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Well, If you knew anything about Midland you would know they have been in the radio business for 50 years. For decades they were a go to LMR radio for law enforcement, wildland and DNR applications. I still know agencies with Midland LMR gear in use. They also have had GMRS radios long before anyone you list on this site. My first Midland was a xstal radio and we had to wait over 2 months for the channel we got licensed to arrive. They were also the first FRS radio to the market when the FCC approved them. Yes part is marketing and they are the ONLY vendor I have ever seen at an offroad show or any event in that industry. Handheld CH. KISS. My parents are in their 70's. They want to pick up a MIC with no buttons and talk. The midland mobiles do that fine for them. For my Jeeps I have the MTX-275 (actually had another arrive yesterday..and wife wanted the Jeep one so it was $10 more than the standard). The HHCH is perfect for a vehicle such as the Jeep. We use one repeater that is mine so dont care about having 50 repeaters in the radio. The wife can jump in and it turns on and if someone say go to ch 4 she turns to CH4. Lastly 90% of the folks we wheel with run Midland as does JJUSA. For that fact its the same and anyone can jump in my rig or hers and know how to use the raidos. What many forgot on this site is we are a very very small user group that gets on a forum. Tons of folks out there use GMRS and have no interest in forums, repeaters, or being ham lite. They just use radios. I have farms all around me that use Midland gear and every tractor, combine, truck has one in it. If I want to play ham radio or outher service I just switch over the my APX8500.

You can find the Icom SP35 speaker on Amazon for $30 or $35 all of the time. Most other places want $50 or $55 for it. The Icom SP35 is an excellent small speaker. And if you need something louder for an open cab vehicle then I can highly recommend the Midland SPK100 20 watt speaker.

I had a blast this weekend on 10 meter dx. I was able to talk to people in Italy and Bavaria and a lot of contacts to Texas as well. All on 20 watts and a dipole at 30 feet high. What a fun hobby.

No, the repeater is required to ID also, unless the only people using it are authorized to use the same call sign as the repeater and they correctly ID.

It is a good thing that literally nobody on this forum cares what you think at this point, probably just like at home. And, point of order: Nobody asked you what you think or for your totally useless opinion

One of the things you will find that is different in having a GMRS repeater is that it has to be opperated under one persons call sign unlike having a club call sign in Amateur radio. Your local Ham club is probably a good place to start for setting up a GMRS repeater. Just incase you didn't know there is one near this location called Herman Peak and another called SHUTTERS LANDING, to the south. The owners of those might also be worth speaking with. As @SteveShannon noted the linking of repeaters for GMRS is now officially frowned upon by the FCC. There is a collection of repeaters around Guerneville, Duncan Mills and Jenner California (I linked one of the larger ones). This area is similar to your area in terrain and proximity to the ocean and these are used for the community for fires, floods and local communication. You may like to get in touch with them. My wife and I like the Brookings area south of you so I'm always checking repeaters in the area and I have noticed more taking place. Good luck.

In GMRS relay repeaters which are networked to the original repeater are discouraged by the most recent interpretation from the FCC. A lot depends on what infrastructure already exists. Does your fire department already have a communications tower that a repeater antenna could use? GMRS is really not a good choice for dedicated emergency services. The only positive attributes are price and availability. Each of your families will have to make a choice for which radios to buy based on price and features. They range from under $20 to hundreds of dollars. Repeaters can range from hundreds to many thousands of dollars. If it must be reliable in an emergency don’t go cheap. If you’re serious about wanting a price hire a commercial communications contractor to put together a quote backed by path studies and whatever kind of special needs your community has.

You sure it's really operating illegally? Remember before the 2017 rule changes business could get a GMRS license. So long as the business has maintained their license, didn't let it expire, they can continue to renew it and operate LEGALLY. The only way to find out is locate the business in the FCC's database, assuming it exists, and if so is their license still active.

I have a Midland MTX575 with a couple antennas for mobile use. I also have a Retevis RA87 (40 watt) that I purchased direct from Retevis as a portable base (price included the radio, power supply and metal box with handle. This gives me the flexibility that I need to have a radio at home as well as one I can take on camping trips with family. You might need to find what works best for you after some experimenting. I will say that I am running Ailunce HA1g handhelds and I would highly recommend them with the extra range antenna, great range with our repeaters in the area and very easy to program and use.

Learn to live with it. In my area there is a business operating a illegal DMR repeater and has been for a few years. It's been reported to the FCC by numerous folks, yet it's still there. The best repeater in the area is running a Motorola Quintar repeater that can work with analog or P25 digital. The info to use P25 is on their website if you have a P25 capable radio. 95% of all traffic is analog though. I hear P25 maybe a total a 5 minutes a month. It freaks out new users and the FCC rule hounds. For such a nice FREE repeater, it's a small annoyance I can live with.

I ran into the same problem about a year ago when I tried several Y adaptors with my KG-1000G. All of the adaptors were stereo to stereo. They work fine when connecting a single mono speaker to a single port but not when trying to use both ports at the same time. As I stated before, part of the problem is the impedance mismatch. And @SteveShannon a mixer would definitely help along with the correct mono to stereo y adaptor. The only thing I have not tried yet was using an actual stereo speaker with both left and right speakers in one unit. Some radios, like the Icom IC-2730, will push audio out for side A and side B from one single port. But the KG-1000G definitely won't.

Gifted, actually. LoL

I think if burglars showed up for my radio equipment (or computers), my housemate would hand the stuff over and check twice to make sure the burglars didn't miss anything.

It like this, 99% of the time the person/s who rob homes already knows your routine. They are not following you on your trip waiting for your callsign. Like most everyone has said have a security systems, dog/s, light on a timer, home sitter etc.. I wouldn't worry about ones callsign to be something a burglar is waiting for to rob your home.

A VHF/UHF 144/430 antenna that is used for HAM radio, can that be used for GMRS too? I'm talking about a Comet gp9 or gp3, etc. A tower/ roof mount antenna. One that can switch back-and-forth to either a HAM or GMRS radio.

Well that didn't take long. I knew Negative Nancy would put his worthless half a pence in. The negative vibes need to go. Plenty of people use J pole antennas with great results. One of my friends has made several J poles for GMRS for other club members and they all work. He has also made a 6m j pole out of copper and a giant 11m/CB j pole out of aluminum tubing. It works well too. I have a 2m j pole made from 3/8" aluminum rod that works well and sometimes use it portable. I also made the faraday clothe j poles for portable work.

Based on what I’ve read, the ones made,of copper tubing are about equivalent to a dipole in performance, not high gain, but decent omnidirectional performance. I intend to build one this spring sometime. It’ll be single band, possibly 6 meters. That’s the only vhf band I don’t have an antenna for now.

Steve is correct. You will get opinions ranging from hey are junk and no better than a dummy load to they are great antennas. I have a 2m and 70cm Fara-J antennas to test out once the swamp dries up a little. They are clothe j pole antennas made with strips of faraday clothe. You can make your own or buy them from https://vfcomms.com . They make a 6m, 2m, 70cm, GMRS and Meshtastic version of their Fara-j antennas. I went to check the yard today and what a muddy mess. We went from snow and single digit temps all last week to 60 degrees yesterday and today.

I do it. You have to be sure to check SWR all the way up and down the bands because some antennas aren't tuned well enough to the 462-467 MHz range. I've had good results with the Comet SBB-1 and SBB-2 and the Nagoya UT-72 and NMO-72 antennas. In terms of getting good SWRs all the way up to 467, the UT-72 gave me the best results. Some folks say the Nagoya 72s are trash, but I've gotten good performance from them. I'm not trying to reach ridiculous distances, so YMMV.

It’s menu #59 for the 935h:

Shocker - anyway I appreciate the info. I believe all is working as intended - plan to verify on the other radio once it arrives - and then to find a Mobile Setup "thinking a: Wouxun KG-1000G Plus".

He does not speak for the rest of us.. He is socially (and possibly mentally) retarded and still cant figure out why he cant make any friends -here or in real life.

I don't think anyone really answered the OP's questions, although the information given is a bit lacking in details. A few questions that might help narrow things down. 1. What's your budget? Who will be in charge of decisions? Is this a centralized control, or left up to individuals that may or may not want to spend $$? 2. Do you plan to supply your own labor, or purchase a plug & play system? 3. Do you have ownership/control already of a location for the repeater? 4. Do you have a need to communicate with other existing radio users in the area? Will this be a private system just for your users? Or do you wish to share? 5. What is the elevation at this Community Center? Do you have the ability to place an antenna and/or mast/tower at this location? What's the surrounding terrain like? As far as a general shot at answers: Bare repeater. Used $500 to $1500 New $1000 to $5000 Need to allow for labor costs if you don't know how to program/install Antenna & Duplexer system New is the best option here, costs will vary greatly, but as little as $400, as much as $2500 Individual portables could be less than $50 or more than $500 depending on what folks might want. Bare bones GMRS repeater capable units are fairly cheap. Mobiles that mount in vehicles are more expensive. LoRa i'm assuming is LoRaWAN - which is effectively Long Range data bursts in the 900 MHz ISM band. Good for telematics & GPS, not so great for voice, but that begs the question of what's the primary use and purpose of this system? If you're looking to do chit chat for local folks on a wide open community channel that anyone and everyone could join in on, then GMRS might be a pretty good choice. If you're looking for exclusivity or privacy, and you want to do tracking or data transmission, there might be better options.

Except for the tones.. You have to program your desired tone(s).

If you want to go the easier but more expensive route, BTech has a plug-and-play repeater system. It's not cheap, but it's literally all you need except the antenna and coax. It has all 8 repeater pairs and includes an auto-ID module. Put up your antenna, plug it in, and you're up and running.

Interesting. Garmin got a waiver even before that to send location data. Theirs is a really neat feature that works very well with their gps map also.

We like the Brookings area also. It has been years since we’ve been there, but we used to stay at a Best Western which had rooms that opened up right above the beach. One thing I would do is make sure the radios I picked for this community communications project are all capable of receiving the fire department’s transmissions and make that a priority channel on power up. That communication system is much more likely to receive the needed funding to make it reliable.

I understand that. I don't know or even care if the P25 repeater has a waiver. It's used so infrequently and if you have tone on receive you won't hear P25 at all. It doesn't bug me but like I said, some folks go banana's the when hearing it for the first time.

I think it really should be 2 channel mono to single channel mono combiner. Yes, it’s taking two outputs, which we typically considered stereo, and combining them into a single speaker, but specifying a mono to stereo Y adapter may result in one of the connectors being a stereo connector. @OldJunk2 really needs an adapter that has two mono plugs (tip and sleeve only, no ring connector) with the tips connected to each other and the sleeves connected to each other leading to the appropriate mono connector (depending on what the speaker he’s trying to use has; if it indeed has a stereo plug then you’re right, but if it has a mono plug then he needs a mono jack with only a tip and sleeve connector.) Most of the adapters out there are two TS (which is mono with a tip and sleeve) to a single TRS (which is stereo with a tip, ring, and sleeve). Someone who is hoping to combine two separate mono speaker outputs to a single mono speaker doesn’t want that. Instead they want two TS to a single TS, mono on all three connectors. Here is the one I found on Amazon: https://a.co/d/2wMGnEy

Thanks Steve. Scanning the R56 I can see I need the education. Thanks again.

Sorry to hear that, I hoped it was worth mentioning.

This is why while @SvenMarbles choice may be right for him, it’s not an absolute one answer for everyone. It’s still simple, just not that simple.

I've owned both and still have the Wouxun. The main reason I got rid of my Midland MXT500 was because of the low output power on high setting. I got rid of the Midland before I knew that I could have sent the radio back for repair. I used both the Midland MXT500 and the Wouxun KG-XS20G 20 watt radio when we were testing the antennas on the tower for our GMRS repeater. We tested on simplex first. I am 22.5 miles away from the tower. The KG-XS20G actually did better all around than the MXT500 did. Both radios were hooked up to my Comet CA-712EFC.

…hold on now let me double bag that for you, did you get everything?

The math proves that channel 16 is the ONLY channel for off roading: Off-Roading is usually referred to as 4X4'ing or 4x4 ... 4 x 4 = 16 There is no other choice but to use channel 16 when going 4x4ing ..

Out all the threads you quoted, one guy "may have" had a bad mic, but no resolution was shared. The rest of them were end-user problems. I would hardly call that an abundance of evidence that Midland products are unreliable. Especially compared to their reported revenue of over $19 million a year from their consumer markets. That's a lot of radios sold compared to a few threads from people who don't understand narrow band vs wide band, don't know how to use a computer, or no one will talk to them.

There are no FRS exclusive channels that allow you to operate a GMRS radio without identifying. Every FRS channel is a GMRS channel. Technically, if you want to operate without identifying, you must use an FRS certified radio. Whenever you are using a GMRS radio you are required by regulations to follow the GMRS regulations, which require identifying.

@Sonicgott, thanks for the well written and complete review. Also, if you’re new to the site, @Socalgmrs has a social problem that none of us understand. Apparently the only way he can feel self worth is to denigrate others and his most frequent targets are new members. The best way to deal with it is to simply place him on your ignore list until he bails out of this site like he did before. It should be a sticky somewhere for new members.

AH! Why didn't I think of that! yeah the old NASA transmissions to the astronauts all had the beep! Funny that today the beep is considered "not professional sounding" when the origin of it was very much professional with NASA!

As said it all depends. In the end its what your going to use it for. Alot of folks on here trash midland gear but its simple to use, relaible and plentiful. If 99% of your stuff is talking to your mobile, to another user on simplex then they make good gear. If your trying to make GMRS ham lite and want 100 repeaters in the radio then its not for you. I have many midlands that are used for what they are. Never had issues with any of them and just ordered another for our new Jeep.

It's beginning to make sense why you have no friends in real life, and you spend all your time here.

I read about the rash of robberies happening to GMRS users, so I started using FRS instead. /s

Here is an easy way to test the Y-adapter. If it is working on one side of the the radio, swap the speaker out cables on the radio and see if the side that was working stopped and the other side starts working.

I no longer have the radio, but I remember that I was able to use a Y adapter, as discussed in the manual. I have found that some of the cheaper adapters have really unreliable plugs and/or jack on them. Do you have another adapter to try? If you plug the speaker by itself into either A or B output, do you get good audio out? (to make sure the rig's jacks are OK.) To check out the adapter, try plugging the adapter into only A and see if you get audio from the speaker. Try the same with the B output only. Both should give you audio.

When *I* was a boy, we had to smack together quartz crystals we dug up ourselves to send radio signals. And we could only receive by hanging a cable on a tree and holding it with our tongues! These damned kids, with their "electricity" and "antennas" are too lazy and stupid to be allowed to have radio!

And DTCSS.

and dont forget about DTC.. DTC, DPL, DCS = all the same

Just arrived!

If you want to run a roger beep run it. I’ve talked for many years and don’t really notice them. I do find them useful if talking groundwave or dx on other bands. People that are offended by them are controlling and should worry about their own transmissions not others.