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I never saw the need to get a .500 S&W. A heavily loaded .45 colt is enough for me, and I can get repeated shots much faster then the .500. Honestly If I need anything more I'm going to a rifle like this.

You can petition your lawmakers / elected officials to change things..... but it's a long shot. petition the fcc with you concerns, yeah......right Get a PO Box or use a service to hide your data....gonna cost a little money. But as others said, you want the best results just go off grid and move back a century. I understand this guy is the guru to start with.....

Kind of comes down to personnel preference and how you plan on using things. Sounds like use of a repeater will be part of your plan. Option 3 is cool because it justifies spending more money and having more toys! LOL Seriously, option 3 seems like pretty good way to go if you want to meet your communications goals and have some flexibility on multiple radios to use without too much hassle. If you want to save some cash initially, and see if you actually like the handhelds you decide on, option two should meet your needs if you have close by and reliable repeaters available to you. Once you figure out what option you will choose consider implementing external / removable antennas. Of course this is not really needed if your handheld "rubber duck" antennas hit the repeater fine. Removable antennas include a vehicle mounted GMRS antenna (Midland, and other manufacturers make lots of them), check Amazon. You can connect a removable antenna to your mobile or handheld and it will almost certainly improve your radio experience in the car . If you want to use your mobile or handheld at home like a base radio. You can connect either radio to a larger external (outside the house on the roof, on a tower, or in the attic) omni-directional antenna. Again Amazon is your friend, and you can find plenty of recommendations here using the search function. You can get a decent entry level external antenna for around $80 to $150. And you would need to calculate cost of your cable run, depending on quality of cable and length of run. This will most certainly improve your simplex, radio to radio, experience and increase you coverage / range overall>

Yup. Any ht cheap or expensive will all tx about the same distance so I’d start with a couple cheap hts with 771 antennas. See how that works out. Then upgrade from there. Ideally you would have a 20-50w base station at home with a big tall antenna such as a comet 712 efc up as high as you could go. 30, 40, 50’…. Then a good 20-50w in the car/truck with a good antenna such as an mxt26 or comet 2x4 installed correctly But you may not need that much to start out.

aside from communicating in that zoo, i would try a couple cheap handhelds first and try to connect through one of the repeaters (of course asking permission to use) My experience using GMRS in your area is hit and miss and very busy.. Good Luck

Hello all, New to GMRS. I decided to go this route because i believe its the best option for my needs. I work approx. 12 linear miles away from home and my wife works from home. I would like some recs on what equipment is best for my scenario: I would like to communicate with her in case of emergencies with a min of 15-20 mile range. I live in the San Fernando Valley (CA) and currently can see a few repeaters I may be able to access. Options I can entertain: (1) 2 handheld units that can easily be utilized by my wife. (2) 1 handheld unit and 1 mobile unit I would install in my car. (3) 1 handheld unit for her and 1 handheld / mobile combo for me. If possible i would prefer Option (3) because I would use the mobile while driving then switch to a handheld when I arrive to my destination and need to bring the handheld along. Please let me know if you need any additional info to assist in recs. Thanks!

Not to be a d*ck, but did you read the manual? Page 5 says: The only issue is that I think you need to have a speaker plugged in to hear it scan.

I fired a S&W 500 revolver ONCE

No, it looks like there is now a GMRS version/flavor of the 5RM.. One is H.A.M.s radios, the other is GMRS.. So my earlier statement stands amended.

If they're any kind of good BN's they'll also take credit for the idea!!!

Yeah, they can't figure out which is the "business end" unless it's plugged in and turned on for 20 minutes first. Then it might take two tries to get it right.

I learned to solder on my own from making kits. And from that skill I was able to sweat a plumbing pipe without even thinking because it's the same exact process. Apply flux, heat the copper and let the solder flow into the heat, never the flame.

says 5rm. But think it’s advertising GM-5RH. I am probably wrong still learning that’s why I appreciate the forum to ask questions

If I set the RT97L to scan what dose that do? I don't see any channel change.

They'll call it Paufeng

Regarding soldering. Back in Jr High we had to take several shop classes, wood, metal, electrical and drafting. You learned skills like soldering. Today I don't think they even have shop classes. That's one big reason most kids today can't do something as simple as solder.

.500 magnum.... been out for a while now, fun revolvers to shoot... as long as you have STRONG wrists and forearms...

At a rocket launch on the Black Rock desert I picked up enough leaded solder to last my lifetime. Some very fine stuff and some that’s about two times as big that’s multicore with rosin flux. And it’s all smaller than the old “Radio TV” solder that I still have. The smallest stuff is perfect for fine pitch SMT.

What? They make a .500 in something other than Nitro Express? When did that happen?

"Some people" seem to read between the lines too much, and miss the bigger picture....

What part is false/what are they claiming? When I look them up they just say they are H.A.M.s radios..

Thank you for the explanation helps out a lot. Sadly seems like a lot of these radios are being falsely advertised on Amazon. No shock there I guess.

Thank you for the clarification

If it aint as big as my pinky finger, it aint for me..... .500 S&W or nuthin....

The GMRS version of the 5RM series is the UV-5G Plus. Type-approval aside, the 5RM variants (with the exception of the UV-5G Plus) cannot be set to power levels below about 2w. That makes them incapable of meeting the technical requirements for operating on GMRS/FRS channels 8-14, since those channels are supposed to be constrained to 0.5w or less. Aside from that they can be correctly configured for 1-7 and 15-22, though they would still not be type-approved, so still in violation of the FCC rules, which not even the FCC has enforced against individuals historically. It would be impossible to distinguish a 5RM series configured technically correctly on channels 1-7 and 15-22 from a UV-5G Plus. Nobody could tell the difference. And on 8-14 it would be hard to know, though transmitting at 2w when you're supposed to stay under 0.5w is more likely to interfere with nearby repeater mains, so not a good practice.