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You spelled 'retard' wrong.

The troll from the desert has an opinion. You know what they say about those…

One thing that I like about the Brendan Carr nomination is that he is already a commissioner. Regulations are some of the most complicated things there are in government and bringing in an outsider who has little experience exponentially adds to the burden for the people who do the actual work.

This video was just posted to YouTube. I have no affiliation with it but I have seen the presenter’s videos before and he follows the science of things. I have long been fascinated with the Amelia Earhart story and this video largely focuses on the radio aspects of her final flight. I thought you all might enjoy this. Cheers

Expanding on this with an example ..I think of it like you and a friend in a room, 6 ft apart. In the absence of other noise, you can carry on a conversation at a normal speaking volume just fine. Desense is the equivalent of now you have a rock concert speaker stack playing next to you, while you try in futility to hear your friend....you see their lips moving, but can't hear anything they're saying.

It’s a little known fact that H.A.M. is an acronym for “Hounding Anonymous Men.” No, that’s wrong! It isn’t an acronym at all.

Are you testing with the two handhelds in basically the same location? If so, since the repeater is passing the transmitted audio in realtime it's entirely possible that the audio is getting through, but the nearby signal from the transmitting radio is causing the other radio to desense (or "go deaf"), so it doesn't "hear" the audio coming back. Having done a little testing for/with desense, the behavior in practice is pretty much what you described ...receiving radio shows an incoming signal, but no audio. Unless there's some pretty severe barrier (like a hill/mountain) to the signal (or a pretty bad blind spot near the repeater), getting into the repeater from a couple miles away should be doable.

Thank you, I guess l am too far away from a couple of repeaters, am hoping l get approved on 1 that is top of a tall building and only 1/2 mile away. Maybe l will take a drive along the river and see how it goes. Thank you T

It’s just the choice some manufacturers make. RPT15 is exactly the same as 23, RPT16 = 24, etc. Personally I prefer using 23-30, instead of RPT15-RPT22, but it’s the same thing RPT15 (aka channel 23) receives on the same frequency as channel 15, but transmits 5 MHz higher.

Are you typing in a location or using location near me? If the latter, it’s possible your browser isn’t set with permission to use your location. That’s just a guess.

Thanks for including page and sitation number... I'd be reading all day lol. Nice find. I guess the repeater might want to consider some tones for the radios RX.

No, the frequency 467.550 is not solely allocated to GMRS. Look at US287 on page 153 of this document: https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/spectrum/table/fcctable.pdf

That’s correct. When you specify TSQL you send a tone to the repeater and you filter out any transmission that you receive unless they match your receive tone.

Yes, if it has a decimal it is always CTCSS. For the other questions, keep this page handy. If you are like me, you will forget and have to refer back to it from time to time.

Hmm, $200 huh, I think I just might have to get my "IZARUBI" dirty more often. At my age, I think it's time to pay to have someone to wash my Jeep while I watch.

Actually if Grindr and Tinder were mentioned, now that would be all-inclusive.

Humor and sarcasm are never necessary, but they sure are funny and never against etiquette. Apparently, some found it offensive somehow. Very important life tip coming. Offense cannot be given. You have never heard anyone say "Standby, I am about to give you some offense". Many say "I take offense at this or that". Getting offended says more about the one who took offense that the supposed offender. Not good things either. It typically shows a lack of something. A sense of humor for example.

I recently picked up a Baofeng AR-5RM. The kit included the radio with battery, a standard "701 clone" antenna tuned to FM (broadcast radio) / 136-174MHz / 400-520MHz, an Abbree AR-771 VHF/UHF antenna, a desktop charger, wrist strap, belt clip, and a manual which turned out to be better written than the manual for my old UV-5R radios. For those who are unfamiliar with this radio, it is pretty much identical to the UV-5G Plus, the UV-5RM Plus, and possibly other Baofeng radios. It's marketed as pushing up to 10w transmit power. The radio is quite a bit larger than the older UV-5G (UV-5R sibling). The screen is much nicer, though I've seen complaints that it's hard to read in bright sunlight. I suspect that's true, though it's still legible to me. The menus seem better laid out, but maybe that's because the display has more characters, so it's easier to understand what the menu is saying. Compared to the UV-5R's 128 memory locations, this radio has 999. Just about the first thing I did was use my old Baofeng UV-5R USB cable to program it with Chirp. This process went smoothly, and the data upload/download is about twice the speed of data transfers with the older UV-5G. Chirp is going to be Chirp -- if you know how to use it with one radio, it works just about the same for any compatible radio, with the addition or subtraction of a few field columns depending on the radio you're programming. I noticed that this radio allows up to 12 characters in the channel name field. And it offers three power levels, low, medium, and high. Through some testing I determined that these equate to about 2.5w, 5w, and 10w. Spurious emissions.... When transmitting with my older UV-5G and looking at the spectrum waterfall on my RTL-SDRv4 I would see a sharp peak at the frequency center, with two short peaks a few kilohertz away in either direction. This isn't terribly surprising, as my SDR's antenna is only six feet away when I test. But when I transmit with the AR-5RM and observe the waterfall, I don't see those secondary peaks on either side of the frequency center. I also used some software to do a wider scan with the SDR to see if there were other significant emissions across a broader portion of the UHF spectrum, and really didn't see much, in my unscientific test. Next I hooked up the Surecom SW-102 along with a dummy load, and tested power output at 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS frequencies. At low power, the output was usually in the 2.3-2.7w range, with a bit of a dip, closer to 1.9w in the 1.25m band. At medium power, there was another dip down to just over four watts at 1.25m, but in other VHF and UHF portions of the RF spectrum power was very close on either side of 5w -- sometimes a little over, other times a little under, but just barely. At full power it came in around 8.2w in the 1.25m band, but everywhere else was between 9.4w and 10.2w. It's worth noting that as a GMRS radio (for which it isn't type approved), it would be inappropriate to set it up to transmit on GMRS channels 8-14, since they're supposed to be 0.5w channels, and this radio really doesn't go below about 2.5w. For MURS (for which it is also not type approved) you're also pushing it a little, since MURS is supposed to be <2w. But 2.5w is only 25% too powerful, versus 5x more power than it should be putting out, which is the situation for GMRS 8-14. The antennas: I did sweeps with a NanoVNA within each of the ranges mentioned above; 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS. The included antennas perform fairly well. The shorter one had an SWR of <2.5:1 throughout all the ranges except 1.25m, where it was something like 3.5:1 -- not appropriate for use in that band. The longer antenna scored consistently better in all of the ranges I tested. Still not really appropriate for 1.25m. With both antennas, they tended to see a bit too much rise near the top of the Marine VHF spectrum. If this spectrum is important you would probably want an antenna better tuned to that set of frequencies. But they both did pretty good at 2m, MURS, 70cm, and GMRS. I compared a Nagoya NA-771G, and it did even better at GMRS frequencies, at the expense of slightly higher SWR in the lower parts of the 70cm band. The 771G did okay in the upper portions of the 2m band, and MURS as well, though it's not designed to be a dual band antenna. Testing with the long antenna (the Abbree 771) at 5w (medium power) I hit the Ogden repeater (43 miles away) and the Promontory repeater (64 miles away). It helps that I have line of sight to those repeaters. Over Simplex I tested at about 3 miles and 5 miles from my home at each power level using both the shorter and longer antenna. The 5-mile test was more interesting, so I'll rank the results of that test from best configuration to worst. First, though; I did manage to get through to my home, with where I had a VOX recorder set up, using each of the configurations. I'm going to mix my RA-87 (40w radio) with MXTA-26 for comparison: Best to Worst: Retevis at 40w: Full quieting, no static at all. Crisp sound. Retevis at 25w (M): Nearly full quieting, no static. Crisp sound. The noise floor was just very slightly higher. AR-5RM at High with long antenna: Obviously it's going to sound a little noisier at 10w with a 771 clone antenna than the Retevis, but still very good. Retevis at 5w (L): slightly higher noise floor than AR-5RM at 10w. AR-5RM at Medium power, long antenna: noise floor was just a little higher than before. AR-5RM at High power, short antenna: I had to listen several times to hear the difference between high/short and medium/long. But medium/long won by a hair. AR-5RM at Medium power, short antenna: Still pretty good, but high/short was a little less hiss. AR-5RM at low power, long antenna: Noise floor was quite a bit higher, and some static coming through. AR-5RM at low power, short antenna: Considerable hiss and static, but my voice was still very clear, easy to make out. I should have tested against my older UV-5G but I ran out of time. At higher powers, the difference between the long and short antenna wasn't as important. At lower powers, the antenna length mattered a lot more. Overall, though, antenna length seemed to make more difference than power level. Configuration: I don't see much point in draining the battery and singing my eyeballs by transmitting at 10w all the time. The sound quality at 5w from 5-miles away was pretty good, particularly with the longer antenna. And I was able to hit those distant repeaters at 5w. Therefore, as I configured the radio with Chirp, I set channels 1-7, 15-22, and repeater inputs to medium - 5w. I set MURS to Low, 2+w. Marine VHF/16 and the 68,71, etc working channels are set to Low (2+w). I haven't tested it with an antenna -- only with dummy load -- at 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm, and currently have it configured to not be able to transmit on any frequencies. And I've set GMRS channels 8-14 to not transmit, since its minimum power level is way too high compared to the requirement of staying below 0.5w on those channels. To configure it to not be able to transmit on a frequency that you have programmed into its memory slots, you set the "offset" to "off." At that point, when you hit PTT, nothing happens. In Chirp there are four possible offset modes: (blank) which is no offset/simplex; off which is no transmitting possible, + (positive) offset, and - (negative) offset. Air band: I've listened to air band with this radio. When you set it into the airband (108.0000 - 135.99875MHz) it automatically switches to AM, and will not transmit (tested with a dummy load). It does pick up ATC just fine. Battery life: I've never run it all the way down, so I don't know. But I do like that you can charge it either from the desktop base, OR with a USB-C plug. In the spirit of avoiding surprises: This radio, at least in the package I bought, doesn't come with a USB data cable. But it works with the same data cable used with the UV-5R or UV-5G. And within Chirp you chose the Baofeng 5RM profile (my UV-5G uses the Radiodity UV-5R profile). The green button (search): Hold the green button for a few seconds. The phone will say "Search." Now hold the PTT on another radio. In a few seconds this radio will show the frequency, and a second or so later, will show the DCS or CTCSS tone. Then it will let you save it into a memory bank. I can't remember for the life of me how to delete it (other than with Chirp) but that's in the manual, for sure. The point is that you can pair it up to another radio that is already set to a frequency and tone quickly and easily. I tend to be the one setting up my radios and handing them out to family members when we go skiing or hiking, so it's probably not a feature I'll need much. But if you find yourself bringing a radio to an event where you know others will be using GMRS or FRS to keep in touch, you can get paired up to their radios easily. I'm well aware this isn't a $50, $80, $100, or $150 two-way radio; it's a $35 (with extra antenna) multi-band two way radio; it should, by all rights, be a much worse radio. But its power levels are quite close to what's advertised, within about 5-6% of advertised across most of the bands I tested. 1.25cm is kind of the exception, being more like 10% off. But still, this radio is better than it should be. It feels pretty solid. Its sound quality is quite good. Listening to my recordings, it sounds like it transmits clearly. Scanning is pretty slow -- scanning is always slow on 2-way radios I've used. Squelch isn't perfect -- scanning 2m repeaters I keep getting hung up on one that must have another more distant one on the same frequency, too far to hear, but powerful enough to break squelch even when I have it set high. When people review equipment there's often some level of confirmation bias. I'm probably looking for reasons to like the radio, and to defend my purchasing decision. If I were looking for negatives, things not to like, I would come up with a few: It's quite a lot bigger than the UV-5G / UV-5R. It doesnt' fit into a pocket as easily. The included ABBREE 771 knockoff antenna feels cheaper than my Nagoya 771G, and the 701 knockoff is even cheaper than that. The scan button requires a long press, and an accidental short press puts you into a DTMF transmit mode that you can't seem to get out of except by hitting the "monitor" button once, which is an undocumented path. The antenna jack is SMA-M, whereas the UV-5G was SMA-F, so I had to order different adapters to be able to use an external antenna. The dust cover over the mic/speaker/data ports feels like it could wear out if you're opening and closing it a lot. Unlike the UV-5R/G you can't alter the levels associated with the squelch settings. That was a common customization people made with the UV-5R series. The USB-C charging light on the back of the battery shows a dim green when fully charged -- too dim to see in outdoor daylight. You can't set the power level low enough to meet power requirements for GMRS 8-14, but I don't really care about using those channels anyway; my mobile radios can't use 8-14 either. In the overall picture, those are minor things, for a $30-35 radio.

Eh… still, pretty good.

No, not always, but I try to be accurate. Like anybody I’m far from perfect.

If you say what part it is that you are feeling lost about the most, it would help others to point you in the right direction. Nobody learns everything at once. As far as getting a response from a PM, you have to realize that not everyone on the forums checks in every single day to get messages and what not. I'm just a novice myself so all I can recommend is to concentrate on the basics. Don't even think about repeaters until you get simplex down pat first. And I make a lousy teacher so take anything I have to say with a large grain of salt.

While there has been a significant increase in GMRS license holders and repeaters in recent years. Not every corner of the US has a GMRS repeater. There is always a possibility that you are having issues with what you are doing with the search, it might be that there are simply no repeaters in your area. If you are willing to give a basic location of where you are, one of use can take a look and see if there are any repeaters that you just aren't seeing or if you don't have any coverage in that area.

I like that one too. Spoiler ahead, I really liked the point in the story where they basically point out the importance of using the correct antenna for the job…

Forgot to add, do l just us the VFO mode and find the freq that's for the repeater in question, from the HH or just use Ogmaster (which is probably be easier)and where it says Decode(rX) Encode(TX) is this where l put the tone?

Let me get my tinfoil and popcorn for this one.

Thank you as well, always appreciate kindly avuncular advice! Amusingly, the linked K5+ manual also only shows two Tx power levels, so I will assume for now that this is a persistent typo across several manuals. I should note that the 5RM CHIRP (legacy) profile works fine as far as I can tell and does show three power levels for my AR-5RM. Thanks all.

The 150 - 154 mhz frequency is in the MURS band, while the 2 meter band is 144-148 mhz, so I had no reason to check the SWR in the 2 meter band. I bought the antenna specifically to use in the gmrs band and tuned it for the best response. There is a Larsen glass mount antenna specific for the gmrs band, Larsen KG450UDPL 450-470 MHz, for $109 art Gigaparts which was more than I wanted to spend. I know that there are several glass mount 2m / 70 cm ham antennas available that might work for you.

Welcome, Mike! There are a few other threads based on your level of expertise. Feel free to ask questions!

Thank you, as an absolute novice, I sincerely appreciate your assistance. However, I already found both a UV-5RM and the UV-5RM PLUS manuals online. The problem is both manuals document only two transmit power levels where AR-5RM has three. So, I wonder what else in these manuals might be different?

OP's statment he says monitor for traffic not talk to random men and he mentiond channel 19 which has been embraced as a highway channel partially do to Randy. So that's where I interpret the question to relate to vehicle traffic. I guess that's just where my mind goes. zoom zoom beep beep. "What is the best GMRS channel to monitor for traffic; I'm new & I've heard nothing on ch - 19."

Wouldn't the FCC regulations override the ITU regulations in this case? Although I'm sure the FCC is in no bigger hurry to enforce this any more than they are in a hurry to enforce other GMRS regulations.

Keep in mind that maritime users ARE allowed (even digital!) on the GMRS repeater input frequencies of 467.550 and 467.575 per ITU (not FCC) regulations but not the outputs of 462.550 and 462.575. They may affect (as they do in my area) the input of a 550 or 575 repeater mixing in with legit traffic even if on a different tone causing a bit of chaos on the output.

If they refer to it as a tone, it’s CTCSS, but the decimal makes it certain. When a different tone is listed for receive, you can always just leave the receive tone empty. If you do use a tone for receiving, there are only two choices that make sense for Squelch Mode: Tone or TSQL. The difference is that TONE means you send a tone to open the repeater but you don’t filter on the receive tone. TSQL means you send a tone to open the repeater and you filter received signals, breaking squelch only when a matching tone is received. DTCS is only used when you send or receive digital codes (aka DPL).

Sounds like they may finally be getting embarrassed about all the re-labeling they do.

@Socalgmrs now THAT was a good post. Well done sir.

Maybe that's why I haven't put any real effort into it yet.

The antenna for my VHF Radio is right in front of the Ditch Light on the driver's side and when the Ditch Light is turned on it will affect the weak VHF signals on 151 and 154 MHz. Yes, my Jeep is dirty from the Trail run last week Thursdsay and it will get dirtier this Thursday. I'll wash it this Friday or Saturday.

Thanks assuming reason could not connect and communicate via repeater, although do pick up traffic here in there based on line of sight in areas.

You’re sure welcome. And pay no attention to the guy who has thrown away more radios than Baofeng has manufactured. We all just understand that he only feels good about himself when he’s sniping at others.. The range you’re getting is reasonable inside a city with trees and buildings. He lives on the edge of a desolate valley and apparently doesn’t understand the difference.

How long does a user have to be here before they get a "Sense of Humor" badge and how many posts are you from getting yours?

The world we live in today is much too soft. [emoji849]

Perhaps we need some more emojis added to the collection eh?

Here’s a video from Notarubicon about the AR152. Note that at about the 20 minute mark he discusses using Chirp and which radio the AR152 “self identifies“ as. And yes, wrkw566 is exactly right. Save the initial and various versions of the data as you program with any software.

Asian product built in US: Tundra US product built in Asia: Your radios

What do you mean by this? Did it not work at all? Did you try using UV-17Pro? As far as air band goes, it sounds like you may need to contact the seller if it doesn't work.

Nice detailed review. Thanks for the antenna tests. I got 2 of these a few days ago and have been going through them pretty thoroughly. I am getting about 7.5w on H, 4.5w on M, and 1.4w on L on the GMRS freqs. I did test on the 2m call freq and got 9w, but I don't use this radio for 2m. I bought the minimal set that only has the one short antenna. I have no way to test the antenna other than comparing it to the GMRS tuned antennas that I currently have for other radios. So, with my current GMRS antennas, I can easily open and talk on the closest repeater to my house with the AR-5RM, which I can not do on my other 4 and 5 watt radios with the same antennas. I also can not even open that repeater with the AR-5RM using the included short antenna you tested. One little thing that might be a big thing for some. is the placement of the USB-C charging port that is on the battery. Many times these ports end up on the bottom of the battery or radio so you are not able to stand the radio up while charging. The port on the AR-5RM is on the back of the battery and has a little rubber cover. One last thing. This radio has the typical Roger Beep, but it also has a MDC1200 sounding tone just for fun. This is a decent radio for the $30 I paid.

After posting to someone else's thread and realizing I hijacked his thread about scanning, I figured I'd start a new thread with cool "tips and tricks" that people have discovered with their new KG-1000G radios. Perhaps we can also use this thread as a "does anyone know how to..." for the KG-1000G. It will also be an interesting read for anyone considering this radio, since it will hopefully eventually contain a lot of detailed info about how specific features are implemented. I'll start with this one (cross-posted from the other thread - if someone can tell me how do delete that other post, I will be glad to do so!): Quickly adding a "privacy tone" that others are using on blister pack radios My Jeep and I were in a parade over the weekend for a couple of WWII vets that were celebrating birthdays (97 and 100!). The organizers were on GMRS/FRS HTs and I asked what channel they were on. "Channel 7 with privacy channel 35" he told me. Not knowing which brand radios they were using nor remembering off the top of my head which frequency corresponds to "privacy code 35" on most radios, I was able to use the Menu [41] "SC-CTC" option (which I've programmed to Key C) to "grab" their PL frequency and then save it to my radio on channel 7 within about 30 seconds. Super handy if you're needing to inter-operate with people on Motorola, Midland, or Cobra radios and using "privacy channels". Note: If you want to be able to RX and Tx with the tone, you need to also change the default setting for Menu [40] "SC-QT" from DECODER to ALL. Pretty neat feature that saved me the stress of having to manually look up possible tones and then program them via FPP while the parade was starting...

Your transmit tone must match the input tone of the repeater. Your receive tone can either be left empty (to receive everything) or may have the output tone of the repeater. I would strongly recommend leaving it empty until you get transmit working anyway.