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I must admit I’m enjoying this thread—and a few years down the road, I look forward to the “kid misadventures of radio” all mentioned. I own 15 acres of woods on the side of a mountain, and my wife and I have taken to using HTs if I go for a walk and want to leave the cell phone (and the rest of the world) behind. But I totally see in the future, when we have a couple munchkins of our own, using said radios to call them when supper is ready…and all the fun that will come with little explorers chit-chatting through the woods…

Over the weekend my son’s phone was dead so he put in his Sonic order to me over the repeater. Oh well….

My granddaughter is at the age where she enjoys talking to me on GMRS using her parents radio or sometimes her grandmother's handheld. Good times.

The Midland is a solid unit for GMRS, but it’s quite expensive. It also ONLY does GMRS – no VHF/UHF scanning. That B-TECH is far less expensive, but I’ve read reports that it’s a bit quirky, sometimes noisy, and the volume is only accessible via menus. But it has fully integrated mic controls and can scan VHF/UHF. For my mobile station, I eventually settled on the AnyTone 778II (w VOX). It’s only 25W, but sounds amazing, scans VHF/UHF, and seems to have plenty of power to throw signal where I need it. AnyTone is also highly regarded in the budget mobile/base radio segment. See if they have a 50W radio that meets your needs, but I’m betting 25W would serve you well with the right antenna and mount location.

I participate in the local severe weather net on one of the amateur radio repeaters in my area. I don't chase storms, but I do report on them. There's no technical reason why it shouldn't work on GMRS, but there's no long-standing tradition of it, so you'd have to develop a network of spotters from the ground up. To get a very significant net, you'd have to have access to a repeater with good coverage. Simplex would work fine for intra-group communication, but a good "footprint" will require a repeater. As noted, you'd have to have someone with the ability to report to the National Weather Service because the advantage of a radio-based weather network is its immediacy -- reports are in real time as the action happens. Even if you don't have access to NWS, one or more local emergency service agencies might find it helpful. You'd have to ask them. A deputy sheriff operates a GMRS repeater I can reach in the county just south of me, and although he doesn't formally run a weather net to the best of my knowledge, if I hear of severe weather headed that way, I'll put out a warning on it. If he doesn't want me to do that, he'll say so. For the most part, GMRS is a service people use at a predetermined time with a predetermined group of people for a predetermined purpose, and AFAIK, there aren't a lot of people just constantly monitoring it as with ham bands. I don't know how you would get the word out to the GMRS community at large to "tune in" during severe weather. It may take quite a while for people to find out. If you had a repeater with some reach, people could even listen with FRS radios if they knew about it.

It stands for "Oh, Shit! Over!"

Scadacore will let you model the RF path between your two sites by showing the terrain and earth curvature you need to factor in for antenna height. As far as equipment, the three most important things are: 1) Antenna; 2) Height above ground (AGL) at both sites; 3) radio. If you don't have a clear path, no antenna or radio will work at GMRS frequencies as the signal travels about 15% further than the horizon. Power just means there is more signal in the area, not more distance. The 20 mile distance you estimate would be adequately served with a 25W radio in most instances. Personally, I would choose an Anytone radio over the two you mention as their price/performance is on a par with much more expensive units from other Chinese manufactures. RF Line of Sight - SCADACore

If it satisfies your communication requirements then it was a good choice.

I’ve been running this little Midland for a few weeks now in various regions (MidTN, Chatty, Northern AL, Bham, MidMS) and have been quite impressed with its performance. Sure, other antennas can throw farther, but this little guy is doing very well with its diminutive profile. Would recommend.

RF line of sight could be a problem, depending on how high you can realistically mount your antennas. An antenna mast with mounting hardware could easily set you back a couple hundred, to get your masts up 30 feet. On the other hand, mounting each antenna fifteen feet up on the roof, with one property 140 feet above the other property, could get you right around 20 miles. This is good news because it also means RF line of sight roof-top to roof-top is something you can verify with a couple of inexpensive handheld radios. So before buying nice radios, and before buying masts and antennas, buy a couple cheap GMRS handhelds for $30 each. Each of you stand on your roof. And try to talk to each other. If you get nothing, no static, no roger beeps, nothing, you're just out of luck. Those wooded areas between you are attenuating too much of your signal. On the other hand, if you're able to break squelch and hear each other a little, you can proceed. Now assume that you were able to break squelch for each other. What next? Each of you get a 25w to 50w radio, however many feet of LMR400 cable you each need, lightning arrestors, some fittings, and appropriate mounting hardware for the roof. Get a couple of antenna such as the Comet GP6NC GMRS antenna. Oh, and get 13.8v power supplies. Adding it all up you'll be spending around $525 to $725 each. As for repeaters; a repeater is useful if it can be higher than the other radios, and/or positioned somewhere between the other radios. It's useless to put a repeater on your roof, if the goal is just to extend range from your roof to the other person's roof. A repeater won't be giving you more range. What a repeater does is it allows one radio talking to the repeater to hear another radio talking to the repeater. If A and B cannot hear each other, but A can hear C, and B can hear C, then putting a repeater at position C will allow A and B to hear each other by talking through C. Another thing to do is to investigate what ham repeaters are in your area. If there are no GMRS repeaters, you may discover there *are* ham repeaters. Then you get licensed for whatever type of repeater exists in your area. If you find GMRS repeaters, great, get your GMRS license. If you find ham repeaters, you and the other party need to study for a couple weeks and get your ham licenses. If you are fortunate enough that there are good repeaters in your area (ham or gmrs), then you don't need to spend 500-700 each. You can each get a $30 radio that is made for the service type you're getting licensed in, and talk through the repeater. In my area there are about seven or eight pretty good GMRS repeaters. But there are also at least 25 very good 2m or 70cm amateur/ham repeaters. If that ratio holds true elsewhere, even if you don't have a GMRS repeater in your area, you may find there are one or more decent ham repeaters.

We are attempting to do something like this in our neighborhood, starting with using a base station to make announcements. 1,500+ acres though the woods may require a serious repeater eventually, but the idea of getting emergency information out to anyone holding a $10 radio is very appealing. We are 24 days into official hurricane season. Tick, tick, tick...

My wife is heading up to NYs to babysit our 2 grandsons while my boy does his bowling tournament thing. I came home for lunch to see her off. After she got settled into the car I took off and by the time I got to the shop she's calling me on the radio. She doesn't have a radio in her car so she was in the house. Turns out she couldn't find her phone and radioed me to call it so she could hear where it was. I did, she found it LOL. And that's why a radio is better than a phone, in this case LOL.

Hahaha @marcspaz

Me: I set our radios to channel 9 and locked the controls. Just use the side button, you don't need to touch anything else. KId: Okay, thanks dad! [fifteen minutes later] Kid: I pushed a bunch of buttons and now I can't talk to you. Me: Well, you unlocked the controls, set the radio to channel 3, set a PL tone, turned the volume all the way down, and... turned the roger beep back on. Little man loves his roger beep. They're FRS radios with a .5W TX max - we did a test and I can't pick them up outside the neighborhood. He did turn it to CH 15 (462.550) once and freaked out when it picked up local repeater traffic. That was fun. Couple of older guys talking about lunch and sports.

That 778 is the one I have. Nice radio for the price. It can transmit on 2m, 70cm, and GMRS if you pick the right band range. Yes, I know, I'm slapping my own hand for saying it.

I could do a Radio Mobile calculation to let you know if you have line of site or not. I would need pretty specific gps location to do so.

Pretty new here as well. If you are looking for a lot of good information, and not a little entertainment go here. https://www.youtube.com/@TheNotaRubicon

You have to start somewhere. We have a neighborhood group that currently is all simplex. Our biggest issues are earthquake and tsunami. Though after the Palisades fire, my area is similar geographically to that area, fire has popped up on our radar. It began after a neighbor had a home invasion and the LAPD showed up two hours later (she was hiding in her home on the phone with 911 as it happened). So now some of us have a secondary means for summoning help. Help that will be much quicker and probably better armed. A secondary use is we just check in with those more limited in mobility.

You mean this one?

Hi! I did the password reset a couple of days ago with no change. I run Android with Chrome as my browser. For whatever reason, the home page problem persisted until earlier this morning. Now all is well. I appreciate all of the suggestions and help!

I have found lately that Safari is having trouble loading the web page, i have had good luck using Chrome or Brave. As far as the password reset. of your are nervous abut it, go to your profile and reset it there. the reset pop up will go away

You don’t owe me any thanks. I literally did nothing other than reporting problems to the owner. Rich @rdunajewski is the owner and administrator. My guess is that he did something.

Hi Steve! I don't know what happened, but I just responded to Uncle Yoda's post and "POOF", everything is back to normal, now! Thank You, All for your help and patience!

If all it’s doing is asking you to select a new password, I think that’s happening to all users. If the webpage is jumbled, try doing a refresh. If it’s still jumbled, report it.

I wonder if it's user specific or regional, it's doing it for me.

DPL 023 is not a CTCSS tone. CTCSS is an analog tone in hertz and DPL is a digital code. The lowest standard CTCSS freq (Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System) is 67.0 Hertz (cycles). DPL (Digital Private Line) or DCS (Digital Coded Squelch) lowest code is 023 and the highest code is 754. DCS/DPL may be either normal (D023N) or inverted (D023I) They both function the same in protecting or keeping the receiver squelched until the tone or coded is present on the frequency/channel carrier. When the tone or code is interrupted by unkeying, the tone/code will cease thus the receiver will squelched and prevent other carriers without a tone or the incorrect code from opening up the receiver. Essentially it is a Nuisance Eliminator. Motorola trade name "Private Line" is misunderstood by many because no frequency is Private unless it is encrypted. Other radio manufacturers use a different name for their CTCSS/DCS or no name at all.

@Raybestos It's never stopped working for me. I did create a new password when prompted. The only update in SC in the past week is a short range repeater near Carowinds. If you need something in particular, I'll check on it for you.

i love the radio when RV'ing the highways with friends.. Defiantly would be lost without it

Yeah, back in the day of the old 3-watt analog "mobile phone" the wife would get into her car and call me to say she's on her way home from work. After a while I asked her why don't you call me from the phone on your desk before you leave? I told her that I love her, but you're costing me $0.25-cents each time you call from that damn phone. I'm glad the novelty wore off after a few weeks or I would be in the poor house.

Hmmm... never heard of OSO....

I started playing with a Baufang UV5R (before they locked them) in the HAM bands. Got bored with the HAM world and programed it to the GMRS side and thats when i began having fun with radio... My first GMRS radio (and favorite) was a Wouxun KG935 HT. I still dabble with HAM but for the most part i enjoy the GMRS side. I never did try a UV5G but did program one of my UV5R to GMRS only. Since these radios are all locked now i would recomend a UV5G or a Wouxun GMRS only radio, they have a few versions now..

I think I've finally sourced the issue. I did another firmware update, and completed another factory reset. This fixed the overall issue (so i thought). As I started piecing settings one by one, to try and source any further issues, i found that when you turn on the weather alert the previous issue happens. Once it is off, the radio works as it should.

Thank you for the kind words. It was my pleasure! I'm glad I was able to help.

Thank you very much! I am in.

If you are using GMRS to communicate between multiple vehicles in your group, or have any local GMRS repeaters, then using during storm chasing might be useful... but if you are looking for locals reporting on the storms, more likely to find it on HAM frequencies or MAYBE CB -- I would guess.

Manufacturers could design mobile radios to put out half a watt, but because FRS regulations require handheld radios and because GMRS regulations limit 8-14 to handheld radios, mobile radios could not be certified, even if they complied with the output power requirements.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Welcome to the new world of written communication brought to you by young people with limited education.

I can see where it might work well for that purpose.

The club will start holding a Wednesday Night Net on the Grasslands repeater. Adam WSHZ 630 has volunteered be the net controller (host) for the first one on June 11th. He has provided the below net procedure for this net.

Well I got around to doing an SWR scan of both the Comet CA-2x4SR and the Diamond NR240CA wide-band antennas the past few days. Both were tested on the UHF type roof rack mount I have on my Mazda. Both antennas are 5/8 wave design, thus they need a decent ground plane to work. I expected crummy results. However I'm absolutely shocked how well they matched up on the VHF and UHF bands!!! I guess there is enough "ground plane" under the mount, plus whatever capacitive coupling between the mounting strap and roof rack rail for a better coupling to the rack rail. The installation looks like this photo, but I have a different antenna on the mount at the time. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/471-mobile-mount-with-antenna-rear-view/?context=new The attached photos show the match on the VHF and UHF bands. The results are very similar. Not uprising since both designs look about the same except the center loading coil. subjectively I think the Diamond antenna match is a bit better.

I'm new to this also and went through the same progression, i.e. HT to mobile, with the expectation of eventually adding a base station -- maybe a repeater at some point. All this would, obviously, require lots of equipment and a modest stack of bucks, especially with more than one vehicle in the household. I've satisfied all of my use cases and spent a total of less than $150. How? By making everything portable. I have a 25W mobile radio and a small 3dB mag mount antenna. The radio plugs in to the cars' cigarette lighters so nothing is hard wired. I can move it between the cars and bring it inside to use as a base station. As I type it's sitting behind me in a closet atop a pizza pan hitting a repeater that's about 30 miles away. Hell, I could use it on my fiberglass boat but I don't want to explain why I have a pizza pan on the bow. Is this top-notch gear? Nope, but it works very well for me. I'll eventually upgrade (probably the antenna), but for now everything is working everywhere, and I haven't drilled a single hole. Oops, forgot the new inside power supply, so let's call it $200 total.

Welcome to the fold. I'll leave the technical stuff to guys like Steve. But I want to warn you someone here will likely tell you GMRS isn't a hoot like HAM. But take heart, their opinions hold no sway. And there's a good thread on how to block this individual. GMRS user is clunky. I going to start using GMRS'rs. Hey, it's a couple of letters shorter.

I've been listening to the old dudes on the local GMRS repeater talk about french onion soup and basketball (separate conversations) for too long and decided I need different soup conversations*, so I took my technician exam today. Got 33/35. Thanks, hamstudy.org! The proctoring team told me I should study for the general while this test still fresh, so that's the next goal. I have a certification exam I need to study for at work, but... that's not as much fun. *the french onion soup conversation was the first thing I heard on the local repeater but the actual catalyst for getting an amateur radio license was I managed to catch some transmissions from the ISS a couple of nights ago. I was reading about how you could contact the ISS on 2m/70cm bands and then discovered the ISS was directly overhead. Ran outside with a HT and managed to catch what I assume were packet transmissions. Now I want to talk to a space station. 8 year old me would think it's the coolest thing ever. 42 year old me still thinks it's pretty rad. Maybe someone up there prefers broccoli cheddar soup.

Wrong on both counts. GMRS is for whatever you want it to be used for. HAM is for whatever you want it to be used for. There are plenty of HAM's who use HAM while off-roading or hiking.There are plenty of GMRS users "making contacts" especially through repeaters. Who cares what they use it for. It's there to be used, for whatever someone wants to use it for. If someone wants to use a log book regardless of service, why would you even care?!

Congratulations on the test and welcome. Let me know if you hear a good recipe for navy bean soup. It’s my favorite ham soup

For the very old or computer illiterate, long ago we had a thing call pen and paper. You could even get paper with lines already printed on it. I suppose one could just write down the call sign and name then refer back to the paper when needed. I know these are archaic ideas, but I'm old and slow. Oh by the way I am putting together a spreadsheet with all of the accessible repeaters in my area. It includes things like the owner/call sign, TX frequency and RX frequency, codes, plus other stuff I just found interesting. It's not complete yet, but if anyone in the Greater Los Angeles are is interested.

With no display, I'd hate to try to feel my way through 30+ channels. I'm good with 12-16 channels selected by a knob, but I wouldn't want to have more than that. I think of knob-selector radios as being for non-radio people more than for radio dorks. I have some Arcshell AR-5s (similar to Baofeng 888s) that I pass out for US Cavalry Association events, and stuff that seems obvious to us can be a challenge for non-radio people. Getting everyone on the same channel was more difficult than I expected, and that's the only thing besides volume that a user can change. In general, most GMRS radios should be as plug-and-play as possible, IMO. Obviously the 500 is marketed toward the more advanced user, but I kind of wonder how many advanced users would go for this instead of some of the less expensive options which have a screen. I suspect anyone capable of programming a radio via software will balk at the $90 price tag as opposed to a $14 Baofeng. I certainly would.

I know a guy here on this forum that regularly/ALWAYS gets 200+ miles on all of his radios.. He apparently does this by purchasing every radio ever made and if it does not get 200+ miles, he just throws it directly into the trash.. All of his "friends" also do the same thing, so this method obviously works.