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I call BULLSHIT - just another Sad-HAM disguised as a GMRS user. YOUR radio YOUR choice - if the sad-HAM control freaks dont like it, they can change the channel.. HOWEVER - as you mentioned, if the repeater owner requests that you not use a roger-beep on his repeater, then following the wishes of the equipment owner who's equipment you are using would be the polite thing to do, IMO..

My two cents, which adjusted for inflation has dropped to a penny, is that roger beeps can get annoying, especially if they're loud. A lot of repeaters have courtesy tones, so if you add in roger beeps, it can get more annoying. The courtesy tone is not working on the ham repeater I use, so you need to listen for the repeater to drop or watch your S-meter. So in those cases, maybe a roger beep would help. Same with simplex. But using a roger beep on a repeater with a courtesy tone may ruffle some feathers. Especially if it's a loud one. Personally, I don't really care, and I've never heard of roger beeps damaging equipment.

In the Pacific Northwest, pretty much every major city has GMRS repeaters, often linked via Internet, or some amateur group with a UHF repeater in use. UHF is virtually saturated, and 900 MHz ISM band radios even proliferated for a while to get away from the FRS/GMRS and commercial UHF crowd. It often hampers or assists in my testing of Radio over Internet Protocol kits I build for my employer, to be sent around the country to link sites to a "Global Security Operations Center" in a central location. Having amateur, GMRS and commercial licenses means that I am on several forums, to include this one. This forum has a nice welcome feel to it, but also some of the same issues other sites have.....one upmanship, and sometimes outright arguments, but also a great deal of information from people that actually use their equipment. In my own experience, I would rather see pictures posted o people using their gear, posting to forums, making contact with other users. On that note, local GMRS community and forums like this help a lot. Especially after the FCC changes to GMRS in 2017, more people have become licensed (and not having to take a test probably helps with this). The fact that an entire family can use the same call sign, cost of license (now anyway, I paid $70), and being valid for ten years, means GMRS and my local community has grown its footprint a bit. I agree that GMRS appears to be a middle ground between the chaos with AM CB and amateur radio, with a bit more inclusivity in forums and users within the community. A much larger radio related site I frequent often results in arguments about how some commercial gear should be set up, HAM radio "police" dictating the legality of everything, and an attitude that if you do not know as much as someone else, you should stay away. It should also be noted that many communities that have Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), often begin their training with blister pack FRS/GMRS radios (pre-2017 style radios), which was a great introduction to radio use in emergencies and within their respective communities.

I have no idea how it could be destructive. I understand that “some people” find them annoying — that’s obvious from @gortex2‘s reply — but destructive? I don’t see how. I agree with you that the repeater owner definitely has the last say, but I also think there’s little to gain by joining a repeater and right away doing something that irritates many or most of the other users. I would listen to hear if others use roger beeps and then follow the community norm, just to keep the peace, especially if you hope to talk with any of them on the air.

Correct. Or they all license GMRS. Its pretty simple.

When it comes to communities... GMRS by far has the best. I've only seen pleasant and helpful people in the GMRS community. It's more easy going than Ham, MURS only has a few channels and basically no one in it, and FRS is basically incorporated into GMRS. The HAM community seems focused on keeping certain people out and creating contacts with people. Also the stereotype is there. Ham is very clipboard and khaki, where GMRS is jeans and TShirts. CB is a whole different world where basically anything goes. And as good and fun as it sounds, not as many people use it as they used to, and the equipment can be clunky. Murs dosent really have a community outside of farm use and hiking. Basically in my opinion, GMRS is a great middle ground between all the services, and has a community of people who care. If anyone disagrees I would love to know why, just because I like listening to all forms of radio.

Someone sent me a message today that when they called the FCC to see why it wasnt working, the FCC lady said they were having "system problems" and do not know when it will be fixed - but she was able to email invoice to him so he was able to pay for his license.

My thanks to all of you who helped me to have a better understanding of how to program my Radioddity DB20-G. Michael mentioned that the DCS conversion chart in the owners manual confused the issue here and that was true. Also the explanation Michael gave about the prefix and suffix letters on the DCS codes helped me to better understand what I was looking for. Lastly, Steve's message with the picture of the drop down box guided me right to what I needed. Thanks guys, the radio is programmed to my local repeater and I have loaded 50 or so additional listening frequencies to help keep me entertained while driving on my hunting trips. I hope you all see my reply. Sincerely, Owen.

If GMRS radios becomes an expected link in the chain of emergency responses, there will be calls for higher quality equipment and a need for higher reliability for repeaters (redundant power supplies, voting systems, etc.) This would lead to more regulation and higher cost equipment. It's a matter of being careful what you wish for.

The main issue with HHCH in the hobby world is price. People complain about the cost of Midland over and over. A LMR radio cost 10 times that cost. Granted used stuff is out there. The second issue is what the mic lets you do. the CCR/Ham world think every option on the radio should be controlled by the mic/head unit. For years as a ham I never had a "true" ham radio and used alot of LMR gear which required me to program stuff ahead of time. Rarely did I run into an issue where it didn't work. Since then as said I have the FTM400 in my jeep. I programmed the SD card 3 years ago and have not touched programming since. I guess if your all worried about 2000 repeaters and changing PL etc on the fly its an issue. For me last summer I took a 6000 mile trip around the US for vacation. My APX8500, FTM400 and a CM760 CB were all I had mounted in the truck. CB sat on 19 for most of the trip, FTM on 146.520 as well as APRS and APX scanning GMRS. Not once could I not talk to who i needed to. Guess there is always an exception but I never ran into it.

I can understand why some people seem to be put off by Ham radio. It's more of a technical hobby and attracts these type of people. When you have a group like that it's inevitable there will be egos and attitudes on display. It seems to be associated often with people in technical areas. You should sit in some engineering design review meetings if you think the on air stuff is brutal! Hams are also very protective of their "turf". When you consider how much spectrum they have free access to and allowed power they have a lot to loose if the FCC gets a bug up their back side. That's not counting the commercial interests that look at Ham radio spectrum as "easy picking" when they petition the FCC for spectrum for their new service they want to roll out. It's basically a non stop assault. The ARRL even has a special spectrum defense fund, and people, dedicated to just this issue. I agree with your point about GMRS being a middle ground. It's low pressure and the only cost of entry is a cheap radio and $35 for the license. No tests, CW etc. thus nothing to brag about or try to use as a right of passage. Other than the frequent questions about antennas, coax and installation/programming issues one can "buy a box" and setup a functioning system fairly quickly. GMRS is far friendlier for non technical people to use. MURS isn't that popular since not many are aware of it and the lack of extensive equipment to use. Not having access to repeaters doesn't help either. I'm going to guess many people who do use it are employing old Part 90 VHF radios reprogrammed to meet the frequency and bandwidth requirements. I'll also wager those radios are running more than the allowed 2 watts, likely in the 5 watt range since that's typical for Part 90 VHF HT's. CB radio seems to have gotten a bit better since the 70's and early 80's. Even so some people won't turn on the CB if they have their little kids in the car. No licenses, no accountability and mostly no FCC enforcement are mainly responsible for the present state of CB radio. If people aren't careful GMRS could end up the same way.

Exactly right. There’s little to gain by trying to make GMRS something it isn’t.

Set it up the way @MichaelLAX shows in his screen shot: Cross in the “Tmode” column no value in the “RX CTCSS” column DTCSS-> in the “Cross mode” column (which sets it for DTCSS on transmit and nothing on receive.

The FCC keeps rejecting my application for a MURS license!

GMRS on linked repeaters sometimes starts to sound like ham. GMRS does have the offroad crowd adding to its overall popularity and the corresponding equipment demand, which is probably a good thing. And Midland may not be everyone's favorite but at least they're bringing people in, and their everything-in-the-mike units sure are nice for many vehicles, although I wish they also had named channels and such.

Note that those images are AZIMUTH images as specific elevation angles. My plots are elevation images. For a dipole, azimuth plots are boring. Perfect circle...

What radio are you using? Try this:

Garmin released the new Tread Off Road GPS with Ride Talk. It operates on MURS. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/702373/pn/010-02406-00 https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-16B1D74D-857B-4FFB-8DE2-A0960FE0D090/EN-US/GUID-1C57D760-1BD2-46F6-B0CE-BC46503AEDBC.html Water resistance IEC 60529 IPX71 Operating temperature range From -20° to 55°C (from -4° to 131°F) Wireless frequencies (United States) From 151.82 to 154.6 MHz @ 31.7 dBm

It'll be fixed in 5 minutes. (That's after they find the problem.)

Sorry, Spectrum upload speeds suck!

Put another way, when first testing a new radio into a repeater, especially by a Newbie, you want to eliminate as many permutations as possible so as to reduce the troubleshooting list, if you are unable to communicate with that repeater. Given that philosophy, there is no need to filter out other transmissions on that Channel while you are testing your first attempts to transmit into and receive replies from a new repeater. Once you know you can "hit" and receive from that Repeater, you can elect to change your reception tone to that of the repeater, especially if there are nearby GMRS' that like to use that same channel for simplex communications. In this way, you will only hear the Repeater and not those others. Me, I like to hear everybody, because it may be an interesting conversation, or clues to another repeater that I am unaware of. So I rarely include the receive Tone.

Those tones are like filters. If you set a tone (either CTCSS or DCS) on your receiver, your receiver opens the squelch for anything that matches. So, if you set your receiver DCS to 131 DPL, it will not break squelch for any transmission that does not include 131 DPL. If you do not have your receiver set to filter out anything, it will open the squelch for any transmissions.

Would you please publish your video review? ?

In theory, nothing in the base should be loose, but to determine the problem, you might need to peel off the Mylar film. It could be some kind of glue holding the magnet, or maybe the antenna mount itself secures the magnet. Or both. Or if you can, send it back and get one that didn't fail quality control.

Just a thought coming from a catv/broadband feedline environment, we use a glue lined thermal shrink tube and apply with a torch. I have repaired moisture damaged passives that were "weatherproofed" years ago with self fusing splicing tape. Often we would have to cut a foot or more of water damaged cable. I understand my environment is somewhat different. Those of you with "radio shop" experience, what's your thoughts?

Usually the roger beep is overdeviated and can nearly blow your eardrum out if you are using a bluetooth earpiece. I've had that a few times where I ripped that thing off my ear cause it hurt. MDC & FleetSync tones are much more subdued, as are courtesy tones, usually at 80% deviation or less, and much easier on the ears.

I think everyone that has been on GMRS.com after a month of use has found out it is worth $5.00 a month for a membership, I think just the knowledge you get from reading old post is worth it as well as the list of local repeater. And it would not hurt to send a couple buck to the repeater owners every once in a while.

Something else I "need" to have. I also wish more radios could be had with a handheld remote control head like this as well. Thank you for posting the link, I may have to spend some money myself.

In my area, there is no GMRS community; my time on this forum is my closest thing to a GMRS community. There is a small community of hams and they’re completely different than the “clipboard and khakis“ crowd. I’ve found them to be very welcoming and easy going, but I also understand that may be different elsewhere. I’ve never been a CB user, other than non-licensed walkie-talkies fifty years ago. Find the group that you fit and enjoy.

Is this for a base or a mobile? IF it's a mobile, you are gonna be restricted to RG-58 or possibly LMR240 due to the size and flexibility of the cable. For a base you certainly have other options, but again the length of the run is going to determine whats needed and your budget is gonna be the other determining factor. Running the NEEDED cable length and not going overboard and having a big coil of cable someplace is the best way to limit losses. So figure that out and get what's needed and not some fixed length of cable. The reason I mentioned budget. If youget 100 feet of LMR-900 cable. The cable will cost more than the radio did. Average price on that cable is 8.50 a FOOT. So, 850 bucks for 100 feet PLUS 100 bucks average for ONE connector.... you will need two. So the cable run would be a grand. Guessing that you aren't ready to drop a grand on a cable run for a GMRS base station. But maybe you are. Here's the rub with cable loss and the CB radio mentality when it comes to wattage. Professionals in the two way industry all use dB for figuring the stuff out. ANd the really important part is receiver sensitivity. Depending in the radio, you need between -118 and -116 dBm to open a receiver. Typically -112 to -110dBm to reach 12dB sinad and -105dBm for a full quieting signal. SO to go from a noisy signal to a strong signal you will need 6dB of change. In watts, that's going from 25 watts to 100 watts. But there are other factors like antenna gain that play into that. And an antenna with 6 dB of gain over an antenna that has zero gain is going to be a LOT less expensive than 100 feet of that LMR900 cable that was mentioned and have the same perceived effect. Sure you can put that sort of antenna up on top of the 1000 dollars in cable, and have a really good setup. But again, that's a TON of money to spend for GMRS radio base stations. I have a repeater running 50 watts into a combiner network that has 6dB of loss. With the cables and such in the building I get 18 watts going out of the building to the antenna. Antenna is 8dBi of gain, and is 180 feet in the air. Cable loss is 3dB due to the length. The repeater in certain directions talks 50 miles. So, does cable loss have an effect, sure. But it's NOT as much as you would think. But antenna height is obviously more important than cable loss. And I am running LDF5-50 hardline which has similar loss figured to the LMR900 that was mentioned. But my run is over 300 feet due to the routing of the cable from the building to the tower.

LOL. Cant wait to see the responses to this one. This is gonna be fun. I agree with you to a point. I am licensed for both amateur and GMRS and I use both quite a bit, some days one more than the other, and I can see what you are saying to an extent. I have made some great relationships with some really solid guys on ham and there are some really great people that are doing some really good work on expanding the capabilities of amateur radio, BUT with that being said I have been doing a lot of digital work lately and I can say that I have also came across some really, umm, how do I say this nicely, "sad hams" as they are so called. People who are angry for unknown reasons and are quick to "correct" you and have really bad attitudes for no apparent reason. I have also come across some guys that were clearly intoxicated and were a bit of a nuisance, but they usually get called out really quick by other more experienced guys. GMRS is great are there are some really cool people on their as well, but I don't see the two being equivalent, they both are tools to use for the job that needs to be done. So far my experience with GMRS over the air has been fine and haven't had any issues with the few people I have come across on it, they have all been respectful and nice. So I think it is just a numbers game. You meet way more people over a greater distance on amateur than you do on GMRS. I can not speak on CB as I have never personally used it, but I have heard stories. Both are great, I have had more issues with people being "sad hams" on amateur than I have had issues over GMRS, but that simply is because I have talked to a lot more random people over ham than GMRS. I am sure there are jerks in GMRS too, I just haven't met them. Yet, lol. Thanks for the post.

Let me say thank you for all you do. I became a premium member shortly after joining because personally I felt like I was stealing from you guys with as much resources you have on here. All the help and info I have received on this site and then even being able to start a page for my state has been great. We have some really good guys up here in Alaska and they are really getting us caught up with the rest of the states which I am so grateful for. I don't mind volunteering and helping you with whatever you need, but I don't know how much help I can be still being so new to radios, but I'm always willing to help others if I can. Thank you again sir!

You ask good questions. Those tiny little flatpack duplexers are designed to "notch" out a single frequency pair (receiver side notches out the transmit frequency, and the transmit side notches out the receive freq). What you have to get your head around is that when those notch duplexers are measured for isolation, they're only getting 55 or 60 dB of isolation. That means that some of the transmit power is always going to be leaking into the receiver - causing desense. When you've got a low enough power setting, the residual amount leaking into the receiver is small, and doesn't cause much trouble - at least, not enough to make a difference when your low power repeater still covers a mile or two, even with just a little bit of desense. The problems begin when you start trying to crank up the power, or even (gasp) toss on a BTech power amplifier to get 50 watts feeding into that flat notch duplexer. Now your tiny little bit of leakage is suddenly drowning out the receiver and causing you all sorts of trouble. Yeah, now you can transmit out to 7 or 8 miles, but you can't even talk back in with your portable until you are within a 1/2 mile. You're also right on the idea of mixing for nearby transmitters. Close channel spacing creates a nightmare of intermod products. The basic formula for figuring out intermod is 2* A +/- B, A being the first frequency, B being the 2nd frequency. Remember, if you've got a small flatpack notch duplexer, and you were tweaking and tuning it tight just to notch out one specific frequency pair and get 65 dB of isolation, and now you're finding out that you need to notch out an entire range of frequencies. That is is why serious duplexers use bandpass cavities, and cost thousands, not hundreds. They also boast isolation figures of 80 dB or better. Gaining 20dB of isolation is Huge with a capital H. Probably better to head over to repeater-builder.com and read up on their duplexer section. They've got it all written up already. They'll even toss in the math if you want to geek out on it.

Same dipole at 3m (~11 feet) (FYI: I'm using 465MHz as that is between the 462MHz output and 467MHz input frequencies) And at 1.5m At 23deg you are down 3dB -- or half the ERP seen at 5deg.

They can but they need to license a business channel. Otehrwise everyone needs a license. No way around it.

This is some great conversation. I think that the GMRS license holder = individual is a giant PITA for anyone who is trying to establish some kind of "Minimal infrastructure" (MI) "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) emergency communications system. It really would make so much more sense for a CERT-like organization to hold the licenses for a repeater.

Well, then, I guess I'll just have to become a paid subscriber....this site is VERY useful for me. Now I have a little star on my profile icon. Thanks Rich, this is a site that gets more useful every day.

Sure is the same thing! Although, I will say that the title of this thread is more useless than a wet sock... Anyone searching before posting will have no clue what "says user request denied , I did no such thing." means lol.

Yes, range will definitely help. In a previous life, I used VHF comms for oil spill cleanup operations, then UHF was for a "command net" which was slightly shorter range, not FRS/GMRS but there were many that brought their own radios that were FRS/GMRS (pre-2017 changes). I would only like to see FRS/GMRS compatible unit as it would augment what I already have, lots of Garmin Rino's. Thank you for sharing the links, I may have to save my pennies for more toys to use with my other toys.

So the xtl2500 is an good radio. I would not use them for a repeater as you can sell one and get 3 or 4 CDMs or M1225 for the price...but... Your going to need to use J2. Also be advised some versions of that radio had an active high and not active low for the COR pin. Nothing is programmable on J2 and its fixed. Pins are still available online. As said you need a duplexer and a controller of some sort.

Every repeater in a given state, for now. Later on I will add a zip code radius search so you can narrow it down further.

It's available and the license he has is very open, it's GPL 3.0. But then keeping up to date with CHIRP's changes is a lot of work for little return. It's a possibility, but it's also more work for me to keep up with on any regular basis. Volunteers always welcome! ?

Just an update that Premium Members can now export a CSV file compatible with CHIRP from the myGMRS Reports page: https://mygmrs.com/reports Note that there was a bug in CHIRP that prevented cross-tone DCS codes from importing properly, but this has been fixed with today's latest update of CHIRP-next.

I've alwasy been a garmin fan. Have a ton of their stuff also. I think the MURS is actually good for riders. Your going to get further than FRS and its used less than FRS right now. I added one to my wish list for the Jeeps.

If they add or even replace MURS with UHF FRS/GMRS, I will buy these for sure. I do have stock in Garmin though, as I own a lot of their products, and have for a long time. The Rino series radios are awesome! I am not even scared off with the $2k price tag for the power switch and 10" display package. I like that they are making products like this. And OP, thank you for sharing the links.

The slick part about it is it does use a external antenna connection. It talks about installing the external antenna. The rubber duck would probably work in one mile but I think a standard VHF quarter wave on a NMO mount would double its performance. It appears to be an SMA connection but they don't specify. I'm trying to decide if I'll order one or not. I just replaced my overlander in the Jeep but adding MURS in the same unit and not worry about another radio seems slick.

That is the first time I've seen a manufacturer not largely embellish the specs (range).

They wont be for sale until the 18th so nobody has one..... I have one, but i cant talk about it until the 18th..

I sense a video from Notarubicon … I look forward to seeing it.

I had setup one years ago for our SAR team, until group licenses where dropped. At that time we moved to VHF to meet the industry standard. We still have the site and repeater on the air but only licensed users are allowed on it. We mainly left it as it was at a county park and was used by others on the park.