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I recommend (in addition to YouTube) picking up a ARRL Technician license book at the library. Not to study for the test, but there are a lot of solid concepts in there regarding antennas, propagation, theory, etc. Just skip the boring parts (electrical components, formulas, etc.).

Had to check my antenna. Nope, just 12 inches. The skinny 18 incher is in a box somewhere. Not sure I'm ready to bring my bullwanger out in public, I'm kinda shy.

That is a very incorrect interpretation of the interview and what happened. You should watch again, but try to pay attention this time.

I've heard that there are good resources on Youtube, but that is probably just an internet rumor.

Decent advice.

Our own @marcspaz has a really informative video here. You’ll find that Chirp now has software for the Retevis RA87 . NotaRubicon aka @OffRoaderX has a video on programming here.

As the title says, I have entered the domain of GMRS. My spot in the corner of mom's basement has been secured and the chicken nuggies are warming in the oven. My license has been received from my overlords at the FCC and I have been accepted by the very knowledgeable and fine people of MyGMRS. Thank you for having me. I have wired up my Midland MXT400 and dropped the stubby little antenna that came with it on the bumper of my 1997 Jeep TJ (arguably the greatest offroad vehicle ever produced by man). I'm sure the ground plane is next to zero, my SWR is probably 5.83 repeating 3, and my radio will be fried within a month or two. That said.... Do I turn ON or OFF narrowband for channels 1-8? Likely only to be used to hear a sweaty middle aged individual standing feet away saying, "little more driver...little more... no too much driver...." or someone else calling for help further along the trail because they stuck their rig in a hole filled with mud. Midland has pre-selected narrowband to "provide optimum communication and spectrum efficiency with both FRS and GMRS radios". Which sounds very fancy. But, I can turn it off if it isn't as fancy as it seems and I seem to remember watching a video somewhere at sometime about narrowband on midland radios being the devil. TIA Greddy

Upgrade to a Midland Bullbar and she'll love you forever, especially if it's the Canyon Edge version.

Was this a download or do you have the program on a floppy disk?.

Oh okay I see how you came up with that now, since you spelled it out for me! Since the dipoles are in Parallel, you took the value of 72 and divided it by the four dipoles, I gotcha!

TL;DR - This is a great radio, and is highly recommended. Now for the details: Setup - Radio: This was a huge pain in the butt, but I blame the make and model of my vehicle for being difficult. I have a 2017 Ford Fusion. I had to puncture the grommet in the firewall from the passenger side, and on the inside of the vehicle, I had to disassemble the passenger side vent assembly and remove the glove box. Then, using a curved metal coat hanger, I fed it through the punctured grommet in the firewall, around the center vent mechanism (and avoiding the passenger side airbag deployment mechanism), and once that coat hanger was completely through, I firmly duct taped the ends of the power cables for the radio, and covered up the fuse with the duct tape. Then, using a lubricant, I coated the now duct-tape covered cords, and SLOWLY pulled them through the grommet and popped them on the other side. I fed a little more cable than was necessary to reach the battery. Once the cables were all the way through, I cut off the duct tape and cleaned the cables, then I proceeded to crimp O-ring connectors onto the cables. Red cord went to the positive terminal of the battery, on the bolt sticking up from it, and the black cord to the negative ground chassis (DO NOT connect the black back to the battery directly!) I removed the nuts from the battery and chassis ground (each of those took a DIFFERENT EXTENDED wrench mechanism, had to make TWO trips to the hardware store!) Then I used 1/2" convoluted tubing (rated for high heat resistance) to protect the wires. On the radio side, there was a cubby right beneath my dash stereo panel which fit this GMRS radio awesome, but I opted to use adhesive instead of screwing things in. This does not work well in high heat, so I had to fix it. It's heavy, and I needed a gap for the speakers. Since I don't have a speaker box to connect to the radio (any recommendations?), I left the head connected to the radio. The handset is heavy, and I wasn't able to reliably use adhesive to mount the handset holder, so, it sits loose in the console for now. Not a huge deal, but I think there's a better option. I'd rather not screw holes into my dash. Antenna: Midland MicroMobile MXTA26 6dB Gain Whip Antenna with an MXTA12 Mag Mount. This antenna comes with a LONG cable, and I chose to mount it on top of the middle of my car. The roof is metal, and the mag mount works very well with it. Huge ground plane, too. I fed the cable down the groove of the side of the rear wind shield, and into the trunk. The weather stripping isn't damaging the cable at all, and I'm not worried about pinching it. I used some small carabiners to keep the cord from being loose in the trunk. I fed it through the back seat on the passenger side, went down to the floor and underneath the mat, and guided the cable with some adhesive cable organizers to keep it from being pinched from the moving seat. Fed the antenna cable into the back of the radio along with the power source, cable managed with some velcro straps. This entire install took me longer than I thought, about 4+ hours due to having to figure out how to install things as I went along. Hopefully my experiences will help others. Use - First, I always remember to power my radio off after I turn off my car. It's directly fed through the battery, so no mechanical switch or feeding through the fuse box. However, there's a safety setting on the Wouxun KG1000G+ that you can turn on which monitors a below-recommended-voltage to disable the radio to prevent excess battery drain. I'm not too worried. However, when I power up the radio, Sometimes I see the screen showing excess of 14+ volts. This is a tad concerning, but so far hasn't really been a problem. If I see it shoot past 16 volts, I'm sure the fuse would be tripped. Signal quality varies. Channels 1-7 are very range dependent. Channels 8-14 I can listen to, but not talk to, so that's not really that important. Channels 15-22 (and the repeater channels) sound amazing -- AS LONG AS I HAVE A CLEAR LINE OF SIGHT. If I'm going through valleys, walls, buildings, or lots of tall trees, the signal will "flutter." On the highway, I've been able to keep in touch with repeaters up to 60+ miles away. (I do not recommend the MXTA25 stubby antenna. It's design is not good for use when mobile and you're trying to reach distant repeaters. As an offroader antenna, though, it would be fine, so I keep it as a backup option). In most scenarios, however, signals are solid and reliable. The fans do kick in when transmitting, and while the noise is audible, I feel that it isn't a problem. Other thoughts - I also have a CB radio and a Ham radio sharing roof space with my other antennas. My colleague has nicknamed my car "the porcupine." Haha. The 70cm/2m Ham radio antenna does not interfere with the GMRS Wouxun radio at all, either transmit or receive. The CB radio, however, does NOT like it when I transmit from the GMRS radio, so I need to turn the CB off, first. Again, the Ham radio is unaffected. There's a lot of programmability when it comes to the Wouxun radio. I'd recommend getting a dirt cheap laptop purely for running radio software so that you can program it in the car, otherwise you'll be using the handset to program. The most annoying thing when programming a channel, though, is naming it. There's no "backspace." You make a mistake, you have to hit the # button to cycle through the letter options again so you can choose another letter. Programming channel names into this thing from the handset is awful. I really want a better speaker for this radio. The sound is okay, but I have to turn off almost everything else to hear it. I'm worried about cranking up the volume too high or blowing out the internal speakers. I do notice a slight audio level loss when doing dual-monitoring. It's also stupid that you can't program the radio name from the handset -- you need the PC and the software to do it. Not willing to buy a internal power supply to temporarily work on my radio in my PC at home. Just get a cheap laptop to bring to the car. (Seriously, you can get a laptop for $80.) It would also be nice to be able to program this thing from a smartphone, iPhone, Android, whatever. Give it Bluetooth or something. A $480 radio should at least be able to do that. My final thoughts: Installation: Varies. My experience: 4/10. My car was just not built to have a radio installed. Perhaps a Jeep or another kind of truck would be better. Don't take my personal review as a reason to not buy this radio. Radio quality: 8/10. Does not like hot weather. Let the fans run for a bit if the inside of your car is hot. The chassis is VERY solid, but the handset is so-so. Nice to have a removable face plate, though I haven't used that feature, yet. Ease of use: 6/10. For most basic functionality, it's fine, but adjusting settings has a bit of a learning curve. Audio quality: 7/10. Could definitely be louder. I'd love to do an external speaker and mount the radio elsewhere in the car and free up space. Handset speaker is subpar. On some rare occasions, I've heard random fluttering-buzzing on my ham radio and GMRS radio. Not sure where that comes from, but it seems to happen on only one channel. It goes away on its own. Might be some punk kid, or some lid. I dunno. Is this radio worth the investment? Absolutely. Performs admirably. Static, however, is inevitable depending on your location. As the great Queen of all that is GMRS once said, "Your FARS may vary." Thanks, guys. WSCL244/KF0QNM

You did it now. That really strange man is likely to comment. (Just an internet rumor.)

Actually the correct way is to use a chassis ground with newer vehicles that have the BMS - Battery Management System. This is especially true with all the vehicles with the Auto Stop Start system. You still want the positive wire going directly to the battery.

There was nothing wrong with your attempt except compared to some I’ve read it didn’t seen over the top at all. . I guess my humor was desensed.

An eight year old girl armed with a soccer ball will knock that radio right out of your hand! No comms, no comms for you.

This is why it is very important to always wear clean panties when transmitting!

I like using the Icom SP35 speaker. The best place to buy them is Amazon for $35. The SP35 is plenty loud with clear audio. I have two in my Ford Escape and two in my shack. One thing about the Wouxun KG100G is to use a separate speaker for each port. I tried using a Y adaptor to use one speaker for both ports and there was an impedance mismatch which cut the volume level way down. This happened on both of my KG-1000G radios. One can program the 1000G using the hand mic but it isn't the easiest. It still isn't as bad as other radios. I do agree that using the Wouxun software is the easiest way to program the radio. The removable faceplate is a must for me when using radios in my 2023 Ford Escape since there is not much room. Having the option to mount the face plate straight or angled up is nice. If the occasional interference is not another radio, then check all of your connections at the batter and chassis ground. I had to put clamp on ferrite beads on the power leads to my radios and I also put some on the main cable connecting the alternator to the battery. I still get an occasional buzz when I transmit (I never hear it). But it is such a rare occasion that I haven't done anything else to eliminate it.

There is an uncommon phenomenon known as the "latent sad-H.A.M.".. As we all know, sad-H.A.M.s are born, not created, and the vast majority of sad-H.A.M.s grow up to have the license, live in the basement, callsign license plates, etc.. HOWEVER - The latent sad-H.A.M. does net yet have, and in many cases may never actually achieve the life-prize of a H.A.M. license - but this does not prevent the latent sad-H.A.M. from exhibiting all of the attributes and defects of a sad-H.A.M., most of which you have pointed out. You find many of these latent sad-H.A.M.s frequenting places like GMRS forums, Reddit, night-clubs that cater to men, HOA meetings, shoe-stores, etc, and although they do their best to disguise their true nature and try to blend-in with the regular people, they are usually very easy to identify. SOURCE: ME! I am The Queen of all that is GMRS, my thesis was in sadH.A.M.ology, in 1987 I coined the term "sad-H.A.M.", and my Wikipedia page says that I know everything. I am also a YouTubes superstar so that gives me extra interweb credd.

Dude! Don't curse my people! I thought we were friends! LOL

Don’t push him toward amateur radio. We also have enough garbage already.

I've never ignored a new member that fast lol

Encryption is allowed for remote control of satellites in the amateur bands. That’s the only exception that I know of.

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.