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In Cincinnati there is an informal net every Sunday evening. Listeners and active participation continues to grow. A good number the participants are licensed for both GMRS and amateur services. Others are licensed for only GMRS. Folks also know to monitor the repeater daily at a given time of day just in case an there is important information that needs to be shared with the community and an impromptu net is needed. Some folks want to participate but cannot get into the repeater that is used. To help, there are multiple people that monitor both amateur and alternate GMRS frequencies to receive check-ins and relay questions. That shows some real dedication in reaching out to the community and a conscious degree of collaboration and cooperation. The leader of the group, Hans, is all about spreading the experience thoughout the community. If there are no repeaters in your area, I see an opening for you. Put one up and share it with the community and put it to use in your daily routine. Traffic will draw traffic. I cannot say that I have experienced any arrogance in the local community at all. Ignorance perhaps (i.e. not familiar with) on both sides of the aisle, but no arrogance. Locally I see cross-pollination as folks licensed in one service see the other has just another communication option. I see hams getting GMRS license and vice versa. With GMRS you can do something that amateur-only folks cannot as readily and easily do: use radio to communicate with family without them having to study and pass a test first. Yet, you can achieve the exact same level of UHF FM communication experience as the amateurs can on 70cm. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

A cheap Baofeng is not a good choice for a SHTF radio. They're OK for a cheap "beater radio" so when it breaks it's so cheap you won't cry over it. The main reason you see so many people suggest them is because of one thing, they're dirt cheap. You buy a $25 radio you get a $25 radio reliability and performance. I purchased a cheap BTECH tri-band hand held radio a while back. Dropped it on the hard floor at a sports bar while out with some friends, the speaker quit working. Oh well, it was a CCR. What you really want is a radio with a heavy duty case that you could drop on concrete and not have it die, drop in the water and not short-out the innards etc. In a SHTF situation you don't know where you'll be and under what conditions, but the radio must still work, hot, cold, driving rain, dusty or smoky air, mud coated etc.

Of course, most replies will be much opinion, so here is mine: 1) IMHO, the Wouxun KG1000G is a great radio - it has a 50W output, but the best feature is being able to throw the chassis under the seat (or wherever) and remotely mount the very small faceplate anywhere. I have also used the BTech GMRS 50X1 - actually 2 of them, but that radio does not output anywhere near the advertised power output and the screen is tiny/hard to read.. but, it is cheaper..sooo... 2) any GMRS antenna is probably "good enough" - on both my Jeeps I use the Browning BR-450 which is a UHF antenna and must be cut/tuned (not a big deal) - but a "GMRS" antenna should not need to be cut/tuned 3) it depends on the antenna & where it's mounted, but to be safe I would remove it. Assuming you mount it where you can reach it, the GMRS/UHF "NMO" mounts are easy screw-off, so its very fast/easy to remove. Tram makes a very small (6 inch?) that works great, and would probably survive the carwash just fine.. 4) There are no designated GMRS channels (technically there, are but, like you, nobody knows about them) and in most areas the airwaves are dead - its not yet like CB as far as activity. 5) I dont have any pics, but, dont overthink it.. Mount the radio where you can see it, and mount the antenna where it works - be warned that experts will tell you that if it's not mounted in the "right" location, "it wont work" - dont belive it. Jeeps are notorious for not having any "good" mounting locations (due to the lack of a metal roof) and both mine are mounted where the experts say "is terrible/wont work" - and yet I can talk to my wife in her Jeep, also with a "terrible" antenna location, 25 miles away, and I can easily hit a repeater 70 miles away while sitting in my garage with the door closed.

Absent test equipment, it would be through experimentation, which is how I did it originally. In the end, I tweaked the receive threshold value in the software until its predicted coverage map reflected the same edge coverage limits I experienced in the field. This was done after I had already entered the transmit side information accurately. I knew I had found the right value when I all the nuances I experienced within the coverage area showed up clearly and accurately reflected my personal experiences. That told me I had gotten the receive value in the right ballpark. While the radio manufactures do publish a sensitivity value, the only time that value means anything is in the lab. It is not usable for the real world range prediction. Once you hook up an antenna to the radio, the noise the radio sees from the area around it increase thus making the lab sensitivity value meaningless to use in the software. In the end, it is this effective sensitivity you would use as the receive threshold in the software (i.e. the value that you can reasonably reasonably expect to be required to open squelch on your radio in your area of concern and produce at least a minimally usable audio). In my coverage maps I had to use an effective receive threshold of about -85dBm to get its edge coverage to align with my real-world experiences. Once I had found that number I was able to vary antenna elevation, gain and cable loss factors to see realistical coverage changes to expect from my transmit location. The key thing for me was learning just how much more elevation I would actually need to achieve a given objective. Recently, I learned that could use my TinySA with its external antenna under some circumstances to get a ball park noise figure that could prove useful in establishing a baseline receive threshold for my radios if I were to go into another area. I also have acquired additional equipment too that affords me the ability to go into the field and conduct model-specific effective sensitivity measurements. Thanks to wisdom gained from interactions with Gman and RadioGuy. Hope this helps. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

After reading all the good clear comments... I said, "Just purchase the best radio at your price level and enjoy the radio with all the features you wanted"... Jack