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My radio, my choice.

Hello everybody, My name is William (WRTT642), I have lived in Alaska since 2012. As I have said before I am completely new to GMRS and radios in general, but I have been researching more about them and have become very interested in them. What really got me into looking into other forms of communication was last winter when we had that big wind storm down here in the valley and it knocked out my power for 3 1/2 days and the KFC lol! Not fun, especially when my youngest son was only 10 months old! So I started to take a couple things a little more serious and less for granted. Like communications for example, amongst other things. Love to hunt, hike, fish blah blah blah, all the typical Alaska stuff. Funny enough I don't physically own any radios yet. I have ordered 2 Baofeng UV9G and they will be here Tuesday. I do have C Crane CC Skywave SSB and love scanning through all the channels. I have a beautiful wonderful wife and four kids. My oldest son is about to join the Army in a few months so excited about that. My wife is awesome and is actually cool with me doing this whole radio thing. Next week Ill be pre ordering the Wouxun KG-UV9Gx. Cant wait for that. Well anyway got to head to Anchorage. Hope to hear from you all soon. Take care!

Check your FCC online record. VEs work with VECs, who typically submit electronically. Also, the FCC doesn’t send anything to you via snail mail. Your license file is accessed electronically. You are responsible for printing it.

Thank you for the reply. Not all of us are on Facebook or have a desire to join. Is there a website or contact instead for the Oklahoma group?

Doesn’t look much different. Thanks for doing the checks.

Not until just now. LOL Seriously, when I made the cables, I looked and didn't see anything horrible. I still use all of the cables. So, I dropped two of them from the gear for a few minutes and put them on the analyzer. The complete cables are almost identical. The values are so close and near where they should be, that for what we do in GMRS, it's not worth calculating reflective coefficients. UHF Connector (@ 465MHz) / N Connector (@ 465MHz) Reactance = 19.2 ohms / 28.3 ohms Resistance = 50.5 ohms / 49.55 ohms Inductance = 45 nH / 45 nH Capacitance = 16.4 pF / 21.4 pF

I only chat with my wife on GMRS, otherwise it is pretty dead in my neighborhood. But I can pick up fire and police frequencies, which is interesting on occasion (especially when there was a murder 500 feet across the street from me, I got more detail than the press just by listening to the police radios). It's up to you how much you want to get into it or not, but if you do get into it, you will get INTO it lol

I spend a lot of my time on ships due to my work. Once when I took my wife, we took Midland GTX100 radios. They worked very well. At one point I was on deck 9 aft, lying int he sun, and my wife went to deck 1 midship to guest services. I was able to talk to her while she was there. Yes, there is a lot of steel, but you would be surprised. Just don't expect them to work everywhere. They are useful on deck. In port, remember that you are not in the US, and the laws governing the island may not allow the use of the radios. Phil

We have seen and talked to people that have brought FRS radios and they have all worked with a very limited range. Ships are big hunks of steel with lots of obstacles in them. The only thing that MIGHT make them more usable is that GMRS channels have more power. Even with that, I would not hold my breath. Beep! WRTY790

Brian, You should join our formal group on Facebook. Our page here lists the website that holds our membership application. Once we get your application, I will email you more information. You live within range of 2 of our repeaters. de WQUQ715

Two pages to discuss roger beep settings???? It's simple, turn that crap off. End of story.

Took some searching, but apparently (at least) two of the line's ships is operating under the flag of the Marshal Islands.

I think the reason people care is because they paid and someone else didn't. It's just a matter of them feeling that if they are keeping the rules, why is nobody else? Yes, hall monitor mentality. I've thought about it. I paid my $35. I hear no call signs being uttered except for when there is a net in operation, or people working a repeater. And I do mean none. Nobody. Never. I never hear another person using a call sign on the GMRS / FRS frequencies except in formal nets or repeater use. Even some nets aren't identifying with call signs. There's nothing that can be accomplished by being grumpy about it. There are tens of thousands of GMRS or FRS radios that have been sold in the past few years within a 25 mile radius of me... of any of us. Maybe more than tens of thousands. One or two grumps are not going to stem the tide. Not even a few hundred. Remember the Internet around 1993-1994? It was well behaved (or at least conformed to a consensus standard). Spam was almost unheard of. Then ever fall a new set of students would get their school-issued accounts, and Usenet would blow up with stupidity for awhile until they were flamed into submission or departure from the medium. And then everything changed: The Internet became popular. AOL started sending out hundreds of million of CDs. There were news stories on the Internet. Books. Magazines. Globally the world was racing to get online. And these newcomers had no idea about, or no interest in stodgy convention. The net-police could flame all they wanted, but there was no stemming the tide of dumbing-down of the Net. All was not lost. It turns out that the Internet became a whole lot more useful when there were droves of people using it. It expanded into use-cases none of the old guard could have dreamed of. And of the unwashed masses? They're fine, it turns out. The real issue is the fraudsters, scammers, and hackers. So enforcement focuses in those areas. All this to say, there's really no point for an end user trying to enforce a policy that not even those who made the policy have any interest in enforcing. Let the FCC spend its time dealing with truly awful abuses, and leave the blister-pack kiddies and hard working businesses alone unless they're really, really causing harm.

If you look close, 99% of them are actually sad-hams, disguised as GMRS operators.

And how do you know they were using GMRS freq.s when FRS is literally the same freq... Many businesses just go out and buy a couple of bubble pack radios for their employees and off they go. What proof is there that GMRS was actually being used? Did you test the wattage coming out of their radios? Where they using a repeater freq.? Where they using radios with detachable antennas? If you can't prove they were using something beyond a bubble pack radio, then you have no case and was a complete waste of their time. "Although they are two separate radio services, the FRS and GMRS co-exist within 462-467MHz frequency range of the UHF band. Both services share the same 22 simplex channels and frequencies. These channel and frequency assignments are standard across the industry. This means that channel 1 on a Midland FRS or GMRS radio is the same as channel 1 on a Motorola Talkabout, or a Cobra MicroTALK, or a DeWALT, Uniden, or Wouxun KG-805F and 805G. Channel 2 is the same, channel 3 is the same, and so on. For this reason, someone with an FRS radio can converse directly with someone who has a GMRS radio and vice-versa." https://www.buytwowayradios.com/blog/2021/10/the-difference-between-frs-and-gmrs-radios.html

Short of interference with medical or law enforcement, why does it matter if individuals are on a channel talking without a license? I understand that there are rules in place to have a license to use system, but at the same time if businesses or individuals are using the system then who cares? I personally don’t agree that we should even have to obtain a license to use this system, kind of a racket if you ask me, but whatever I’ll play along and I’ll even help people get one if they so choose, yet I have read a bit of all these forums and everybody says the same thing, all they hear are crickets in most places. If the FCC isn’t too interested in policing the system then why should it be upon us to do so? Im sorry but I do not have the time nor patience to try and track down individuals or to go to businesses to inform them that they need to have a license to use system. Personally I don’t think any of us should be doing that in any way and putting ourselves in a possible dangerous situation just to inform somebody that they shouldn’t use a radio or how to use one. And to be honest I would much rather have my taxes spent on something more important than to have some government official spending their time trying to track down some kid telling poop jokes or cussing over radio.

I think there may be some misconceptions about UHF connectors (and M-type) vs N-type connectors when it comes to the bottom end of UHF. You can buy garbage UHF connectors that won't work well, 100%, but that holds true for N-type, too. N-type connectors were created in the 40's, when there were no real standards for UHF connectors, not that there is much of a standard now. The DOD needed consistent performance, so Bell Labs created a standard to be met and created N-type connectors. If you buy a quality silver/teflon UHF connector manufactured by a company like Lands Precision or Larsen (about $8 per connector, $16 per set to make a cable) you will not see any difference in insertion loss or any performance degradation when compared to a comparable price and quality N-type connector in GMRS systems. I personally have done tests using LMR400. I made 2 patch cables that had UHF connectors and 2 patch cables that had N connectors. I tested them with my analyzer between 440 MHz and 500 MHz and there was exactly zero difference between 3 of the 4 cables. One of the cables with UHF connectors had an increase in insertion loss 0.01 dB... which I am assuming had something to do with me and the way I made the patch cable or possibly the section of cable itself introduced the difference and it had nothing to do with the connectors. Bottom line, we are not running enough power, moving enough data, or have high enough duty cycle that would require an N-type connector. Our only real benefit would be for outdoor connections and utilizing the native weatherproofing instead of having to add additional weatherproofing to a UHF connection.

As you stated in a later post your planned use is mobile and that brings up another set of questions. GMRS isn't like CB where there are a lot of units in use along the highways so don't expect help with traffic congestion or directions. People on GMRS seem to primarily use the radios for communication between family members and close neighbors. The use of GMRS is shifting to where more units are installed in vehicles but it's going to be several years before GMRS begins to challenge CB for car-to-car conversations and assistance. With that in mind, you also need to look at what you want to accomplish with a radio. If it's finding people to chat with, then your better choice would be to get an amateur license at this time. An amateur Technician license gives you access to two frequency bands, VHF and UHF. GMRS is UHF. As amateur radio has been around for over 100 years there are thousands of repeaters available all around the nation and even millions around the world. People on amateur radio are those that like nothing better than talking to others also known as rag chewing. Entry level VHF/UHF radios are in the same price range as some of the better GMRS radios. I started with a little 25W unit that was around $125. An antenna and mount set me back another $50 or so and a power supply to use it in the house was another $30. That's about the same price you are going to put into your radio station but limited to the GMRS/FRS frequencies. Yes, the requirements for an amateur license are greater but nothing onerous. The Technician level license for V/UHF takes about 40 hours of study and passing a 35-question test on some basic radio knowledge and the rules. The biggest difference in the licenses is an amateur license is for the individual only where your GMRS license covers your entire family. The biggest difference in making contacts is I'm not limited to just those in an area around me. With my ham transmitter I lack only contacts in Africa from working all continents. I can still talk on the GMRS/FRS frequencies using my GMRS transmitter as I'm licensed in both services. But to get back to your questions, if you are going to have the unit in just a vehicle, a 25W radio will meet all your needs. These can be powered from the cigarette lighter socket so just add a magnetic mount antenna and you are set. While not according to the rules, you can use some dual band radios for both amateur and FRS/GMRS communications. That's not a recommendation to do that, but just letting you know it is possible with some radios. Adding an external power supply, you can bring your radio inside and make contact using an external antenna. You can also upgrade to a higher power radio going up to the 50W limit. I would stick with an analog or FM only radio unless you go into the amateur ranks where you may want to try a digital radio and connect to others through the Internet. There is a freeware software package called Chirp that can program any frequencies you need into a great many radios but Midland isn't a brand that's covered. You can see the large number of different radios at Home - CHIRP (danplanet.com). Chirp is an easy to use program and there are other sites that have tutorials on using the software as well. As far as brands go, four that would meet your needs are Alinco, BaoFeng (and BTECH), TYT and Wouxun. There are a great many others, but these 4 offer a wide variety and are generally reliable performers.

I have looked myself (at the last 10 years of enforcement), thats why I dont trust what you're saying.

Welcome! Short answer to your question: NO Slightly longer answer: If out of range of the repeater your radios would not be able to talk to each other while on that repeater channel - UNLESS both radios have a "talk around" option and both of you enable Talk-Around (IIRC, neither the RB27 or MXT275 have talk around). The other option would be to change both radios to a regular/simplex channel while out of range of the repeater. EDIT: NO fair you answered your question while I was typing my response!

I just answered my own question after another 5 minutes of searching. Of course it won't work as they transmit and receive on different frequencies...