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As far as I know, the KG-935G is a /single receiver/ (regardless of that "two radios in one!" comment on page 25) that rapidly switches between A & B selections. It is not a true dual-receiver that has separate receive modules for each A&B -- you can't hear traffic in both A&B at the same time. In effect, the unit is "scanning" between A & B. Since real scanning requires rapidly switching the scan side from channel to channel, it is quite reasonable that the unit spends all its cycles on just the scan side and doesn't have time to spend on the non-scan side. Compare the description of priority channel scan (page 33 in manual) which just puts the priority between each linear channel during a scan.

That is almost certainly an "MDC" on Motorola radios, or "FleetSync" on some Kenwood radios. It's a digital identifier that other radios of the same type can read and display on their screen.

Probably, as it will do the job just fine - the 1486 is what I have on my roof. Now stand-by for all the long-winded and overly-complicated answers from the people that are incapable of grasping the meaning of "yes another newb" that you mentioned in your original question..

I could see a pretty cool use case in which a Retevis RT97 repeater is used for a campsite (or a church), and a bunch of little BF-T11 satellites for the users

Yeah, I don't expect that we will ever see encryption on GMRS. It's been deemed legal in certain situations on Ham, but the key has to be posted sort of removing the security of operating secure. I don't know that we will see digital modulation in GMRS in the future either. It's getting along fine without it and the number of license holders continues to grow. If enough people were to write letters requesting it be reviewed, it might get looked at but I doubt it's gonna happen. To the comment about linking. The regulation says the PSTN (public switched telephone network). Now that gets defined by the FCC during an enforcement action. Is the Internet (due to VoIP) now considered part of the PSTN? That would be for them to consider, and argue to a judge during legal proceedings. But there first has to be an enforcement effort to even begin to have the discussion. Leading back to the question of when was GMRS looked at for enforcement of any kind. Now the difference between 5 watts and 50 watts is 10dB. One S-unit is 6 dB of change from one level to the next, so it's actually less than 2 S-units. The height restriction. This is similar to the control station height limit spelled out in part 90. That states that a control station antenna, meaning an antenna for a radio that is communicating to a repeater and NOT another station, can be no higher than 20 feet above the highest point of the nearest structure. Now, a base station is defined as any fixed station that is NOT a repeater in part 90. Meaning a base station is setup to communicate SIMPLEX with mobile and portable radios directly without a repeater being involved in the communication. So again, what are they defining as a base station with GMRS, is it ANY fixed station that is not a repeater, or is it only a fixed station that communicates through a repeater? That is another double speak regulation that deserves a layman's explanation of the written regulation. Now here's a thought. I wonder if you could get an FCC attorney to write a layman's explanation of the GMRS regulations so that it was a bit more cut and dried and not so confusing. Lastly, ERP. there's where the rubber hits the road. If you were to stick a GMRS repeater on a tower. Have 10 feet of feed line between the duplexer and the antenna with 40 watt's of output due to losses in the duplexer with a 50 watt radio. Connect that to a DB-420 antenna with 8dBi of gain. Your ERP is 250 watts. Park that 200 feet in the air and you are legal in all aspects and talking for miles. But damn few are gonna do that. Maintenance on the repeater required a tower climb. Rigging and lifting the repeater and duplexer up there is gonna be difficult at best and the tower is gonna need to be sturdy enough to support the weight and wind load of the cabinet that it's in. If you put 300 feet of 7/8 line in there and locate the repeater in the building, you loose 2.4 dB of signal. Dropping you down to 144 watts of ERP. Which sounds like a bunch, but since I have an antenna at 180 feet and am only getting 20 watts out of the duplexer (actually a combiner which has higher loss) and it talks 30 miles, I don't believe it's that big of a deal. Now on some tower this is absolutely possible. But it's a pain to work on the thing. We discussed it and decided against it and have both the room and the tower to be able to do it. And that picture is ONE corner of the top deck taken from the center of the deck. And those posts are 6 feet apart.

I see the antenna now that I blew up the picture. Thanks!

What does piss off people are those that treat the rules as “suggestions” with no concern for possible enforcement actions, or where they prove inconvenient when they want to do something that’s prohibited. There are several on these forums who think that way. Unfortunately they set a bad example for the newbies.