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Hello Mike. The primary reason I have my GMRS license is as means for family communications. Mobile to mobile, mobile to home, around home and more. It also serves as source of emergency communications for and with the family and neighborhood. Basically it serves as a utility service for me. Yes, I do use it to communicate with other GMRS’r too, mostly while mobile, occasionally from home. I have my ham license for a variety of reasons. As a hobby and means to experiment and learn. As a means to connect with others in a fun way, both local and world wide. As a means to help with civic events and perhaps be prepared to help the community during a time of natural disaster or other local or national emergency. It also serves as a means to connect with others with like interests. No one in the family has interest in amateur radio. The have not the interest to study for it, invest in it, nor interest in ‘talking radio’ with others. Both work for me exactly the way I want them too. GMRS is utility. Ham is hobby and personal interest. Hope that helps. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

If you just want to give the radio hobby a try then just get a Baofeng BF-888S: its a 9 dollar radio. It programs with CHIRP, and the cable is like 9 dollars: in short, it should be the simplest and cheapest thing to get going. If you don't like the hobby, or for whatever reason you decide this is not your thing, then you can smash the thing with a hammer, set it on fire, blow it up with tannerite... and not much will be lost. All other CCR radios mentioned here, the Wouxun, the Retevis, et. all, all those will have similar low performance to the Baofeng BF-888S, except they cost a ton more (rip off??) and are equally bad in terms of receiver performance. Yes Yes... I know... here are the buzzwords to be aware of: Superhet, Hyperhet, Megahet, Turbohet... etc all those buzzwords are designed to sell overpriced cheap radios without the most important component: a proper TUNED FRONT END (to filter all the unwanted signals out there) which is what most LMR Part 90 radios will have... so the radios will work inside Best Buy and not blank out due to all the electronic noise present. But, OTOH, if you do like the radio hobby, the next radio should be a quality LMR radio, not a cheap china radio (CCR). Personally, I would chose a Motorola, the HT1250 is a fairly inexpensive radio, or the Motorola XPR6550, or the Vertex Standard EVX-539 etc, but also Kenwood, or Icom LMR radios are pretty decent too. Remember that GMRS is NOT Ham radio, so, you don't need a VFO, nor the ability to transmit in 100 bands, or in fifteen different modulations. All you need for GMRS is a FM UHF radio that transmits and receives from 462.5 to 467.8 MHz, can store at least 22 channels, do repeater offsets and have the ability to set PL tones. That's about it. Most commercial grade radios will suit your needs. G.

Thank you for this! Very informative! You just made this forum great!!

Hello Don. I do not believe that ‘most, if not all users are talking through repeaters linked to the internet’. I believe that is a misconception. I do not have any way to know what percentage are actually connected to the internet, but my best guess it is lower single digit percentage. There is both utility and novelty to linked repeaters. It has its place. In the event of a national or regional emergency and telecommunications where interrupted then yes, linked repeaters would loose their ability to communicate with linked repeaters. Those repeaters however would still retain their utilitarian local communication capability which is huge. Also, in a grid-down scenario the local repeaters can still serve their purpose if the owner prepared for this eventuality. I would venture a guess (and that is all it is) that perhaps less than 10% of all are equipped for grid-down scenarios lasting more than 1/2 day. Hams in general would not be crippled. Amateur radio operators have many means of communication available to them. If power and internet both went down, either locally or country wide, properly equipped hams can still communication locally, nationally and internationally. Yes, they may loose the ability to use what linked repeaters or reflectors that are accustomed to, but they can just switch to a different mode of amateur communications. Many can and do communicate radio to radio around the world regularly. Many can relay emails from one radio to another. Many practice sending, receiving and delivery of ‘radiograms’ daily. The more diverse the amateur is the more opportunities exist to them, and the more we will all rely on them in a time of crisis. Regards, Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Thanks Michael.

I primarily use GMRS for family comms. If others in my household were interested in getting ham licensed, I probably would not have spent the $70 on the GMRS license. GMRS works for me only because my wife's place of work is only 2 miles from our house and practically under the nearest GMRS repeater; those 2 factors make it useful for us.

You had a 6db antenna with 16' of cable then went to a 40' of LMR400. You will have loss in the cable. Granted wont be a ton but will be different than 16' of cable. As reference I run the Laird antenna on my Motorhome for my repeater and have used it alot. Its a solid antenna. Get it in the air and it will do fine.

Welcome to GMRS! You might wish to visit the North Shore Emergency Association: http://nsea.com ...

Plus, hams down on the longer wavelength bands (lower frequencies) routinely talk across the globe without Internet intervention.

Hi Don and great question. Really it all depends on the type of repeater that is being accessed and is really only a problem directed at the Ham community. Normal repeaters with a link or node controller will simply continue doing its thing when it receives a signal, only it wont be able to transmit to other repeaters. Not crippling, as the system is still functional, however range will be greatly reduced to only that of the repeater in use. This is true for both normal analog and digital repeaters. There is another form of repeater that has taken off in the amateur community and deals with digital communications. Many hams use a digital hotspot at their homes to communicate with other digital users and are essentially a very low power local repeater. These hotspots typically have little range, perhaps a block or two at best, and rely souly on an internet connection to relay any traffic it receives. The good thing is that emergency communications groups in both radio community's have already planed for these sorts of events. Typically digital wont be used at all unless an area wide digital repeater has been set up. Likewise, when an incident arises it is expected that power and internet will be out and thus repeaters will be unable to link, even if they are running by back-up power. Hope this answers your question Mike

Some of the Kenwood NX series radios will do both analog and digital. The digital part is NXDN, mostly used by railroads with smaller number used by businesses. A few areas in the US see some use of NXDN on the Ham bands. Note that any type of digital voice on GMRS is prohibited by the FCC so only the analog part is of any use. I picked up a Kenwood NX-340U, analog/NXDN, real cheap off of eBay but haven’t done much with it yet. Also got a Kenwood TK-D340 as well that does analog/DMR.

Ok, pulled two UHF ID's, Both have a GC of K44, The first is 431200 and the second is 431201. Both have certification for part 22, 74, and 90. While it is not part 95E certified, as long as you do not run digital or encryption and you keep the power levels within legal limits you should be fine to use this radio.

Some of the old Kenwood radios are Part 95 certified. I have the TK-370G-1, TK-3170-K and the TK-3140. All 128 channel UHF radios. While the official lower frequency range is 450MHz on the ones useful for GMRS I’ve used them down to 440MHz or so making them usable on the simplex and repeater section of the Ham 70cm band if that’s of any interest.

Good Morning. Honestly, I do not believe you would able to tell the difference in range between the two models, assuming both are properly installed and working correctly and both are mounted at the same elevation. Something you should know is that VHF and UHF frequencies are what are called ‘line of sight’ frequencies. This means that if two antennas operating on these frequencies can see one another, odds are great the radios connected to them can communicate with one another, even with minimum power. But in reality every tree, plant, tower, building, pole, hill or hump you put between the two antennas reduces effective range. To determine your theoretical best case scenario you start by calculating the radio horizon distance for the two radios that you wish to communicate with one another. Below are some links for you to play with. These calculators assume the earth is a perfectly smooth sphere. As you will see, the higher the Tx and Rx antennas are, the greater the theoretical distance. For two antennas located at 6’ each, the maximum theoretical distance is a mere 6 miles. For the case where one antenna is 35’ and the other is 6’, the maximum theoretical is 11 miles. Both antennas at 35’ and the maximum increases to 16 miles. But since the earth is not smooth (has hills and valleys) and has natural and man-made obstacles (trees and buildings) range is nearly always dramatically reduced. In far fewer cases it goes way up (consider radios on two different mountain tops). You may ask what is the radio horizon. The radio horizon is the point at which (in any horizontal direction) the radio wave is blocked by the surface of the earth. It is nearly the same as your eyes. Go out on a boat on smooth ocean waters. If your eyes are at 6’ above the water, the horizon you see is only a mere 3 miles away. The higher you are above the earth surface, the further away the horizon is that you see. It is the presence of this blocking horizon that prevents the signal from traveling further around the earth. https://www.qsl.net/w4sat/horizon.htm https://www.everythingrf.com/rf-calculators/line-of-sight-calculator https://www.southwestantennas.com/calculator/line-of-sight Hope this helps. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

You can find the legacy DTRs very cheap on eBay but their condition is a big "?". The DLRs and DTR600/700 are still expensive on the used market. The DLRs are packed with the features of the DTRs, minus a display and some channel capacity and larger removable antenna. Don't be fooled by what appears to be very basic radio. It is packed with hidden features that work with the DTR's features. It is set up to be as basic as you can get like you said. Some people have commented that they don't like the large round PTT button on the front of the radio because they are so accustomed to a PTT button on the side of a radio. I found the large PTT button on the radio makes perfect sense because the radio is so small. A thumb press using either hand is all it takes and the radio is comfortable to hold. The PTT button of the front is different from what people are used to but it makes perfect sense for such a small radio. Battery life on a charge is in excess of 15 hours (5/5/90 duty cycle), similar to the DTR600/700 models. Another option is a pair of old NEXTEL Motorola i355 handsets. These iDEN handsets and a few other models have an off-network phone to phone feature which NEXTEL called Direct Talk. This is different from the NEXTEL DirectConnect PTT feature which used NEXTEL's iDEN network. The Direct Talk (DT) feature allows 2 or more phones to communicate simplex on 900MHz when in range of each other. It was useful for contractors at jobsites where one or more of their NEXTEL phones had no network service, which was common when working in a basement of a building. The DT feature offered a solution to this problem when phones had no service but were in simplex range of each other. The DTRs and DLRs are a spinoff from this feature. The DTRs and DLRs use the exact same FHSS system but differ in software only. The DTRs and DLRs are incompatible with the off-network DT feature and supposedly was done on purpose. The legacy DTRs and one particular iDEN handset (i325 or i325is, IIRC) were originally one and the same at the start of their design but at some point they split away and became separate products but still shared a common design. I suspect the software incompatibility came when more DTR-specific features were added to the DTRs. The Direct Talk (DT) user interface is a primitive version of the DTRs. MOTOTALK was the original silly Motorola name for this system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOTO_Talk You can find i355 and other Direct Talk capable iDEN phones dirt cheap on eBay. I recently re-batteried my DTR650 fleet so I know replacement batteries are readily available for them. The one gotcha with these is they need to have a SIM card which has previously been activated on an iDEN network (NEXTEL) in order to enable the DT feature. The DTRs and DLRs have an 11 digit private ID in each radio that was assigned at the factory by Motorola and is not changeable by the end user or with the CPS. The ID functions as a hardware electronic serial number (ESN). The DTRs and DLRs use an ID-based system for private groups and 1 to 1 private calling. The radios only know each other by their 11 digit private ID. The DT features in the iDEN phones create this ID from 1 plus the area code and phone number in the SIM card that was assigned by the iDEN carrier (NEXTEL). If used phones have a SIM in them that was previously activated by an iDEN carrier then you are good to go. There are plenty of YouTube videos describing and demoing the Direct Talk feature. My wife (g/f at the time) and I had a pair of i355 phones back in the day and we played with the DT feature and that's when I first learned of the DTRs.

I just checked eBay for the DLR1060 6 channel model. Most were very expensive but two were reasonably priced, $50 and $70. I looked quickly at the Moto site for info. You’re right the DLR series is about as basic as you can get.

Welcome to the forum and asking a great question... as a fellow newbie back in Nov 2020... I took the Part 95 certified radios to make my $80 purchase handheld from CCP as a starter radio and has been great... One thing I learned is my handheld is 25MHz bandwidth and sound is great... I'm not the tech guy. I can not remember if it was Kenwood or maybe Midland did half the bandwidth... Someone will help me remember... Jack

If you are saying that the stock antenna that came with the MX105 is a 6dBi antenna, I believe that to be in error. At best, it may be 2dBi. The short little midland antenna does need a ground plan, where as some others can benefit from one, but do not need them to achieve acceptable performance. Midland does make a 6dBi version. I own one and find that it does quite well. Even mounted on top of a metal trashcan lid. I believe the Laird antenna you reference is similar. Height is King in GMRS. Get the antenna well above the tree line and you could find yourself achieving simplex distances of 20-50 miles and more. As the antenna elevation drops so too will your usable range. With an elevation of 4-6 off the ground your usable simplex distance could be down to 1/2 - 2 miles or so depending upon the obstacles between the transmitting and receiving antennas. I recently did some testing with a local ham and GMRS’r. I had a high-gain antenna at 56’ (still below tree tops) and could not communicate 8 miles to another location were we testing. Only thing significant between the two antennas was loads and loads of trees (no hills or tall buildings). Using same antenna, radio and power (5 watts) we reached a good 50 miles going a different direction where fewer trees and other obstacles existed between the antennas. Never under estimate the importance of height when it comes to GMRS distance. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

My owned list: Wouxun 805G (2) Kenwood TK-3170 Retivis 76P (2) IMO of course: I prefer the Wouxun because I can adjust from the front panel. Software is ok but Kenwood is superior. Kenwood is great but needs to be laptop/software programmed unless modified for FPP and I'm not sure that's possible on their HT. Not field adjustable for CTCSS, etc. Software is excellent. Retivis 76 is ok but I seem to prefer single-band GMRS for simplicity's sake. I just got these so only one day wheelin' with them. Just finished programming Baofang 5Rs for a friend and hated Chirp. Mostly because of my ineptitude maybe but other software was more straight-forward for me. 5R is not FCC cert. and is discontinued, but I think they have new models that are compliant.

First hand experience here with a thorough-the-glass antenna on 2M/70cm. Don’t bother, nothing to see here, move along. Do not recommend. Of course, that was 20 years ago. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I've dipped my toe in the GMRS waters with Midland and Wouxan. I'd like to buy a used Kenwood and try my hand at programming. I'm looking at an 8180 for a base unit at the house. What do I need to know about programming? I've got the whole family using channel 16 with CTCSS 2. Is this something a newbie can do with relative ease? I really appreciate all of the advice I've gotten here so far. Thanks in advance.

I wanted share my experience as I am new to GMRS and recently setup a TK-8180 in my truck. Not only was this was my first mobile setup, but also my first time programming. To be honest I was concerned that I was getting in over my head. I purchased the software and programming cable and couldn't get my computer to read the radio. After doing a little investigation I realized that the programming cable I bought was junk. I replaced it with a quality cable and everything worked like a charm. The KPG-89D software is pretty simple to use. After playing around with it for about 15 minutes I started programming the radio. 20 minutes after I started programming I had all of my repeaters loaded in zone 1 and all of the simplex channels loaded in zone 2. It really couldn't have been easier. I recommend buying your cable on Ebay from bluemax49ers. You'll pay a little more for his stuff, but it works great! If you follow this youtube link and jump to the 1 min mark you can see just how easy this software is to use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-S_DHkcg6o

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

I can confirm that the Retevis RA25 and the Anytone At-779UV are the same radio. I also confirm that you can not change the pl tones witch isn't any good for duplex. retevis 1.zip

When I opened the the software and downloaded my MTX400 current programming as it came from the factory, channels 1-7 and 15-22 were spaced at 12.5K, the repeater channels 23-30 were already spaced at 25K . The only thing I did with the software was add split tones to the repeater channels that needed split tones. Midland either always made the repeater channels 25K or changed it at some point of production. My radio was new and sealed in packaging so it had to be programmed that way from the factory

Are you sure of this? Perhaps I misread your post. I would think that if the manufacturer (or whoever is getting the radio certified) included the capability to configure elements of the radios via software, and documented those capabilities in the certification application, that doing so would be Ok. Note in particular the Kenwood GMRS radios that have keypad programming locked out but can be programmed with the appropriate software. Of course, programming would not include changes that would not be allowed in GMRS, like transmission on non-GMRS frequencies, power and bandwidth settings > the FCC specified limits for a channel, etc. However, organizing memory locations and banks, setting PL, etc. and audio signaling, adding text labels, roger-beeps (though those should be categorically outlawed!), etc. would all seem to be things that can be changed by the end user without voiding the certification.

It is interesting that note the LT-590 and TH-9000(d) UHF versions are not available on Amazon and it is unknown if they will become available. OTOH, There is a Retevis RT-9000D That appears to be almost identical to the TH-9000d and is in-stock. I mention the availability of the two Bond Telecom brands (Luiton and TYT) because it may hint at an upcoming change in the MXT400. In fact, the Retevis version may represent close-out stock that they purchased from Bond Telecom. Also, FWIW, the Retivis-9000D programming software appears to be the same as the LT-590. Also, just wondering if anyone here has tried to program their MXT400? I am sure there are a lot of interested people waiting to hear.