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Or for group recreational activities such as Jeeping out on the trails. I don't normally see Jeep Creeps using HAM radio while on the trail. 99.98% of the trail comms are normally simplex. Although, occasionally, I will hear some CB traffic on Ch. 16 AM during a Blue moon situation way out in the boonies on the trail.

GMRS is a good service and I see it as the evolution from the old CB days. Where Amateur Radio is filled with people who enjoy making contacts for the sake of meeting new people and making contacts, GMRS is often called a “bring your own friends” type of service, in that its often used within families, hunting / hiking groups, off road groups, etc. You’ll typically find fewer folks just looking to connect, but that does happen on occasion. Where I’m at there are regular net sessions, a Ham study session, and we even had a recent picnic to meet up. I’m still not as well known, but that’s fine by me as I have other stuff going on. You should investigate to see if you have local GMRS groups near you. You are entitled to whatever opinion you wish to have, but that doesn’t make it accurate. Many folks who use GMRS are also Ham operators. While we have fun with “Sad Hams” the truth is there are people here who simply enjoy radio and use Ham and GMRS. My dad used to say “it’s not what you said but how you said it”. Instead of complaining and insulting established members here, maybe consider taking a breath and getting a sense of how things flow. There seems to be a thing with new folks around here lately….

Exactly! And there isn’t anything wrong with wanting to have a pointless small talk with someone on GMRS.

What is it that you think people should be saying on the air? What is it that you say on the repeater? Maybe you could be the one to start the ball rolling. GMRS is not ham radio, where people actively seek out people to strike up conversations on the radio just because the radio is there. GMRS is more designed to be a utility for two people or an entire family who wish to communicate, generally while doing something else, possibly recreational like hiking, biking, etc., or possibly as a business, like farming or ranching.

I wouldn't do direct chat. But why don't you post a few questions and we can see about knocking out answers for them? At its most basic: Get a license (which you have). Get two radios. Set the two radios to the same channel. Set no squelch tones (aka, privacy tones, ctcss tones, privacy codes, subchannels, dcs tones). None. You and your communications partner go a few hundred feet away from each other with the volume where it is comfortable. One of you pushes the button on the side states his call sign, and asks if the other can hear him. The other pushes the button on the side of his radio, states his call sign, and says yeah I hear you. You're good to go. Next step, if you start hearing lots of construction crews and kids playing walkie talkie, you both select a squelch tone and set the radios to that tone. Now you will only hear each other (everyone can still hear you though). Then you come to the realization that you can only hear each other a half-mile to a handful of miles away, and not reliably. So you come to mygmrs.com and find repeaters in your area. You submit a request to the repeater's owner to use the repeater. He or she grants the request. Then you set one of the repeater channels in your radio correctly. You'll have questions on how to do that. Ask when you're ready.

Or like complaining about how much traffic there was on the highway Friday at 1:30 in the afternoon and able to have someone to talk with while you experience said traffic.

Ask the dealer service dept which fuse block locations are unused for his truck model.

Might be meeting the wrong people, just about everyone I have ever talked to about radio has been very welcoming to the hobby.

The Nagoya 771 was a little tight on my 9G, but someone here suggested twisting the base in some sand paper to thin it down a little tiny bit and I could get an extra turn in when tightening. Worked great.

The Baofeng web site now has programing software for the GM-15 pro available. Download - Baofeng (baofengradio.com)

2022 Ford Bronco Basesquatch. Channels 16 or 19 open. Channel 22 simplex Hard to find good trails in Ohio. I make trips when I can.

I recall when I first got into CB (Class D) in 1970, there were a few, actually a VERY few, guys with an echo feature on their radios. All of them were running some type of homebrew echo device and all of them sounded very cool. It was (at least, to me) a rare auditory treat when one of them activated their echo device. Those echo boxes were very clear and had a resonance and quality to the sound that the store-bought ones never had or never will have. One guy told me that his was built using the reverb from an old electronic organ. It was one of the best of all. Around the late 1970's or early 80's, store-bought echo boxes began to appear. Every truck driver, for whatever reason, had one. They didn't just run them on "special occasions", but on every single transmission. They sounded like absolute $#!^ on the radio. They made the voice of the user distorted. With wind and road noise feeding into them, they made hearing what the driver was saying, a real chore. They were incredibly obnoxious. I hope they NEVER catch on, on GMRS.

We have a group of radio dorks around DC and Northern Virginia that are on the GMRS repeaters just about every day. I call it "the going to work show" in the morning and the "going home show" in the evening. Great group of people. That said, it's a little burst. Everyone knows one another. The rest of the time, it's pretty quiet. And we have close to 4 million people in the coverage area. I would assume the total number of licensed operators around a group of 200,000 total citizens is pretty small. So I'm not surprised it's quiet for your area.

@SteveShannon full disclosure I do not have this year Taco. I did run the radio in mine all the way to the battery and have no noise issues. I also programmed my radio to turn off after a certain amount of time should I forget to turn it off to save the battery. All that said I looked over the interior fuses on the year in question albeit on line and noticed that there is a 20 amp fuse for a sun roof which may come in handy for your friend if he doesn’t have a sun roof. Good luck.

Feast or famine! Too much traffic or “why is everyone so quiet?”

That's what I suggested to my friend and he intends to do that. We can see which circuits have no fuses; we just don't know if there are wires coming from them into the cabin somewhere, and if so, where. I thought since the Taco is pretty popular that maybe someone on the forum had already gone through this exercise.

It may not help to run direct to battery. My mobile in my RAM 6.7 Cummins picks up electrical noise generated from either the electric fuel pump or the manifold heater element.. Not sure which one is causing it yet. It's not really annoying but you can hear it when it cycles on/off.. My mobile is ran direct to one of the batteries and yea, i checked with two different mobiles and both radios pick it up..

We have a fairly active repeater here, but most conversations happen on simplex and the repeater is used more for range, and most conversations happening are between people that already know each other.

@LeeBo I've heard of people doing exactly that.

How many mounting locations do you want? "Yes" lol I have those bullet proof mounts in my colorado z71, great stuff. I abuse my truck pretty good, and my phone and tablet have never fallen out or even moved.

In addition to reading, some Google searches will be helpful as you’ll find most answers to questions. Doing a forum search is also a good move, as many new guy questions have been asked and answered. Finally, I’ve found YouTube a decent resource too. Good luck & Welcome.

Here is my In Jeep set up. 2 phone holders with and iPad holder for OnX Off-roading app all on dash. Overhead molle panel with Wouxun KG20t radio and my aux panel. Also a pouch for Hand held radio when trailing.

Unfortunately i don’t know anyone in your area. I’m in Montana. A Yagi antenna gives you the greatest gain, but it’s very directional. With your situation of wanting to hit two different repeaters in different directions you would either need to rotate the antenna to change repeaters or have two antennas and an antenna switch. Are you allowed to have a tv antenna? Are you certain that you can’t receive from either repeater? I always suggest listening on the correct frequency with no tone, just to see if you can hear. Adding the tone at that stage just adds another variable that can confuse matters. If you can hear the repeaters your trees are not an insurmountable problem.

I mounted my gmrs base antenna atop a 30 foot flagpole and have coax fed down inside pole. I cut an exit hole in the pole and installed a grommet to protect the coax. It works great.

I believe your reasoning is correct. Unfortunately, when I tried to look up any Canadian GMRS licenses I was unable to do so because only USA addresses are supported by the license search utility.

A Foreign National can get an FRN Number, FCC CORES account, and a GMRS License. They may not be a representative of their Government, and must be at least 18 years old.

I have 2 Motorola XPR8400 UHF 450-512Mhz repeaters with duplexers. They've been taken out of a working system. They both put ~44Watts out to dummy load. Asking $500 + shipping from zip 60005. They have simple features enables; FM and digital mode, IP Site connect, enhanced privacy, transmit interupt and satelite receiver. PM me please if interested.

It was my understanding that most of the microphones that echoed were modified from using a old Vibrasonic (Reverb) that was used back in the 60s connected to your car radio speaker system to listen to Wolfman Jack on XERB while causing the Boulevard.

My problem is that i don’t get offered to become a premium member because i am one. But if you go to the repeater page and scroll all the way to the bottom, maybe the bottom ribbon has the link to become premium. It’s $50, which is about 2 1/2 times what I pay for other forums I want to support and I have urged Rich to offer something in the $20 range. I believe he would make up the difference in revenue because more people would be willing to pay the price. He has indicated an interest, but this isn’t his day job and it hasn’t happened yet.

I found it. It wasn't under "manage subscriptions", and now that I'm looking for it again I can't find it. Getting old sucks!

Maybe, since beginning to unlink the mygmrs network, Rich has decided not to sell subscriptions also. Try writing him. I haven’t met him personally, but I have corresponded with him and he always comes across as very reasonable.

I'd be more than happy to start my collection if you wanted to give them all new homes. (Just trying to keep up the assumed humor)

Which is a lot of the "I can hear repeater X but can't transmit to it" posts.

Go to your account, click on manage subscriptions:

What Digi said is exactly right. Gain in one direction is stolen from somewhere else. What are you using the antenna for? Do you expect to turn it to point in a particular direction, such as pointing it at different stations? Or do you want to just receive every station in a circle around you? Wil they all be at the same level as you or will some be higher and some lower? Personally I’m satisfied with a 6 dBi gain antenna on my roof. The repeater that’s 3000 ft higher is still easy to reach.

Thanks for the fast response. I went to "Subscriptions" and "Profile" and don't see how I can subscribe to the premium level. Do I have to be here for some period of time before that becomes an option? Thanks again!

I haven’t, but is that gain dBi or dBd?

Hrm, a WTF beep. That would be nice. I hope my radio has that feature.

OH YEAH, ROGER BEEPS FOR THE WIN. And it's got to be the 5 tone beep... A single ping will NOT do Captain Rameous. But, you also have to have the double ping on key up and a couple noise toys for good measure. The orgasiming Meg Ryan, Good Band and the Ugly theme and a robotalk are requirements

They are old, but an Icom IC-FR4000 has all of those options. Or maybe a Motorola MTR2000? Sometimes new isn't necessarily better

Those are not the towers I'm looking for.

OK, then... We have a live one here. Part of what I do for a living is track down and market vertical real estate for commercial radio use. So while you may think I don't know what I am talking about, I can assure you I do. So I will now just spell it out. If you don't have interest from ham operators then you are wanting too much money, or your tower is crap. But it could be a combination of the two. There aren't but two reasons that a tower that is height X can be 'easily extended' 30 feet to height Y. It's either some crankup deal or someone got lazy and decided to not stack the rest of the tower. And you are in the same state as this https://www.kxan.com/news/national-news/ap-200-foot-radio-station-tower-stolen-without-a-trace-in-alabama-silencing-small-towns-voice/ So anything to do with a tower in that state is sketchy to begin with. But maybe that's where the tower came from to begin with. If you are actually wanting to generate profit from the site, advertising it on Craigslist ain't gonna help. Neither is finding hobby radio web sites and forums thinking you are going to find paying customers. And assuming you have already approached all the commercial radio shops and got laughed out of the building and are marketing to hams and GMRS users on web forums tells me this thing must be a peach of a tower. Which is why I mentioned that if the site is marketable and desirable you might consider listing it with the big three vertical real estate companies. They will come in, tear down your crap, put up a multi carrier tower and let you park your stuff on it and PAY YOU to do it. But of course the site needs to be desirable to them. My guess is it's not. So, like the ham's and numerous others have said. Good Luck.

Look, I had the same problem understanding your question that they did, so I simply ignored all the bullshit about radios and antennas and answered your hearing aid question (or at least what I interpreted as the question.) A wise person once told me "If you're not getting the answers you want, maybe look at how you asked the question." You included a bunch of confusing bullshit, whether as an attempt to be funny or perhaps you thought we would understand some analogy. You removed your antenna and inserted the symbolic 1500 foot mountain between you and us and now you’re upset that we cannot hear you. Don't take it out on this forum because you posted a bizarre unintelligible plea for help.

Good luck bro!

Never take a radio to a gunfight - you can't whip them with a 771

^ They multiply like rabbits!

You obviously bought one that was pregnant.

Oh, we can fix that. Buckle up. I got into this about a year ago with a $20 POS CCR. "I'll just buy one and try it," I said to myself. I'm up to six and have no idea how this happened.

Thanks for the welcome guys. I promise to not ask goofy questions like "what's the best radio", or "how far will my radio work". I'm not that big of a newb.

Nice work! Thanks for that. I should have mentioned that our interest is in HTs as a backup to cell phones here in Hurricane Central. I knew that the lower frequencies of MURS would be a helpful characteristic, but the lower power would be a negative vis-a-vis GMRS. That's probably the trade off Randy experienced. Ideally we would just hand out HTs in the community and leave it at that. We've tested GMRS HTs successfully at a distance of ~2 miles, but that was purposefully between the two tallest points on site, which isn't going to cut it. Looks like MURS HTs won't work either. A portable repeater put up after the event may be the way to go. We had sustained winds of 120 during Charlie in 2004; add in the gusts and the seldom-mentioned fact that hurricanes spin off tornados and anything resembling an amateur installation is just going to get blown over like everything else. For reference I've attached a photo of the view from my front door. The problem is obvious. Sigh.