Leaderboard

As I mentioned in my OP, I am only asking about LEGAL use of Part 90 equipment. I have several of the B-Tech GMRS V1 transceivers and they seem surprisingly well made. I don't have a service monitor to fully test them but just listening to the transmissions on our ICOM IC-7000's and the MXT400's, the audio quality seems about the same as any other FM transceivers that I have tested. In fact, both wide and narrow FM seem reasonable to my ears. Consider that back in the 1990's I think that we spent $330 EACH for Kenwood TH27A 2 meter only ham transceivers. I shudder to think how much that would be in inflation adjusted dollars but you sure get a lot more for your money these days. It helped to have a wife who is also a ham and needed an HT for being an active bicyclist who frequently was on the local state trails. More than one accident/emergency situation occurred over the years before cell phones. There does seem to be somewhat conflicting statements about the use of Part 90 equipment for Part 95, but it does appear that the FCC says this is a violation of the rules at this time. It sure would have been great if the rules allowed MURS and FRS to be on the same licensed by rule equipment. I am sure that if this was possible, BTech would have done this rather than have two separate radios based off the UV-82 series. I wonder if the BTech GMRS V1 and MURS V1 radios are improved from earlier ones? They did drop the power level to only 2 watts on the GMRS model so perhaps they no longer exhibit loss of frequency stability? As far as audio quality though, the ones I have seem quite good. At least so far.

One visit from a FCC field officer and your $24 dollar radio may end up costing you $2400...

Here in Nebraska, CB never went out of fashion with the local short-haul trucking community. All of the local guys still use channel 19, and we now have an expanding population of immigrant truck drivers in the area using channel 22 in Spanish. I live 5 blocks away from a grain elevator, and 4 miles from a feed distribution site, so I hear a lot of CB traffic every hour. The elevator uses either channel 19, or sometimes channel 12 to instruct drivers how to back around to the loading/unloading areas etc. I live in the middle of nowhere, so the only thing I ever hear on GMRS is my own family, and some occasional ducting from a grandfathered business-licensed system on .625 that is used by a concrete company east of me about 70 miles. (They have a phone patch. Not sure that's legal even on a grandfathered system.) On FRS channel 1, I quite often hear the little girls across the street playing with their walkie talkies, but that's about it.