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At least on the official side. My buddy has his "export" mobile radio for 12/11/10 meters. He's run FM on 11M with a few people, and that's before the FCC allowed it. The question will it replace FRS. I think the answer is no. Why. The usage cases are different. People using FRS have short range communications requirements. The small size, radio plus antenna, fit in a shirt pocket or on a belt very easily. Anyone that's looked at some of the older "HT" style CB radio, well they're about the size of the old WWII walkies-talkies. The antennas for any reasonable radiation efficiency are ridiculously huge. These radios are not convenient to use. The retired cop in my radio coffee group tells us stories how the older Motorola radios were not liked that well. They were large, bulky and the officers complained about the antennas poking them in the armpits all the time with the radio on their utility belt.

The logical assumption is that there’s are CTCSS tones or DTCSS codes somewhere that you don’t realize are there, either on the FRS radio or on your other friends radios, or the radio is transmitting on frequencies the other radios are not receiving. We can’t really know for sure without more information, such as you posting a screenshot, a chirp file, maybe a device like the SW102 showing the output power and actual frequencies of the transmissions that others are not receiving. But we can speculate a bunch: Bad programming. Bad firmware. Both. But here’s something to try. When it’s transmitting and other people’s radios don’t seem to receive it, put your UV5R into “scan for tones” mode to see if it’s actually sending with a tone that the other radios filter out.

If he is a licensed GMRS users he does not need to lower his power down to 2 watts to legally communicate on FRS channels 1-7 and 15-22. He is allowed to use 5 watts on channels 1-7 and 50 watts on channels 15-22 even if he is communicating with a FRS user on those channrels.

His request doesn’t make sense. Any GMRS mobile radio will talk to FRS radios except for channels 8-14 which may only be handheld portable units by regulation. GMRS handheld radios can talk on 8-14.

^ This. Just have your friend use something other than 8-14.

Keep talking guys. I am learning a lot.

There is an issue with the data we receive from the FCC, which affects newer licenses. We worked around it and have processed all the available GMRS licenses that we can see through the FCC data export. If your license was issued in the last 48 hours, you should be good to go now!

This! Absolutely nothing unusual about the results.

I started out with a KG1000 repeater and never had issues other than desense early on. A couple times a year the repeater got pretty heavy use during nearby off roading events. Yea, they do get hot, but they keep on ticking. I use two Maxons for a portable repeater, they never break a sweat and they are housed in a ventilated ammo can. Now my current Hytera Repeater can run 24/7 with no worries. Amazingly, I paid not to much more for the Hytera radio then the two KG1000’s. I think we all do this, we learn the hard way.

I think it's great that they came up a solution, and as much as I love the KG-UV980P hardware platform, I would never use a KG-1000 nor a KG-UV980P as a full-time unattended repeater. 1.) As good as they are, they are not designed for continuous duty cycles or 24/7 operation. 2.) They may overheat or flat out fail with prolonged use. 3.) The transmit/receive isolation is not as good as a proper repeater, leading to desense issues. 4.) Audio quality and levels can be inconsistent. 5.) VOX or Carrier Operated Switching methods can introduce delays, distortions, and clipping. 6.) There is zero remote monitoring, diagnostics, or telemetry unless you engineer something yourself. 7.) Paired mobiles are extremely inefficient with regard to power consumption. The only time I ever have or ever would use paired radios as a repeater would be for temporary field use and as an emergency backup (maybe). In an emergency, the FCC isn't going to ding anyone for not having the repeater ID on it's own, and for temporary field use the control operator is IDing the repeater every time they ID themselves... so an add-on device is really not needed.

This is true for those using two KG-1000G radios as repeaters.

the break out board option will make it easier to implement a controller of your choice, so basicly you woiiuld be able to set up auto CW in any configuration you choose

I received the same email. I want to do some more research to see if they will ID every 15 minutes 24/7 or if it can be set so that it only IDs every 15 minutes when there is actual traffic on the repeater,

The bandwidth setting has nothing to do with your issue. Either there are tones on the radio that cannot 'hear', or the two radios are too close to each other when transmitting.

I was a police officer in the early 1980s and that's pretty much how we all felt, but we accepted it because there weren't any other options.

I like either the AR-5RM or the XTS5000, depending on how many monies you want to blow and how strongly your radio-dork gene is presenting.

The simple explanation is one is used to isolate the transmitter from the receiver. Since the repeater is a full duplex operation, transmit and receives at the same time, any RF energy from the transmitter will get into the receiver. When this happens the receiver will trigger the transmitter. Now you have a feedback loop where the system will stay locked up on transmit until the power is yanked, destruction of the receiver's input at worse, or simply kills the sensitivity of the receiver then it becomes deaf to weak signals. The typical notch/bandpass duplexer filter is setup such that the receive half of the filter is tuned to notch out the transmitter's frequency as much as possible. The bandpass filter on the transmitter side is tuned to eliminate as much of a spurious signals that are not on the exact transmitter's frequency, thus preventing them from entering the receiver's circuits. For the above to work a certain frequency minimum difference between the transmit and receive frequencies are required. This minimum depends on the quality (design) of the duplexer. https://horwin.info/en/pro-dupleksery/ https://www.repeater-builder.com/antenna/pdf/w6nbc-duplexer-book.pdf

I had an Uncle who was an Admiral in the Navy out of Groton. Passed away and only my Aunt is survived. No one in Rhode Island that I know of LOL

Glad I could help you spend money The black screen is definitely easier on the eyes in bright sunlight and at night. It's worth the extra $50 for me. I can't answer your question about swapping the remote heads between the radios since I have not tried it. I have not noticed any differences in the two radios except for the screen colors. Both work equally well on 2m and 70cm. I didn't bother doing the mod on my 2730B since I am not impressed with how my 2730A performs on GMRS. I've tested the 2730A against my TYT TH-7800 and my Wouxun KG-1000G. I've tried all three with my Comet CA-712EFC and Comet GP-9 antennas. The modded 2730 does not receive GMRS as well as the TH-7800 or KG-1000G no matter which antenna I use. And everyone says my transmissions are louder and clearer with the TH-7800 and KG-1000G

Ya, thanks for the offer. Up in CT so kinda far to travel. But maybe I'll get sick of working up and take a couple days off and go visiting. Got people as far down as Florida and Texas I'd like to meet up with some day to make the imaginary internet friend real friends.

It's been about a year since we got these and they are by far the most used radios in our household. We use them for simplex in the neighborhood when we're out walking or biking. They have had multiple slips, trips, and falls from bikes and scooters. We get coverage from inside the house to a point about 0.5 mi away in an urban neighborhood with lots of mature live oak trees. If both radios are outside, it's closer to 3/4 mi. I can hit a local repeater from inside Walmart at about the same distance without any problems. Actually, reaching the repeater can be done from inside my house at almost 2 mi away (elevation matters). For a <2W radio that's as small as the bubble pack radios and costs ~$13 ea, we've been very pleased. They're going back to the beach this year where it all started. There's more repeater coverage now so I'll have to reprogram them. I guess that's the biggest complaint is that there are not many DIY programmable channels. Otherwise, we've been happy with the purchase.

As far as I can determine, exactly 3 people in the US use FM CB. Is that better?

True, but if they had used the radio as little as they probably really did, the movie would have been much less exciting. I believe you're referring to Bat 21 which was supposedly based upon an actual incident. I give Hollywood a little slack on some of these things. Nobody wants to see a movie about a bunch of soldiers who spend 20 days standing around scratching their b@lls and then have a 3.6 minute firefight.

No, directly from Btech. I ordered the repeater from them. They decided the duplexer was troublesome and sent me a new one already tuned to the GMRS spectrum. I removed the old and installed the new. I still have the old one, they didn't want it back.

I would say that is much better than a radio anyway!

SOP hasn't changed, one still has to keep transmissions short to keep the enemy from triangulating your location. The Russians and Ukrainians are finding that out the hard way. Difference is you now have to worry about drones along with missiles and artillery. Signals are scrambled and most military radios use frequency hopping but the can still be located if they transmit too long.

I have the Btech RT50 and it has a full spectrum GMRS duplexer. It says it's rated at .25µV at 12dB SINAD. Can't say I can prove it but it seems to receive well for the antenna and it's height. This is the replacement duplexer they sent me. The originals sensitivity was much worse than the replacement. Tuned full band.

I guess I can justify my LMr400 cable as a Fathers Day gift (even if I ordered it last week).

RG8X has around 86% loss over 100 feet while LMR400 has around 48% loss over 100 feet. Plus the fact that the center conductor, insulations (dielectric) and shield braid are bigger with LMR400 which helps reduce loss. @WRDJ205 your real world measurements are close to what most online coax loss calculators will show. While a j pole is not the best antenna, they work just fine. I've seen enough home made UHF j pole antennas built from solid copper wire that works well. No they won't have as much gain as other designs but nothing wrong with a J pole.

Here is the difference between the 2730A and 2730B for those interested.

i have some from Nest that claims to be military grade. Big enough to hold a HT with antenna. These are more designed for EMT protection with i would think would work against cell phone detection.

I picked up a pair of GTX67 Pro Midlands for my son and his girl. They aren’t “radio people” so the simplified operation is a benefit for them. It’s also a good match for the MTX575 in his Jeep. He’s been happy with them so far.

I agree that the interface is less than intuitive. And it’s inconsistent. Sometimes you have to use the up and down buttons on top of the microphone to scroll through options, other times it’s a pair of buttons on the front of the microphone next to the FUN buttton.

There's hams here that are used to the normal answer, "it's complicated". It actually isn't. For a first mobile/base GMRS radio, the correct answer is the Radioddity DB-20G.

What part of Louisiana are you in? I am planning on relocating out there and looks like a good bit of GMRS activity in the southern part of the state.

There’s a couple Facebook groups for Louisiana GMRS users and one for SE Louisiana repeaters specifically. Come make some friends, probably more around than you realize depending on where you are. The New Orleans repeater is on GMRS Live and it pretty active.