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Midland has not yet set a release date. My sources indicate it will be at least a few more weeks. The worst part of that means that I cant talk about it for at least a few more weeks!

I’m afraid I’m in the same boat as the OP. I live in the heart of Texas (Waco, specifically) and I got my GMRS license in hopes to do a little rag-chewing too, but all I get are crickets. I also understand that this isn’t ham radio and random contact and chatter isn’t all that common in GMRS. I’m not only interested in that side of it, but also in possibly setting up a repeater or getting HTs for my family. These are long-term goals, however, and it would be cool to just make contact once! Had I done more research, I would have seen that there are ZERO repeaters in my area (the closest being about 60 miles away) so my only shot at this is simplex (which is what, 1-2 miles line of sight?) or hitting one of the repeaters when traveling, which I’ll also try to do but not at this very moment. oh well. Lol

Will second this take. When I put close to 3ft of 5/8 over 5/8 wave on my truck I figured it'd be easy to see from a distance, but not so much, it gets lost in the background unless you're right there. My current base setup is indoors, 5/8 wave whip mag mounted on sheet metal and a btech for gmrs, with a comet gp1 and a dual band icom for 2m/70cm...was hoping to run gmrs on that too with (separate 70cm/gmrs and 2m radios), but swr was too high on gmrs ( 2.5-3:1 ) on the comet. Uhf radio went to the truck for 70cm/gmrs instead, with that browning on a mag mount. while mounting outdoors will definitely help, especially simplex, both work fine for repeater work, multiple machines within ~30 miles on mid power on 2m and 70cm, and 30 and 60 miles out on high on gmrs

Midland has not yet announced an official release date for the 500 or 575 ... I have both.. but I'm not yet allowed to talk about them... ?

No problem. I reread your instructions and found a way to get it into the cab without it looking butt ugly or getting the cable pinched. ?

Another channel worthy of mention is Ham Radio 2.0 He does mostly ham videos but is engaging more and more into GMRS.

Small tiny correction: narrowbanding was mandated by FCC for the commercial Part 90 radios. GMRS is still wide band. FRS was always narrow band. Midland took easy way, and decided that their offerings will be narrow band. There is some logic in this decision, if you take in account Midland's FRS offerings and desire to make the whole universe of Midland to be compatible with itself. Sure, they made it less compatible with wide band GMRS equimpment, but maybe it's their intent, to lock users in their universe.