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I think it was Voltaire who observed Perfect is the enemy of Good.

I am barely 3 weeks into GMRS and as impressed as I am with the performance of the GMRS radio over my prior use of CB MANY years ago, I am even more impressed with the community! Between the help I have gotten on these forums and the suggestions I have gotten while talking on the radio, I now have a system that FAR exceeds my initial expectations. So to everyone here and on the air: THANK YOU! Note to self: Try to leave well enough alone for now. Enjoy what you have before you "over tinker..."

Sorry for the long winded post ahead of time. Currently, applied for a vanity call sign. The previous owner was my social studies teacher from 8th grade and Ham Club Sponsor and operator, many moons ago. I recently went looking for him to tell him I finally got my license. Nearly 40 years after I walked out of his club doors. I could tell in a later conversation with he was disappointing that I stop attending. Sadly, I found he had died on 9/11 at the Pentagon. We lost a great man. At that moment I looked up his call sign at it had laid expired and dormant since 2007. At that moment I chose to apply for his call sign. I want to get his call sign back on the air, and from someone that knew him. So no I am waiting, studying for my General as well as CW. I have started working on a QSO card to remember him by. My dilemma is I am not sure if I am even close to proud on the work. Any suggestion or input is appreciated. Thanks ahead of time.

So, I started my personal GMRS and ham journey in January of this year for reasons that are not relevant here. Among my goals was to be able to have simplex RF comms with my wife at her office. (2.1 miles as the crow flies, through suburban northern Virginia. Small rolling hills, but plenty of RF interference along the way.) Frankly, I was disappointed by the limitations of HT<-->HT around here. I was lucky to make it 3/4 - 1 mile. Clearly, line of sight matters enormously. I got a simple j-pole antenna and tried that at home from my attic. (HOA issues.) Still HT to HT, but no luck. I got permission from the HOA to put up two 5 foot j-pole antennas and got them up yesterday. (See attached photo. Both are Ed Fong designs. One ham and one GMRS tuned.) Simultaneously, I got a 50 Watt (UHF) / 40 Watt (VHF) mobile radio. This morning, I ran a quick and informal series of quick tests with the mobile radio set up in the ham bands (70 cm and 2 m) as a cross-band repeater. (I use a 70 cm simplex channel to my home mobile, which then repeats it on 2 m out to my local repeater (W4AVA).) In short, VICTORY! The repeater connections had several flat spots for me. They're 99% gone now. I can trivially tx/rx to my wife's office location with 5 by 5 audio signal on a simplex connection. I know many folks here dismiss the Ed Fongs, but I have to say those reviews are not consistent with my experiences. In particular, the Warrenton GMRS repeater that is some 40 miles from here was completely out of range for me in the past. With the Fongs on the roof, I'm getting 5x5 signal reports consistently on that repeater -- which serves a vast footprint of NoVA and MD. YMMV. So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with where I am on my personal journey. Cheers, Ken van Wyk WRFC318 / K0RVW

New mobile antenna spotted in public. With built in social distancing features.

Yup. I have some friends that have either the Ham Tech or GMRS license and are looking at getting the other one. For the $70 and good or 10 years why not get the GMRS license IMHO.

Increase the font size just a bit on your information to fill more space. Get rid of the "www." in front of that QCWA web address. Having WWW. in front of everything was cool in the 90's, but it isn't needed anymore, and all modern browsers will automatically add that if needed. Radio and television don't even use that anymore. They finally figured out that "double yoo double yoo double yoo dot" wastes 10 syllables and 2 seconds. That's almost 7 percent of the available time in a 30 second commercial. The lower third of that card could be a photo of you and your station, or your family, whatever... cropped to a 1:4 aspect ratio. - ultra wide-screen.

I just got this Slim Jim antenna for my go bag, and the clarity it delivers even to a Btech UV-82C is so astonishing, that it could easily be used as a permanent for a decent base radio. I ordered it with the 16' cable so I could tie paracord to it and throw it over a high tree branch. If someone else has a better idea for an on-the-fly antenna, I'm all ears!

Just get both.

Channel mode and frequency modes are the same thing. The difference is in what is displayed. Channel mode shows the channel number while frequency mode would show the frequency for the channel. GMRS repeaters operate with frequency pairs with the pair being 5 MHz apart. A 462 MHz frequency is paired with the 467 MHz frequency, The different tones are used to to enable the receiver (input) side to open up and listen to the signal on its input frequency and then key the output or transmit side of the repeater. The tones are also referred to as privacy codes. The repeater listings often refer to the "travel tone" which is 141.3 and needs to be enabled on your transmit frequency in order to access the repeater's receiver.