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Same for the distracted driving laws in many states. Amateur, CB, and two way radios are exempted in many if not all states.

Good Day Marc. This weekend was a weekend of more tests. I even made my first 1/4 wave ground plane antenna. I mounted it on top an 11’ pole and walked around the neighbor hood. I looked like Moses, but I digress. I took delivery of an entry level SWR/power meter (SureCom 102) and dummy load so I had at least something of my own to use. I have also started to make friends with a local ham who owns some additional test equipment. He was the one that inspired me to go for my tech license. Using two different power meters (with dummy loads) I now know that my radios are outputting 4-5+ watts on all but the 7 mandatory low power FRS frequencies. I confirmed the SWR of my Comet 712EFC and Midland MXTA26. Both antennas measure less than 1.10:1 across the whole GMRS spectrum. This was done with two different meters with consistent results. My local ham friend also supplied a small digital antenna analyzer that scans the antenna system. Pretty cool! (Similar to an audio band impedance and acoustics analyzer I own). The output graph was nice and smooth and the resulting SWR measurements were substantially consistent with what was obtained with the SureCom. At least no gross anomalies observed. I am starting to gain confidence that equipment is working. I have also purchase some 1/2 wave Nagoya 771G and 1/4 wave 701G antennas for HT use as well as some Ed-Fong antennas to use. The arsenal is growing fast. Michael WRHS965 Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Short of profanity, you can do just about anything you want. Many people use their call sign with a custom suffix, as noted above. If my son is expecting to hear from me, I just get on the radio and call him by name. "Hey Nick, are you there?" On the repeater, you might get a response from the wrong Nick. So, appending call signs work great, since it ID's a specific group of licensed stations. So I would say something like "<call sign> mobile 2, this is <call sign> mobile 1, do you copy?*

Call sign w identifier. "(callsign) wifey this is (callsign) mobile 1 are you there?'. Mobile 1 and wifey can be substituted for whatever that suits your fancy. So call sign & individual identifer.

Until this week! Retevis submitted the RT97 for FCC Part 95E approval and got it. The FCC ID is 2ASNSRT97. The interesting thing is they are only certified for 5W whereas the other RT97's are rated for 10W output. The best part? You can preorder yours now from myGMRS! I have 2 on the way from China and will place an order for more based on demand. Current ETA is mid-June for the first batch, but no idea how accurate that date is. Shipping to the US has been very slow lately due to the lack of flights from China. There are things I've ordered from early March that still haven't left the country, but they were not Express shipments. I think these have potential to explode in popularity for GMRS. Everyone wants cheap repeaters that are plug-n-play, and these are about as cheap as you can get while being type-accepted and not just 2 HTs taped together.