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I’ve been running this little Midland for a few weeks now in various regions (MidTN, Chatty, Northern AL, Bham, MidMS) and have been quite impressed with its performance. Sure, other antennas can throw farther, but this little guy is doing very well with its diminutive profile. Would recommend.

fort cambell?

RF line of sight could be a problem, depending on how high you can realistically mount your antennas. An antenna mast with mounting hardware could easily set you back a couple hundred, to get your masts up 30 feet. On the other hand, mounting each antenna fifteen feet up on the roof, with one property 140 feet above the other property, could get you right around 20 miles. This is good news because it also means RF line of sight roof-top to roof-top is something you can verify with a couple of inexpensive handheld radios. So before buying nice radios, and before buying masts and antennas, buy a couple cheap GMRS handhelds for $30 each. Each of you stand on your roof. And try to talk to each other. If you get nothing, no static, no roger beeps, nothing, you're just out of luck. Those wooded areas between you are attenuating too much of your signal. On the other hand, if you're able to break squelch and hear each other a little, you can proceed. Now assume that you were able to break squelch for each other. What next? Each of you get a 25w to 50w radio, however many feet of LMR400 cable you each need, lightning arrestors, some fittings, and appropriate mounting hardware for the roof. Get a couple of antenna such as the Comet GP6NC GMRS antenna. Oh, and get 13.8v power supplies. Adding it all up you'll be spending around $525 to $725 each. As for repeaters; a repeater is useful if it can be higher than the other radios, and/or positioned somewhere between the other radios. It's useless to put a repeater on your roof, if the goal is just to extend range from your roof to the other person's roof. A repeater won't be giving you more range. What a repeater does is it allows one radio talking to the repeater to hear another radio talking to the repeater. If A and B cannot hear each other, but A can hear C, and B can hear C, then putting a repeater at position C will allow A and B to hear each other by talking through C. Another thing to do is to investigate what ham repeaters are in your area. If there are no GMRS repeaters, you may discover there *are* ham repeaters. Then you get licensed for whatever type of repeater exists in your area. If you find GMRS repeaters, great, get your GMRS license. If you find ham repeaters, you and the other party need to study for a couple weeks and get your ham licenses. If you are fortunate enough that there are good repeaters in your area (ham or gmrs), then you don't need to spend 500-700 each. You can each get a $30 radio that is made for the service type you're getting licensed in, and talk through the repeater. In my area there are about seven or eight pretty good GMRS repeaters. But there are also at least 25 very good 2m or 70cm amateur/ham repeaters. If that ratio holds true elsewhere, even if you don't have a GMRS repeater in your area, you may find there are one or more decent ham repeaters.

Pretty new here as well. If you are looking for a lot of good information, and not a little entertainment go here. https://www.youtube.com/@TheNotaRubicon

Hi, Both choices are good ones, I would say the Kind of antenna is very important. Look up GMRS antennas on amazon, also look at YouTube for some tips as well. I sure some of the other Radio Experts (in my opinion, Great people by BTW) on here will give more feedback to this question, but I would say a repeater even if it's the portable one: Amazon.com: Retevis RT97S GMRS Repeater, RT97 Upgraded Version, Radio Repeater, Full Duplex Long Range, Compatible with Raspberry Pi, Portable, LCD Screen(1 Pack) : Electronics I understand you are budgeting things out. just put this on the list this can maybe be deployed in the event of a storm and then you can cover the 20-mile gap. I'm just thinking of Quick deployment scenarios. I'm also New to GMRS.

There was a pretty big pass hack recently Perhaps the site owner or service provider instituted a required password change.

You have to start somewhere. We have a neighborhood group that currently is all simplex. Our biggest issues are earthquake and tsunami. Though after the Palisades fire, my area is similar geographically to that area, fire has popped up on our radar. It began after a neighbor had a home invasion and the LAPD showed up two hours later (she was hiding in her home on the phone with 911 as it happened). So now some of us have a secondary means for summoning help. Help that will be much quicker and probably better armed. A secondary use is we just check in with those more limited in mobility.

Interesting..

Hello, i am looking to get into the GMRS world and would like some input and advice on the how to's and what not's to achieve my goal. here's what im after, i am trying to connect 2 locations via Radio for emergency purposes. After Hurricane Helene hit us our entire AO was without comms for several days and i want to ensure that this does not happen again. said locations are almost 20 miles apart in a straight line with location A being roughly 140ft higher in elevation than B. mostly woodland with several open fields in between, all rural land in S.E. Georgia. There are no know repeater locations near nor between location A/B according to the map on here. i was looking at the MIDLAND MXT500 Base Station Radio or the BTECH GMRS-50V2 50W 256 for both locations along with a few handhelds to use within each locations immediate area. i know i will need an antenna for each location and im thinking that a 30ft pole for each site will be suffice but im just not sure what kind. Also, i may also consider adding a repeater at location A down the road. i am not able to go "no limit" budget but also do not want to go the cheapest route. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated!

BTWR has been great for me. They have had excellent customer service!

You mean this one?

We are attempting to do something like this in our neighborhood, starting with using a base station to make announcements. 1,500+ acres though the woods may require a serious repeater eventually, but the idea of getting emergency information out to anyone holding a $10 radio is very appealing. We are 24 days into official hurricane season. Tick, tick, tick...

Hi! I did the password reset a couple of days ago with no change. I run Android with Chrome as my browser. For whatever reason, the home page problem persisted until earlier this morning. Now all is well. I appreciate all of the suggestions and help!

I participate in the local severe weather net on one of the amateur radio repeaters in my area. I don't chase storms, but I do report on them. There's no technical reason why it shouldn't work on GMRS, but there's no long-standing tradition of it, so you'd have to develop a network of spotters from the ground up. To get a very significant net, you'd have to have access to a repeater with good coverage. Simplex would work fine for intra-group communication, but a good "footprint" will require a repeater. As noted, you'd have to have someone with the ability to report to the National Weather Service because the advantage of a radio-based weather network is its immediacy -- reports are in real time as the action happens. Even if you don't have access to NWS, one or more local emergency service agencies might find it helpful. You'd have to ask them. A deputy sheriff operates a GMRS repeater I can reach in the county just south of me, and although he doesn't formally run a weather net to the best of my knowledge, if I hear of severe weather headed that way, I'll put out a warning on it. If he doesn't want me to do that, he'll say so. For the most part, GMRS is a service people use at a predetermined time with a predetermined group of people for a predetermined purpose, and AFAIK, there aren't a lot of people just constantly monitoring it as with ham bands. I don't know how you would get the word out to the GMRS community at large to "tune in" during severe weather. It may take quite a while for people to find out. If you had a repeater with some reach, people could even listen with FRS radios if they knew about it.

Calling Special Agent Oso Sorry, I had to...

I have found lately that Safari is having trouble loading the web page, i have had good luck using Chrome or Brave. As far as the password reset. of your are nervous abut it, go to your profile and reset it there. the reset pop up will go away

I'm all over the place lol! Local Gmrs repeaters, Simplex and Repaters on Ham radio, and on Murs as well, And on Brandmeister 3100 and 93 on Dmr.

My granddaughter is at the age where she enjoys talking to me on GMRS using her parents radio or sometimes her grandmother's handheld. Good times.

You don’t owe me any thanks. I literally did nothing other than reporting problems to the owner. Rich @rdunajewski is the owner and administrator. My guess is that he did something.

The other commenters have put this very well here. I’m not THAT far away from you over in Western NC, and we have so sparse of GMRS repeaters, the ham freqs are where the skywarn etc activity is all at. I’d wager a guess that most of the US is that way, but I can only speak to right here in little corner of it lol. Welcome to the family though, and good luck on your endeavors! I have a background in meteorology, and we definitely have some unique stuff here and down your way. Just be careful when the tornadoes line up along I-85 like they do a couple times a year…eesh…

I must admit I’m enjoying this thread—and a few years down the road, I look forward to the “kid misadventures of radio” all mentioned. I own 15 acres of woods on the side of a mountain, and my wife and I have taken to using HTs if I go for a walk and want to leave the cell phone (and the rest of the world) behind. But I totally see in the future, when we have a couple munchkins of our own, using said radios to call them when supper is ready…and all the fun that will come with little explorers chit-chatting through the woods…

Hahaha @marcspaz

Hi Steve! I don't know what happened, but I just responded to Uncle Yoda's post and "POOF", everything is back to normal, now! Thank You, All for your help and patience!

Hi Uncle Yoda! I don't know what happened. It was fine one day. The next, the home page is a jumbled mess with some words on top of other words. I can now get a very limited view of the first ten repeaters in SC, but not the normal control. Thank You for the offer to look up and translate for me!

This is a great take, actually. First: Yeah, that's why I decided that I was barking up the wrong tree when I programmed 128 channels into my RT76P. Only one repeater ever gets any action anyway, so… At that point I may as well just get a crystal-controlled set with a reed and a single channel, like old ancient Regency commercial gear. (Actually scratch the reed; that repeater has switched to DCSS as of the beginning of this year. I guess I could still use a reed to generate the tone and a MOSFET or solid-state relay to switch the signal …)