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Do they just... burst at 50?

When you're making $505 a month defending democracy, you go cheap! Except for my golf clubs back then...

Fun fact: no one on the RR forums has an anus.

Okay, 55 years ago it was $20, then it was reduced to $4 (that was when I first considered getting a license because $20 was way too much!) The point is that the government has no problem reducing the cost of the license, even to zero.

I don't remember paying when i obtained mine in around 74.. If I remember correctly, i went too the local post office on base, filled out a form, name address, birthday etc. checked two boxes agreeing to abide by rules and sent it with a prepaid stamped postage card. About 30 days later l got my call sign in the mail. For the life of me, i can't remember that call sign.. Probably cause i never used it .. Back in that day, I don't think i would have wasted $20 for a license, considering that could have filled the tank in my 70 SS Chevelle 5 times.

Kraco CB's were the equivalent of GMRS CCR's today. They were the cheapest POS radio's you could buy.

Well 49 years ago it was free, but required. But of all my army buddies who got CB's back then, I was the only one who sent in for the License!

The same goes for amateur radios these days.

Not really. CB licenses were $20 each 50 years ago when $20 was a lot of money. Then they lowered it to $4, perhaps hoping to entice more people to get legal.

the difference between CB and GMRS in the FCC's mind is 'cash' CB licensing got them nothing, GMRS is a pretty good cash cow for them.. So no, i don't think the same thing will happen.

KAUO6363, Sent in a form that was in the Kraco box to Uncle Charlie when I was at Ft. Campbell in '76.

Looks like you've done a fair job of researching your options. Lets start with the antenna system. First off I wouldn't worry too much about a few extra feed of coax cable. Likely the mount you will use has RG-58 type cable. A few may use the thinner RG-316, noticeably higher loss, but easier to route through small holes and other tight spaces. With RG-58 the difference between 13 feet verses the typical 17 foot long ones isn't worth worrying about. More on that later. The antenna is where you shouldn't compromise. The same goes for the location on the vehical. Your usage case may justify two antennas. You would use a cheap quarter wave, about 6 to 7 inches tall, for local communications and repeater access. Then a much taller higher gain one for out on the highway traveling. Both would be better off mounted in the clear on the roof. The quarter wave is so short you could almost forget it's there, even when parking in a garage. While swapping antennas is a bit of a pain some of the folks here do it depending on where they are going to spend most of their time. Oh, the quarter wave is likely the best option when traveling in mountainous or hilly terrain. The radiation pattern gives much better coverage when two or more stations are at significantly different altitudes. About an extra connector or two and comments about extra losses. I see people frequently get two things mixed up in that area, SWR matching and power loss. Good quality connectors have very low losses when used within their design frequency range, about 0.1 to 0.2 db. The real issue is the typical SO239/PL-259 "UHF" connectors are NOT really recommended for use above about 200 to 300 MHz, but you see them all the time used on UHF, on the back of radios and on the ends of the coax from antenna mounts. The problem with those is the "impedance" doesn't match the coax impedance of 50 ohms. This results in a higher SWR. The more of these you have the worse the match gets. Myself I try to stick with "N", BNC or RG-8x mini type connectors. Those are all 50 ohm types, and have very low power loss. If you want to go down the rabbit hole with the antenna system design evaluation I did one for my current ride as an example. Most people don't do this, and likely wouldn't need to anyway. I did it just out of curiosity. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/483-cx-5-antenna-system-analysisjpg/?context=new For antenna choices the CA-2x4SR from Comet gets mentioned frequently. It's a good high gain wide-band antenna. If you ever plan on getting your Ham license it's usable on the VHF and UHF Ham bands as is. The price is very reasonable. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/7914-how-is-the-comet-ca-2x4sr-antenna/ There is a very similar antenna now available from Diamond, of course more expensive. Be careful, I see two slightly different model numbers. I believe the one you want is the NR240CA. I see the NR240C sold too, which I think is tuned a bit different. I asked Diamond about this and never got a reply. The spec's for the NR240CA seem to show a slightly wider bandwidth than the CA-2x4SR. Now lets talk about radios. As mentioned a 25 watt radio would be good for most every day usage. A higher power radio would be a good idea if you had to communicate through heavy foliage, trail riding on your 4-wheeler for example. A lot of good recommendations for radios here by other members. Personally I stick with commercial grade radios. A number of the cheaper consumer grade types, including some modified Ham gear, I've played with suffered from poor sensitivity, and worse, poor selectivity and de-sense issues in moderate to high RF environments. The commercial grade radios tolerate the later two much better. I have a large collection of mainly commercial grade hand held radios if you have any questions on these I would be happy to answer them. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/249-my-radio-collection/?context=new This is typical of some of the Kenwood mobile radios. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/250-nx-820ghjpg/?context=new CA-2x4SR.pdf NR240CA.pdf

Most people with GMRS radios have no clue they even need a license as most GMRS radios only mention it, if they mention it at all, in a footnote in the user manual which 99% of people just roundfile along with the packaging. I know people with business radios that don't know they need a license. They just bought a couple of radios off amazon with no idea what they were. They looked simple no display or keypad, just 8 channels. Granted they operate a cabin resort in the middle of nowhere so nobody is going to care.

That really depends on the radio, each will be different. Some 50 watt radios will draw up to 13-14 amps while transmitting on high power. The Icom IC-2730A draws 13 amps and the Wouxun KG-1000G draws 12 amps. Each brand/model will vary on how much current they draw. Vehicles have not had actual cigarette lighters in them for quite some time now. Those were normally rated a little higher than the accessory socket found in most vehicles now days. Most manufacturers protect the accessory ports with a 10 amp fuse and the owner's manuals state to never exceed 10 amps. As you said, getting consistent power through a cigarette lighter/accessory port is not the most reliable. Plus you always take a greater chance of getting interference in the radio from the vehicle wiring or rf interference from the radio when using an accessory port.

Agreed. Some philosophical consistency would boost the FCC's credibility, also. On marine VHF one can TX on channels reserved for port operations, intership safety, intership commercial, international distress, state controlled, U.S. government (non-USCG), USCG, bridge-to-bridge intership in the lower Mississippi river only, U.S. EPA, noncommercial and a dozen other uses with a 25W mobile without having anything -- no testing, no license, no nuthin'. How much damage can one do on GMRS frequencies? A lot less than the above, so why require a license?

Absolutely nothing prevents any person from simply buying a full power GMRS radio and using it unlicensed, thereby avoiding whatever gatekeeper challenge “programming a ham radio” might provide.

Yes, but in a lot of vehicles, getting a consistent 10 amps through the cigarette lighter plug can be impossible. Not necessarily, because my Chevrolet Trax will deliver 16 amps all day long, but many vehicles -- especially older vehicles -- won't. That said, depending upon where you live and what you want to do, 50 watts may be overkill. The quad-band radio in my truck will deliver 50 watts, but I usually run it on 12. In my location and for what I do, if 25 watts won't get me there, 50 won't either. My take is that you should get a radio that has the features you want, but don't pay extra to get more than 25 watts unless you know you're going to need the extra power. Virtually all antennas will work better with a good ground plane, but a trunk lip mount or hood lip mount can deliver well enough for a lot of users. There's a plethora of good antennas and you'll get about as many opinions as there are users, but a few tend to stick out. The Comet 2x4SR is a remarkably good all-purpose antenna and it can perform acceptably on a lip mount. The Midland Ghost surprised me with how well it performed, but I didn't try it on a lip mount. For a mag mount, I've gotten good results with a Nagoya UT-72, although others report that they haven't. The advantage to a mag mount is that you can move it around until you find a suitable ground plane. There are a number of good lip mount NMO units, you just need to keep looking.

You’re right about potato chips, especially here in Idaho. I have 4 mobiles and 6 HT’s. They tend to accumulate.,

That is correct. My callsign was KAFU2984. I have no idea why I remember that. Is the same thing happening to GMRS? Well...yes, I believe it is. I think it's largely due to the FCC's ill-advised decision to allow FRS to use the GMRS frequencies without a license. Anyone can buy an FRS radio and use the same frequencies without any license at all. From there, it's just a small step to, "Gee, if I buy this Boofwang radio, I can do the same thing but with more power" so they do. Since no license was required before and it's all the same channels, they don't bother with a license for the Boofwang either. There is still a little bit of "gatekeeper effect" with repeater owners, and using repeaters requires a bit more savvy than the average FRS user has, as does programming a ham radio to operate on GMRS, so it isn't quite the crapshow that CB has become, but I can easily imagine it devolving into that.

This comment has absolutely nothing to do with the question but thank you for your useless reply to the topic.

Yes, it’s possible. They’ve asked us for suggestions for simplifying regulations. Most (by far) of the people who use GMRS now don’t have licenses. One way to simplify this would be to combine FRS and GMRS into a single unlicensed service like FRS is today.

I remember those day too. That's when I had to get out the old whetstone and grind my reeds in the Vibrasender and Vibrasponder to change PL tones. Those were the good old days. You needn't worry about the FCC offering license free services as they will never give up that cash cow. GMRS will safely stay the gentleman's CB band.

Reaching back into the dusty hinterland of my memory I seem to recall that a license was required to use a CB. At some point the number of unlicensed folks got so large the FCC just gave up enforcing it. If my, admittedly, somewhat sketchy memory is correct, could the same thing happened to GMRS? Is it happening?

It Only takes 10 amps max to support a 50 watt transmitter, so not really true.

I Might even hang this in my Shack ... except I know others, possibly related to him.