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The key question is your budget and the number of units (radios) needed. CCRs or Cheap Chinese Radios vary greatly from model to model. The Woxuns have a better user rating than a great many of the Baofengs but again, they do have some good units as well. Flea Bay is a good source for used high grade radios from manufacturers like Motorola, ICOM. Vertex-Standard, Kenwood and others. Many of these are not certified under Part 95 of the FCC regulations but are certified under Part 90 which has tighter specifications. That doesn't make it all right to use them on GMRS but many do. Amateur or Ham radios are also not certified for GMRS, but again, many do use them. The best of the bunch will be a commercial or public safety grade unit, but those are typically limited in the number of channels available and require some expertise in setting up the channels for use. Many are best programmed by a radio shop for a fee but you also need to know before hand exactly what you need for each channel. BTech offers a good GMRS handheld that can be programmed from the front panel or through a PC/MAC using a free program. The Midland units are fair but both they and the BTech along with the Woxuns work better with upgrade antennas. The best advice is to do your homework first, build a needs list and the search for radios that come closest to meeting all your needs along with the nice-to-have features.

The ability to hide our full street address when someone looks up our call sign!!!! City and state are fine but why show them our full physical street address?

Maybe reach out to commscope who makes the antenna now ? https://www.commscope.com/product-type/antennas/base-station-antennas-equipment/base-station-antennas/itemdb404-b/ In the past I tried to replace one on a VHF version and the cost of the harness was close to a new antenna. If the antenna has been up long enough for the cables to deteriorate it may be worth the new antenna. The antenna is less than $400 online. I guess if one was really in a bind you could try to rebuild the harness but normally need decent test equipment to do this.

Welcome to the group... I have the same handheld as Michael and as my first step into GMRS, I too got information overload. One thing I wanted is flexible use in car/Jeep/hiking/RV and home. Also wanted radio certified by FCC to be legal. I have kids and GMRS fits my needs to teach them. Check out other posts made for whatever radio you are looking at. You see radio is a personal thing and a lot of "IMHO". https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/2373-type-accepted-transceiver/ Jack

First, MAKE SURE THE BRACKETS ARE INTO GOOD STRONG STUDS!!! Dont just drive them through the sheeting. Now, I can give you the utility pole rule of thumb, should work for this application. So, you use 1' for every 10 feet of pole. This includes the antenna as well, plus 2 feet to the total. So a 20' pole with a 10' antenna, 30', 3+2= a 5 foot space.

Hello David and Welcome to GMRS. I own, use, and would buy again, the Wouxun KG-805G. It is a good starter radio. I use it with an after-market antenna and the higher capacity battery back and other accessories. I use it with an external antenna in the car. It will cost you more than twice the price of the more costly bubble pack radios (e.g. Midland GXT1000) while remaining affordable enough to allow for one for each family member (IMO) if needed. The radio is repeater capable, audio quality is good, has more than sufficient memories, and is software programmable. It has all the features you will need to have a good initial GMRS experience. Do not get your hopes set to high on distance. Compared side-by-side against the best bubble rack radios you are likely to only see a 10-25% range increase when operating simplex and that is because of the added power and upgrade antenna. But, because it is repeater capable, if you have any local high-profile repeaters in your area that are within your intended area of use you can the expect much greater effective usable range. I expect I will upgrade one or two of my radios in the future, but only when I find one with notably better radio performance and a few additional features that I would like. Until them, I am content with this radio. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Let’s at least discuss this in an “apples to apples” manner. The CDM1250 (and 750 and 1550 sisters) are mobile radios in 25 and 40 watt flavors. The Kenwoods you cite are certainly decent commercial grade radios, but this thread is about mobile units, not HTs.

I finally made the purchase of the HD 46’ push-up fiberglass mast I referenced in my earlier post. This weekend I rigged things up in a temporary way to conduct tests with local (and not so local) repeaters, as well as do some local simplex work. The image below shows my antenna at full elevation (56’ AGL to tip of Antenna). Mast was installed in a temporary way just for testing. Eventually it will get moved next to the house. Amazing how plumb the mast was being guyed only at 7’3” (not good long term, but good enough for testing). The antenna is a Comet 712EFC Collinear 9dBi. https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/cma-ca-712ef Cable is TMW LMR400 Mast is from DX Engineering. https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dxe-tfk46-hd All of my testing consisted of using two handheld 5w radios. One feeding the Comet antenna, one in the car using an MXTA-26 antenna. First, the high-point of the testing. I was able to communicate from my home southeast of Cincinnati to the Dayton 700 repeater located 50 miles north(straight line distance) using approx 3 watts of input power into the antenna. Signal report from a Dayton area resident was “very good” and “into the repeater solid”, perfectly suitable for a QSO. That alone made my weekend. On the local front I was able to get into three local repeaters located 20, 21 and 26 miles way. Got in with full quieting to the one 20 miles away (“just as though I was next door”), and with just a hint of noise on the ones 21 and 26 miles away. Getting the antenna up high obviously makes a huge difference. On the simplex front I found I could achieve pretty reliable coverage out 4 to 5 miles where things transitioned to hit and mis out to about 7-8 miles when all seemed to die completely. I expect the reliable range will decrease as foliage comes back. Not bad though for a couple of lower power HT and with good external antennas. It will be nice to experience the positive change to simplex coverage after I up the power of the base and mobile to legal limits. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Hi Jerry, I own the Fort Pierce repeater which covers the Port St. Lucie area very well and with a good base station you should be able to get to West Palm Beach. For your house, you would need a UHF base station antenna outside as high as you can practically get it (ideally on your roof if that's possible). Elevation is the key to getting better range. For a base radio, you can use a mobile radio and a power supply hooked up to the antenna. Some form of lightning protection for the coax that comes from the antenna is advised, especially in Florida. There are Polyphaser surge suppressors that you can buy which will protect the radio from a surge in the coax caused by a nearby strike. For your mother's house, depending on where she's located she might be able to use a handheld radio which would be good for mobility, but you'd have to try it out and see. I'm not sure if you have a GMRS license yet, but a license would cover yourself plus your immediate family members which includes your mother, so there's only once license to purchase from the FCC. Once you have a license you can register for the main myGMRS.com website and you'll see the frequency and PL tone information needed to program your radios to the Fort Pierce repeater, and you can try it out. I actually put up this repeater for my elderly aunt and uncle who live on the island. Their cell service isn't great and they have become stubborn and don't like to evacuate when there's a hurricane. I wanted a way to reach them by radio, or a way for them to call others for help if they ever need to. I live in NJ so I have linked that repeater over the Internet which allows me to talk to them when I'm not in the area.