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I apologize for being "off topic," but it's neat story about a local ham club setting up a repeater and getting residents on GMRS, where cell towers went down during the wild fires and the order to evacuate wasn't received by a lot of victims. Here's the link to the story....hope it gifts you a smile today! https://www.mtdemocrat.com/disaster-resource-guide-2020/disaster-radio-to-the-rescue/

Here is another website I stumbled upon that allows you to enter two points on a map, graph the terrain between them and then add antenna elevation to both to see what amount of elevation is needed to eliminate terrain blockages. https://www.scadacore.com/tools/rf-path/rf-line-of-sight/ WRHS965 Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I would differ on this view. It depends on what the goal is. If you want to know the maximum possible useful GMRS range in an area, then yes, equipment will matter a lot. However, if you want to know your maximum useful range, then you, by all means, need to test with the same equipment you are going to use. An old developers saying goes something like: Test what you will use. Use what you tested.

I hope it works out for you. Feature-rich radio, for sure.

Keep in mind that many, maybe even most, people get into GMRS specifically to talk to family and close friends and have no interest in general chatting on the air. If you are truly looking for finding people to chat with over the air, you probably should at least take a look at amateur radio.

I have to disagree with you entirely on this. The phonetic alphabet is used in many service, such as law enforcement, emergency medical, DOD, etc. Additionally, its not useless. Even under the best of audio clarity and strongest signal strength, many letters sound the same, such as c and d, y and I, m and n, and so on. When you have a critical message and/accuracy of spoken letters matter, the phonetic alphabet is an extremely useful tool. Taking those letters that sound the same and trying to distinguish them when the signal to noise ratio is 0.2:1, and it becomes even more useful.