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I have seen a few posts talking about getting more distance out of UHF gear, such as the GMRS equipment we use. It looks like the common theme is, many immediately want to go for more power, assuming they can brute-force their way through issues. I am hoping myself and some of the other people who have some training and practical experience can use this thread to help new users understand how to make life better without more power. I want to start with handheld transceivers. HT antennas use your body as a counterpoise. Depending on how you are dressed, how tall you are, how you are holding the radio, the radio position, the distance of the radio from your body, what direction you are facing, all impact performance. Even how much fat, salt and water your body is retaining at the moment impacts how an HT antenna works, because those things vary the conductivity of the human body. In all seriousness, forget about more power... or even more range from a typical HT. If you want more range out of your HT, your best bet is to find higher ground, figure out where the best place to stand is, and what general direction to be facing when compared to the receiving station provides the best communications path. Mobile antennas are often several wavelengths+ in overall height and the body of the vehicle is typically a much better reflective counterpoise. There is a lot that can be done in the mobile and base antenna world that can help, but for now, lets continue to focus on why 'more power' likely isn't the right answer. There is a standard in radio communications about intelligibility of radio communications. It is called the 5/9 scale. 0 to 5 for voice clarity and 0 to 9+ for signal strength in s-units. It is said that while a 2/1 signal provides partially usable comms, the lowest "reliable" communications happens at a 3/2 (or 32) and the best is a 5/9+ (often called 599, 59+20, 59+40). With that in mind, you have to quadruple your power to impact a receiver 1 s-unit. So, if the other party is receiving a signal at 1/2 s-unit while you are using 4 watts, you need 16 watts to go to 1 s-unit. You then need to jump to 64 watts for 2 s-units. Finally a third jump in power of 256 watts to get to 3 s-units and possibly getting a reliable communications signal (a 2/3 or 3/3). Depending on the modulation of the carrier signal and bandwidth, you may need to jump to 4 s-units, requiring well over 1,000 watts. Now, lets say the same receive condition exists, but now you are already using 20 watts for that 1/2 s-unit. Now your power jumps are 80 watts, 320 watts, 1,280 watts for 3 s-units and possibly needing 5,120 watts for 4 s-units. Well, the first bump you made already seriously violates power restrictions in GMRS. AND, this is under hypothetical perfect conditions, assuming nothing else changed in the environment. Which almost never exists. Chasing better performance by boosting power typically doesn't give you any truly desirable results. The top 3 items that will help improve comms in almost every band is elevation, elevation, and elevation. From there its antenna tuning (and beams) filters to reduce interference and lowering the noise floor, as some examples. So, for our technically skill folks... Would anyone like to contribute some general advice for new users to benefit from? General advice on what to do or not to do?

I would like to add that it generally takes 2 s-units to hear an appreciable difference in signal strength. So as long as your 1 watt is enough to be heard without dropouts, it will take 16 watts to make any real difference. If your signal is readable at a 1 watt "low" setting, there is no reason to switch to "high" power as that will only drain your battery faster. The 4 or 5 watt setting only has any relevance in a case where the low setting is strong enough to be heard, but is dropping out. In my experience, there is zero reason to seek out the 40-50 watt "H" version of a particular mobile radio. It really won't do anything noticeably better than the standard 25 watt radio. But it will use more battery power, get hot faster, and find any substandard connections in your wiring faster than the lower power radio. It will also subject you and any bystanders to more RF exposure. And it is more likely to negatively affect the computer and other electronics in your car or home. That's much more prevalent than you might think, too. The manufacturer of your vehicle or home computer couldn't care less about your 2-way radio activities.

Absolutely, finding higher ground should be the first step towards improving a setup. Running more power only matters on fixed setups where the antenna is already as good as it can get, or on mobile operation where there is no 'finding a good spot'. Even then, there's not a huge difference between 15 and 40 watts. Here's my first piece of advice for new users (and I have a bunch, fair warning): use scan mode on a radio that will tell you the active CTCSS tone or DCS code if you're looking for repeaters to use. RTL-SDR is also a good tool, and makes the entire 462 MHz band visible with good sensitivity and excellent selectivity. Especially on fixed setups, grounding is important. Noise will get picked up along the coax and travel up to the antenna, where it enters the receiver. The effect is very apparent on SDRs, where the noise floor is directly visible. When grounding a setup, check for ground loops with a multimeter. Learn to recognize the busy-channel indicator on your radio. When the radio detects any activity on the channel, regardless of correct CTCSS/DCS, it'll turn on the busy-channel indicator. It'll help you to know if you have the correct CTCSS/DCS for a particular system. Some repeaters use multiple CTCSS/DCS, so this indicator can be useful on those repeaters to make sure you aren't interfering with a different conversation. On Baofeng's radios, this is the green LED on top of the radio. On Motorola's commercial radios, this is a blinking red or green LED near the antenna; on their FRS/GMRS radios, this is the red LED above the display. Some repeaters transmit CTCSS/DCS back to you, but only while someone is transmitting to it. If you're hitting the repeater but can't hear it come back to you once you finish transmitting, this could be a possible cause. Use the monitor feature on your radio or check the busy-channel indicator to check for the repeater's tail. Don't be afraid to try simplex. If you hear a callsign with variable signal strength, they're probably not going through a repeater. It's rare to find contacts that way, but that's largely because hardly anyone calls for contacts on simplex. 462.5625 (channel 1), transmit and receive CSQ; and 462.6750 (channel 20), transmit CTCSS 141.3 and receive CSQ are good places to try calling CQ. People who use MDC-1200 on their radios don't actually have to hear the data bursts, the radio can detect the burst and mute it. It gets annoying so most people with MDC-1200 radios have their radios like that. This forum sure does love their Kenwood TK-880s and Motorola M1225s. They're great radios, but terrible general-purpose radios. Virtually all commercial radios can only be programmed by computer software, so you have to know ahead of time what you're going to talk to. Speaking of commercial radios, used Motorola HT1000 radios are incredibly durable and inexpensive. They use the same programming Don't waste your money on the BTech GMRS mobiles, the quality control is practically absent. The GMRS-V1 is apparently alright and Part 95 accepted. Use CHIRP for programming; it will save a lot of time and headaches, while allowing for named channels. When buying a used radio online, make sure the frequency range actually includes 462-468 MHz. For handheld radios, make sure that you are getting (or already have) a charger and antenna. The battery is probably shot, so include a replacement in your budgeting. I like to have at least one spare battery, so I can continue using the radio while a battery is charging. Don't transmit on a handheld radio while it's charging. Counterfeit antennas are a thing, especially with Nagoya. Buy from trusted sources, or find a friend with an antenna analyzer or VNA who'd be willing to show you how to see if an antenna is good or trash. Be willing to learn how to use test equipment, or at least be aware of what that test equipment is testing. It'll help greatly in the future when you are faced with new problems. GMRS isn't ham radio, but it's often used pretty similarly to 70cm. Ham radio clubs are still a useful resource where you can make lots of friends with lots of knowledge. If you don't have a ham license, they'll pressure you to get one. A Technician-class license is easy to get, costs much less than your GMRS license, and you may even be able to use the same antenna for 70cm. Different clubs have different focuses, so don't get discouraged if you don't feel a particular club is right for you. Depending on the area, hams may not like GMRS for one reason or another; but recognize the common interest in establishing reliable communications between licensed operators. There's a 30 MHz gap between 70cm and GMRS, so most 70cm antennas with appreciable gain don't work on GMRS (and remember you're usually transmitting at 467 MHz, not 462 MHz). Check your antenna's documentation to see how much bandwidth you have. Most handheld antennas are broadband enough, and most commercial-band antennas actually work better on GMRS. Don't put up a repeater until you know exactly what you're doing. There's enough deaf GMRS repeaters out there. Don't take on the task alone, either. The more support you have, the better (and, for you, cheaper) the repeater can be. Even a low hilltop provides significantly more coverage than a rooftop repeater. Sites cost money, but can cost a heck of a lot less if you get to know some repeater folk and can make a good sales pitch. Don't use LMR-400 for repeaters. Getting above the roofline makes a big difference in suburban areas, particularly when trying to work hilltop sites. For more rural areas, try to get above the treeline if possible. If you're the only one-story house in a block of two-story houses, ouch. Be it ham radio or GMRS, remember that the radio hobby is about communication. This includes, but is not limited to: rag chewing, technical talk, emergency communication, repeater building, proselytizing the wonders of properly configured radios, and being willing to help the confused. A lot of people out there try to assert their dominance over a channel and run around with a better-than-thou mentality, and over the course of your license you'll find at least one of them. They aren't out to improve either service or what each service stands for, so stay away from them. Don't let them change your perception of the radio hobby, either. If you hear confused FRS users on channel 1 that can't get their radios to talk to each other, offer to help. Transmit CTCSS 67.0 and receive CSQ. They'll probably need help configuring CTCSS on their radios. Ask for the model number and look up the manual on Google. Stuff like this happens more often than I'd like to admit, and half the time those people spent a lot of money on those radios. Be a good citizen. Some repeaters will beacon out their callsign. That doesn't mean there's anyone using it. Repeaters aren't supposed to do that, but not everyone has a good repeater controller. It's almost universally agreed upon that such repeater behavior is super annoying. Not all repeaters identify, and that can make it a pain in the rear to figure out who owns the repeater. It's usually private repeaters that don't identify, and some legally don't even have to. It's another fact of life that makes frequency coordination difficult for repeater owners. The FRS channels, especially 1-14, are flooded with business users. They're allowed to be there, and aren't looking for conversation. Let them be. They're close enough together (a few hundred feet, typically) that they won't even notice you're on the same frequency as long as you're on a different CTCSS/DCS code. Not everyone is following the rules. Report egregious violators to the FCC, but don't expect enforcement action. Report criminal activity (eg. terroristic threats, use of radios in a crime) to law enforcement, not the FCC. If you happen to know who the perps are, tell the FCC as well. You probably won't encounter any such activity. If you start getting involved in the commercial radio users crowd, be it on 70cm or GMRS, you'll see a lot of brand loyalty. I'm a Motorola guy, since those are the first commercial radios I got involved with and those radios meet all of my needs. We have a lot of Kenwood folk on here, and boy do they love their TK-880s. Both make rock-solid commercial radios. There's other brands out there, too. Stay away from cheap Chinese radios, those are markedly not rock-solid radios and may not have any type-acceptance whatsoever. It's generally accepted that radios with commercial (Part 90) type acceptance are fine for GMRS (Part 97E) operation, since Part 90 requirements are more stringent in terms of RF performance. While the FCC is yet to make an official exemption, they allude to it frequently in the 2017 rule change discussion. Directional antennas (mostly Yagis or log-periodic antennas at these fequencies) are terrible general purpose antennas, since you need to know the direction towards the stuff you want to talk to. Commercial omnidirectional antennas covering 460-470 MHz at a minimum make the best general-purpose antennas. Browning's BR6157 is a good starter antenna, with some gain and a wide bandwidth. If you spend more than $60 on one before any sales tax, you've overspent. Use FakeSpot when shopping for radios or accessories on Amazon. Don't get ripped off by fake reviews. Monitor channel 1 (again, transmit CTCSS 67.0 and receive CSQ) during disasters. You may save someone's life. Prioritize your safety highest; you're still a victim. Don't be a dillweed on the air that hides from consequences behind a microphone; respect is reciprocal. Not everyone you'll meet understands this. When you got your GMRS license, your whole family just became GMRS licensees as well. Come up with a separate simplex channel for them and them only. It's useful when outdoors, communication between vehicles on road trips, or during disasters. Having a nationwide license to operate a radio without frequency coordination, and with unlicensed operators on FRS, is a beautiful luxury we have on GMRS that you will get nowhere else. Make sure to test your channels ahead of time, and check them regularly if you don't use them often. I mentioned it earlier, but I'll elaborate on it: RTL-SDR is an excellent tool for GMRS. All of the output channels are visible with a spectrum analyzer-type visualization. Interference becomes easy to spot and identify. CTCSS and DCS decoding is straightforward and nearly instant, and works with hardly any signal strength at all. Signal strength readings can be calibrated against an absolute scale (dBm), which allows for comparison between antennas and locations. A fancy setup of them, Kerberos SDR, can do direction finding with real-time map plotting, but requires some technical knowledge. SDR is fairly recent, and there's plenty of user groups online (like Reddit's r/RTLSDR). When shopping for RTL-SDR, don't spend more than $30 for a bare unit, and don't buy anything that doesn't have a 1.0ppm TCXO or better. If the item description doesn't say TCXO, it doesn't have one. RTL-SDR Blog v3 is a good unit, and the Nooelec NESDR SMArTee performs the same. Throw the RTL-SDR Blog 20dB LNA on there as well, life will be much better. Use a USB 2.0 extension cord with SDRs. Talking on a handheld radio while driving a vehicle is illegal in California under the cell phone laws. Mobiles, with a simple PTT-only hand mic, are fine. Don't get a 16 or 48 channel radio as your first real commercial or commercial-grade radio. Go for something with at least 128 channels and a screen. Get the programming software and cable before you get the radio so you aren't stuck with a paperweight. Don't give money to HamFiles. If you have a lot of long conversations but all you have is your handheld radio, get a mobile radio and a power supply. Use a proper antenna (as discussed earlier) and some low-loss coax (RG-8, LMR-240, or better). PL-259/SO-239, also called the UHF connector, is a terrible connector at UHF. Avoid it wherever possible. Use TNC or N for permanent or semi-permanent connections, and BNC for connections you switch out a lot. Keep your connectors clean and seal any outdoor terminations. Assume each adapter adds 0.5-1dB of loss, so use as few adapters as possible. Get your coax terminated in whatever connector your antenna has; don't leave the adapter outdoors. Mastic tape gums up over time and future you will hate present you. If you use cheap non-outdoors coax like I did, it can get water ingress. SWR will still show a rather normal reading, but the wet insulator will suck up all your RF (easily 99% of it). Good coax is thicker than you think. Take that into consideration. Folk at your local ham radio club, or GMRS club if you live in an area with one, have done enough fixed radio installations to be able to help you with yours. Don't go out alone and do it, but take some notes so you can eventually help others. Honestly, they're not that hard. If you're in a place that gets thunderstorms more than a few times a year, lightning protection is a real concern. Nothing will stop a direct strike, so unplug your equipment during such inclement weather. That's another reason to keep portable radios around. Repeaters almost always use hardline instead of flexible coax. Hardline is expensive and requires special tools. Good feedline is critical on repeaters because you usually have a 40-watt transmitter on the same antennas as a sensitive receiver. Slight non-linear effects, even a rusty fencepost nearby, can cause issues with receiver performance. If you have an opportunity to visit a hilltop repeater site (an opportunity you may get if you're involved with repeater groups), take it. The first trip to one is an experience, and you'll get to see a variety of real-world installations. Hilltop sites are surprisingly dirty; nobody's up there keeping the floors clean. Some sites are cleaner than others. It's often a long drive and fair distance from civilization, so bring a lunch and go to the bathroom before the trip. Some sites require four-wheel drive and an experienced driver to get to. Buy their dinner. Flat areas can get significant coverage from a low-level repeater. Rooftop repeaters actually have decent performance in those environments. Even on rooftop antennas, your simplex range to a five-watt mobile/portable can be as short as two miles. GMRS is heavily influenced by line-of-sight propagation. Building penetration is better than MURS or 2-meters.

I am going to throw out some ideas for those who are repeater operators. It is an area I am exploring. By now everybody realizes that a 5 watt portable talking through a 50 watt repeater will have its range limited to the ability of that 5 watt portable to "make" the repeater, lets say 8 miles. If that 5 watt portable is talking through the repeater with another user with a 50 watt mobile some 20 miles further distant, that is an inherent accomplishment of the technology. In the public safety arena, UHF 5 watt portables are the critical users. Users want that portable to work everywhere. Public safety seeks to design systems to 97% reliability within a jurisdiction (town/country/statewide). Reliability is the name of the game. A TIA document TSB-88 describes how such systems are designed and tested. For example, if you wish portable coverage throughout a large city or county, the use of satellite voting receivers has long been the solution. Each of these voting receivers has a reliable footprint where a 5 watt portable can be received. Lets say that a small city has three satellite receivers at various locations and where the city boundary is reached, the coverage from any single receiver is 97% reliable. However in other areas within the city, the coverage drops to 70% reliable , if the other two receivers in the system overlap those areas and are also 70% reliable or greater, then > 97.3% "Joint Probability" is attained when the voter switches between strongest signals. For the typical GMRS repeater operator, constructing such a system would require having antenna towers at various locations and a means to bring the signals back to a voter by phone line or other circuit. The towers alone would be costly to build, rent or maintain. However, the hardware, satellite receivers and Voters are readily available on the surplus market and can be pressed into use in a much different way on one site, preferably a rooftop.. All three receivers can be co located on the same tower or rooftop and be used to facilitate multiple receiver diversity reception. Diversity reception can work with two repeaters, but we will use three in this example. If your repeater had 70% reliability out at 8 miles, you could improve the reliability to 97.3% in theory by adding two more receiver antenna branches. To get maximum return, there is a need for the antennas to each receive uncorrelated signals from that distant portable. In a hilly or urban area that may easily be the case. The antennas will have to be physically separated many wavelengths from each other on the tower or rooftop to yield diversity gain. A caveat is that the additional two receivers will need bandpass / notch filters to filter out the transmitter, just as a duplexer would do for a singe receiver station.. I will provide an excel file "Joint probability example" to anyone interested. I was unable to attach it.

Nice writeup(s), Thank you. Super informative. I'm new to GMRS. I have been monitoring Public Safety channels alot, but never heard anyone in my area talk on GMRS. I am 4 miles away from our Local Repeater (Cowee Bald, North Carolina). Should be hearing something, but nothing yet. Learning allot before jumping in on a First GMRS Radio. Looking at some of the ebay Kenwoods.

Radioguy7268 is correct. FB2 would also be fine for a private system. However, the idle chit-chat that is common on GMRS is not actually permitted on the business/industrial service. But in reality, it would never be challenged anyway as nobody really cares (including the Commission).

While the commercial approach provides many things (allows DMR, group licensing, encryption, etc.), many repeater groups or clubs would no longer have free or low-cost rent at the repeater site. Most site owners will charge full rent for "commercial" repeaters. It would also impact community service teams like CERT or Fire/Disaster Council groups that rely on the availability of very low cost "bubblepack" radios. Yea, one can now buy $100 Part 90 radios, but once the group's designated "radio guy" decides to retire or leaves, nobody knows how to program the radios, or even understands where to buy them.

Agree on the costs. But if you need spectrum in a metro area, 6.25 kHz channels that may be the only thing available. So you just eat the antenna, backup power system and additional rack space and site lease costs. Ouch. TETRA - I forgot to mention this! As GMRS uses 25 kHz wideband channels, that could support TETRA (I think it requires 21k bandwidth, so you would have to convince the FCC to go beyond the 20K GMRS limit; its already been done in Part 90). Four TDMA slots would be more flexible than DMR's two and would further reduce message collisions among different groups. The handheld equipment is also quite nice, but still expensive. Since we have 25 kHz channels, it may be lower cost (considering both the repeater and user equipment) to simply split a GMRS channel in half and place two DMR transmitters there. Normal Channel Center: 462.650 New Lower Channel Center: 462.650 MHz - 0.00625 MHz = 462.64375 MHz New Upper Channel Center: 462.650 + 0.00625 = 462.65625 MHz I just confirmed that the Motorola SLR5700 DMR repeater can be programmed for these channel centers. Not sure about the CCRs. This now provides four repeater timeslots or channels in the place of one wideband analog channel. Hmmm..... Greg

That's true on vhf and below, and with miniature radios on uhf. But a TK-380 for example is 5-1/4 inches long with an aluminum chassis, so that's very close to a full quarterwave counterpoise. In fact since it has a large cross-sectional area, it probably has enough bandwidth to actually be a full quarterwave electrically.

we have a few of the TK-8360 H good radios no complaints if you choose to go with one here is the software https://hamfiles.co.uk/index.php?page=downloads&type=entry&id=radio-programming%2Fkenwood-programming%2Fkpg-135d-programming

Agreed. HT antennas use your body as a counterpoise. I'll start a new thread about this so I don't completely derail this one.

The NXDN 6.25 is, IMO, nothing but a gimmick. For the non-tech person it looks like a panacea. And at first glance, its pretty obvious that you want to do FDMA and not TDMA, but once you start calculating budgets and figuring out what you need, you quickly realize that double the equipment per frequency is in order, with even tighter filtering, so twice or triple the cost of a TDMA solution. IMO, again, IMO, for a less complex 2-way radio system (vs a cellphone system), I think a TDMA solution makes a much better use of the spectrum (like GSM did). And, again, personally, if I could afford to run TETRA I really would, I really like the TETRA b/c it has 4 timeslots vs just 2 slot of DMR. A TETRA implementation on GMRS would actually make the use of repeaters great, b/c now 4 guys can be talking simultaneously without messing with each other's talks. You can now use a public repeater to selectively call IDs (groups, individuals), rather than keying the repeater (and all that are linked to it) at 3:25 AM in the morning and waking everyone up to hear "WXZX1245, hey honey, I am going home." And lets not forget that, effectively, with a DMR/TETRA GMRS solution in place, most folks would have little need to build their own repeater for a less public (not encrypted) channel. Making good repeaters (like the Madison 700) now a viable option to have a group call with just your family so it doesn't open the squelch for a guy sitting in Indiana, who probably isn't very interested in hearing when you're going home. Maybe he is, but if so, he can run a nice thing called "promiscuous mode" so you can hear all traffic in the linked repeater network, but then, that is HIS choice. For a public GMRS DMR I would also filter ANY and ALL encrypted calls. Don't run encrypted crap, please, thank you. One possible way to do this on DMR would be: Assuming a hierarchy of Repeater -> Call Sign -> Family. Lets begin by assigning a repeater Group Call ID for every repeater, this Repeater Group Call ID will be issued to all the radios that connect to it via direct RF, so for example, for the Madison 700, the Group Call ID could be, say, ID 1000, and consequently all the registered radios that are in the Madison area will be listening to the 1000 Group Call. Then, when a new licensee signs up on the repeater, they get assigned two DMR IDs, first one is a Group Call ID, linked to your callsign, which will be then subsequently used by anyone under your callsign (ie. family) and a Private ID just for any new radio you get. So, now, when the wife gets a radio, all you get is another private DMR ID for that radio, and set the radio to listen to both the Group Call ID under your callsign and the Group Call for the repeater. So, now that GMRS repeater has become a pretty viable family comm service (which is what GMRS was meant to be) And then, b/c DMR allows to have 2 people talking at the same time (even more I think with the higher end Moto stuff) so again, digital makes so much more sense IMO. So you can effectively utilize repeaters like the Madison 700 area to do what GMRS was really meant for, and without bugging everyone and their mother (and especially when the repeater is linked all the way to Indiana from Wisconsin... holy cow, my simple radio call "WQXXXX, hey honey, I am going home" was heard all the way down to Indiana... that doesn't sound very appealing to a lot of people, hence there will be much less "repeater proliferation") That is just for basic GMRS family comms. But then you can create Group Calls for different things, like hobbies, say, there is a buch of GMRS guys who like RC planes and another who really likes "basket weaving", or guns, or Corvettes? No problem, create several group calls, ID 40001, 40002... so on so forth, and if you like RC planes, you just add that group ID to your personal radio, or if you like basket weaving you listen to that ID, so the guys who hate "basket weaving" don't have to listen to the "basket weavers" yap all day long about how awesome it is,etc. Same goes for RC planes, or whatever it is that floats your boat. Again, this is just my opinion, I clearly understand that the current FCC regulations don't allow for any digital modulation at the time of this writing, so don't use digital, but then again, dreaming is for free. G.

Once again, thanks for all the well thought out reply's. The reason for the radios is for emergency purpose. I want to run as low of power as possible to save energy in a power outage. I have quality agm batteries to keep things going and solar. I am barely able to get into 2 different repeaters on 5 watts with my BTECH but my signal is nearly full quiet with the BTECH at the 15 watt setting. I'm using a diamond 400 meter and needle barely moves when I check the SWR (far below 1.5). My understanding with the Kenwood 880 and the 880H is that the 880 is 5 watts on low and the 880H is 10 watts on low. So, I wondered if the Kenwood's 880H signal at 10 watts is cleaner than the BTECH's so it may sound as good or better than the BTECH running 15 watts. Most of the reply's seem to refer to the antenna and I believe all of you that it would make all the difference in the world to improve on but at the moment I can't. I do however want a second radio that is repeater capable so I figured I may as well get some advice. Something I do like about the BTECH 50x1 that I would lose using the Kenwood is the ability to monitor VHF and having an FM radio. Probably considered gimmicky but I do like the features, (at least it doesn't have a flashlight). One more thing, the Kenwood's do have CTCSS correct, since that is what our local repeaters use near me. Thanks

De ja vu... This is an excellent point. I first got bit by the radio bug when I was a kid in the 90's. No cell phones radio was the cool thing. 2007 I started getting FCC licenses starting with my GROL. Fell out of the hobby and started up again 10 years later. When I started up I had a friend start up with some cheap Chinese mobiles from Amazon. I bought a couple Baofeng handhelds that I didn't have much issue with. He ended up dropping out due to not getting what he wanted out of the underperforming radio just like you said. We have an excellent HAM community here but I'm not much into talking to complete strangers, I wanted to communicate with friends and family. So I dropped out of radio again until this year when I decided to give GMRS a shot because one station license could be shared by my household.

We're looking at this from a different perspective. Hoping to do a blended-function setup with analog voice and SMS via GMRS from a single, non-repeater mobile station to a set of HT receivers in the field within a 1 km radius. Still catching up on the learning curve on this.