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Hand helds for now... but want to put a mobile in my trailer. I use a Baofeng in my side x side when in the desert

I'm a little late to the party, but here's my thoughts: Most people are operating in close proximity (to other operators in the same building or within a few hundred feet), where the other party will overpower any other users on the channel except in dense areas. For FRS, that's fine. I use it to talk to my family members and my unlicensed friends, and neither of us wants to hear the other users on the channel. That's all undesirable for disaster communications, where I can use my higher power level to reach many users. Putting a proper emergency channel in FRS radios would end up the same as CB 9, full of false reports and interference. A licensed solution would improve the situation, but that's not possible anymore with 22-channel FRS (I would also prefer a solution under Part 90 or a similar setup, but that's a topic for another thread). FRS can be a tool but much of the hardware are toys and perform in RF-busy environments like you'd expect a $10 radio to perform. Motorola's Quiet-Talk enabled by default is stupid, it defeats the purpose of FRS's interoperability requirements. FRS 1 in CSQ should be the out-of-the-box channel for all radios, and mandating the radios be shipped in that mode would greatly assist emcomm. It wouldn't make much sense in reality where there's no distinction between calling and working channels and where it's impractical to attempt to train kids on that stuff. The FCC won't recommend a calling channel or tone for a reason. Agreed, LMR is not going anywhere. Infrastructure dependence is a real concern among the public and first responders alike, and those views can be seen in some cities' resistance to joining county/state trunked systems (see LA-RICS). Being able to communicate unit-to-unit effectively is an underrated feature of two-way radio that cell phones still can't provide, especially where interoperability is required. If you only remember two paragraphs in this post, I hit the "Post" button a bit early.

My kind of guys!We wheel all over Southern California and lead groups of up to 150 Jeeps 1 or 2 times a year.. Here is a video from a trail we did in a place called Johnson Valley a couple of months ago .. I'm driving the orange Jeep:

I like the battery power supply option, You would purchase a nice deep cycle battery and an appropriate low noise charger for said battery. then connect your gear to the battery via a fused circuit. Your power will generally be 13.8v and during grid power fail, you will still have 12.5 to 13v and several hours of stand by power. In my case, I have a 110AH lead acid battery under my bench and 12v power outlets at my work space. I also have several 12v powered tools and a ventilation fan. I also have a 9" LED TV that only uses 5.5 watts. Great post storm set up, keeps communications going for several hours. Our repeater has a 55 AH AGM battery and operates for up to a day of lite to moderate use. clean quite power supplies like Astron can cost several hundred, this set is comparable in price.

If you are new to radio, hopefully this will be helpful information for getting the most out of your radio. Normally, when I install a radio in one of my vehicles, I cut off all the connectors and run my own lines from the battery to the radio. Occasionally, my GMRS radio gets moves between 2 vehicles, so I left the factory T connector on it. Turns out, that was a big mistake for performance. I had a few people tell me that my signal would be very good for a second and then rapidly drop to a weak signal. I ran a field strength test and the voltage would peak at 77.5 V/m on initial key, and almost instantly drop to 65.7 V/m. That is a huge drop. Knowing what to look for, I measured the power from the battery on the cold side of the T connector and it was 14.0v while on stand-by. However, when I key up, the voltage dropped to 12.4v. A couple of times, it dropped to 12.1v. On the hot side of the connector, there was only 0.25v drop on key-up. I cut the T connector off and soldered in some Power Pole connectors, which have more surface area and much higher spring tension. Now, I only have 0.25v drop on the input of the radio and my field strength is holding steady at 77.5 V/m while transmitting. To give you an idea of how much drop that is in usable power, it is the equivalent of changing your antenna feed from about 37 watts to 50 watts (assuming an antenna with no gain and 100% antenna efficiency). So, if you want to get the most out of your radio, ditch your glass fuses (weak squeeze connector) for a blade fuse and replace your factory T connector with either a fully soldered connection or a high quality Power Pole style connector. Note: I could resolve the 0.25v drop if I run a larger diameter power and ground cables... but it's not worth the effort for my application. Hope this helps.

Still haven't fixed it. I think I need a big cap on my alternator or I need to have the alternator rebuilt/replaced.

Even if they do read the directions, that doesn't change the fact that FRS/GMRS radios do not come out of the box with basic cross brand and model interoperability for the most part due to the pre-programming. To me, they are set up to make coordinated use difficult (sharing channels) and emergency/outside contact unlikely. Given the transmit range, outside of urban areas the likelihood of needing the tones so that you don't hear other traffic seems very small - especially with the fairly low number of users (on top of the aforementioned TX distance limits). Even someone with a large amount of knowledge would have the same issues with bubble pack radios. When I am walking down a hallway and meet someone, I go right and he goes to his right. This coordination wouldn't be possible if we both had our eyes closed, and had only opened them once for a few seconds before we started walking. This is what using tones seems like to me. You check the channel by using CSQ for a few seconds, hear nothing, and start using the channel oblivious to the (radio) world around you. It seems odd to me that the default mode in this radio service is to block outsiders rather than enabling it if necessary.