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Everyone's most favorite hand held radio is the best.... And not a single sole can change that

This will be valuable information for the door to door GMRS radio salesman I’m sure.

I wish Josh would get right on that

@TacticalTodd Read this link about the CHIRP columns.

Yep, so far I haven't heard of anyone walking off a cliff or into traffic while talking on a two-way radio.

Both good radios.

Just a friendly heads up. When asking questions about repeaters don’t post specific info on the repeater unless you are in the private (members only) area of the forum. So maybe just don’t include the name of the repeater or leave out specific tones. Here’s the what and why per forum rules located here. Private content. Do not post sensitive information such as repeater PL/DPL (also known as privacy or CTCSS/DCS tones) tones outside of the Private Discussion forum. This is to protect sensitive information from being picked up and indexed by search engines such as Google and Bing. The N indicates Normal while an I would be for Inverted. As you mentioned there is a +5 for Tx. It is worth noting that the +5 is automatically added on the preset repeater channels of GMRS radios and won’t require you to add it. You may know this already so I mean no disrespect by mentioning it, just trying to help. It sounds like you are on the right path.

thanks for the info that is my next radio the Wouxun KG-935G for g.m.r.s. and the KG-UV9D for amateur radio

Thems rookie numbers.

It's not a HT, it's a mobile unit , 20W's. I'll keep working on it. There are trees in between though, that may be it. Thanks for the answers ! FYI, I know there is a 5 meg diff between Tx and Rx.

I have used both military issue and commercial Motorola radios while in the Army. I have never gotten anywhere close to 50-60 miles range with any hand held radio even in the wide open deserts of California or the Middle East. We used commercial Motorola radios when I was stationed at Ft Irwin California. We had to use repeaters on base due to the mountains. Otherwise we could not talk to main base while on the live fire ranges on the north part of base.

You’re making the assumption that it’s a “bad habit.” That’s a value judgement on your part that’s simply not true. If it was true the other choices would not exist. Teaching the OP about them is not wrong, just because you wouldn’t do it. Some people want to hear all transmissions on a particular frequency, especially when traveling. Programming a squelch tone prevents that.

I see the benefits of having a Motorola or Kenwood and would go that rout if I could. But my budget doesn't support that. CCRs are better than no radio at all.

I'm not sure about "most" but for a UV-5R I've done several tests in my neighborhood and the stock antenna doesn't cut it from my house to a particular point at the end of a bike ride. Both the 701 and 771 do make the trip with the 771 a little clearer than the 701. Mind you there are a lot of trees and houses full of f...furniture in my neighborhood.

While I'm jealous of all you guys that can afford to buy the nice radios, my AnyTone AT-778UV with Nagoya UT72 antenna is actually performing quite well.

i am on the fence of this radio. what work around in Chirp did you use to program this? for my Baofeng GM21, i had to use the GM5RH to read and upload to it.

I received an email when I got mine. Seems like the sort of thing that might be worth checking your spam filter/junk mail for though.

I swear, I'm not BSing at all, I almost bought one last night but opted to spend the extra cash for the FTM-500DR instead.

I would be pissed if you put me on that list! Why would you do that? Most people that use GMRS are not interested in being contacted by random strangers. They use it to stay in touch with friends and family and that's all they want it for. Then to add it to google and Farce book who harvest and sell everyone's data already. Many things are easily done, doesn't mean you should. Not cool in my opinion.

Everyone keeps forgetting about the ICOM IC-2730A w/MARS mod. Great 50W mobile. One caveat is accessories are extra.

I bet a CCR standing in the exact same spot as you and your XTS can. As a matter of fact, I guarantee that it can.

I think you should choose whichever of the two has the features that best meet your wants, needs, and desires in a radio.

Thanks for the tips, I'm to gmrs and know antennas help out because I'm a truck driver and used CB radios for 25+ years and the antenna makes a big difference. I'm learning asi go with GMRS, excited to see how far I can take it.

thanks i was already looking at the KG-UV9D for amateur radio now i found my gmrs handheld Wouxun KG-935G thankyou for the posting and sharing

You can't always rely on the brand name either. My Wouxun KG-Q10H and KG-935G both outperform my Icom IC-T10. And with the global market, most companies source parts from China and/or have their products made in China. Yaesu is having some of their radios produced in China now.

So I have the Encode set correctly at D423N as shown in the original post. Ok, I'll keep working on it. Interestingly, this repeater has been down for 4 days, Not a peep on that channel.

Simple answer yes. You encode a transmission and decode on reception. Is a simple way of thinking of it. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

I looked into them and you can get a Bridgecom repeater for close to the same price. And you get excellent customer service/technical support from Bridgecom.

The easiest thing to do is choose Tone for squelch type instead of TSQL. That’s the same as having no tone for your receiver. Then it doesn’t matter what the output tone is, your radio will reproduce it. You still have to match your transmitter tone to the repeater input tone or the repeater will ignore you.

That’s actually a very good path, starting with a UV5R and learning the basics. As you learn you will be able to make more informed decisions about what you want going forward. I commend you for using ham radio studying as a way to learn more about the science and terminology of radio. I used HamStudy to do that and found it very helpful because it allows a person to follow any topic as far as possible.

Just use the antenna that came with the radio. Most of the other types of antennae is just foo foo stuff.

I think that's why I started with a UV-5R. Learn to use chirp, how to set tones, experiment with antennas, program in repeaters, local emergency channels, local school channels, etc. If I mess up and the thing explodes, I'm out $19. Now I'm working on my Ham license... not that I'm concerned about the "license" part.... I'm in it for the education part. Just to follow this thread, I have to google at least 4 things a day to understand what people are saying.

@Chessy68 Welcome to GMRS. As far as antennas go, Both Nagoya and Abbree make a 771G which is a very good antenna. Nagoya also makes a 701G which is shorter but still typically better than the stock antenna. Abbree doesn't offer the 701G yet, only the 701UV. Abbree does provide some good Tactical antennas. I haven't tried one yet but so far all the reviews I've seen have been good. I live in Baytown. I'm not aware of any GMRS clubs in the area but there are a lot of good repeaters around here. Check this site, myGMRS.com and also texasGMRS.net to find lots of good repeaters.

I found as a noob my self that if you are programming via CHIRP you need to select the Uv-5H then for the repeaters scroll down to those channels with the + in the column put in your repeaters in to the correct channel slot. WSCH382

So, I went to the Baofeng website and in the product description, I saw this: "it is compatible with Chirp[Choose:GM-5RH]"

I agree it’s a great radio and it’s what I have in my truck.

My most recent license was in early 2022. I received an email notification that my license had been granted. Also, a year ago I changed the trustees for our ham club licenses and I received an immediate notification. Here’s the screenshot:

I apologize, I spoke to soon. I'm still missing something. I'm trying to program in the following repeater in Wisconsin [ Yes, we are going walleye fishing!] Not understanding which cells I'm putting in those Input and Output tone Freqs. Here's the details for said repeater from the maps section: Eau Claire 600 Albertville, WI Frequency 462.600 MHz Output Tone 103.5 Hz Input Tone 69.3 Hz

The repeater tones are opposite of what you want programmed to your radio. For example, the INPUT tone of the repeater is the tone that the receiver is listening for to “accept” a transmission. So, you want to set the OUTPUT tone of your radio equal to this frequency. Similarly, the OUTPUT tone of the repeater is what your radio needs to be programmed to listen for to “accept” the transmissions from the repeater. So, you want to set the INPUT tone of your radio equal to this frequency. It is a bit confusing at first since they seem “backwards”, but you will get the hang of it! It helps to think of it from the “point of view” of the repeater. Hope this helps!

Oh man... A lot of people are going to shart-themselves when the reality that the FCCs makes their info public and easily accessible to anyone that has their callsign starts to sink-in...

You’re not gonna insult him and call him a shill for Baofeng? I was so looking forward to another drunken goat rope….

This is just an "I think", based on owning a couple... from what I see, the Amateur Radio and the GMRS radio are the exact same radio, in every way, shape and form. What distinguishes the GMRS radio from the Amateur Radio is the stickers, labeling and what firmware is loaded at the time of sale from the manufacturer. Again, making assumptions based on past experience owning some of these, the firmware for all versions of the radio are likely stored in a controller memory. Because each radio is identical, all 3 versions of the firmware are stored. There is a BIOS (Basic In/Out System) that is independent of the firmware loaded. The BIOS will look at the boot options and see if there is a command to go to a boot menu or load the stored data in the EPROM (aka ROC/Radio On a Chip). If there is no indication to load the boot menu, the BIOS loads the current radio configuration, memories, restrictions, etc.. If there is an option selected to load the boot menu, the BIOS will load the menu. Depending on what you pick, if anything at all. the bios will flash the EPROM with the firmware stored on the controller memory and then reboot, loading the new operational state. This is why all of your saved memories and settings gets wiped when you change modes/types. Just to recap what I mentioned before, in Ham mode, it only allows transmitting on ham frequencies. On GMRS mode, you can only transmit on the pre-programmed GMRS frequencies stored in a memory channel. In normal mode, you can transmit on every frequency from 136 MHz to 520 MHz.

I'm not sure how the FCC communicates your new license to you these days, it's been a couple of years since I got mine, and several years since I got my amateur call, but you can check daily on their site: https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchGmrs.jsp Just type in your FRN and click on the search button, and if your license has been issued, it will show up. The FCC database normally updates once a day, overnight, so check in the morning.

Usually within 24 hours, possibly 48. But access to this site doesn’t occur immediately. That might take another week.

If you want APRS, get an amateur license and quit trying to make GMRS into something it wasn't meant to be. All you people wanting to turn GMRS into a clone of amateur radio need to just get their licenses. Sent from my SM-S911U1 using Tapatalk

Good job! Thanks for letting us know.

You have three problems that team up to cause you problems. Length, resistive losses, and mismatched impedance. First, RG6 is the wrong impedance. It’s 75 ohm, which matches television equipment but not two way radio equipment. For very low loss cable that would not automatically be a problem but as WRYZ926 pointed out you’re working with UHF here which leads to: Second, it has high resistive losses. The losses for 100 feet of RG6 are a little more than 6 dB. That’s 75% of your signal that would be converted into heat by your cable. So if you’re using a 50 watt radio the antenna would only ever see 12.5 watts. That’s on transmit. The same thing happens on receive. Your antenna is acted upon by a certain number of micro volts of RF but only 25% of that reaches your receiver. A mismatched impedance alone isn’t a kiss of death but combined with a lossy cable it is. I absolutely agree with LScott that you should use at least LM400 or a high quality similar cable like M&P 10 mm Ultraflex. Either of those will “only” cost you 2.7 dB of the signal, or just under half. And I agree with LScott that LMR600 (or its 13 mm equivalent from M&P) would be much better.

You might want to consider up-sizing the coax to LMR-600 for that long length.

I have since learned that on chirp, "M" is actually high. By switching from M to H, we are actually changing from H to L.. Now that I have that figured out life is easier and no more problems.. I do like the radio and it is putting out a tad over five watts..

I might suggest getting Chirp next software. It's free and it helped me to program my Baofengs. You'll need a programming cable to connect your radio to usb port on your computer. You can get that cable here: https://brushbeater.store/products/pc03-programming-cable I would also suggest this video on Chirp programming: This helped A LOT. hope it helps you as well. Thx.