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Just added that to my cart. I'm gonna test it next week.

Hello, this is whats missing Amazon.com: ZEZEFUFU Two-Way Relay Walkie Talkie Repeater Box RX/TX for Baofeng UV-5R Accessories 5MHz U-V V-U Cross Band Walkie Talkie Repeater : Electronics

And far more often than not, user error / misconfiguration stemming from not understanding how 'privacy tones' (I know, I know...) work.

This is not an issue. All GMRS radios/brands manufactured after 2017 can communicate with all other GMRS radios/brands, and most manufactured before 2017 can also. There may be isolated incidents of one radio not talking to another radio, but those are.. isolated...

A true GMRS radio is not that complicated; you switch to a channel (1-22), make sure that neither radio has tones enabled, and then just start talking. If you add a tone (CTCSS / PL, or DCS), you will need both radios to use the same tone. Midland gives its tones different numbers than other manufacturers, so you might have to look up in a crossreference table in the manual if you have a Midland. That's it for radio-to-radio communications. All GMRS radios should be compatible with all others at this level. Then getting into repeaters, you'll need to select the correct repeater channel (sometimes named 15R, through 22R, sometimes R1-R8, sometimes R23-R30), and the correct tones for that repeater. But any repeater-capable GMRS radio will work about the same way, and all should be compatible so long as they support repeaters in general.

“I’ll alert the Media!” - Hobson in “Arthur”

Thank you very much! I am in.

Appreciate the info. From what I've read I intend to look into Wouxun and Baofengs to start.

Looking at the map on mygmrs, the only repeater I see that has coverage in your area is the Mesa Tumbleweed repeater. But you will have to either request permission and the PL tones or try to scan for them. And you might not even pick that one up depending on your exact location.

Welcome!! Scan the 8 repeater channels for local activity Use the Repeater Map and Database on this website

I mentioned that their size was similar to a bubble pack radio and I think it may have been misunderstood.

We have a longer hand time set on our 2m Motorola Quantar 125 for this reason. The Quantar 125 has a pretty high spike in amp draw when it firsts starts transmitting. The spike is fast/short enough that amp meters can't get a good reading. This caused us some issues with our Renogy inverter. The repeater would cause the inverter to throw a ground fault error and shut down. Our fix was to have the Quantar plugged into a line conditioner and the line conditioner is plugged into the inverter.

I did try one like it but the one I had did not work. It may be a bad one but I had better results with just the wire with the appropriate jacks on either end.

Im ordering it over the weekend. i really thing that's the missing part to the setup.

I have not had any problems with my Q10H yet. But I have had other brands of radios act up. though usually just reloading stuff fixed them. I've had Icom and Yaesu radios have glitches too.

Make sure to fill us in..

I hated when I had to carry the PRC-77. At least I did not have to carry the PRC-77 at the same time carrying the M60 machine gun. The only SINCGARS radios I dealt with were vehicle mounted. They were heavy enough trying to carry from the shop to the vehicles for installation.

I've looked at the spec's for the man-pack radio itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/PRC-77_Portable_Transceiver At 1.5 to 2 watts for the size at the time seems crazy now days. Just think what a modem commercial, not military, grade P25 HT can do , 5 watts and with AES256 encryption. It would fit in a uniform shirt pocket. I also checked the spec's on the old WWII handie-talkies. I was shocked to see they only did 360 milliwatts! Remember that while watching those old B/W WWII movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-536

Okay, I reported your issue also.

I would implement a controller, Surecomm will have something that works with HT's

The new fangled radios are all computers now. And just as any computer might need the occasional reboot so do radios. Having to do the reset is just a step farther. I had to do it on one of my Wouxun radios that was acting weird. Fixed it up and I just hooked it up to the computer and reflashed my channels back into it. 5 minutes and done. But this would be a serious problem if it was an emergency. Good old fashion radio guts with no computer can have an advantage sometimes. Same goes with automobiles.

This is not how we radio in a polite society.

Using compander adds some audio elements that are not always pleasant. There’s almost always some background hiss in audio. That hiss is compressed along with the desired audio at the transmitter and expanded at the receiver. Some refer to the sound as resembling loud breathing or pumping. I started with compander turned on but didn’t like the sound. I have turned it off now.

My repeater ID feature stays idle until there is traffic and it will ID after that every 10 minutes as long as there is traffic, and it won't interrupt or interfere with the traffic.

I wish I could provide some help, but that question is out of my wheelhouse. I sure hope some folks that have much more technical knowledge than I can help you figure out your rx and/or tx issue at the affected location. I hope to learn something in the process, as well.

Not the best if you want to use for repeater work, but good enough if you know the frequencies/repeaters beforehand.

Just because it looks like it, doesn't mean it is. But in this case I think the cat squished the roof.

These MP31 radios are GMRS radios and programable using the Baoefeng software. However, their size is very compariable to the bubble pack radios.

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.

In that case you may want to use "split tones." This is means the that TX and RX tones are different - for example TX on 467.675 MHz with DCS tone 654 and RX on 462.675 with DCS tone 172. Our club repeater uses this strategy to help limit interference. There is even a repeater in my area that uses a digital tone for TX and an analog tone for RX. The caveat here is that many radios are not capable of operating with split tones - the recent Midland GMRS offerings are not capable of using split tones as far as I know. A split tone strategy can help limit interference and people inadvertently keying up your repeater, but this is not a silver bullet. A persistent repeater jammer can easily thwart this strategy.