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UPDATE: Talked to my friend this morning and told him there are work arounds for his issue. He said he was just going to put them back in the box until he could figure out how to do that. Then he said he just wanted to be able to talk to his family. I told him about the GMRS versions of Baofengs (he likes the price point) so he is going to send the UV5R radios back and get a couple of the GMRS versions, and, get a government permission slip. He travels with his family a lot so he can use them for car to car comms as well. Sometimes GMRS is the answer for keeping it simple.

Wouldn't be the first time that a "private" repeater's tones were readily available. If it's not really explicit that it's an open system and go ahead and use it, it's good etiquette to at least ask (even if that's keying up, identifying yourself, and saying you're looking for permission to use it and, if the owner's not on, if anyone could put you in touch.

You have two things to understand here. Repeaters are almost always higher power than your hand held (HH). Repeater antennas are almost always higher above ground than your HH antenna. Power means better coverage for the signal area and height means distance. The higher above the average terrain in your area you put an antenna, the greater area served.

Yeah, the channel programming is SUPER restrictive in GMRS mode. But it's also really easy to program in the GMRS rules once it's opened up. I also really like that it has a "TX OFF" function for each memory channel that you can set from the face of the radio, if you want to program in, say, ham frequencies that you don't usually have permissions to transmit on.

Yep, it's sad that you have to do things like this sometimes. You shouldn't have to find a way around it. I think some of the manufacturers misinterpret the regulations. Any GMRS radio should be able to have multiple repeaters programed in with the same frequency but different tones so that as you travel, you just switch to the one you are near.

Sorry, but, wrong, or, at best "not necessarily correct".. My antenna is also mounted where "it will not work", and yet I talk on simplex with people 20+ miles away and have used it to hit a repeater 93 miles away.

Those coverage maps are a good reference but not 100% accurate. We did a coverage map when we first installed our repeater. A few of us then drove around testing to see where we could and could not get into the repeater. We compared that to the coverage maps and it was close but not 100% accurate.

@Socalgmrs You definitely love to be argumentative don't you. Two people can be within the range of the repeater and in opposite and equal directions and talk to each other. So if a repeater has a 30 mile radius of receive/trasmitt coverage and both parties can open the repeater, then YES both parties can be 60 miles apart with the repeater in between them and still talk to each other.

That’s why I run a fleet of uv9 radios. Cheap rugged and water proof. I can hand them out to friends and family and if they walk away no problem. I can, and have dropped them in streams, left them out all night in the rain and snow with no problem at all. I have even had horse step on them and been run over with quads. Love hand held radios that are water proof. And in the end of the day I still have a radio that hits repeaters 30miles away

Of course I realize all of that. Just trying to get a sense of what others using the app might be putting in there for the other numbers besides their own equipment. Myself I'm surrounded by trees on 3 sides. North of me is treeless in the immediate vicinity and it shows in my real world experience. Now the leaves are falling and the signal is opening up. So it's possible the app might register more accurately than it has been. There is a check box on the app that says use land cover. Checking this box decreases the signal quite a bit. Also would like to know what the "Use 2 Rays" option is since it's checked by default. Also the Strong signal Margin. I've bounced between 14 and 20dB for the most part and the reliability seems to be more accurate the closer you get to 100%. I tried 100% once and the program won't run. So I keep things above 98% most of the time. Just curious. And there's pretty much no way an averaging program could get things spot on. But getting it close would be nice.

I am away from my programming cable and wanted to figure out how to program the UV-5G Plus from the keypad. I took a look at the video from @OffRoaderXon the subject of programming BAOFENG radios, and it was slightly different from the manual for this radio. It got me thinking that it would be worth drawing something up to help myself, and hopefully others as well. I am a very visual person and I usually draw pictures so I know what the heck I am referring to. In this case, I wanted to have a reference for the relationship between T-CTCSS and Input Tone as it really does not make a lot of sense to the new user. Hopefully this will be useful to others when they come across this thread. I did not add the step for the R-CTCSS as it's not absolutely necessary. If anyone spots and error, please let me know so I can make this a handy resource.

Sounds to me like you should spend more time in a book learning how radios work before jumping down someone's throat for having a question. This whole "hams vs gmrs" thing is the dumbest stuff I've seen in a while. It's perpetuated by certain individuals that like to use the phrase some people to stir the pot for engagement and clicky-clicks, but for the rest of us it's getting pretty stale.

Just string them up on an inconel wire during the fireball.

This is also untrue. The connection to the ground plane does not require metal to metal contact. It’s RF, at UHF, not DC (which would require metal to metal contact). The paint layer will add some slight capacitance, but slightly capacitive capacitors are conductive to UHF. I use the MXTA26 with a magnetic mount. Mag mounts have no metal to metal contact and they work fine.

Oh, horseshit. You’ve posted this many times before and you are still wrong. It will work better in some directions than others, but it will still work.

I can hit a repeater 70 miles away because I have good line of sight to it. I have another repeater 2 miles from me that I can't hit, because it is not in my line of sight.. So the answer is "it depends"

I know, figured it was worth a shot.

Just one more thing. There is nothing wrong programming in non GMRS frequencies if all you want to do is “monitor” them. You just need the correct license to transmit on those. Some specifically designed GMRS radios allow out of band frequencies, but those will only work on receiving.

.....So Then Just Buy A Satellite Telephone, Use For Emergencies, If Needed In Excess Of One Hundred Miles - And Get Over The Ruling For The Original Purpose & Intent Of GMRS Radio. No Need To Worry About Any Of The Excuses For Not Advancing Into The Ham Radio Spectrum As An Alternative.

Thank you. I think I understand how this works better now. The radios work great at our ranch in West Texas (a little over a mile apart at the furthest points) but struggle back in the city. It sounds like I'll be putting an antenna on the roof and getting a base station set up at home soon. My wife is excited about it.

The coverage radius of a repeater goes for both receive and transmit. With all things being equal, you could be 30 miles away from a repeater and your friend could be 30 miles away in the opposite direction and you two would still be able to talk to each other through the repeater.

First a repeater is just 2 radios hooked together with a good antenna up high. It’s not magic or anytning. So No it’s more about line of sight. You’re standing at 6’ off the ground with an 6” rubber duck antenna And your buddy is standing at 6’off the ground with his rubber duck. It’s much harder to get line of sight. Mean while you’re 6’ off the ground but the repeater is at, let’s say 1000’ higher than your locations It’s much easier to get line of sight. While a repeaters antenna is also MUCH better and receives somewhat better it’s again all about line of sight. A 5w hand held on 460mhz will and has reached the space station so it’s a direct line of sight. That is always why a good antenna up on a tower at home say 30’ up hooked to your hand held will transmit and receive MUCH further than you standing on the ground. Or even you standing on the roof is better then the ground.

So gmrs 460 is totally dependent on line of sight. My self because of where I live and to a much smaller extent the antennas I use on all my hand helds I can talk simplex hand held to hand held well into the 30 plus miles at times further. But when I go into the city, mountains, trees hills, suburbs ext then not even a mile simplex. However like already said. Usually repeaters are far up on hills or mountains or towers and at that point line of sight again takes over your your antenna can see the repeaters antenna. Same thing with good home base stations. My base station with location and antena and a 20w radio will do 200 miles. While some one in the city with a 50w radio and a junky little antenna may only get 5 miles.

Because oftentimes, this is where repeaters are located: And this is where you and your friends are located Ok, I don't actually know that, but...repeaters are often powerful radios with big antennas located somewhere high up. You're holding a handset on whatever ground you're standing on. I can reach a repeater on a mountain 50 miles from my house, but if I'm hiking in a canyon, I'll be lucky to get half a mile depending on where the other radio is

Box car is correct on all points. In addition to greater power and altitude, many repeaters use land mobile public safety/business grade gain antennas and low-loss feedline (hard line). All of this contributes to the extended range you enjoy on a repeater, versus ht to ht, ht to mobile, etc. This is why people who can afford it, spend the extra money on repeaters.

If the tones are listed publicly, it's probably "open" but if they are not, you should ask for permission from the owner. If the owner grants permission, he will send the tones.

It is. Ensign Peak's less than 5 miles from the airport, and far and away the closest mountain-top.

Yep, the weather protection and size are why I want it. If I need to be outdoors and exposed to the elements, the H8 will be the one I grab. It will only be asked to do the basics while being used. I'm thinking of the H8 as my "all weather", "hard use" radio. The investment is low ($59), but the return on the invest could be big! That's my thinking anyway! Thank you for the response!

It would be quite interesting to see a map of all the abandoned repeaters around the country.

Have you downloaded the documents? https://www.ingenieros.cl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Radio-Mobile-related-documents-English.zip

@alexwade This is a 5 year old thread, you may not get an answer.

https://www.amazon.com/Walkers-Game-Ear-Filled-Multi/dp/B085R4JZ3X?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1

Thank you , everyone, for your responses. I appreciate the help.

Menu 25 (SFT-D, ie: Offset) does have an "OFF" setting, but I'm pretty sure that just means no offset. I don't believe it has the same effect as setting the Duplex to Off through Chirp. Might have to play with that some tomorrow.

You can set the TX frequency to something that won't cause trouble. For non-hams, FRS ch. 1-7 are good choices on UHF and MURS is good for VHF. Either make sure offset is zero to manually enter TX freq or calculate offset to get desired TX freq. Also low power like someone already mentioned.

Welcome, Jeff!

I have one. I went through all of the menus and I didn’t see anyplace to inhibit transmit. Sorry. Thanks for trying to do the right thing.

^Welcome!

Perfect, thankfully the H3 is super cheap so it should only cost $300. I would also assume for more $$ the quality and accuracy will be better. Thank you for the confirmation and info. It looked like the next logical step with similar features to the H3. A shame its not fully unlocked but i understand the reason even though i know better not to transmit where i shouldn't since i don't have my Ham license yet. Do they even make radios that can both transmit and receive on all bands besides these cheep TID radios? The H3 was my starter besides my old Radio Shack GMRS radios. H3 will likely become backup too.

The 5RM is a ham radio and, from the factory, locked out of transmitting on GMRS frequencies. The 5G+ is a GMRS radio, and from the factory, locked out of transmitting on ham frequencies. You'll probably need to unlock at least 1 of these to get them to talk on the same frequency. Both should be able to *hear* the other (ie: they shouldn't be locked out of receiving on the other band, just transmitting), but they won't be able to transmit on the same frequency.

We finally had a chance to put our Motorola Quantar repeater and Arcom RC-210 controller online yesterday. Man what a difference it made. This setup works a lot better than our older Motorola repeater using a Raspberry Pi as a controller. We still have a few bugs to work out and tweaks to make but overall I am highly impressed with the new setup. There is always a learning curve with any new setup and the hardest part was programming all of the extra features in the controller. One hint if using this setup. Make sure to shut the time out timer completely off in the Quantar if you are using a time out timer in a controller. We missed that and it did cause some issues last night until we shut the TOT off in the repeater.

I have to agree with you on this. We setup our GMRS repeater for local use only. It's intent is for families and such to use during normal times and as a backup to our 2m and 70cm repeaters during actual emergencies.

https://www.change.org/p/demand-fcc-to-allow-all-network-connections-to-gmrs-repeaters-and-radios Demand FCC to Allow All Network Connections to GMRS Repeaters and Radios Take the next step!

One thing I might suggest... Since (I assume) you will have a GMRS license holder at the central command office of the camp, why not set up a 5-watt, narrow band UHF base station on 462.6125 MHz, with no CTCSS tone. Put a small UHF antenna on your 40 foot pole, (use low-loss coax like LMR-400) and you will be able to cover your whole forest on the frequency known as FRS Channel 3. Tell everyone with FRS radios to stay off from channel 3 unless they have any emergency or need to get in touch with the camp headquarters, then just call on channel 3 with no privacy code. Even if those cheap bubble-pack radios can't talk to each other through the trees, they likely can be heard at the base station with the 40' high antenna, and with licensed 5 Watts at 40', they will hear you. Forget about a UHF repeater. NOTE: I'm just using channel 3 as an example, but any channel 7 or below could be used at 5 Watts. You could use higher power (50 Watts) on channels 15-22, but remember, a lot of older FRS-only radios don't go past 14, and channel 8-14 are low-power only. If there is any GMRS repeater within 50 miles, pick a channel 2 or 3 away from its output frequency, so its wide-band transmitter doesn't splatter on your narrow-band base receiver.

Ken, I believe that GMRS could be a valuable and useful asset at the scout camp. 1500 acres is not a very large area for UHF HTs to reach across, even with thick vegetation. Since you said the camp is in Florida, that rules out mountainous terrain,which could pose a problem. Maybe a site survey could let you know what to expect from HTs. Have you ever used RadioMobile Online? It may help you predict coverage for the camp. Having a base station at the HQ with a 30' tall antenna would most likely allow HQ to have clear comms with everyone on site. 20 years ago, I was a scoutmaster and we had a jamboree at Camp Farragut, Idaho. We used bubble pack Motorolas and could communicate for at least two miles (one end of the camp to the other). I live near Spokane, and we have mountains and trees. I get 3-8 miles HT to my house (30' tall antenna), and 10-30 miles mobile to house.