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Maybe I am the only one, but I am confused about the purpose of this ongoing rant. Complaints on an online forum are not going to change anything. If you want change, file a Petition for Rulemaking with the FCC. Then get people to support your petition. But, to the points you raise. First, about GMRS radios themselves: Some of your facts are wrong or off target, there is no need for a -5 MHz (not KHz) offset on a GMRS radio. There are only 8 repeater input frequencies defined and those are all 5MHz higher than the 8 defined repeater input frequencies. And, the number of internal memory locations (aka "channels) that a given user needs is very difficult to determine. Probably more than 22, but 180? Zello? Zello works just fine without a GMRS radio at all. But, Zello is an Internet (IP) based app, which means anything that connects to Zello needs an Internet connection. But, you also suggest GMRS should work when away from any cellular infrastructure. So, how is your Zello equipped GMRS radio supposed to connect to Zello when you are in the middle of nowhere? And you complaint about morse code, I really don't know what that is about? We live in a free market economic system. Manufacturers are free to offer products they feel will meet customer and investor needs. You have a choice. And, if you don't like the certified GMRS products you can choose from, there are plenty of other options, from super-cheap CCRs to super-high end Part-90 commercial equipment. Technical questions aside, your major complaint seems to be about licensing fees. Here again I think you are off base. Many services, especially commercial, marine, aviation, LMR, broadcast, common carrier, cellular, etc. have licensing fees and they are often quite expensive. At $7 a year, GMRS is cheap by comparison. Yes, it is more than Amateur. But, Amateur radio is also considered a public service, with a long history and International agreements. And, what difference does it make who you pay a licensing fee to the FCC, the ARRL, a local radio club or whatever? But, even here you are not current. There is now a proposal in the FCC to lower GMRS licensing fees to $50 and add a fee for Amateur radio. The reason? It appears federal law requires fees be set to recover costs. The GMRS fee was bringing in too much money, ham radio was bringing in nothing. You also object to being taxed on your GMRS radio, but have no issue with the FCC requiring a cell phone company to offer a GMRS repeater service on every tower for free. When you consider the equipment and installation costs, plus administration and maintenance costs, are you willing to pay for that every month when Verizon and AT&T raise your bill to cover their costs? There is no free lunch. Ok, you obviously feel strongly about something, otherwise you wouldn't have started this topic and posted 7 follow-up comments. But, it is really hard to understand just what it is you are complaining about and what you think should be done about it. Can you succinctly state the top 5 high level problems you see with GMRS today, the reasons you think those are problems, and 5 proposed solutions.

Just for completeness... This short period of signal, sometimes followed by a beep, is commonly known as a Squelch Tail.

In the Amateur Radio world, all offsets that are commonly used and considered best practice, have come out of a developed band plan. The band plan dictates what the offsets (frequency pairs) are for coordination, to help prevent harmful interference with other repeaters and other services inside of those allocated spaces. The American Radio Relay League defines the band plan as "a voluntary division of a band to avoid interference between incompatible modes." Does anyone know if something similar exists for GMRS and its repeater offsets? Tradition seems like a good answer, but I have to think there is more to it than that. Also, using non-standard pairs would likely end up causing interference for others who are using the standard +5 in a GMRS dense area like where I am. There are repeaters around my house on every available (standard) pair, with some overlap with several machines, that only have PL tones separating which machine you bring up. You would also break the repeater capability for every repeater capable type approved radio on the market. The FCC issued a PDF as guidance to the makers to help ensure devices meet the type acceptance criteria, and that document shows the +5MHz offsets. While it may not be codified in the rules, based on the document, I am pretty sure that +5MHz is what's expected by the FCC, too.

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but the subject of Midland radios being not dual PL tone capable has already been addressed. The MXT400 is split tone capable if programmed to do so. Out of respect for the experts on here who have posted about this several times, and so they won't have to post yet again, please view this thread: https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/1837-midland-gmrs-product-updates/page-3 I have not tried it myself (yet), but to be fair, this option is out there. ...

All I can say is Wow! Thanks Berkinet for saying what was on my mind. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

FWIW shoot me a PM and I will send you my email so I can take a crack at this. Not sure how much help I will be but I have setup all (6 total) the ones used by my family. Once I get your "dat" file from you I will take a look at it and load it into my spare 8180 and see what I come up with. ALL of the Kenwoods have a group that contains a mix of repeater channels and simplex ones and the scan function works flawlessly in that group. I suppose the frequency could be off but if that is the case, why does the radio work/pickup the simplex channels when it is not in scan mode? Weird....

Yea.... just not seeing it. For at least the last decade, an overwhelming number of people I know, for them, GMRS is a toy. I dont know anyone personally who uses it as anything more than a toy or a second layer of mobile comms, with less traffic, compared to Ham radio. And while there are some businesses around here that use FRS (which seems counterintuitive given the name) there are none using GMRS. Also, in the FCC rules, it even defines GMRS as a mobile two-way voice communication service to support the individual licensees and the families in there activities, with things like emergency services being secondary and business use is a grandfathered tertiary purpose. So, it would seem our interpretations and experiences are vastly different. But... that's okay. :-)

The replies are always so courteous, patient and accurate around here I sometimes forget I'm on the Internet. Great info folks and welcome to GMRS jjohns01.