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FCC rules do not require tones. The reality does.

The trouble with a Carrier Squelch repeater is that it will repeat literally everything it hears. There's no real control, and if you're high up, you'll hear the world, including stuff that you really don't want to repeat. If you've got any other co-channel user close by, your repeater will be keyed every time one of their mobiles is transmitting. Not ideal, not even close to useful, and pretty much guaranteed to be a pain to your neighboring system. I don't see anything in the rules that says you have to run PL, but the FCC does say you're supposed to avoid interference and monitor before transmitting.

Whoever told you that is either an idiot, a liar, or quite possibly, both.

Tones are NOT required on any channel or device. Ask whoever gave you that tidbit to show where it is required in the rules.

I have a hard time listening to CB (especially 19) because of the noise and language. BUT when I encounter a traffic problem there is no better source of real time information on what is happening, which lane to be in, or how the find an alternate route. And I have a $700 police scanner on my dash!

To the OP: As you can see, there’s a lot of fiddling around that accompanies repurposing something based on a high end commercial radio. That’s fine if that’s really how you want to spend your time. But for many people a decent radio, built to be sold as a GMRS radio, such as a Wouxun 805, 905, or 935 will be more than good enough without concerns over software legality, tuning partitions, needing a knob guard, or any one of a number of “perfect except for qualifiers” listed above.

It isn't that your signal can't go beyond the limit on your license and connect to a unit outside the assigned radius as much as your use of that frequency is not "protected" from another user being coordinated in an adjacent area. Typically, the coordinators assign a 32 km (20 mile) protection area, but they also issue city, county and state-wide areas of operation. The different frequency coordinators have different periods in which they review and approve or object to another coordinator's application. Commercial B/ILT coordinators must file their objection within 24 hours while public safety coordinators have 5 days to review a proposed coordination. The difference in review times is due to the nature of the coordinations. B/ILT coordinators work on the premise that all frequencies are shared while the public safety coordinators assign exclusive use to a frequency.

Thank you to all for the quick responses. Now I know what I have to do. Regarding Radioddity Support at the same time as I posted this I sent them an email with the same question and here is the answer I received. Thanks for reaching out to Radioddity Support! I am Leslie and I'd be happy to assist you with this. Please kindly notice that the channels over 39 in DB20-G are receive-only channels, which can not be programmed as TX channels. That is why the radio has an error tone. Here I attach the 500 Channels Table of DB20-G for your reference: Channel 1-30 (RX and TX): 30 GMRS channels Channel 31-39 (RX and TX): 9 DIY repeater channels Channel 40-493 (RX only): 454 VHF(136-174MHz) and UHF(400-490MHz) channels Channel 494-500 (RX only) 7 NOAA Channels Please feel free to let me know if you need any further assistance or information.

Well at least a few people figured out CB radio is used for “communications” not to generate attention grabbing noise, make a fashion statement or stroke one’s ego by being the channel king.

I thought that way for a short period time and It was probably because of the ham crowd that I hung around with. When you look at any radio service out there, it's not the radio service that's the problem. It's the people involved in it. Ham radio can be the same way at times depending on the band. Sadly, I've heard stuff come over ham that made me cringe, because I have always operated it in a professional manner and always viewed it as a highly respected radio service.

It’s a 1998 Dodge Ram with a diesel on a cold day idling next door to your house. Sounds the same whether your radio is on or off. Don’t ask me how I know. ?

Same here. If I figure out they have no license, whether it's GMRS or ham, I ignore them. And like you, I got the GMRS license so my wife and I can keep in contact on repeaters when I'm off exploring outside of cell coverage, since she's not really interested in the ham license.

Honestly, I don't really have any interest in "carding" whoever I'm talking with to see if they have a license. I also don't get too wound up if they don't use their callsign. I use mine, but that's just me. I see GMRS as just another form of communication and I have no interest in the radio hobby as such. For a while I thought I may get my technician's license, but decided it wouldn't be useful for family use. It's impractical for each family member to have to learn a bunch of radio trivia just to be able talk back and forth.

Your emergency might not be my emergency, and vice versa. Just have a communication plan for your emergency. If it is to organize community to clear the road from the landslide with FRS, so be it. If to order pizza from Lubbock Texas, more power to you. Just plan ahead, and be realistic with the expectations. And do some training too. Just like with any other communication plan, have an answer to three questions: 1) what do I want to say; 2) who do I want to talk to; 3) what do I need from them/what can I do for them. For example, we had (still have) a fairly detailed plan between me, wife and kids about what to do if major earthquake hits. Radio comms is a part of this plan, but not a major part. It is rather "nice if it works" sort of thing. Our house is on one side of the dangerous fault, while mine and wife's office on the other side of this fault and also a mountain ridge. I always maintained that I need 48 hours max to get back to the house in any circumstance. During this 48 hours, stay calm, save water, save batteries, and adhere to Radio-3-3-3. If I'm not there in 2 days, assume I never will be there, and act accordingly. Of course, there are more details, I do not want to bore you with. Like, for example, reserve frequencies and alternate time slots in case of interference or whatever. We did our regular training while we were camping, hiking, being around. Now kids are young adults and of course think that parents are super uncool, but trained skills will not disappear. Couple of years ago, when some major fires were burning around our community in California, and we were sitting for a few days without electricity, cell service and internet, it was handy to use battery-powered laptop and battery-powered FT-817 and Winlink to maintain email exchange with my elderly parents, so they know that we are fine and have plenty of canned food, stoked on water and have a full tank in a car, should we need to dash out. The experience and equipment I have from the SOTA and other -OTA activation helped.

@WRQI583 The things you are saying and what @WRQC290 are saying just don't match up to what is really happening in the world of emergency response. I'll share actual facts about what has been happening based on my continued involvement over the last 20 years. If you still feel the way you do, than I will just simply stop the discussion. Before I get too far into this, I want to share my background. Normally I hate people who "flash their resume" in an internet debate, but in this case I think its relevant to the topic we are discussing. Especially since John set the precedent. I am turning 50 this year. I have a gifted IQ and since I was 12 years old (1984), I have been working as a professional in Electronics Engineering and Computer Systems and Network Engineering. I have been specializing as a consultant for the Department of Homeland Security since its inception in 2002. I have several major roles in the organization. One of my roles are providing emergency communications sustainment to critical communications infrastructure to ensure first responder, emergency responders, public messaging, and 911 communications are functional during emergencies. Additionally, I am and have been a volunteer with ARES/RACES for 20 years. I am an Assistant Emergency Coordinator, Operator and trainer in two states, totaling 3 counties. I have decades of extensive training in NIMS, ICS and EmComm/AuxComm. In my years of experience, I have assisted with emergency communications with several major disasters in the US, both man-made and natural. Most lasting months. With some of my credentials listed (goodness I hated that) let me explain what happens in the real-world. Obviously I cannot speak for how everyone does everything, but my teams are regularly used as an example of what should be done. For someone to join our team and be a successful participant, they only need a technician class license, a decent VHF handheld radio, a couple of spare batteries and some entry level ICS training. Would other tools help? Sure, but our teams do provide almost everything needed. Obviously, there is a significant need for people to be in good health due to the working conditions in an actual disaster, but we don't discriminate due to disabilities. If you can do the job, you can do the job. The teams that I work with have a very heavy focus on VHF and UHF. We have VHF/UHF repeater systems owned by the ARES/RACES team members that are located at key locations, such as at the hospitals, airports and both County and State EOC's. We have spent a significant amount of time and money investing in battery, solar and liquid fuel generators at each location, for extended to unlimited amounts of runtime, regardless of commercial and public works infrastructure. Our repeater systems are designed in such as way that we have coverage with most of them for greater than a 90 mile diameter, with overlap for relays. We also have extensive, member owned digital and APRS networks in our support areas. We have our own extensive OTA computer network that allows us to send electronic documents, email, and other tradition computer-based functions. On occasion, that also includes voice and video conferencing. We have several redundant systems for portable and mobile VHF/UHF repeater systems that can be on the air providing coverage in minutes... not hours or days. All 100% standalone and supported by battery, solar, and/or liquid fueled generators. All of our VHF and UHF equipment has been modified for compatibility with with FRS and GMRS radios, as well as some DOD services. Often our civilian volunteer SAR/USAR teams use these radios, as well as us intentionally putting FRS radios in the hands of critical leadership and POC's inside the workforce so they can easily reach us if we don't have the manpower for a Shadow. Additionally, many of our members' personally owned equipment has been modified for this purpose as well. With regard to HF, there is an occasional call for the use of it. This is typically for voice or email traffic that does need to travel hundreds of miles and the backbone is down. Examples would be during the Katrina response or during the week-long power blackout that impacted all of the Northeast and parts of eastern Canada, to name a couple. We do have a few members who hold a General or Extra license who would man those stations at the EOC's, their home shack or portal shack, if needed. So, with all of that said, I get personally offended and defensive when people such as yourself or John say things like you have. Especially stuff like this... "old fogies who run the miscellaneous clubs, and prepper groups, think that reading fox news headlines over the local repeater, or broadcasting which Costco still has pallets of toilet paper in stock during a crisis is going to be the best use of 2 way radio comms after a major emergency." (Encouraging or advocating for theft? Wow) "The reality of course is that inexpensive radios that can be looted from the local Walmart and distributed to neighbors..." "overweight retirees with ham licenses, will be the ones needing rescue, not providing essential communications (or any useful assistance whatsoever)." So, are there a bunch of old farts, contesters, rag chewers and people with disabilities on Ham radio? Sure. In my 20 years of personal and profession experience specifically surrounding emergency services, are those the people who are responding to emergencies? Nope. Is FRS/GMRS "better" than Amateur Radio for emergencies? While if depends on the immediate need and the bodies doing the work at the moment, generally speaking I would say no, because FRS and GMRS simply can not provide the level of services that Amateur Radio can. Again, GMRS and FRS are extremely valuable for some emergency responses. I am proud to be a GMRS user. I am not bashing the service, its users, or the awesome men and women who put together some amazing GMRS networks to help people in their area. So, that's it. End of soap box.

We all know this is absolutely un-true.. Only about 90% of them are like that.

I don't have issue with a national net once a month to give guys a chance to chat with others outside their normal operating area or system. But there are some concerns I would have with control operators and backup control operators being on the same node or even the same repeater if the links bounced. A net is of course run by the CO. If all of a sudden there was no CO, the net work fall apart, and if that happened a couple of times the net would just fall apart. I would advise that there be a CO for each major node at minimum when the nodes are tied and the net starts so someone can keep things going while the links reset or to run the net on their node so things don't spiral out of control. Of course those CO's would need enhanced control ability to drop individual repeaters off ANY node that became an issue during net operations. Beyond that, there should be a preplanned set of topics to discuss and all the normal net stuff, again so that there is a reason to join the net to begin with. That of course is a problem with HAM nets. Lack of compelling topics to keep people engaged. Once people stop showing up, there is little use of having a net.

@wayoverthere DMR sounds good when setup correctly and uses good radios. When DMR first got popular the only option was Motorola MotoTrbo repeaters and radios. None of the CCR market was building anything. Over time they did. I know of a few DMR repeaters that sound pretty good over the air. They are mostly MotoTrbo but some other LMR brands on the air also. On the other side there are a lot of "home brew" repeaters now on the air with MMDVM boards on analog radios. Most that get put up never get aligned or setup properly and don't have the audio quality of a LMR repeater. Mostly because many hams don't have the test gear required or the know how to set them up right. Next issue is the subscribers. Again the CCR market has flourished and blanketed the market with cheap stuff. They don't sound as good and putting them over a home brew repeater makes it sound even worse. Some of us have learned the hard way after buying "economy" radios then spending a bit more on a true LMR radio the difference. Even though I have many high quality P25 radios I got suckered into the cheap DMR market when I wanted to dabble in DMR. Mostly because it was easy. The radio got used once. Its in a box. Sadly DMR is dead where I am so only listened when working in different cities. I did finally get an XPR7550 and its night and day from the MD I had. YMMV

I really prefer P25 as a favorite digital voice mode... But that may be because I've been a Firefighter for the past 25 years and use/listen to P25 trunked daily. I have also used DMR, Yaesu Fusion/Wires-X, and D-STAR, and honestly I still think P25 has the best sound quality. I have heard some P25 transmissions that sound so clear I could have sworn it was Analog... But that's just my preference and I am sure some will disagree just like some may agree; it's subjective to the person's usage.

Most of those Smart radios are pieces of crap, buggy as heck and with piss poor receivers. That is without even mention what kind of backdoors those "smart" radios have... so... thanks, but no thanks. G.

FRS is a Family Radio Service. As in: you buy the (part 95) radios, you blabber on them, no restrictions. Families use them on camping, fishing, hiking trips, on playgrounds, on county fairs, in shopping malls. Business can use FRS if it suites the needs, like if you are a construction guy on the top of the 5-story building tired of yelling silly at your crew below. Or you are an employee at the valet parking lot. Proper certified FRS radios have fixed antennas. Anyone can monitor and listen on FRS frequencies. Anyone can perfectly transmit on FRS frequencies using FRS radio, including HAM operators. Illegal radios exist and will always exist, just like illegal guns and illegal drugs. And illegal speeding. And illegal fishing. To require to end FRS or pay for FRS license because your operations are inconvenienced, is very wrong, even if you paid $70 for 10 years. Amateur operators (HAMs) are not vital for the national security. It's a hobby, just like knitting or cat grooming. Nuclear subs, healthy economy, transportation network, energy independence, free press, sane leadership are vital for national security. You know what else is vital - a clear head on top of every citizen's shoulders.