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My wife told me NOT TO speak to her in that tone. I switched and haven't heard from her since! What can I do?

When I first started getting into GMRS I was told that I needed a dedicated GMRS antenna for my AR5RM radio BC the stock antennas that came with the radio are sh!t. I know the little rubber ducky antennas leave little to be desired. A knowledgeable person told me that I need a NAGOYA 771G antenna. I already had an ABBREE 771 GMRS antenna. That antenna cost me a whopping $8.00 in monies. The NAGOYA is $22.00 in monies, almost 3 times the price of the ABBREE antenna. I was told that the NAGOYA is a better antenna because it's made in Japan and the ABBREE is a Chinese knockoff. Total rubbish! The NAGOYA is made in Taiwan, not Japan. It has a Japanese name so people assume it's made in Japan. It comes in an identical wrapper as the ABBREE which is made in China. I did a side by side comparison of the 2 antennas Talking to a lady about 20 Fars (miles) away on a GMRS repeater. I was using the NAGOYA 771 G antenna and my signal was weak. She could barely hear me. Her signal wasn't so great either because it was transmitting back from the repeater into my sh!tty NAGOYA 771G antenna. So then I told her to stand by while I switched antennas. I installed the ABBREE 771 GMRS and it was as clear as a bell. It was like talking to someone next door. The elcheapo Chinese made ABBREE antenna was far better than the more expensive Japanese knockoff outsourced to Taiwan NAGOYA 771G antenna. I recently bought another AR5RM radio. This one came with an ABBREE 771 UHF/VHF HAM antenna. So I did another antenna test. I made a contact about 40 miles away on a HAM repeater using the included ABBREE 771 UHF/VHF antenna. I then switched over to the ABBREE 771 GMRS antenna. The person I was talking to said he couldn't tell any difference between the 2 antennas. His transmission back to me was clear as well. Will the ABBREE 771 UHF/VHF work on GMRS? I don't know, I haven't tried it yet but but I suspect that it might. Anyways, that is my unscientific antenna test for whatever it's worth. Jeff WRKY933 / K7JXB

My FamChan repeater, in American Fork, is up and fully functional. My intention was to have emergency communications with my adult children, who live in the Orem and Lehi, but anyone wishing to use it, may do so. Anyone wishing to use it for hosting nets is more than welcome to do so. The repeater covers most of Utah Valley and over into some parts of Eagle Mountain. Give it a try, lets see who we can get on to the repeater.

I was doing some searching for general info on dPMR radios. In the course of that search I found some interesting info that at least a few of the Russians in the Ukraine are using a nice analog/digital multi-band radio. https://www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/azart/ I wonder if any of these have ended up in private hands for personal use.

Some Nagoyas are counterfeits made in China. If you got a genuine Nagoya that isn't superior, that is unusual. Contacts made thru repeaters are often poor for comparisons because repeater antennas are often mounted much higher than is practical with HT or mobile units AND repeater receivers are dramatically better radios than HT's. A much better test is simplex HT to HT.

And you thought Motorola and Harris was expensive.

Wow that is a hefty price! But is it Chirp compatible? I think it might have been Yakov Smirnoff that use to flip things for his Russia jokes (then again it could have been Robin Williams). So it would go something like this… In Russia you don’t program radio, radio programs you.

That would be interesting to see. I would guess some rather high gate count FPGA’s. They would be programmed to run DSP algorithms far faster than a micro could do it since the calculations could be done in parallel on the data.

I can see Putin's face as he craps his shorts when he realizes one of his new hyper-sonic missiles he ordered lunched is homing in on a GPS target location in North America. Oops.

I get trouble about that too. One guys calls them Hop Sing radios. But the Wouxun radios work well. And just because a Radio says Icom on it doesn't mean it is a good radio. My Icom IC-T10 is no better than the UV-5R. @WSFW950 I have zero experience with the Wouxun UV-8H but have used the UV-9D Mate and own the KG-Q10H. Both of those are good to go. I also have the KG-935G Plus and it has been good to go. I know the menus are the same for the KG-935G and the KG-XS20G and easy to use.

Apparently, UR3QQC has one (or at least had one long enough to make a YouTube video). Unfortunately, that call sign isn’t found in QRZ.com. I liked this section:

I've had it just over a year. No problems whatsoever. I have a Diamond Dual band 70cm/2m SRJ77CA antenna on it which is just about as good as a 771G Nagoya in GMRS bands. One time it came unclipped from my side-by-side and fell off and was left outside on the ground being rained on for over a week, before I found it I actually drove over it with the sxs. No damage at all! My HAM buddies sometimes rib me for running a "Chinese" radio. All I have to do is say, yeah, but it's dual band and only costs $160. And good luck finding a dual band HT that isn't Chinese and doesn't cost $1000+ and you don't need a $100/mo subscription to program it. I have one of the only other ones I know of a Yaesu FT65 (yes it says made in japan on it) while a decent radio a) it isn't chirp compatible and their software sucks , chirp says it works, and it takes the load but the chirp driver is broken as it adds a DCS code to every channel programed, in addition to any PL code which isn't even possible with it's menu's or software b) it's audio quality on both TX and RX can't hold a candle to the Wouxun.

Then there are some search terms on your desktop that are filtering out the missing repeaters. Frequently it’s the check boxes for stale and offline but sometimes you have to go into the advanced settings.

Because you are using a GMRS radio you do not have to worry about the offset.. Just pick Channel 23, and enter your Transmit tone.. your receive tone is optional and you should ignore it for now. This assumes that 141.3 is the correct tone for that repeater. But the answer is YES - the offset needs to be there to use the repeater, but again, because you are using a GMRS radio, you dont have to think/worry/fret about it - stop trying to overcomplicate it.

I wouldn't say the AR-5RM is the best radio for a newbie. A noob radio is a dedicated GMRS radio that you pick up, turn on, pick a channel, and start talking. The 5RM does require some programming, but it's a lot more versatile than a dedicated GMRS radio. There is a learning curve, and there are things I learned by trial and error, but I think most people can learn to use it. Like @RIPPER238's Tidradio H3, it has a lot of options, but you do have to exercise some restraint because you can do things with it that you definitely shouldn't do as a GMRS operator. An SSC Tuatara car can go 295 mph, and I'd kinda like to tool around in one to look cool, but it will absolutely do things that I have no business participating in.

Voted yes since no one else did and i have no idea what the question really is.

We had a kid that was using his grampa's radio without permission. He kept getting on the repeater using CB lingo. We ignored him. Then he tried using a totally made up call sign. Again we ignored him. Then he was dumb enough to use his grampa's call sign. One of our members then started talking to him. We got his grampa's name and address from the call sign. We then send an email to the grampa. We haven't heard the kid on the air since. We have had instances of kerchunkers bouncing from our GMRS and 2m repeaters in quick succession. Again we ignore them while members try pin point the person's location. We have found a couple and just the threat of FCC fines was enough to stop them. We also programmed our repeater controllers with an anti-kerchunk feature. It keeps the people that just push the PTT in for a second from even opening up the repeater. That has took the wind out of a few kerchunkers sails. Sometimes a cease and desist letter is enough to stop people and other times it's not. A cargo van with a bunch of mag mount antennas on the roof parked across the street is enough to stop some people too.

This ^ is the best advice.. Unfortunately too many people react, argue, complain, etc, etc, over the air and that is the exact kind of attention most jammers want. If you ignore them and pretend like they aren't even there, and just talk over/around them, without any reaction, they often/usually get bored and go somewhere else to get attention.. Much like a spoiled child.

You can pick up a Sonim XP8 off of ebay for a decent price. They run an older version of Android, but this doesn't need to be a new slick speedy device. They are built like a tank, as they are decommissioned first responder devices. Like a rubberized brick. I have tried to get DroidStar running on it, but I honestly just have not had any luck at all. There is also the Sonim XP10 which is an upgraded version.

LOL! Yep, monitoring both services at the same time can be interesting. So far, no one has chewed me out but a few have laughed about it.

It’s probably the biggest reason why I don’t program GMRS frequencies into most of my ham handhelds. I had both programmed into my Alinco radio, (you know, just in case!) and I found myself transmitting my GMRS call sign on the 2 meter repeater with another ham standing beside me. He didn’t give me a disapproving look or anything like that, I just knew I screwed up. Split mode is often used to have ham radio conversations with hams from other countries who have different amateur bands. Using split US hams can transmit on approved US frequencies while listening on the other country’s frequencies. The ham in the other country listens on US frequencies but transmits on a frequency approved for their country. That’s legal.

Been there, done that, razzed someone for it and been razzed as well

In case anyone follows this thread to the end, It did turn out that the toy radio had a CTCSS tone. I didn’t pick it up on my scans because it was not one of the standard frequencies that my Baofeng was scanning. My UV9G started the scan at 67.0Hz and stopped at 254.1Hz The trick was finding the frequency. It wasn’t in any of the documentation I could find from the seller, but I thought I would Google the FCC ID listed on the toy radio and sure enough there was a result and that FCC report actually had a pdf manual for the toy radio that I hadn’t seen before. In that manual it listed the frequencies for the channels and had a second column for CTCSS frequencies and they were all 62.5Hz. Setting that in the radio by typing it in as I couldn’t scroll to it(not one of the selectable options) worked like a charm!

I have operated amateur DMR since 2011 and legacy analog repeaters since the 1990's. What I increasingly find in amateur are many abusive people with closed minds that lack loyalty to friends. Also very cliquish. They want to consider amateur an exclusive club...no thanks. I find those in GMRS - many very new to radio - as more open-minded and less abusive (except for here . ) I am guessing that of all the people that want or need a radio, likely ~90% will never get their amateur license. So we miss out on all of them. GMRS is a great service for the vast majority of these people. The familial license is just the right amount of regulation to keep business and large incompatible organizations from monopolizing it and running legit GMRS licensees off. But the other nice thing is less content moderation by the government. I can actually conduct my small business communications over GMRS legally. The ability to hand a radio to another family member for quick comms is also great. Lets expand GMRS capabilities, not cripple it with inflexible rules.