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The difference in range between the least expensive Baofeng handheld radio and the most expensive Wouxun is zero.

It is amazing what is being done with 3D printers. I do not have one yet, hopefully someday, but will have to improve my Fusion360 skills as they are lacking compared to the designs you guys have shown. Like many of you, I found the radios starting to multiply so I did create my own version of an organization/charging shelf in metal. Holds a lot of stuff, but already running out of room. Also made a simple bracket for the Kenwood TK-880H mobiles as I take them in and out of my vehicles often.

As others have stated, there will be no difference in range. Look at different radios and go with what has good reviews, the features you want and at the price you want. The Wouxun KG-905G is a good radio that is easy to use. The plus is no buttons for new users to push and then mess the programing up. Programming the 905G is very simple using the free Wouxun software available for download at Buy Two Way Radio's website. Note that the Wouxun programming software only runs on Windows 10/11. And contrary to a single person's opinion, the Wouxun GMRS radios are well liked and they all get good reviews. In other words, learn to ignore Negative Nancy like the rest of us do.

This ^

I suggest spending some time reading posts here. The 905g has a very good reputation, but it’s also more expensive than many others. As far as Wouxun being the best brand I think that’s fairly subjective.

The reason I have a pile of them is that they're short and flexible and work well enough. If we're out backpacking, I always have a Signal Stick wrapped up in my pack in case I need to get out a bit further. Depending on terrain it won't make a TON of difference, but depending on terrain it might and it weighs nothing, so it comes with. And in testing it's made a decent bit of difference in clarity when working at the edge of a handheld's performance.

I have the TIDRadio TD-H3 (a pair) and the Wouxun KG-935G Plus. The H3s are dirty as all hell and can often be heard over police and fire frequencies in my city. The Wouxun is very well-built, solid feeling, has a decent sounding speaker, the control knobs feel nice and tolerant, and the signal + audio reports I get for it are always good and people often ask me what I am using and when I tell them, they are shocked while claiming they never thought it would be a Wouxun CCR. That is my experience.

While you will only hear the one repeater by doing that, you will still receive the signal from the other repeater. You can see it on your radio if it has a signal meter. It's the same way on a repeater channel with tones set and someone close by transmits on the corresponding simplex channel without any tones. You won't hear the simplex transmission but you will still see it on the radio's signal meter. Just because you can't hear one of the signals does not mean that it will not interfere with the other signal that you can hear.

Very cool @WRZR574. The mobile radio bracket is brilliant and I really like the antenna holders. Simple and efficient. Bravo!

I have found that there is no one magic antenna that will work well and/or be an improvement over the stock antenna for all handheld radios. The Nagoya and Abbree 771G antennas did make a difference with my Baofeng GMRS radios but the stock antennas on my Wouxun GMRS radios did better than the 771Gs did. All you can do is try a few different antennas and go with what works best with your radio.

Just remember that any and all updates/support for Windows 10 will stop in October of this year. I think there is an option for continued Windows 10 support if you are willing to pay annually for it. Yes Wouxun radios do cost more than other brands but they are better quality and are generally clean as @RayDiddio mentioned. I have Baofeng UV-5R GMRS, handhelds along with Wouxun and Icom handhelds. The Wouxun is definitely better than the Baofeng radios and it is even better than the Icom IC-T10 I own.

I have a pair of Baofeng UV-5G Plus that work well for strictly GMRS communications. 5W of power, according to the specifications. I also have a Baofeng 5RM that works well for GMRS, as well as 2m and 70cm ham bands. 10W of power, according to the specifications. They are very close to each other in price. Neither model has given any problems and are both CHIRP programmable. The screen isn't too great when out in daylight, but they work well.

SWR in a handheld antenna is nearly meaningless because there’s no transmission line. All the power still exits the antenna. In an antenna system, a portion of power is converted to heat within the transmission line between the transmitter and the antenna. High SWR results in power reflecting and traveling back through the transmission line to the radio where it reflects again and incurs more losses before it gets back to the antenna. Each time more power goes out the antenna until all of the power has either been converted to heat in the transmission line or RF radiation in the antenna. In a system with virtually no transmission line virtually none of the power becomes heat. For that reason handheld radios (including cell phones) have virtually no transmission lines and so SWR has very little importance.

If my memory serves me right from my analog conventional simulcast system days, (and that was eons ago), it takes a difference between the two signals levels of 6 dB or greater for full capture. Anything less than that you will get the warbles and wah wahs.

I've the 701G, 771G, 701 dual-band, and 771 dual band. My unscientific observation is that the 701s were a little disappointing because for the most part, they didn't perform any better than the rubber duck. Perhaps a little better clarity in some circumstances, but that's about it. The 771s are another matter. I don't necessarily get more distance because of the terrain, but I definitely put out a signal with more authority. In areas where I'd be static-y or breaking up with a short antenna, I get through loud and clear. I'm not really sure if the GMRS-specific versions outperform the dual-band ones. I get about the same distance in ordinary use, but I haven't actually done any tests of range. I still use the 701 a lot because most of the time it will work just fine for my purpose and it's more convenient than a longer antenna. I have a little bag with a couple of different antenna options in case I want them and I usually have it in my vehicle, so I pretty much have everything covered. I have some Nagoya tri-band antennas on order, and I'll be interested to see how they compare to the Comet and two no-name tri-band antennas I'm currently using. My current tri-band antennas perform more like 701s than 771s on 2m, 70cm, and GMRS (in spite of their length), which shouldn't be surprising because the more things you ask an antenna to do, the less well it does each of them. There's a 1.25m repeater in Oklahoma City, and I can access it from a reasonable distance, considering that the 5RM puts out about 4-5 watts on 220, but I've never gotten anyone to answer a signal check. It works, but I guess nobody monitors it.

Short answer is I have selected a repeater channel with the least traffic in my area. I monitored and researched out channels that would be appropriate, then determined a tone that would not conflict with other repeaters. The open repeater in question is very low traffic and in the distance. There is another repeater near by on a different tone and it does not appear to be problem with ours if the radios are setup correctly. There is just no clean channel we can use due to the amount of repeaters in our area and changing channels for our entire CERT and fire district at this point would be challenging.

I would go with a different repeater channel if all possible. The reason being is that anyone in-between the two repeaters will have issues from receiving both repeaters at the same time. I go through this all of the time being halfway between two repeaters.

Yes it will, but the FM signals may still interfere with each other. With AM it’s possible to actually listen to two signal on the same frequency. With FM the radio attempts to capture the strongest signal. The tone doesn’t prevent that because the tone has no effect on reception, just reproduction.

You’ll catch on. Welcome!

Good news for those of us who have been waiting. I think the title about says it. Cheers and a thank you to Mel Terechenok at Chirp.

Just because he can hit the repeater does not mean anyone wants to talk to him.

Why are you here? We all already know what an A-hole is, there is no need to keep giving us an example. Shouldn't you be busy talking to all your friends on a repeater 200 miles away.

@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.

My radio club in the near future will be implementing a DMR repeater system in the near future with a repeater located on high elevated remote radio site. The long-term goal is having linked repeaters throughout the State for Statewide radio coverage. Since, I am essentially don't have any spare room in my 23 Wrangler Rubi 2 Dr. I elected to go overhead with the installation of a Motorola XPR5550e dashmount radio. This makes the fourth radio I have installed in my jeep. I was hoping the Club would have gone the P25 route, but they decided to go DMR.

I wouldn’t put too much stock into testing SWR on HT antennas. @SteveShannon explains it better than I could in this post. Just go with what works best for you in real world applications.

Dang it, I ran out of reactions for today.. Nice setup. Our club is actually removing DMR from our 70cm repeaters since no one uses DMR anymore.

You will get many replies for and against, so it’s really a silly question. How about doing some research on your own, read reviews, watch YouTube videos, and form an opinion based on that. Consider using the search function here, where you’ll surely find more info. One thing is certain; Wouxun isn’t “the best”.

Don't own a Wouxun. But I recommend searching the forum and you will get plenty of recommendations and reviews. You Tube can also be a good source of information. When it comes to 5W handhelds I would not consider any of them "long range" out of the box. Of course range can be significantly increased if you plan on using repeaters. Or, if you make provisions to connect it to an external antenna, preferably mounted very high. Simply put you are not going to see a really noticeable differences in range from brand to brand. So I wouldn't assume one is much better than the when it comes to range. Commercial grade radios Motorola / Kenwood etc... are very nice. But it usually involves buying a used radio, programing software, a programing cable and a steeper learning curve. Not to mention determining if the radio is GMRS compliant. So if you are beginner an out of the box solution is probably the better way to go for a first GMRS radio. Best of luck.

I can only take one person. I removed the rear seat so I can have my refrigerator and carry my recovery gear, and of course, install/bolt down the VHF and UHF XTL5000 remote radios on the floor. The attached picture is without the recovery gear. The next time I load up my recovery gear, I'll snap a picture and post it.

i learned the hard way after dozens of radios. Hytera PD682 & PD612 for me.

I’m gonna get run over and flammed but I use radios every day. All day 7days a week for 12 hrs a day. I had woxouns. They always get the worst signal reports. They are expensive and really have no better features then any one else. The big gimmick is mark from Huntington Beach califonia pre programs them with all kinds of useless frequencies that most people don’t need or want. To me woxouns are not worth the hype. Woxoun retivis radiotitty midland and rugged all belong in the dumpster. If you’re gonna spend $150 or so you can buy a kenwood or Motorola. If you want a sub $50 radio that does just as good or better there are many other options as well. Now, some cross dresser ex hand model that calls him self queen will come out of his basement to yell at me and call me names. However I’m not the one making money from gmrs radios. I just use them all the time.

After a lot of research and so many main stream radio manufacture like Motorola just not making good advanced radios, I went with a Wouxun KG-935G that's really robust with features, works really well and reminds me of old school Motorola. I also have a Q10H, but the Q935G has a much better display.

Are you using a Kenwood Kpg cable ? I use a spare Anytone programming cable, and it works fine.

This is all what I thought, thank you for confirming. The only real solution that I can see to ensure someone only hears the repeater with Tones they want, is to make sure their channel is set to T-Squelch instead of just Tone. That will allow filtering for just signals with a specific Tone.

I think not getting the programming cable to communicate is my problem. If i could connect i think all would be fine.

Find out what you can reach with the HT before you put an antenna on the house. It may be that you can reach as far as you want with the stock antenna. I can put up a better antenna but it doesn't gain me much because of the terrain. I suppose if I got it high enough, it might help, but I'm not sure who I would talk to that I can't already reach

Oh thank heaven I'm not the only one. First time in an elevator when I was able to reach the panel... Oh well, live and learn they say.

Ha, yeah no worries. I don’t know why lawyers got to be so wordy, they could have just said if it’s only used by you and your immediate family and everyone uses the same call sign no repeater ID needed. That’s too simple though I guess.

If it goes to 467.xxx on PTT then it’s doing the offset correct. However before you said the channel was 462.700 not 462.550 so if it’s supposed to be 700 and not 550 it may well be in the wrong channel location or something didn’t get set right. 700 should be at channel 29 or 37. One thing I can say is I have made mistakes in a cut and paste before. Where when I went back for some reason or another some of my corresponding frequencies weren’t copied correctly. I never knew why but I was looking things over and found a couple that weren’t what they were supposed to be and I just had to change it back. I’m happy to help if I can and hope that in the end everything works for you.

Return it for a replacement, or a refund.

WHY do you insist on talking SHIT about radios you either Don't own, or know NOTHING about ?? Why do you think you get "Blasted" ? This is Why !!

Welcome! Only you can answer those questions. Things to consider: whom do you want to talk to? Have you heard them on the radio? For myself I wouldn’t put an antenna on the house unless I was certain there were people who I would be talking to. Spend some time with the radio and see what you’re lacking before spending money.

When I bought my house, I went to the neighbors on both sides of me and introduced myself and asked to exchange telephone info in case of emergency. One neighbor was cool, the other was a jerk (in 10 years I don't think I spoke more than 2 sentences to him) and told me "I'm not comfortable giving you my number". Fast forward a few years, I come home from work there are fire trucks in his front yard and they are getting ready to take out his front door with a battering ram due to an alarm. They ask if I have a way to contact him, told them I didn't and they ram down his front door. He pulled up maybe 30 seconds later. He went to the store, left something cooking on the stove that burnt and set off the smoke alarm. Karma in action.

Did you look at the map? Arab is about midway between the Huntsville repeaters and a repeater called Palisades Park 650.

3D Printers are a must have..

I have looked far and wide and settled on a Wouxon 935G, which seems to have high selectivity, clean transmissions and just feels like the old Motorola's quality. I don't use chirp, i use there proprietary software which is fine for me since its also free. Really hard to find alternatives with this quality and features. But my quest is never ending. Though i do have to say there is a special place for my Tidradio H3, one heck of a cheap mediocre radio.

Don't bother because he will state that he has 999 reason to not use any Chinese made radio. In fact he will only recommend an old commercial radio that requires either MS-Dos or Windows 3.1 to program.

I thought it was the Midland radios that you, and everyone you know has issues with? Seems like you and "everyone you know" has issues with a lot of radios...I recall you once posting a comment proclaiming that "everyone you know" always throws their Midland radios directly into the trash right after they buy them.. So I am pretty sure that anyone that has read your previous posts (including before you changed your forum-name to hide from ridicule), already disregards anything you say.. I have owned 30+ Wouxun radios, Wouxun radios were my primary radios in both of my Jeeps for several years, and I have a dozen or more friends/off-roading acquaintances that that use them - probably around 100 in total, and never, once, ever, have I, or anyone I know had any significant issue with any of them.

Yes, you can do that, and nobody would care... But dont forget that the HAM version does not have "channels", so you would have to program them all as you mentioned, and also manually set & configure your repeater channels.. Not a big deal if you know/understand how to do that, but based on your question I am guessing that you may not know how. Also, as I'm sure you know, there is virtually 0 difference in farz between 8 watts and 10 watts - the only difference you will see is the battery draining faster.