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Gee that sounds like a ham radio conversation. Seriously, at a bare minimum the way to report it is saying that the repeaters are being keyed with out the person accessing them being within the coverage footprint of the repeater. This is causing harmful interference on that frequency / frequencies in a specific location or area. That is spelled out in the blurb the FCC put on the their web site about why they don't want people linking repeaters. No way to monitor the frequency in use before accessing it and causing interference. Mind you I am all for linking GMRS repeaters, and have even come up with ways to mitigate this and other issues that were cited as being the problems with linking. But the FCC says the rules are what they are, so until they change the rules, I don't link repeaters. Now I will say this, that group has backed themselves into a corner. If someone is interfering with their linked repeater system, they have ZERO recourse to deal with it. It's like having a house full of drugs and calling the cops because someone stole their bag of weed. The FCC is the only governing body with GMRS. If they call the FCC, then they open themselves up to being looked at for what THEY are doing. So that's not really an option for them. Local police and government in general have no ability to enforce FCC regulations. So, the option they are left with is the redneck thought process of "I'm gonna *insert dumb redneck statement of violence here* and that will get it done. Of course the problem with that is the local police DO have the ability to deal with that. And although I'm not sure what Georgia's laws are but if they are like Florida then doing that sort of thing might involve a free trip to a hospital or even the grave yard. While people may claim that they will just go drag them into their yard and throw them a beating, it's rarely done for that reason. And can escalate quickly if they do. And the police will still not give a rip about the GMRS interference, the assault, battery, menacing and all that WILL get a response.

Every radio, or at least every one I've owned/used, that supports tones (my CB doesn't) including the original UV-5R and some 25 year old Cobra GMRS radios, allows you to use the MON button to temporarily open squelch.

I don't know what radio you have, but I have the upper (50 watt) channels duplicated with CTCSS/DTCS tones for such a contingency. It's not perfect, because when the tone opens your squelch, you still may pick up the other traffic on the frequency. It also requires that your buddy program his radio the same way. Still, it mostly works because if you're traveling with someone in another vehicle, likely you're close enough that your signal will "beat" another signal originating further away.

I suppose he heard people talking about it before it was ready. But as it is now, this won't come close to covering the Charleston area. It will take one on a big tower to do that.

Ignore him. Anything you paid less than $1,000 for isn't a "real" radio to him. The rest of us actually live in the "real" world.

Interesting. I feel as if I have a real radio. It was sitting on the dash of my real Jeep. Attached to a real Bulletpoint Mounting Solutions Rubigrid tray. As I was driving down what I very much perceived to be a real highway. Your suggestion, then, is that I imagined the whole thing? Because I can't, for the life of me, imagine what else you would be implying.

It will depend on the signal level difference between the two signals. It takes about 6 dB or more of a stronger signal level to capture the weaker signal and anything less you will be hearing a bunch of wah wahs and worbles.

That rule existed in the 70s and may have been in existence in the late 60s. Effective February 1999, the FCC allowed all GMRS operate on any main and interstitial channel.

OK, so...new guy with egg on his face, again. I guess I didn't realize that "Channel 20" occupied the same frequency as some local repeaters. You are indeed correct. I was picking up chattering from a repeater in the city but the tones were wrong. So there's that mystery solved. But leads me to another one. What about people who want to use simplex on Channel 20? I understand offsets and working repeaters. I guess I've just never thought about simplex on the same frequency. And FRS for that matter. Say you're in range of a repeater and you and your friend key up radio to radio, what happens to the TX from the repeater?

With a real radio you can have a programmable button programmed for PL Defeat/Disable and all you have to do is push the button at any speed while you are driving so you can hear all the traffic on that channel.

Atlanta is a big enough place that I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were in range of two or more repeaters on the same frequency with different tones.

Our Jeep & other Off Road clubs use 16 in all State, Fed parks & pay off road courses in Florida.

Proves again, that by keeping the original thread title, every new post here falsely disparages Radioddity!!

Yes. It seems like it changes daily. Yes they are. I traveled to Brazil on several occasions in the late 80’s for work. The import duties and paperwork work was a real PIA. The other thing was the insane inflation rate they had at the time too. The prices seemed to increase once or twice a day. Trying to do comparison shopping was useless. The financial numbers got so big even 10/12 digit calculators couldn’t handle the number of digits required I was told.

The short answer is no, though @OffRoaderX is making a push for 19. He is probably the most influential and well-known person in the GMRS space. If any one person has a shot at impacting the culture, it would be him. You are going to hear a lot of people mention channel 20 with tone 141.3... but that is a little misleading. I'll try to make this painless, but this is the long answer. The original 'distress' frequency was 462.675, aka channel 20. This was by FCC rule... but that doesn't exist anymore. After the rule change got rid of the official distress frequency/channel, Popular Wireless and the Personal Radio Association came up with the idea of the Open Repeater Initiative (ORI). It was originally repeater channel 20 with 141.3 for the tone. They called 141.3 the "travel tone" They spread the word that if you have a repeater on channel 20 and are willing to let people use it with no special permission, as a courtesy to travelers, use the tone 141.3. As time went on, people started using the "travel tone" on their repeaters, regardless of what channel the repeater was on, for the same reason. So, 141.3 became know as the "travel tone" for repeaters, in general. However, with the fall of Popular Wireless and the Personal Radio Association, the adaptation of 141.3 on any repeater channel for open repeaters, and no central group helping maintain the tradition of a travel/emergency channel, the ORI vanished pretty quickly. So, there is still an informally recognized "travel tone" for repeaters, but there really isn't any "travel channel" per se. I feel like you have just about the same likelihood of finding people to chat with or making contact in an emergency on every channel by trying all of the repeater channels with 141.3 as the transmit tone (no receive tone squelch). I wouldn't use simplex unless I was traveling as part of a group and we all agree to use a specific channel. Hope that wasn't too long.

There is a file you can download which will open the old style MS help files. I have to find it again on-line to load up on a couple of my Win10 Pro computers. Even with the utility clicking on Help in the program will fail. You have to click on the help files themselves and set the utility as the default program to open them. Once done then just create a shortcut to the specific help files themselves and keep it with the one for the programming software. I think you can try the link below for instructions on how to locate the utility and install it. https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/view-winhelp-hlp-files-windows-10-with-winhlp32-exe/

That’s why I almost NEVER use RX tones on my radios.

The FARs (and I don't mean Farz as in distance) will not allow the use of a magmount on an aircraft.

He did say off road.

It's funny you mention this. Just today I was driving around metro Atlanta running some errands. I had my CB on 19 and my GMRS on Channel 20 with the tone set at 141.3. For a solid 5 minutes, I was getting RX transmissions but I couldn't hear anything. It would light up green, go dark, then light up again and repeat. Over and over. It makes me wonder what was happening? I reckon someone was transmitting on 20 but with different tones? If so, who or what and at 70 mph, I was covering a lot of ground in 5 minutes for simplex to still be working. I didn't have the ability in traffic at speed to take the tones off to see if I could hear them.

Interesting. What timing?

Yeah that looks way different. When I try to cut anything from this list is just does nothing and just reverts back to this stock look.This is the CPS from B2wr where I bought the unit. Of course anything past ch30 I can put anything I want with no issues. Perhaps the OG poster was using same software and creating issues. I think Chirp or RT systems might allow such edits.

A road has intersections, stop signs and stoplights.. A highway, aka a freeway, does not.

How do you distinguish road from highway?

At what frequency is that 4.6:1 SWR? Do you have an antenna analyzer that will sweep the range from 462 to 468 MHz so you can see where the minimum SWR ratio occurs? Maybe the antenna just needs tuning.