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A true GMRS radio is not that complicated; you switch to a channel (1-22), make sure that neither radio has tones enabled, and then just start talking. If you add a tone (CTCSS / PL, or DCS), you will need both radios to use the same tone. Midland gives its tones different numbers than other manufacturers, so you might have to look up in a crossreference table in the manual if you have a Midland. That's it for radio-to-radio communications. All GMRS radios should be compatible with all others at this level. Then getting into repeaters, you'll need to select the correct repeater channel (sometimes named 15R, through 22R, sometimes R1-R8, sometimes R23-R30), and the correct tones for that repeater. But any repeater-capable GMRS radio will work about the same way, and all should be compatible so long as they support repeaters in general.

A lot of these complications are likely related to privacy tones or something similar. I have radios from several different companies and have not had any issues. (Wouxun, Tidradio, Motorola, and yes, too many Baofengs)

“I’ll alert the Media!” - Hobson in “Arthur”

Welcome!! Scan the 8 repeater channels for local activity Use the Repeater Map and Database on this website

no problem unless you start using talk groups, Digital and other special features of a given radio. I use Hytera which is compatible with a lot of Motorola stuff but not all. As far as analog use strictly, , no problem with compatibility between different brands.

So I'm ready to move up on my handhelds. But lately I've seen posts about one brand not communicating with some others. So this seems to throw another dimension into radio selection. Are there models that are less prone to such things? Also, I should mention, at this point in my journey I am not concerned about "unlocking" the radios. When I get to the point of wanting to deal with Ham frequencies I will just get a license and buy appropriate radios.

I mentioned that their size was similar to a bubble pack radio and I think it may have been misunderstood.

Hello, Im following @OffRoaderX video guide on tone scanning. I'll keep you up on the progress if I can catch people talking on RPT2 or GMRS 16.

Did I miss something? Where does FRS come into this? The MP31 is a GMRS radio.

Don't Garman have radios with GPS and will save location of the user in memory?

Thank you very much! I am in.

We have a longer hand time set on our 2m Motorola Quantar 125 for this reason. The Quantar 125 has a pretty high spike in amp draw when it firsts starts transmitting. The spike is fast/short enough that amp meters can't get a good reading. This caused us some issues with our Renogy inverter. The repeater would cause the inverter to throw a ground fault error and shut down. Our fix was to have the Quantar plugged into a line conditioner and the line conditioner is plugged into the inverter.

my uncle, now deceased, had the ammo can version in his collection. It wasn't really an ammo can, it just looked line one. Yes, it was pretty heavy for its size. I remember lifting it and think, what the hell is in this thing.. He also had a Military AM portable radio (i can't remember what they called it) with the radio mounted above its power supply.. The power supply was DC or AC depending how it was configured in the field. That thing was very heavy.

Maybe, but there are a few different ones to try.

I did try one like it but the one I had did not work. It may be a bad one but I had better results with just the wire with the appropriate jacks on either end.

Im ordering it over the weekend. i really thing that's the missing part to the setup.

From what I remember there were different sizes of battery boxes that could be used with the PRC-77. They were heavy (for the size) even with just a single battery attached. And then you had the weight of any spare batteries you carried on your ruck sack.

My $25 Tidradio H3 does split tones. I have my repeater with a analog receive and a digital transmit. Mostly don't because of the interference issues I have at my house, nothing to do with trying to keep people off. But it's a private repeater so it doesn't matter anywho

Sure there is. A wait time for someone to answer so it doesn't unkey and then rekey quickly. It's not as bad but no matter what start and stop produce wear and tear even on electronics. And having a 2-3 second hang time gives your party time to respond without the transmitter going off and then back on. It certainly isn't the same wear and tear as a large relay and tube system. But electrical spikes in transistor circuits can be fatal.

didnt they have several variants of that radio? Backpack, ammo can, mobile, etc? The battery back is what made them heavy as in the ammo can and mobile version they were realitivitly small

I have not had any problems with my Q10H yet. But I have had other brands of radios act up. though usually just reloading stuff fixed them. I've had Icom and Yaesu radios have glitches too.

Make sure to fill us in..

I hated when I had to carry the PRC-77. At least I did not have to carry the PRC-77 at the same time carrying the M60 machine gun. The only SINCGARS radios I dealt with were vehicle mounted. They were heavy enough trying to carry from the shop to the vehicles for installation.

Just added that to my cart. I'm gonna test it next week.