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You forgot to say GMRS can cause excessive spending on new radios and antennas.

I have the Ghost antenna (MXTA25), the whip (MXTA26), and the Comet CA2X4SR-NMO. On my old '95 Bronco I use them with a lip mount on the hood that is just forward of the air-vent cowl. The ground-plane that provides is a minimum of eight inches to the aft, and more in all other directions. I find the best of the bunch on GMRS is the MXTA26. The CA2X4SR-NMO is invaluable as a dual-bander/broad-bander, though; great for 2m/70cm plus GMRS (different radios, sure). I don't really use the Ghost all that often anymore. It was okay. SWR was a little higher than the others, and as I drive around testing propagation by recording at home what the signal sounds like, I just get more umph out of the bigger antennas. Plus, where I have it mounted on the Bronco, my FM Stereo's antenna is still longer than the MXTA26. But the Ghost isn't bad. If I'm in a group where we're within a couple miles of each other, I don't need anything better. And actually if I'm parked in the lot at a ski resort, the Ghost is probably a better option for reaching someone on the slopes, since the mountains can be so abrupt.

Hit a repeater at 25 miles with .1 watt? Yeah, it's not hard. Several ways to do it. First is vertical height, if you get the radio in the air far enough it's not hard. Aircraft will do it in any situation. Beyond that, two tall hills over a valley would work as well. Issue is to have unobstructed line of site. Second is antenna gain. Lots of it. Toss up a 12 foot dish that you can pull close to 30dB of forward gain. Same way I do it with 23dBm (200 milliwatts) for 23 miles at 4.9Ghz. Of course path loss at 4.9 is WAY higher at that distance than 460 Mhz. At 460 the path loss is 117dB. At 4.9Ghz it's 137dB. SO 20 dB more. You have to remember that a repeater, or at least one with reasonable coverage is going to have vertical height already. Repeaters with antenna's at 50 or 100 feet don't talk 25 miles period. The curvature of the earth makes the line of site horizon 14 miles for a 100 foot high antenna. Beyond that you need to increase height to maintain LOS.

Mine sits in a radio junk box in the garage. Terrible transmit audio is the biggest issue. It also reads low voltage until I turn it off and on a few times. I really like the concept, but sadly, this radio completely missed the mark.

MDC isn't forbidden on Amateur Radio or GMRS. I use it on both. Done properly a user wouldn't even know its being used. And its great to keep CCRS off my sites.

I would not recommend that one. I have something similar, but with a BNC connector on the end. There is no ground plane resulting in a bad SWR match. The crappy coax shield is used as the other half of the dipole.

41 more days

Generally, it's within a day or two of showing up on ULS that it will hit this site's database to allow registration. Occasionally there will be a bit of bad data in the "feed" coming from FCC that requires admin intervention, which can take a little longer.

It’s an extract, not a live lookup. You can’t speed it up. It could take anywhere between a day or two to a week.

Good thinking!

Can you provide a definitive reference for the above comment?

SYSTEM: The Hampton Virginia repeater is new, is a Vertex VDX-R70, 25 watt system located near Mercury Blvd and North King Street in central Hampton. It's currently in BETA testing mode and is owned by me; a retired law enforcement officer and disabled vet. I am working closely with a couple of great individuals in Portsmouth and Surry to accomplish this goal. In late November 2024 we requested The Chamberlin Hotel / Harmony Assisted Living center on Fort Monroe to allow the installation of this repeater in the building with a roof-mounted antenna, and were told they would do all they could do to get it done; we are still awaiting a response. As secondary and tertiary locations, we sent a request December 10th to the Fort Monroe Authority to utilize space there, as both locations are on the water, have higher structures, and will reach Norfolk. I have also reached out to Hampton University Real Estate Foundation this week requesting a 2nd alternate location at 2 Eaton Street in downtown Hampton. 2 Eaton Street is a 14 story building and would give very ideal coverage. I'm open to other possible locations in Hampton with the height requirement to attain a 20 mile service radius. The system is currently being BETA tested at my Hampton residence with the antenna installed at 30 feet until it can be installed at one of the top three locations in the next 90 days. ROLE: This repeater's PRIMARY role is to provide radio distance access to Disabled Veterans and military personnel with low power radios in Hampton, Portsmouth & Norfolk who utilize GMRS as a hobby or to speak to someone other than F2F and have no repeater access. It will however be open to any licensed user. The SECONDARY role will be utilized for emergency communications for a group of volunteers, the majority of whom are DV's, active duty & retired military personnel who require solid communications when volunteering during hurricanes, flooding and other disasters on the peninsula and northeastern Norfolk. This repeater will be restricted to essential personnel only during these incidents.

Not long ago I tested a few antennas against the Midland Ghost antenna and it performed better than the Nagoya UT-72G .. and ALMOST as good as the Midland MXTA26..

It depends on the antenna, but for a single band whip antenna without a trap you “simply” adjust the length of the antenna until it matches the frequency you wish to transmit and receive. Connect an analyzer to your antenna and look to see where the dip is. If the dip is at a lower frequency than desired your whip is too long. Take off a tiny bit and check again. The dip should have moved to a slightly higher frequency. If taking off a half inch changes the resonant frequency by 2 MHz (I made that number up; you’ll have to figure it out for your situation. It could be less or it could be more!) and you only want to change 500 kHz then you’ll need to take off an eighth of an inch more. Approach it very carefully because it’s damned hard to make the radiator longer. Most antennas that are intended to be tuned will have some sort of instructions and maybe a cutting chart. Here’s a video on tuning the Tram 1486 to GMRS frequencies:

@WQGU515 and @EMGREY, your forum accounts should be all set now. I think some peoples' accounts fell out of sync due to some maintenance we were doing on the database the last few weeks.

Aside From My Kenwood, Motorola & Vertex Standard UHF Radios I Use Daily For All My GMRS Use, I Do Have (8) Retevis RB75 Units That I Use For Hunting, Fishing & All Other Similar Outdoor Activities. They Are IP67 Rated, 5Watt, Have A 4500mAh Battery, Durable, Talk Good & Are Fairly Priced. Perfect Outdoorsman Radio & You Won't Cry If Someone Trashes One Out. https://www.retevis.com/rb75-waterproof-long-standby-gmrs-two-way-radios-us Also Available At Amazon.......

I have the 9G and it’s been fantastic. It’s not the most power option, but with 771 G antenna it’s a great radio.

Yes aluminum will work as a ground plane. You would need some actual steel somewhere for the magnetic mount to stick to. And @WRXB215 is correct, you need at least a 6" radius all the way around the antenna for a good ground plane. I actually use a 40" by 24" expanded metal cargo rack on the back of my SxS with the mag mount centered on the rack. That works just fine for me.

OK, been meaning to explain this and this is a good time. The commercial guys here will all tell you there are three tests that we perform when installing a new repeater system out in the field. First test is 12dB sinad with the service monitor connected to the duplexer wit no antenna. Second test is for something called isolation. We drop the input signal down to where the repeater squelches, or stops transmitting and then increase the signal slowly until the receiver just opens back up. What we then look for is the repeater to drop again when the transmitter comes up and then drop back out. If the duplexer isn't tuned correctly, the repeater will 'ping pong' up and down because the TX frequency is getting into the receiver and deafening it to some degree. If it does start to ping pong, we increase the signal level in in TENTH's of a dBm until it stops. At that point, we usually stop the testing, touch up the duplexer tuning and run through all the tests again. The last test is antenna desense. An isolation Tee is connected to the duplexer antenna port and a dummy load is then connected to the output. The tap port has signal injected on it to the point the receiver opens and the signal level is noted. Then the signal is removed, and the dummy load is unhooked and the antenna is connected. The signal is injected again on the tap and increased to the point that the receiver opens again. The difference in the required signal level is the antenna desense for that antenna and repeater system at that site. Now, here's how that applies to what YOU are seeing. With the 12dB Sinad test, you need to understand what that measurement is. That being a ratio of signal to noise in the receiver. Here's a good explanation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SINAD But it's NOT the minimum signal level that the repeater can hear and open up. That is actually the LAST test (antenna desense) where the signal level is just above the noise floor enough for the receiver to recognize it and hear the PL /DPL. On a repeater running CSQ, the level is going to be lower, because it doesn't need to hear the tone above the noise, just the RF. These readings are gonna be 6 to 12 dB different in their levels. And the basis of where I make the statements about needing to be able to increase signal level a BUNCH to get a noisy signal to be full quieting. It's not a watt or two, unless you are only running 1 watt or less to begin with. That's based on using dB and specifically dBm numbers for power output in place of watts. An example is 30dBm is 1 watt, 33 dBm is 2 watts, 36dBm is 4 watts. on the upper end, 50dbm is 100 watts and 53dBm is 200 watts. So when you look at it that way, and start realizing that to go from just opening a repeater receiver at -119dBm to 12 dB SINAD at -110dBm or so, that 9dB signal level change is HUGE in the percentage of power change when you convert it back to watts. And the best part is you can calculate all this if you have the information about the equipment in play. You need the antenna model (so you know the gain) the coax type and length (to calculate the cable loss) the number and type of jumpers (again cable loss) the duplexer model (insertion loss). Then you need YOUR power level in watts (converted to dBm) and your antenna system numbers as well. The last part is the distance between the antenna's to calculate something called PATH LOSS. With all that you can calculate what the actual signal is at the repeater input from your radio transmitter from miles away. And yes, I have tested this and found that it's accurate within a dB or two. The difference is from signals that bounce off other things and arrive out of phase to the antenna and cancel put part of the signal. This is called Rayleigh effect. (Again, go look it up, NOT typing it all out) but that also explains sitting in traffic and the repeater fading out. Moving 2 feet and the repeater signal coming back.

I have said this before in this forum....if you are scanning with no PL filter (CTCSS/DCS) because you want to hear every thing then don't be upset when you DO hear everything.

The Arizona GMRS Repeater Club in the Phoenix Sun of the Valley, as a service to the GMRS community, provides traffic and weather information every weekday morning and afternoon commutes on the 462.550 repeater channel every 15 minutes between 0630-0900 & 1630-1830 hours. More information is available at www.azgmrs.org

I understand that. I was responding to @WSFN233 comment that he got useful traffic information in his area. When I took a long trip, I figured I'd leave it on just to see if anything of value came across. It didn't. Regardless of what anyone may think the service is "intended for," there's no reason people couldn't find it valuable for that purpose. In fact, that's actually the topic of the thread. Try to keep up.

I just wanted to point out that there was a lot of humor in some of the responses in this thread. It was pointed out on another thread that using humor with newbies (of which I am one) is apparently a no-no. I am a special newbie that did not lose his funny bone when I got my GMRS and General Class licenses, so it does not affect me. However, because we now have at least one generation that could not win a rock paper scissors battle, much less Guadalcanal or the Battle of the Bulge, we are supposed to treat them with the kindness they were promised at birth (apparently). Remember, he is probably used to creating solutions for non-existent problems not actually trying to solve a real problem. I just noticed that my reply post contains hints of sarcasm and some facetiousness, both of which are elements of humor. I want to apologize to the starving pygmies in New Guinea, one legged men/women/?? in a butt kicking contest or any other contest of kicking things. No squirrels were harmed in the posting of this and in no way can this be duplicated without the expressed written permission of the commissioner's office.

I've already gone a year past when the oncologists would have estimated when the cancer was first discovered... Though it does seem to be migrating to lymph nodes... so who knows where treatment goes next... I do need to get off the Internet and inventory my crud in preparation of having a will made (I'm aiming for a trust -- especially with all the firearms, followed by all the musical instruments -- one may not care about what happens to a $350 flat-top mandolin, but a $2400 Taylor NS-72 is a different matter, along with all the radio gear [which is why I gave my nieces the Tech study guides, and as incentive Yaesu starter HTs]).

I wish you the best as well. My sister and her husband both went through radiation treatments. Sister was breast cancer and her husband had prostate cancer. Both are doing good fortunately. I hope you're results a in positive outcome.

I wish you the best results possible with your chemo.