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I figured I would let everyone know, I updated Chirp tonight and saw the Radioddity DB20G is now on the supported radios list. Which Im sure means the other brands of this same radio likely work with it as well. Consider this a friendly heads up. I think we all prefer Chirp over most all oem software.

My MX275 radio goes between my RV, boat, and occasionally my wife's car, depending on the activity. It always has been kind of a handful of stuff. Harbor Freight had a coupon that I used a week or so ago, purchasing an inexpensive Pelican case knock off. There was room in the case for the 275, its cig plug, two UV5Gs, one "RM", three rubber duck antennas, a charging base for the UV5Gs, and the stock mag mount antenna for the 275, which I don't use, but seemed like a good thing to toss in for completeness sake. I used the lower foam layer for the Baofeng charging base, cig plug, and stock external magnetic mount antenna for the 275. The MX275 instructions are underneath it all, since you need them to translate real PL tones to the codes that Midland uses. None of this is high end stuff, but it should be relatively convenient.

The Retevis RA25 and the Anytone 779UV are also listed. I noticed that all three are separately listed as well and not the typical “see this or that model”. I for one am glad to see these added being a Mac guy.

"Stealth" wasn't so much a consideration as "easily finding it when 1 of the kids accidentally drops it down a ravine"

CW is a mode. Morse Code is the most common code use with CW.

This^^^ I like to program my radios so they are the same. Being able to copy and paste is very useful.

Does it do it if you program in the DCS split tone through the OE software? If so, then it might be something weird with the radio. if not, then it'd be worth reporting the issue to Chirp so it can potentially be corrected/

It's simple, but it's clunky as hell. Being able to copy and move entire lines (or hell, an entire table of channels) at once, instead of doing them cell by cell, is nice. But if you don't screw around with your config much and just set it up once and use it, then there's no reason the OE software won't work.

It works on a Mac.

@amaff Very Nice. The bright colors were a great choice for such a setup.

There is a problem that will prevent me from using Chirp to write to the DB20-G. After downloading channels, there are 2 channels (22 and 38) highlighted in red which have a mouse-over notice that says list index out of range. Both of these are set to .725 with split DCS tones. Other channels with same frequency but CTCSS tone are OK, and so are channels with DCS same on both in and out. I'll have to stick with the company software until Chirp developer(s) fix this. There are no frequency range settings for GMRS mode (not surprising). The channel list shows that TX Disable can be set to Enabled for 8-14, but whether the radio will actually transmit I can't test until I can write to the radio after the above issue is fixed. Update: I added a fake channel (.625 simplex on 44) with split DCS tones (1N, 2N) and Chirp read that OK. So I don't know exactly what combination triggers the error. Update2: Added another fake channel (.725 simplex on 46) with split DCS (773N, 1N) and this one does generate the error. And, tried a couple more combinations... doesn't appear to be related to frequency, just DCS split.

Showing respect for another person’s life is not weird. Now if you start fixating on it, that’s another story. One thing about the Anytone; if the call sign is just used for the splash screen that’s okay, but if you use the radio on DMR you’ll want/need to change the DMR ID to your own before transmitting.

Yep, there are other brands that are way more expensive.

Is it a HAM Lic? you follow this copied cliped process: To request a vanity call sign that was previously held by a deceased individual, you can apply for it under the "in memoriam" provision or the "close relative of former holder" provision, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). You must have in your station records a written statement from a spouse, child, grandchild, stepchild, parent, grandparent, stepparent, brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, or in-law of the deceased confirming their association with the club and their consent to your request. Here's a more detailed explanation: 1. Check if the call sign is available: Use the FCC Universal Licensing System (ULS) or other databases like QRZ.com to see if the call sign is currently in use or available.

The Apache 3800 is $40 and the Apache 4800 is $60. Plus they are on sale quite often for less.

FYI the radio is now in Chirp

I have two of the Apache cases too. The Retevis RT97 repeater setup an a few HTs. All the appropriate accessories under the repeater.

It is not available for GMRS..

Showing respect for someone who passed isn't weird. The world could use more like you.

You're a ringer - you already know what it means and how to use it.

Yea. that's pretty weird!

It could be anything. What does the Morse code say?

That’s exactly right. I tried hard to give @Socalgmrs his due. I even upvoted a few of his posts after others piled on just because it was him, wanting him to settle in and realize he didn’t have to act like that, but after the past few years where he has steadily gotten worse rather than better I realized that nothing I did was going to change for the better. It helps to understand that he was a member here under the name wrxp381 (his call sign), then changed his username to SocalGMRS, quit the forums, had all of his identifiable posts changed to come from username “guest”, and then came back as socalgmrs again to act exactly the same way he did before or worse. As Randy said, others will provide whatever good information that he might have injected into a conversation. You’ll literally miss nothing by adding him to your ignore list.

I don't know radios but I do know software, so I'm gonna nerd out for a minute: No, as you noticed, sorting numbers stored in a text field does not always return useful results. Fields in a database have a specific type - numeric fields can only have numbers, text fields can only have text, then you've got stuff like dates, timestamps, booleans (true/false which is sometimes stored as 1 or 0). You can't have combinations of types in a column in most databases so if you have text and numbers in a list, everything is stored as text and the sorting has to go by character value, which is when you wind up with "111" coming before "9" just because of the first character in the string. And if you do manage to squash two lists together and end up with text and numeric values (like [67, 77, "Unlisted"]), the software is probably going to complain that your array can't be converted to a common type or it'll do something weird like calculate a numeric value for "Unlisted" based on the numeric value of each character or turn the numbers back into strings, and then you're back to a weird sort order. It's dumb sometimes and we know it's dumb, but that's how this stuff works. That said, there's three common ways to implement a sort that does what you want it to do: One way is to pad out your numbers so they're always a fixed number of digits ("77 Hz" becomes "077.0 Hz", "251.4 Hz" can stay as is) so that the hundreds digit is always there to be sorted first, making string sorting work correctly. This lets you use pull values straight out of the database without doing anything extra behind the scenes to sort it, but it's still a little janky because most people don't use leading zeroes when writing out numbers and you'll end up with DPL and CTCSS tones mixed in because "071 DPL" and "077.0 Hz" both come before "251.4 Hz". You could flip stuff around like 'DPL 071' and 'Hz 077.0' or put a prefix like 'CTCSS 077.0 Hz' to enforce grouping, but that doesn't always look right, either. Second way is to store your numeric values in separate fields - CTCSS becomes its own numeric column, DPL becomes its own column, and then you use something like 0 for "No Tone" and null for Unlisted. You can tack on ' Hz' or ' DPL' in the display. This works if you don't mind having multiple columns instead of a single one - would probably work for RX/TX tones as long as you don't mind having four columns instead of two (CTCSS Rx, CTCSS Tx, DPL Rx, DPL Tx instead of just Rx and Tx). Last way (and probably the best if you want a single display column) is having a hidden index for the values that is numeric, and then you sort by that index - you could map CTCSS frequencies directly ("77.0 Hz" becomes 77) and assign text values obviously high/low values to force them to be at the top or bottom of the list. Unlisted would end up as 999999 if you want it to be last when you sort by ascending, or -999999 if you want it to be first. That gets stored in a separate table and then you do a little magic behind the scenes to sort the list by index before being displayed. This also lets you do do stuff like grouping - you can stick a numeric prefix on things so they're always together. If you pad out all the numbers so they're 6 digits, you can make your CTCSS tones start with 100 (so "77.0 Hz" becomes 100077) and your DPL tones start with 500 ("071 DPL" becomes 500071), when you sort, your CTCSS and DPL tones will always be in their 100xxx and 500xxx groups. Plus you can do stuff like custom sort orders - giving "No Tone" an index of 0 and "Unlisted" an index of 999999 lets you put them at the start and end of the list, with all the numeric values in between. This looks a lot cleaner and you have more control over your sort order but now you have to maintain a table of index/display values, so if you have a column with values A, B, C and indexes of A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, and someone wants to add a record with value D, you have to remember to add D = 4 to the the index list or you'll end up with a null index value and it gets displayed in an unexpected spot in the list (usually first). No idea what the software currently supports, but implementing any of the solutions are going to have trade-offs. The good thing about GMRS tones is its a fixed list of values so there wouldn't be much maintenance of the index, but implementing it in the first place is probably a bit of a hassle. Dealing with this kind of stuff is why they pay me the big medium bucks. Anyway. That's a lot of text to say "yes, storing numbers in a text field gets weird when you sort them and we know it sucks and there are ways around it but it might not be worth dealing with it". Thank you for coming to my TED Talk and letting me rant about sorting instead of working.

This is the only thing in your post that gave me heartburn. RG8x is terrible for GMRS. If you’re using more than just a very short length you’re attenuating a significant portion of your RF output in the cable before it ever gets to the antenna. Fifty feet of RG8X attenuates 62% of the signal. 50 watts out of the radio becomes 18 watts delivered to the antenna. https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/