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I recommend that you add @Socalgmrs to your “ignore list”. Life gets better. Personally I prefer to have a link to the CFR page on the internet rather than capturing a point in time with PDFs: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95

I just spoke with a large radio importer/reseller based here in the U.S. (i cant say who) - He said his tariff fees are based on the wholesale price (not 'calculated value' at the port of entry, as I thought/read about) - because the new fees would nearly double the retail price, and he knows he cant sell any at those prices, he has halted all new radio shipments.. i dont like it but I am willing to feel a little short-term pain for longer-term trade equity...

And there ya go with the negativity yet again. @WRVK513 If you want an actual Part 95 certified radio then yes the firmware will be locked. And this goes for pretty much all Part 95 certified consumer grade radios. We know plenty of people use non certified amateur band radios that have been unlocked/Mars modded on GMRS, but those radios are not Part 95 certified. And if you don't want a locked down radio then look else where.

I just received my new KG1000G+ UPS TODAY!!

That's because it's a mobile radio and can't transmit at a low enough power output to be legal on 8-14. That's pretty much standard on mobile GMRS radios.

The advertisement for the GP-9NC shows it as a GMRS antenna and covers 460-470MHz. The GP-9 and GP-9N (no C at the end) are ham only. The letter "C" is Comet's designation for the commercial band (kinda where GMRS resides) - not ham. The letter "N" means it has a "Type N" connector and the straight GP-9 is ham only with a SO-239 connector. When I got mine, the bag it came in said it was GP-9N and they put on a tiny sticker with the letter "C" at the end of it. My guess is they didn't want to print up new packaging to add a letter. I don't remember what paperwork it came with though (ham or GMRS) but I didn't have to tune it.

Nor should anybody post the details about your repeater here for you. If you become a member you can do it yourself. That also enables the mechanism people can use to contact you with questions or to notify you of problems.

Ya, that can be annoying and nice at the same time. But you have to do it in the right order. If you put the tone in the RX it'll automatically put it in the TX, but you still need to go there and press the blue button to enter it. At that point if you have a split tone you can enter it, but you must put the RX tone in 1st. It you put the TX tone in 1st and then the RX it'll change the TX tone. That was just part of the learning curve on the radio.

I prefer to activate car alarms with a 1000 watt transistorized spurious RF master blaster on 11 meters. I kid I kid it’s just a joke chill

I listed my original first edition Baofeng UV-82 on eBay for $350 since it's now a pre-tarrif classic..

https://absolute-emc.com/calculator/convert/dBm

Yes I have rucked plenty. I was both airborne and air assault qualified, assigned to airborne units. And when my assigned weapon was not the M60, then I would get assigned to carry the PRC-77 radio. So yes I know a thing or two about rucking extra weight. Now go strap on a 75-80 pound ruck sack, carry the M60 machine gun with 1000-1500 rounds of ammunition along with your main and backup parachute before you say anything else about how I supposedly don't know anything about carrying weight. I was also a combat engineer so I carried even more stuff than the average infantryman. And I have done so in combat on a few occasions. Let's break down the weight infantryman ruck -70 pounds combat engineer ruck - 75-80 pounds Main and reserve parachutes - 53 pounds. M60 machine gun unloaded - 23 pounds 500 rounds of spare ammo - 35 pounds Those weights didn't even include any explosives or mines I also had to carry. You showed your rear again by assuming that I don't have any experience rucking heavy weights. And we all know what assume actually means.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a portable GMRS setup that will put out 20-50 watts. I like using 10 AH or 12AH lipo4 batteries for 20 watt or less radios. Most 10 AH lipo4 are the same size as the batteries in computer battery backup systems. The lipo4 batteries are quite a bit lighter. I like the Redodo brand of lipo4 batteries when it comes to 50 AH or 100 AH batteries. A group 24 lipo4 batterie will be half the weight of a standard group 24 lead acid deep cycle battery. And just ignore Negative Nancy with his negative waves.

It was a nice thing for him to do. He didn’t lecture anyone; he just tried to make it easier for us. You’ve been grumbling about things lately. Are you becoming infected with the socalgmrs bug?

I would add that moving things around like this out of the normal progression is going to make things problematic when you try to communicate with someone who has their radio set up correctly. You are really better off being able to know when someone says go to channel 12 with a tone of xyz that you are doing the same thing.

95.1763 (d) 467 MHz interstitial channels. Only hand-held portable units may transmit on these 7 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 467.5625, 467.5875, 467.6125, 467.6375, 467.6625, 467.6875, and 467.7125 MHz.

47 was my radio call sign in my last law enforcement job. I have a fondness for it.

Realizing this is a 3 year old thread and things have changed in those years. And this is only my opinion...... These forums seem loaded with people who seem willing to, and are encouraged to, return and exchange budget radios at the drop of a hat when the radio doesn't appear to work well. Yet, in my opinion. With Midland they appear willing to "soldier on" with a radio clearly not performing to advertised standards. Despite the company having a true customer service department and a defective product claim process. And, instead prefer to limit their actions to airing their disappointment in the forums. Which I actually appreciate a lot, as it helps me form my own opinions of products and manufacturers. I guess in the end, I just don't understand what seems to me a strange unwillingness to allow a company to solve their problem for fairly expensive products.

Again, you live in an area that allows that. Most people will never see those kinds of ranges. Your range of 200+ miles in very unrealistic for the majority of people.

The GP-9 (PL259) doesn't say it covers GMRS in the paperwork either. But the SWR is 1.8 or less across all GMRS channels, 2m and 70cm. Others have tested their GP-9 antennas and the SWR was above 2.0 on GMRS. So each antenna does need to be checked.

Which is a poor attitude to take. There are some significant differences between GMRS and Ham Radio. It's not just technical, more operational rules based. Its fine to conduct various business activities on GMRS, whereas on Ham its strictly forbidden, as one major example. Then the ability for an entire family to operate under one license is another. With Ham everyone must have their own individual license, no sharing allowed. And if one doesn't even want to apply for a GMRS license there is always the license free FRS radios, that communicate just fine with GMRS when adjust for the difference in bandwidth between the two services. Ham radio has nothing like this. Its examples of the kind above that people make a choice where Ham radio doesn't fit their usage requirements, thus getting a Ham license would be a waste of time, and something likely to never be used. Nothing to do with being a "quitter". On the topic of license free operation one should consider the average consumer has several choices, they can operate on HF (CB 11M), VHF (MURS) and on UHF (FRS). When thought about this way it's more like Ham Radio Lite without the license requirements.

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate it!

A friend would scramble everyone's TVs on the block when he would fire up his CB and amp in his truck when we were in high school. The neighbors loved him for that I live in a small rural town of 1100 people ( I think they counted chickens and cows to get to 1100) with several of us having our amateur licenses. We try not to use any amps when working HF so we don't overload everyone else's radios. One is 500 yards away from me and two are 300 yards away. I had to get on one of them when he decided to run a 165 watt VHF amp during a net. He was overloading my Icom dual band radio all across the 2m band.

There is a class of hams, old and young, who feel the need to feel superior in some way because they had to pass a test. Since the exams are all multiple choice now, with all the possible questions published with the correct answers, it’s no big deal. Spend some time memorizing the questions and answers is not impressive, which is what many end up doing. In years past one had to draw schematics etc. and answer questions with no published answer guide. Im not diminishing what people who have passed the various ham exams accomplished. I’m encouraged by those who want to go beyond simply memorizing the questions and answers, but want to know the underlying theory. We get those people here on this forum. We should do everything we can to make them feel welcomed and politely answers the questions they have. Snarky attitudes should have no place here.

So far the folks getting into our neighborhood network just use the appropriate call sign and first name. That way no one has to memorize all the call sign. We pretty much know who Sal is even if we have three.

Make sure if using “Unit number ___” that you’re wearing a shoulder mic, a black basket weave belt complete with flashlight, knife, and keys. Also helpful if you drive an ex-cop car, as this helps complete the picture. [emoji16]

What about all of those junky/crappy radios (Midlands, TidRadios, Retevis, Wouxun, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc) that were "junk" - and you "threw straight into the trash can" ? Are you staying that instead of taking advantage of the warranties on ALL of those radios that you seem to know so much about and have told us you purchased, and "threw straight into the trash", you never even once considered getting a replacement instead?

Hello Steve, 462.6875 is channel 6 not 8. One thought is the radio may have an issue programming it in the wrong position if it is one of the initial 22 channels but I'm not sure as I don't program mine out of sequence. Usually the repeaters will be programmed into channels 23-30, 31-38 and so on. The fact that you got the others to work though makes me question the PL tone. Not all radios have the same number of tones. Retevis CTCSS #2 is 69.3 while Motorola is 71.9 so you may have the wrong tone programmed. So you may want to check that. How are you programming your radio? Direct? Using Chirp or possibly Retevis software? Can you show us a screen shot of the program? Edit: On second thought the fact you are getting the beeping has me back to the wrong frequency idea. That's usually what that indicates. This may or may not be do to the position it's been put in. Edit #2: please see @amaff and @WRYZ926 responses for correct answer.

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Hams can't use radios in exactly the same circumstances as GMRS because the test requirement is a barrier to entry for a lot of people -- which is why a lot of us have GMRS licenses/radios as well. Hams tend to be older, often somewhat debilitated, so we're not going to be using our radios while mountain biking, but by no means does that mean we just sit around and try to contact Italy. I participate in a stormwatch net, I monitor my city's emergency sirens and report how well they function, next week some of my club will be teamed with medical personnel to respond to emergencies at a marathon. Recently, during tornadoes and fires, members in the affected areas provided ongoing, real-time information on the events to emergency responders. It's not the same as running the marathon, but it's not endlessly calling CQ either. Next week, I'll be part of the staff of a regional cavalry competition. Guess what? I'll be pulling out the GMRS radio because many of the people who will be there are GMRS folks, and it also gives us the ability to talk to people with FRS radios, which some of the staff will be using. If you saw me there supporting that event, you'd think that was evidence that only GMRS people do that kind of stuff, but you'd be wrong. I go back and forth between the two modes as appropriate to the situation. A lot of us use radio to support hobbies, but also as a hobby in itself. There's a certain allure to the challenge of building an 80 meter antenna from scrap wire. It's true GMRS is most often an adjunct to some other hobby, but that doesn't mean there can't be a subset of GMRS users who want to build that antenna and a subset of hams who see the radio mostly as a means of supporting other activities.

Yes this is to get us in the air for local skywarn ops. Trying to get a 50 watt unit saved up. But there other parts needed as well. So this a small win.

Well, it's here.... After using a bunch of feature-rich radios I wasn't expecting much out of it, but this was pretty disappointing. The only feature difference above the MXT400 is the split tone and (maybe) the weather resistance. The biggest disappointment so far is they advertise this unit as 50w and its not. I bench-tested it with two different watt meters and it maxed out at 38 watts on the 462 MHz channels and 32 watts on the 467 MHz frequencies. I'm going to play with it for a few days and see if there are any other disappointments. I'll let you all know what I think after I give it a fair shot.

Not me. I only have the Radioddity version. RT Systems works well there though.

I'm pretty new here and probably shouldn't write this. But I've been around online information sharing sine before the WWW. Back when online literally meant on the telephone line to one other computer. Back before bulletin boards. So I have learned a bit about the folks that haunt the anonymous electronic world. But here goes. This guy is what is colloquially called a troll. The folks make outrageous statements, often pure fantasy, in order to incite responses. They feed off of the responses. It doesn't matter whether it a good or bad response. As long as they can stir the pot the will. The ways you kill a troll are simple. First they can be banned by the forum owner. Unfortunately they sometimes pop back up under a new "identity". The second way is to stave the troll. Again, two methods. Best is to put him on your ignore list. You won't see his comments unless someone else quotes him. The other method is to never respond to his comments. It took a bit for me to convince myself this guy was a troll. I'm ignoring him. If he irritates do the same.

One bit of weirdness that I have noticed about the TD-H3 is that if you enter a CTCSS or DCS for the RX it automatically puts that same value in the corresponding TX too. and if you clear the RX tone/code it will clear out the TX tone/code. Does the repeater you are trying to use have a different RX vs TX tone or code, or does it use a CTCSS tone for one and DCS for the other?

Who are you asking?

As a lifetime avid outdoorsman; hiking, camping, hunting, rifle matches, fishing, boating, and other activities, even a little 'off road', holder of several commercial radio licenses, licensed GMRS operator, NWS spotter, an FCC Volunteer Examiner AND a relatively seasoned ham radio operator, my opinion is that your statements above are not a true picture of either "hobby". Learning more about ham radio may be of benefit...if nothing else, perhaps you would know what you were talking about. Ever notice all of the talk here on this GMRS forum about clubs and nets and linking repeaters and setting up repeaters? Those aspects of GMRS have "ham" written all over them. Not being critical at all, but simply pointing to the elephant in the room. I think they are more closely related than some care to admit. In spite of the denial, I believe a lot of members here DO look at GMRS as 'ham lite', a low-tech shortcut to radio commo - I think that's great, and if the interest persists and deepens, there is a lot that can be done if one decides to move on to amateur radio. Yeah, yeah, there's a test. So what? As a VE, I work with a small group that gives the exams and I assure you that it's not near as bad as rocket surgery...we have kids as young as 8 or 9 passing the Technician exam. I am new here, but even then have seen MANY people asking questions indicating they have bought the license and the equipment, and would like to use it to find active repeaters, some with nets and clubs, in order to make contacts with people outside their social circles and caravans. That approach in no way takes away from the fact that many, maybe even most, GMRS users use their radios during their other activities, or those users that simply want to stay in touch with family members while they're out and about. Perhaps unbelievably, ham operators also use their mobile radios during their activities and to chit chat with acquaintances while commuting. I will say that with ham radio, the equipment and technical knowledge actually IS the hobby. If one is interested in electronics, it can be quite interesting. Almost everything about ham radio is geared toward learning about radio operation, propagation, building your own antennas and other technical aspects, and the results are measured in contact quality and distances. I am a former radar repairman and also built and serviced surveillance receivers and test equipment for a manufacturer. This ham radio hobby is an extension of that and right up my alley. Like GMRS and CB, simply another face of the radio hobby. Electronics and radio science is not for everyone and I get the idea that many people just want to use the radio as a tool without having to learn any more than necessary. I know a lot of people like that and that is one factor that led me to setting up GMRS - this radio service allows me to talk with my brother and sister outside the infrastructure, neither of whom wish to be ham radio operators. Many members of my ham radio club are also GMRS operators. No one hides it and we simply look at it as another tool in the box. Sorta the same with CB, although most of us avoid CB due to it being a zoo here. That didn't stop me from installing a CB here at the house and wiring an antenna in my truck for when I want it on the road. Civil uses of ham radio include operating safety checkpoints for marathons, races and organized hikes, weather warning/monitoring like the National Weather Service's dependence on spotters to help calibrate equipment (radar sensitivity and resolution) and to provide instant warning of severe weather developments. There is overt emergency response via groups like RACES and ARES. Our county emergency services work with us and even sends the commo truck out for our field day events. Our repeater covers a tremendous footprint and in the event of an emergency or severe weather becomes dedicated to public service. It runs on a generator and then batteries when power drops out. Our club is one of several in the area and just between our members contacting members (we can just go simplex on the repeater input frequency), we can cover a tri-county area. The maligned "POTA", "SOTA" and other temporary activations like "Field Day" are as much about determining how to operate in austere conditions and how to make solid contacts under tough conditions. Oddly enough, I see some of the same goals with my fellow GMRS licensees, "portable ops", "emergency contacts" and other terms are interchanged between these closely related radio hobbies.

I stand corrected. I went in to profile to edit said “Unit Number” and it said this underneath.

Wrong, Wrong & Wrong..... This Is Not A Squelch Tail, It Is The Repeater Hang Time Where The Transmitter Remains Open, But The Receiver Is Closed Waiting For The Correct CTCSS Or DCS To Reopen The Receiver For Retransmit. It Is Normally Set To 2 to 3 Seconds, Not Minutes. The Intent Purpose Of A Repeater Hang Time, Is To Enable Users To Reactivate The Repeater With The Correct "Tones" So As Not To Have A Repeater Drop Out Completely & Restart The Transmit Cycle. Squelch Tail Is Something Completely Different, & The Repeater Hang Time Is In Place To Help Continue Convos & Should Be Used For It's Intended Purpose To Save On A Complete Restart Of A Repeater..........

What about Target? “Transmitting In Target Stores”

Trump just announced the following: From ABC: “BREAKING: President Trump has announced that countries subject to reciprocal tariffs will have a lowered 10% rate for 90 days. This does not apply to China, which Trump says is now subject to a 125% tariff rate following their retaliatory tariff on the U.S.”

I don't think that one reaches me.

Agreed. The impact needs to be to cripple greedy American conglomerates who outsource all manufacturing to China. Wouxun, Baofeng etc. are rare example of Chinese products sold directly to us. Most Chinese goods are made for companies like Proctor Silex etc. so executive heads can get rich selling us inferior junk products at HIGHLY inflated prices. This will be ending real soon. I'll keep my wideband capable Spectra mobile and Saber portable (made in Malaysia, not China). I have zero problem with Wouxun radios but I do have a problem with toasters, microwaves - EVERYTHING being made there under a trusted American brand name. REAL capitalism means many small to medium size businesses all doing well across our great country. Just google "American Made Products" - MANY things to choose from (sorry no radios). Thats where I buy.

As per my usual approach. Here is a visual showing how to test your radio is setup for a repeater. Admittedly, this does require a second radio. The picture shows a use case with a repeater on 467.7/462.7 with an input tone of 131.8 For simplicity, you can omit the tone on radio 2 (test 2) to check that your primary radio is receiving, and then add it in if you have programmed it on Radio one to test that it's actually OK. That's up to you. All this proves is that your radio 'can possibly' communicate with the repeater. It does not account for the fact that you may 'actually' have the wrong information in the first place. I can't test for that!!! And trust me...i've been there. Hopefully this is helpful.

I agree completely.

while there's been lots of valid points raised already, I'll mention something I noticed looking at the specs for that glass mount...wouldn't 1.5dBi effectively be negative gain antenna in the real world? (dBi vs dBd and all) that aside, I've absolutely run into auto glass on newer cars impeding the signal, which would be an issue with that glass mount inside as well. aside from the mentioned "hatpin" (uhf 1/4 wave, which are quite inexpensive), Midland's "ghost" (MXTA25) antennas seem to get decent reviews, and that would be fairly unnoticeable hard mounted on the roof without compromising ground clearance (they're less than 4" tall).

@WRYZ926 The MXT500 having low power out of the box was the biggest let down. I had hoped that Midland fixed the issue since then... but I guess not. The only upside is, there is almost zero difference between 35w and 50w, from a real-world use standpoint. You can measure a difference, but likely wouldn't see an extra 10 feet in range.

As someone that has recommended a few radios to a few people in my day, i have, and still do recommend Midlands to "regular people" that just need simple vehicle to vehicle comms; ie; The Jeep Crowd. Radio Dorks and latent hams will require something with more bells and whistles, but MANY normal people are more than satisfied with the simplicity and performance of the Midland mobiles. Choose the radio with the features that are right for you, and ignore the online "experts" that look down on you for not being the same kind of socially reet-ard-ed know-it-alls that they are - it's difficult, becuase there are a lot of them right here in this forum.. Even in this thread..

You're not going to hack this, so start preparing for defeat..

Wouxun has a reputation for manufacturing GMRS radios that do not unlock! Good luck!

Oh.. shit. As it turns out, a AM as stupid as everyone says. It is also entire possible that I have had too much NyQuil .. Carry on.