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Some dual band 2m/70cm antennas already work for MURS/FRS with acceptable SWR of 2.0 or less. And you are correct that it would not take much to dual band MURS/FRS antennas with just small changes to the element lengths.

Uh oh, Smiley just waded into the swamp

Emergency Maritime Channel in the Maritime VHF Band is channel 16, also used for safety and common calling, per Part 80 Rules & Regs. The use of channel 16 is regulated by rule and does not require a station or individual license while operating on-board a vessel or in port. No, the use of the Part 80 freqs cannot be used on hiking trails and even for your land yachts.

As dosw said, the repeater would help you only if you could get it between the two locations. And again, elevation is your friend. 10mi in flat-ish land is a lot to ask without some height.

If you and your family member are both holding the radio at five feet off the ground, and there are absolutely no contours to the earth or other obstructions between you, you'll get about 5.5 miles range. This is because even lacking contours, at 5.5 miles the curvature of the earth will block your signal, if both antennas are at 5' off the ground. If you can get both antennas 20 feet off the ground, the curvature of the earth will attenuate the signal at just under 11 miles. So, again, if there are no contours to the terrain, and there is nothing else between you, the curvature comes into play at just under 11 miles. If you can get one antenna 30 feet off the ground, and the other is 5 feet (base station to handheld, for example), you will get 9.44 miles of range. To get ten mile coverage with one handheld radio (antenna 5 feet) and the other radio a base station, the base station's antenna needs to be 36 feet off the ground. Here's a formula you can use: range[miles] = 1.22459*sqrt(height[feet_antenna_A]) + 1.22459*sqrt(height[feet_antenna_B]) But that formula applies if the earth doesn't have any variations in the terrain. This is Kansas, but it's not *that* flat; there is some variation. That variation can help you or harm you. If you're able to take advantage of slight hills to get the antennas higher, great. If the slight hills block your antennas, not great. As for a repeater, it doesn't change physics, it just adds a third antenna to the mix that, if placed in a location between you and your family members, or if placed high on a hillside that all of you can "see" at the same time, is able to be the antenna you talk through. Repeaters make a lot of sense where I live; there are mountains around me, and everyone lives in a valley below the mountains. So if someone has the ability to place a repeater 1000 or 1500 feet above the valley, everyone can access that repeater all over the valley. But you're in flatter terrain, and may not find such advantaged repeaters. Also, this isn't a power issue. A 50w radio can't blast through the curvature of the earth. And if you all could "see" an antenna elevated a thousand feet over the area, you could all hit it at 2w from many miles away, until you reach the curvature limit again. A theoretical 1000 foot high antenna communicating with a handheld at 5 feet would have 41 miles range. The farthest repeater I can hit is 64 miles away, and I'm at 5000 feet elevation, the valley floor is 4200 feet, so we're both well above the obstructions around us and the curvature probably wouldn't eliminate our "line of sight" until we get to a distance of about 75 miles.

A better antenna, mounted as high above your roof as possible (and the same on their end) might work.

There's an area in Utah that uses Channel 9 / Tone 11. Using a low power channel with a tone seems butt stupid to me, but I guess it's easy to remember... Edit: I misremembered slightly. 9 / 11 for when a rescue is underway. Which...changing channels when you're already talking to the guy also seems butt stupid when you have a comms link set up that works. https://utahavalanchecenter.org/education/group-group-radio-channel-initiative

Both MURS and FRS lie just above the Ham 2M and 70cm bands. The ratio between the mid point of the 2M band frequency range to the mid point of the MURS band is 0.953. The ratio between the mid point of the 70cm band frequency range to the mid point of the FRS band is 0.946. It's an almost identical ratio so a simple reduction on the element length would likely work just fine for both to modify a Ham dual band rubber duck antenna.

I am a new radio user. I purchased the Baofeng AR5RM hand radio. I want to talk to my family that live within a 10 mile radius in the Kansas City, KS area. I have a GMRS license. Questions. How do I optimze range, at this point it only goes about half kilometer? Need at least 10 miles. Do I need a repeater to boost signal? I have Chirp installed on my computer.

i have one thats unlocked and love it.. Nice radio.. I read in QRZ awhile back that Wouxun's are actually made by Hytera. If you put a PD782 and the UV9gx together its hard to distinguish between the two other than the screen resolutions which is much better on the Hytera.. Radio programing ais all much different between them.

It would be easy to make a dual band antenna that covers MURS and FRS/GMRS. It's done all of the time for 2m and 70cm dual band radios. Tri band and quad band hand held radios generally require two antennas: one for 2m/70cm and another for 1.25m and 6m. The cat's out of the bag when it comes to actually separating FRS from GMRS. I doubt that will ever happen. But I could be wrong on that.

Actually it is right below the 6m band which is 50.0 MHz to 54.0 MHz. The US Military still uses 30 MHz to 70 MHz. Some source state 30 MHz to 75 MHz or 88 MHz. This includes the frequency hopping SINCGARS radio system. Yes 46 MHz or 49 MHz could be used for public two way coms but that portion of the VHF spectrum can be fickle hence calling the 6m band the magic band as it is either open or closed and you never know which it is. And openings don't stay open very long.

Maybe not a bad idea. One could pick the frequency band that works best for the local conditions without being forced to carry two radios. The removable antenna bit could be a hangup issue however with the FCC. Otherwise no real technical difficulty. Hams had dual band HT's radios for decades. People have been doing this on the sly for a long while ever since dual band radios were around with the MARS/CAP mod's, or the opened CCR's like the UV-5R.

Hypothetically, but the internal duplexer has a 10 MHz split centered on 442 MHz. You'd have to connect an external "flatpack" duplexer, but at that point… Yeah, you've kitbashed together a cheap effective duplexer for around $300. It should outperform the RT97L, frankly -- at least if you use the right kind of duplexer, but they're increasingly cheap and ubiquitous.

This is smack in the middle of the "magic band", which is especially suitable for meteor-bounce communication and other really weird shit. We'll do fun propagation science to it, even if we need to buy a GMRS license to do it. That sounds just about fucking ideal for linking repeater sites over the air. How much digital data can we squish into the CTCSS frequencies? Something like AllStar without internet interconnections should be rules-compliant.

I also feel like MURS and FRS ought to be merged, since their rules are so close to identical. This would mean removable antennas on FRS radios, which… should be mostly a nothingburger with a few "duckheads" running amplifiers to create high-powered jamming equipment but… you can already do that today, it doesn't happen, so we shouldn't be forced onto fixed antennas because stupid people want us to not have nice things. Seriously, it's a non-thing. Time to drop it.

For GMRS Wyoming designated 307 (channel 3, CTCSS tone #7) because the entire state has 307 as its area code. I don’t know anything like that in Montana. Here it would be 406.

Sven, I think you’ve lost your marbles, That’s exactly why you have call signs and why you’re required to use them: to identify yourself to others and have a way to look them up when you engage in the personal or business activities of “making contact”. Although it’s not explicitly encouraged like ham radio it’s absolutely not discouraged in any way, explicitly or implicitly.

"Making contacts" with anonymous men certainly counts as a personal activity... Very.. very personal..

Welcome.

Define personal activities.

I realized that after reading the manual. The Mandela effect is kicking hard because when I posted, I thought I had questions and then Randy asked and I was unprepared and stymied. The information I craved was now gone...Weird. My cravings for Maroon crayons has jaded my perspective on life as I know it...Maybe it is a conspiracy involving pork...or rubber ducks on a dash board...or phonetic language rotting my brain...DAMN, the world is too flat for this stuff! I'll be over here rocking back and forth with my aluminum wrap until I have to go to work again...lmao with beverages....

Well it’s right there.. Personal and business activities. Concerned parties. Not “making contacts” across licenses.

Just another matrix program, you aren't really even here.

Tropospheric Ducting as another way?