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When repeaters are linked to 20 others then it almost seems like the intention is to be more social, and not so much only about short comms with family and close friends.

Being blunt, there are no "custom channels" on GMRS or FRS radios. A channel can be "customized" by adding tones for receipt and transmission of messages between users. Adding tones means you are requiring a user to have the same tone to use the channel in the same manner as the others but does not guarantee any type of privacy or exclusive access.

Call me old fashioned but I prefer to buy my radios.

Yes, constantly putting the word ham and its variations in sneer quotes rankled me also at first. It was a little like being at a party and having a drunken guest constantly doing air quotes where they really didn't belong. ?

I'm going to make a suggestion. Keep GMRS for the reasons you cited. Car to car, simplex kind of stuff. You can't beat the audio quality and antenna compactness of GMRS, especially when you compare it to CB. Get a ham license so you have access to more repeaters and a wider array of bands and frequencies.

What it all boils down to is that you have your vision of what’s acceptable and anything else is not acceptable. Whether you like it or not, GMRS is the Wild West of licensed services. People are still homesteading it for a myriad of purposes and testing to see what works. For some people it’s the ability to ragchew with others without taking a test. Perhaps one side or the other is a ham, bringing practices that you view as bad habits, but as much as people whine about it, it’s not prohibited. In fact, I’d love to see a list of what you consider those bad habits. With others it’s simply the ability to briefly get a message to someone else. There are those who build repeaters for the purpose of sharing freely and then there are those who want to monetize GMRS by building a repeater. None of those practices are currently prohibited. If you really can’t live with any of them you should try to get the rules changed.

They need to explain custom channel. There is no "other GMRS/FRS" channels other than the ones listed. My guess is maybe they use a unique PL or DPL tone on one of the channels to keep it to your group. Ask them what they mean by custom channel. Once you get that info we can help you program your radio.

Absolutely, as well as bandwidth. GMRS has a very limited number of set frequencies, so proper etiquette often dictates short transmissions and like you said, short-distance communications, whereas ham radio has an incredibly wide range of available frequencies and modes across numerous bands, and covers everything from short distance simplex to global communication. Where the OP is going off the rails is by driving that overused wedge farther between ham and GMRS, as so often happens here. Truth be told, I'm sitting here listening to a couple of guys on a GMRS repeater here in SoCal who have been ragchewing for the better part of an hour.

QFT! If I may add on to this (not directed to you), I am going to play both sides of this debate. The purpose of the Amateur Radio Service (also known as "ham" radio) in the United States is to provide a hobby and public service for individuals who are interested in radio communication and electronics experimentation. The purpose of GMRS is for short-distance two-way communications of licensees and their immediate family, for business or pleasure. Based on the definitions provided by the FCC, the idea that GMRS is exclusively utilitarian is not an accurate, in my opinion. There is overlap because of the interest in radio communications, even though GMRS is so much more restricted in use of hardware, power and range. I think OP is leaning more toward operating etiquette. I could be wrong. I like the idea of community members volunteering to make an orientation video and I like the idea of new people wanting to learn and having it as a resource. It just needs to focus on things specific to rules, technology and equipment to help people on getting started; not opinions about behavior, use, etc. While I occasionally violate this myself, I believe we should speak in plain English and if you are on a wide coverage area repeater, it's not a great idea to talk for hours. I recommend against tying up the repeater and radio waves for 2,000 sq miles or more for hours a day, several days a week, is kind of greedy. That said, it's up to the operator to decide what lingo, habits, and method they use on the service. As mentioned, the purpose of GMRS is for short-distance two-way communications to ease the activities of licensees and their immediate family. If that means rag-chewing, that is up to the operators involved. It's not really up to any one of us to tell anyone else how to use their radio/license. As far as repeaters go, the owner doesn't own the airwaves, but they own the hardware and can set the rules for sharing, if they want to share at all.

I would hazard a guess here that the "awful habits" brush you paint the general ham radio community with is that hams tend to talk more, and that "awful habit" doesn't fit with the GMRS service. Ragchewing on a GMRS repeater is probably not part of the use case for GMRS, but the reality is that it happens. Remember that they are two different services, with at times completely different use cases. As a GMRS user, I keep my transmissions short and sweet, usually on a repeater that I am a paid user of. As a ham, my ham friends and I carry on discussions on my repeater that last quite a while. I have no intention of unlearning anything. What I do is treat each radio service with common sense, and use each one for what it's pretty much intended for, paying special attention to the rules and guidelines of the repeater owner. There are GMRS people here who cannot stand hams, and there are hams here who have a hard time with GMRS folks. Then there are those of us in the middle with dual citizenship who can't quite figure out why either side is sniping at the other side, and who would much rather see everyone play nice.

OK, there is NO WAY that can work. If there are TWO repeaters in the same area, and one doesn't have any input PL tone on it, that repeater would come up every time the other repeater was keyed up if the user could be heard by both repeaters. And if both repeaters could be heard by the user, their radio would howl and have very poor receive audio due to the frequency difference (slight mismatch) between the two repeaters. Now one of them might not have a TX PL tone. That is completely possible. But the receive PL would be required on both and both would need to be different to keep both repeaters from transmitting when someone keyed them up.

The official list of changes: NEW UV9GX Features (Upgrades to the UV9G PRO) • 3 New Dark Color Screen Modes (Day 1, Day 2 & Covert) • New Priority Channel Quick-Jump Feature (for instant Emergency or Favorite Channel use) • Extended 1.25m “220 HAM Band” RX Range (down to 219 MHz) • Roger Beep (on all freqs. except the repeater inputs) • Bright Flashlight (new LED Lamp with tighter & brighter beam) • Stiff Knobs (to avoid accidental changes, can be loosened if desired) If none of those are deal-breakers, then the PRO is otherwise the same radio. There is also a slight difference in the L/M/H power levels (see the product page), where the GX has a 2W Mid power, which is a bit more useful when communicating with FRS radios. BTW, I'm going hog-wild here on shipping backorders, so I hope to cut the wait time down in the next month or so.

I live on the east side of a large valley at around 3300 feet elevation. There is a repeater on the west side of the valley at 4700 feet. I do not have a perfect line of sight. I had been hearing traffic on the correct repeater frequency occasionaly but couldn't tell if it was on that specific repeater. At one point I had thrown a slim jim roll up j-pole in a tall oak tree and did open the repeater with a handheld. I spoke to someone that didn't know where they were or what repeater they were on. Last week my daughter and her family were on the other side of the valley. I had asked my son-in-law to see if he could hit the repeater in question. He texted me that he could and that he was listening. I was able to talk to him on my 5w handheld but the signal wasn't very strong and reception was spotty at best. I threw the j-pole back up in the tree, 16' off the ground, and has a great signal. I am 83 miles from the repeater. Pretty good for GMRS. Just a good reminder of what a few feet of elevation and a good antenna can do for you. I got my s-i-l and I each a roll up to carry when one of us goes up into the high country. The picture is the peanut gallery watching me throw a line into the tree.

Hmmmm..... Don't know what what I'm doing wrong..... I'm hitting 46.4 to 50.8 watts on all high channels.... on a ground plane.... in the attic..... with LMR400 coax.... able to talk good and clear on all high channels and repeaters..... Checked two of the three GMRS-50-V2 units I have, and both get the same watts, etc! I guess I'll have to check the third mobile unit when it gets back, just to be sure..... But, so far, I think they're great. I also have two GMRS-V2 units, and have checked them both for wattage out...... Hmmmm... both doing about 4.3 to 4.9 watts out...... Maybe...... I don't know for sure....just maybe..... all five units that I'm running are great radios that do what they say they'll do........ I'm happy with BTech GMRS-50V2 50 watt units (I have 3 units in use) and the handhelds GMRS-V2 (I have 2 units in sporatic... sometimes use). Anyway, TMO.

Probably about 7 miles straight line. I already have a base antenna up. It's my 440 Ham antenna. He has a mag mount on a steel plate screwed to the window sill. There is a 300 foot high hill directly in between us. I just built a couple of j-pole antennas and matched them with a Nano VNA. I'm going to try one at his house up on a mast and see if that does the trick.

OK... I am amazed by this really... I had no idea this was an issue. It is slang after all in English?, and I will refrain from using it. I will address it as amateur radio. That is not slang. Please don't be offended, English culture is every bit as amazing as others. I had no clue quotes were sneers! I have seen a few things on this forum that I had not a clue what it even meant. I could not tell if it was a compliment, insult, or what... Yeah, that is how true it is.

I see nothing wrong with what you propose. It's your repeater so you can impose rules that make it more enjoyable for you and your users. I am a ham and I am a GMRS user and I see them as different radio services, used for different purposes, but as I said earlier, it's like the Wild West still with lots of people finding new ways to use GMRS that don't always fit others' concepts. I think it's too simplistic to blame that on others, but we can all share in developing solutions.

Being an extra-class amateur while using words like "hammy" and phrases like "ham-type license" tends to throw shade on your credibility. It's not that we don't want to see your extensive list of grievances with the amateur radio community, it's more that I don't want you to feel pressure to waste an entire weekend doing it.

It sounds like you would really enjoy ham radio. See if there's a club nearby (I can just about guarantee there is!) and see about their classes. By law hams are prohibited from charging you to use their repeaters. (GMRS has a similar rule, but it allows non-profit contributions to pay for equipment). Most hams are very friendly, although there are some who are idiots, but that's true of anything. You might even be able to repurpose the radios you bought and use them on nearby ham repeaters.

Yeah but video killed the radio star ?

COAX was created explicitly to be IMMUNE to the surrounding environment (electrical behavior, not immune to fire, etc.). It is meant to be run through conduits and around wiring bays. So, no -- copper tube/metal mesh won't change it... Unless the coax connections are NOT unbalanced, and there is signal (losses) on the outside of the coax shield (in which case a tube or mesh is just going to couple to the unwanted/lossy part of the signal). When used with a balanced antenna (dipole), one normally needs a balun/choke to force the signal into the coax core and block it from the outside of the shield. Ladder line tends to run 450-600 ohm impedance, and is a balanced line (no balun needed for dipole -- BUT you need a matching network to convert from that high impedance down to native antenna [dipoles tend to run between 33-75 ohm depending upon height] and if your radio doesn't have a balanced input, you'll need a balun to convert down to the unbalanced/50 ohm connector). Also ladder line (window line, 300 ohm TV twin-lead) MUST be kept away from metal objects as there is no shielding and it will couple to any metal running nearby.

I think this guy is simply parroting the same anti-ham rhetoric that he reads here. So far he hasn't offered any concrete examples of bad habits, only vague references and disjointed posts.

Some radios provide the ability to program "unused" channel SLOTS with a "copy" of existing repeater channel configuration (Tx/Rx frequency, bandwidth, etc.), then modify the tone mode for that copy. This allows, for example, having two repeaters that are on the same FREQUENCY (pair) but use different tone configurations to coexist in the radio -- instead of having to remember the tone configuration for each and manually changing it when switching repeater. There are only eight frequency pairs available for repeaters. Some radios may also allow this to be done for non-repeater frequencies (the eight main simplex, seven 462MHz GMRS interstitials, and -- with the 2017 reorganization -- the (formerly) 467MHz low-power FRS interstitials). Radio manufacturers tend to refer to these added channel slots as "custom channels".

Almost, Think of your radios set TX tone as a key to open the repeaters RX tone (the lock if you will) if the repeater doesn’t have a tone set then it’s already open to the frequency regardless and with no RX set on your radio you are open to all that is on that frequency. So leave the RX tone off on your radio.

Linking is the problem with GMRS. I know many think its great but it does cause a mess in some regards.

Excellent point. If we don our reality glasses looking at this scenario, we see that extensively linked networks are those requiring fees. So this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I read all the comments thus far. Thanks to all for those.

You may need to expand your horizons just a tiny bit. Engineering types and techno-fetishists are known to not be able to see the forest behind all the trees, but your specific case is remarkable. Especially, after bringing mine and yours exchange from the other thread, where I explain to you what stands behind today calibration of S-meter and where the root of all of this. Read it again. Good luck and good bye. Edit: By the way, changing topic name and changing text/wording for the contested theme is dishonest. I'm not going to waste my time for you anymore.

Note that if one repeater is NOT USING an INPUT tone -- it will respond to any signal on the frequency, whether that signal has a tone or not. In that situation, setting one channel with the input tone of the other repeater, but leaving the output tone empty, will result in one's radio basically receiving whichever repeater has the stronger signal (FM "capture effect").

I have a theory that they wait until I purchase a certain radio and then wait a short time to release the new and improved "plus" model. It has happened too many times to be coincidence.

I dont know of any radio manufacturer that releases their GMRS radios/updates on any set schedule - they come out when they come out.

Here's an article about Ukraine ham radio silence: https://www.arrl.org/news/ukraine-maintains-ham-radio-silence-in-state-of-emergency