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@WRVC250 - Welcome to mygmrs! As others said better, don’t let the few jerks ruin the experience for you. Listen to as much radio as you can and speak up when you have something to say. Also, don’t hesitate to participate here. I'm just one year younger than you and I live in a place that has no GMRS repeaters, so I would have to establish my own if I wanted to have one connected to the net. Instead, I got my ham license. There are a lot of things going on in ham radio also to get involved with, so for me that’s an interesting place to learn. Everything I learn about ham radio carries over to GMRS. Again, don’t hesitate to jump in here. Maybe the written nature will be easier for you with respect to retention. Happy holidays! Steve

I have a couple of drones I use for hanging antennas from trees, recording offroad videos, scouting areas to put up my portable gear when in the field, and occasionally just for the sake of flying. I got really bored yesterday and ended up with a fun gag reel I wanted to share. Anyone else here use drones and find a way to incorporate then into other hobbies? How do you use your drone? Anyone a Part 107 Certified Remote Pilot? If so, what are you using your cert for? Work? Fun? Both?

I had pretty good drone setup that I used to make videos, but the rules got tougher, it got harder to fly in a lot of areas, and I dont make that kind of videos anymore.. So I sold it all earlier this year. This was the last video I made with my drone - also got help from a friend that has one of those fancy 'stunt-drones":

Baofeng UV-5X Firmware Update Guide_20210308.pdf Read this first. This update was to correct a CTCS and narrow band issue the first few runs of UV5x or G radios shipped with. If your radio out of the box does not have CTCS tones on the channel and is not on narrow band, you already have this firmware.

Welcome OP, and glad to see others learn new things radio related. As for troublemakers, we are probably all in that list somewhere at some time, to include here in online forums. You will find a lot of information along with opinion, just look into the source a bit and you will figure out whom to trust. Good luck in here and with radio, whether that be amateur, GMRS, or CB (US AM [ok now also FM] 1970's "Convoy" style).

In my experience, if you try to run a 1/4 wave, or especially a 5/8 wave antenna without a ground plane, the SWR is quite high, which at best will kill your signal, and at worst is not good for the radio. There is no real difference in performance between a 1/4 wave and a 1/2 wave if the 1/4 wave has a decent ground plane. In reality, a 1/4 wave without a decent ground plane will "underperform" a 1/2 wave. The 5/8 wave should outperform both the 1/4 and 1/2 wave antennas if it has a good ground plane because it has more gain. Antenna theory is voodoo science at its best.

At least they float when used on the water. Better than seeing a $300 radio sink out of sight like a rock.

You should have about the same "gain" using a 1/4 wave with a ground plane compared to a 1/2 wave without one. The difference is the 1/2 wave will be a taller antenna, about double that of a 1/4 wave naturally. Unless you have a large ground plane for a 5/8 wave antenna they aren't worth the hassle. https://www.w8ji.com/VHF mobile vertical.htm

I would go with the 1/2 wave simply because you'll have more flexibility where to mount it. The small additional gain you get from a 5/8 wave along with the complication of needing a good plane, IMHO isn't worth it. Myself I got a new vehicle and I'm going to install a 1/2 wave since I don't want to drill holes or deal with a magnet mount to use a 5/8 wave antenna.

And at the same time try two MURS HTs as well! Maybe 20 watt UHF can be beat with 2 watts VHF up to rooftop antennas. But altitude and line of sight will be important here:

In CHIRP, just under Memories in the upper left hand corner, see if there is a Settings Mode and within that, an Advanced Settings and if, when clicked, there is an option to change the ID line from Wouxun KG-935G to WRVE426. Otherwise you might have to use the Wouxun software for those types of settings.

For Christmas I got a GMRS radio for each of my boys, both of whom are teens. While I'm covered with a license for the whole family I wasn't prepared for what they did. I guess I should have seen this coming, but the next thing I knew they were playing music to each other, kerchunking, and screaming on channel 9. We had to sit down and have a little talk about etiquette.

That's some top-drawer drone footage right there!

I was a heavy drone user until all the rules got set in place. Seem's that I am within 5 miles of a strip of land that that FAA recognizes as an airport so can't even fly in my back yard legally without logging every flight. And when we were required to telephone inform the airport, I was doing so and the guy got sort of upset (his private airport number is his private residence number). He told me to NOT call. Problem is he didn't have that authority so my guess would be if he see's my drone up, he's gonna call the FAA and turn me in. So NOT worth the hassle. And when I say I was involved in it, I had / have something like 10 drones. These range from copies of the original DJI Phantom to a heavy lift unit that I was building to carry an SLR camera aloft with a cellular telemetry data link system that would have allowed almost unlimited link distances with a fly home mode if the link was severed. I was also in process of planning / building a Reaper Drone that would have connected with that same system. This was all going to be controlled from a computer with a high end flight sim yoke and throttle setup and a number of additional channels for servo and digital I/O for controlling various things. I was just getting that plan off the ground when the 55 pound max rule was put into place and the engine and ducted fan was going to exceed that. Once the FAA got all crazy and dropped the hammer on the whole hobby, I completely backed away from it. Last time I had a drone in the air I was taking video of the tower my buddy has (before the 107 was created) which was 4 or more years ago.

Build it and they will com. ?

I only fly quad-copters for pleasure, and to get video and pictures of the area immediately around me. For me, if it becomes work, then the pleasure often fades very quickly. I was about to get into the Part 107, but work intervened. One of my radio warehouses became a swarming drone test building. Large fans were installed, curtains to contain parts of the building hung, and the sprinkler system was re-tooled to allow it to "rain" when wanted in various parts of the building. This is a three story building that looks like an Amazon fulfillment center (there are several in the area, and I think that was part of the idea [security through obscurity]). Great video by the way. Great to see yours following you down the road.Great video quality and stability.

I don't have the 935, but try turning up the squelch; if it is too low, it might be opening up for just noise.

I might have to go swimming for that ?

Or a $1,000 smart phone.

Hey Michael, yes they are preset from 23-54 and a +5 offset is preset. I do use Chirp and I did try adding a repeater set up on channel 102 this morning and it does transmit as long as you are in a gmrs frequency. So if you wanted you could fill it up to 127 with repeaters. Also you don’t have to stick with the frequencies in their preordained order. You can change things around say if you had a different order you wanted. The offset can be changed also. It won’t let you add any non Gmrs channels for tx though, just receive. For that you need it’s Ham cousin the GT-3WP and yes that can be unlocked… though I would never ? One thing I would add is I did adjust the squelch parameters in chirp to dial out unwanted noise in scan mode. This seems to have different sensitivity from radio to radio for whatever reason. Gil

No worries MichaelLAX, I appreciate everyone's help.

The offset is 5.0 MHz; as shown in the CHIRP photo above. 444100?!? Not a GMRS frequency. I just downloaded and reviewed the UV-9G manual, and it is not too helpful in this situation. Perhaps you cannot transmit above channel 30 on this HT? Oh, @WRUU653 says Channels 23-54 are preset for Repeaters. In Channel Mode, try entering the CTCSS Tone of 162.2 on one of Channels 23-54, depending upon the frequency of the repeater you are trying to access.

In the video it looks like you are trying to TX in frequency mode which I think you will find you can't do on the GMRS version. like Borage257 said

I guess I have the best wife on this site. Nobody else got radios for Christmas. It's funny these are the crappiest radios I have at being radios but I am so excited because they are perfect in the right situation.

Keep in mind, things like industrial zones, heavy transmission lines, forests (especially after rain events) and built up areas can mess with UHF propagation. I cant talk with my wife between our house and an old employer due to the number of steel buildings at the old job site. I cant talk with family 8 miles away because their house is surrounded by transmission lines. I could however hit the local repeater and talk with them.

I like PCRADIO’s suggestion of getting on the roof to test things out. It also looks like some repeaters in your area that you may be able to do a comparison with.

I'm in a fairly flat part of east Texas. With an antenna at 30' I can do about 10-11 miles through the 90' pines to another user who also has an antenna at about 30'. Ive done as much as 75 miles on a 5w and yagi. Its mostly about height. If you can get your family to get antennas ( ED Fong 5dB antennas will be cost effective) mounted at or above the ridge line of the their houses and get some decent cable (LMR or KMR 400) you'll be in business. You could also try some of the 17 ft long 7-9dB dual band antennas. In flat areas higher gain antennas will do better. Also use a RF line of sight tool to check between stations. If you want to get a little further in the weeds, you can use Radio Mobile Online to map you coverage.

There's nothing about additional gmrs channels that breaks compliance. Look at wouxun...my kg805g let you fill all 128 channels with whatever gmrs transmit frequencies you want, and receive anything in the 400-470 range. The kg1000g also allows lots more channels of tx within gmrs, and all the Rx you want in multiple bands, no issue. Unfortunately, for some radios (like the at779uv/db20g), the unlock to get those additional takes it out of the state it was certified based on. I really think this "no additional tx channels" was just an easy path to 95e compliance.

They make very high quality cables, but as LScott points out there’s much more to it than picking a good manufacturer. Every different cable type has a characteristic which indicates the loss rate (usually expressed as dB per 100 feet) for that cable over distance for a specific frequency. Generally speaking the loss rate goes way up as the frequency increases. If you only need six feet you might not have to be too choosy, but if you’re running 200 feet through LMR400 for a GMRS repeater you could easily end up losing 75% of your power in cable losses. 3 dB loss over 100 feet is the same as losing 50% of your power. 6 dB over 200 feet is 75% loss. So, by all means select from a high quality manufacturer, but look at their complete catalog to see what they have that will work well for your use case. Also generally speaking larger diameter cables have lower loss rates. For professional installations people usually use something called hardline.

I know for a fact that there are plenty of reviews of these MURS radios especially the ones made by retevis and they're taking off like rockets I'm planning on getting some myself because not only is the band quiet but it's there just in case anybody has an emergency or whatnot compared to the FRS that I really don't care for due to the fact of all the kids on it I really like how the VHF side had been nice and quiet and that's what I've been scanning is those five frequencies haven't heard anyone on it yet but I'm always monitoring it just in case somebody's passing through the area and wants to talk or has an emergency I'm able to respond right away which is great!!!!!!

That’s an Italian supplier but it tells us nothing about what specific cable you’re looking to install. It makes a huge difference. Coaxial Cable Attenuation Chart.pdf