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You can listen to the air band with a UV-5R but it won't sound very good since the radio doesn't have an AM receiver. And FM transmitters won't transmit on AM. Get a scanner if you really want to listen to air band frequencies. The stall speed for planes is around 100-115 MPH. Smaller/lighter planes have a lower stall speed compared to commercial jets. I wonder what speeds a magnet mount will hold up to. They hold fine up to 80 MPH on most vehicles. Plus the fact that most aircraft bodies are made from aluminum or other light weight materials so a magnet mount won't work.

You will not hear the helicopters. 122.750 MHz is designated for fixed wing aircraft, that means airplanes that have stationary wing(s). If a helicopter (rotary wing) meaning having a wing that rotates and spins around needs to communicate with an airplane then you may hear a helicopter. Aeronautical freqs are amplitude modulation freqs., so I doubt that your Barfwanger Pandaland radio will emit Amplitude Modulation since they are frequency modulation radio devices.

No need to update firmware for your uses. You can if you want but not likely to change anything for you that is important. Just a note... since you say you are new to GMRS and Radio... Unless the other coaches are your family relatives, each one of you legally should get your own individual GMRS licenses. If they are family you can share, if not each person is licensed, not the radios. Another alternative, if the others use FRS radios (which use the same frequencies/channels as GMRS) but are lower power), they would not have to be licensed (FRS is a no license required service). You would be able to use your GMRS radio to communicate with FRS radios, and your family could use your GMRS radios with your callsign. Besides this, if you are only communicating from one side of the athletic field to the other, you probably don't need anything more powerful than FRS.

Uh... if you are transmitting on GMRS at the altitudes that planes fly... I would say you are not going to get a "somewhat private conversation"... every GMRS user 100 miles around is going to hear you.

I just wonder how well that cheap magmount antenna sticks to the airplane.

But that's not what he said he has.

He might have the M model.

Go ahead and tune your UV-5R to 122.750 and tell us how that works out.

So if I tune my UV-5R to 122.750 and there are helos nearby talking to each other on this frequency, I should be able to hear them? And theoretically speaking, could I talk to them? I wouldn't do this but I'm trying to understand if that's possible?

I once lost (bricked) a radio during firmware update. After 5 minutes into the update and not seeing any response on the software side, I actually thought windows locked up and did a ctrl- alt-del to shut down the program. The radio then started flashing astraks. Got. In touch with Atlantic, they confirmed I bricked the radio. I got lucky, they sent me a new replacement on warranty repair. I’,ve never done a firmware update since,

The only one to stay away from is 240625, that had some detrimental effects on the radio. I can't remember what but I remember removing it after I put it in.

Most of my radios have GMRS_250110 This one added the antenna meter that shows strength instead of just showing full bars on all signals. For some reason they removed it.

That's because as I've learned the radio is looking for a perfect 50 ohm load from the antenna and since the dummy load gives the radio the 50 ohms it's looking for the SWR is perfect. The load the radio "sees" from a given antenna can vary depending on frequency, hence the need to tune the antenna for a given frequency. I really want to pick up a NanoVNA to run SWR scans on my antenna so I can see what each is tuned for.

Thanks to @TheMeatTrapper (WRMN250), @SteveGibbs (WSBM443), WRXS569, @WSGE773, @WSCY890, WSDK964 and @WSDV406 (me) and for joining the check-in net tonight (8/13/25). Besides the check-in, tonight's question was "If you could master one skill, what would it be?" A sample of the answers (you'll have to jump in the nets to hear the full answers) were: "understanding why women are always mad at us", morse code, bladesmithing, and much more. Join us every Wednesday at 8pm on Brentwood 600, tone 123.0 for a quick one fun question check-in net. Always feel free to weigh in with your answer to the nets' questions here on this thread. If the nets get large enough, we'll start making each net it's own post. But for now, we'll keep it all here.

They seem to be a very popular radio and I'll bet they cranked the assembly line up to 11 to make more radios and many more are failing.

That seems to be A Thing with these, unfortunately. When they're good, they're great, and I guess I just got lucky with the 4 I bought. But they seem to be having some pretty serious QC issues.

You got 2 duds.. I've been seeing more and more reports of this (here and on the big GMRS Youtuber channels in the comments).. getting more and more common with the H3's..

Flipping between ham and gmrs (and unlocked) modes shouldn't break anything. One of my two GMRS-mode radios is a ham model, and my ham radio is a GMRS model. (Why? Because I wasn't paying attention when I was setting modes and I'm too lazy to swap antennas/modes, that's why) Two of my four radios (one ham, one GMRS) are warranty replacements, and I have a fourth radio that's dead somewhere. All of them read 0W on an SWR meter but could still TX to a nearby (i.e. in the same room) radio after they died. Assuming you have all your settings correct (allowed frequency/channel, correct offsets, etc.) and still can't talk or it shows 0W, send it back or contact TIDRadio support and have them ship you a replacement. Or get a different radio. I think I'm done buying H3s after this and will be switching brands when my remaining radios start dying.

Possible you got 2 duds. If you have nothing showing on the meter likely it's showing correctly. What does the working radio show? If that shows 4-5 watts and the other shows zero then you got a dud x2. I've gotten 2 duds out of 16 radios. And they would transmit about 1000 ft or so before getting static and wouldn't reach any repeaters.

I have 2 H3's and convinced my brother to get one on the Amazon sale.. It came quickly, but inadvertently he bought the Ham version.. No matter, I know how to change it over to GMRS... Got it changed over and programmed to our repeaters and such.. Went smoothly.. We just couldn't get it to work right.. It would receive somewhat but transmitting was a problem.. I finally decided it was defective and we boxed it up and asked Amazon for an exchange.. The exchange came today, got it programmed and zilch.. Recieving, but not transmitting at all. Same problem as before except maybe worse.. . Hooked it up to my fars-o-meter and get nothing even though the radio's meter shows all bars.. Now I think I may be missing something on the switch from Ham to GMRS.. Seems easy enough, but what the heck?..

I have 3 H3'S. I haven't updated the firmware. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless there is something specific that needs fixing, I'll just leave mine as is.

Thank you, now I understand what that setting is for my radio

Wild azz guess for the win.

Excellent

I imagine it's some form of VOIP software. I'm not savvy enough to venture anymore of a guess than that.