECH.]

Does anyone know if repeaters in the Roscommon/ Grayling area are linked to for instance Saginaw or Metro Detroit? A guy on Mackinac Island was able to come through on Mount Clemens or Detroit repeater recently and I'm curious what he was connected to. My brother is trying to figure out what repeater he might be able to use while in Roscommon.

Bummer, I believe I only have a mic jack in the back unlike a handhelds. Of course the manuals do nothing for me. Wondering if I just plug a mic cord between them or mic cord from 628/629....Hmm.

Yes, they need to be connected together. Surecom makes a couple of controllers (628 and 629) which might work. However, desense frequently occurs when trying to cobble together a repeater from two transceivers and you might want to run the transmitter at low power if you anticipate much use.

Repeaters are required to transmit the call sign at the end of a conversation and every 15 minutes while in use. Most don’t transmit their call every 15 minutes when not in use because that would be annoying to anyone who monitors the repeater. So, after a repeater has been on standby for awhile and someone tries it or kerchunks it, many repeaters will issue their call sign. As far as what inverse and normal means, DCS is a digital code rather than a tone like CTCSS. So it’s really a series of 1s and 0s. For instance 5 is normally 00000101. If you invert it, it’s 11111010. Often, DCS codes are expressed with either an N or an I as part of the code to denote whether it’s Normal or Inverted. If neither is included most of us assume N for Normal.

Hello gang. I've been playing with these a little while, enough to work them but new enough to venture neck deep. I am fooling around with building a repeater with two of these radios. I realize my connector and cable collect will expand. I have a 100W duplexer, two DB40-G radios in service (which will test my toy before purchasing more). I have an antennae which will work for this game. 1) Do they need to be connected together (mic wire, controller, etc...)? 2)Depending on the previous answer, what would be recommended? This is a fun project which is relatively low budget. Sorry that I have not added a clever sign off below but its coming.