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Sven, I think you’ve lost your marbles, That’s exactly why we have call signs and why we’re required to use them: to identify ourselves to others and have a way to look them up when we engage in the personal or business activities of “making contact”. Although it’s not explicitly encouraged like ham radio it’s absolutely not discouraged in any way, explicitly or implicitly.

I wish it was that boring around here. We have the most uncouth people on the radio around here. One lady got on the repeater (not simplex) to tell her husband to go break-up the kids from fighting because she was taking a crap and couldn't get off the commode.

"Well, you see, little Timmy, sometimes a man buys a radio so he can meet other men and exchange signal reports and talk about antennas." "What about talking to friends and family?" "Yeah yeah, they do that too, but first, let's talk about mag mounts and ground planes..."

Post a screenshot of the channel settings in Chirp. It's easy to set things wrong in Chirp. [Whenever you want help, give as much detail as you can.]

Offset +5MHz use a channel that allows transmit you could post all the relevant menu settings so someone might spot what's wrong

There are only 3 possibilities: You're on the wrong channel You've entered the wrong code(s) You're too far from the repeater The repeater is no longer online

What I hear is that one guy is going into town to get parts for the tractor or a load of feed. He and his friend get together on 70 cm DMR for maybe 10 minutes every day just to check in with each other. It’s nice to hear.

If you and your family member are both holding the radio at five feet off the ground, and there are absolutely no contours to the earth or other obstructions between you, you'll get about 5.5 miles range. This is because even lacking contours, at 5.5 miles the curvature of the earth will block your signal, if both antennas are at 5' off the ground. If you can get both antennas 20 feet off the ground, the curvature of the earth will attenuate the signal at just under 11 miles. So, again, if there are no contours to the terrain, and there is nothing else between you, the curvature comes into play at just under 11 miles. If you can get one antenna 30 feet off the ground, and the other is 5 feet (base station to handheld, for example), you will get 9.44 miles of range. To get ten mile coverage with one handheld radio (antenna 5 feet) and the other radio a base station, the base station's antenna needs to be 36 feet off the ground. Here's a formula you can use: range[miles] = 1.22459*sqrt(height[feet_antenna_A]) + 1.22459*sqrt(height[feet_antenna_B]) But that formula applies if the earth doesn't have any variations in the terrain. This is Kansas, but it's not *that* flat; there is some variation. That variation can help you or harm you. If you're able to take advantage of slight hills to get the antennas higher, great. If the slight hills block your antennas, not great. As for a repeater, it doesn't change physics, it just adds a third antenna to the mix that, if placed in a location between you and your family members, or if placed high on a hillside that all of you can "see" at the same time, is able to be the antenna you talk through. Repeaters make a lot of sense where I live; there are mountains around me, and everyone lives in a valley below the mountains. So if someone has the ability to place a repeater 1000 or 1500 feet above the valley, everyone can access that repeater all over the valley. But you're in flatter terrain, and may not find such advantaged repeaters. Also, this isn't a power issue. A 50w radio can't blast through the curvature of the earth. And if you all could "see" an antenna elevated a thousand feet over the area, you could all hit it at 2w from many miles away, until you reach the curvature limit again. A theoretical 1000 foot high antenna communicating with a handheld at 5 feet would have 41 miles range. The farthest repeater I can hit is 64 miles away, and I'm at 5000 feet elevation, the valley floor is 4200 feet, so we're both well above the obstructions around us and the curvature probably wouldn't eliminate our "line of sight" until we get to a distance of about 75 miles.

Both MURS and FRS lie just above the Ham 2M and 70cm bands. The ratio between the mid point of the 2M band frequency range to the mid point of the MURS band is 0.953. The ratio between the mid point of the 70cm band frequency range to the mid point of the FRS band is 0.946. It's an almost identical ratio so a simple reduction on the element length would likely work just fine for both to modify a Ham dual band rubber duck antenna.

It would be easy to make a dual band antenna that covers MURS and FRS/GMRS. It's done all of the time for 2m and 70cm dual band radios. Tri band and quad band hand held radios generally require two antennas: one for 2m/70cm and another for 1.25m and 6m. The cat's out of the bag when it comes to actually separating FRS from GMRS. I doubt that will ever happen. But I could be wrong on that.

"Making contacts" with anonymous men certainly counts as a personal activity... Very.. very personal..

My understanding is that if the radio itself is branded as BTECH, it is contract manufactured for them to their specs (by someone other than Baofeng). If the radio itself is branded as Baofeng (regardless of whether the box only says BTECH), it is a customized model from Baofeng which is usually (always?) exclusive to BTECH. For example, the UV-82HP is a BTECH exclusive, although there are generic tri-power UV-82s. My work on the BF-F8HP Pro (a BTECH exclusive) shows that BTECH is listening to customer feedback (many requests from Facebook, here, and other places) and it has been incorporated into the two firmware updates released so far, with more to come). It is also quite ahead of other analog Baofeng handhelds in terms of features, bug fixes, and programming software (Disclaimer: I write the Windows CPS programming software for the BF-F8HP Pro and co-manage firmware development, as well as dabbling in documentation. However, nothing I post should be considered an official statement of BTECH.) Speaking of the BF-F8HP Pro, if you use coupon code "CPS" at checkout you'll get 20% off (on that model only, and only on the BTECH website, not on Amazon). I should point out that the BF-F8HP Pro is not type approved for GMRS use, but since the equipment reviews rules were relaxed a while ago to allow discussions of non-GMRS equipment due to the overlap between the GMRS and ham communities, mentioning it here should be OK.

Had a nursing home near me using Channel 1 and 67.0 PL. Occasionally, usually late at night, I would say something like, "I just crapped my bed again. Can someone please come clean me up and change my sheets?" There would be several "Who said that"'s and confused chatter between the staff for a while. It helps if you can do a good "elderly person" voice. I could do that since my teens. I AM elderly now so it just gets easier.

Does the radio work on other repeaters? That is as good as a watt meter for testing if the repeaters are similar distances away or the one that does work is farther.

Make sure you join our weekly check-in net on every Wednesday at 8pm on the Brentwood Grasslands Repeater at 462.650. The tone is 123.0. Normal +5 offset.

ok.. so you have NOT confirmed the tone is correct.. CHIRP looks good to me, but see what the experts have to say. Have you ever tested your radio with a power meter?

Those both fall squarely under item #1 of my list.. He has a GMRS radio, and obviously he is a n00b so the mention of "offset" is unnecessary and only adds to his confusion.

Exactly! Because this advice is WRONG!! To "get caught" someone must first be looking for you.. and for someone to go looking for you, they must first care... TL;dr: You can't get caught by the FCC because the FCC isn't looking for you because the FCC does not care. SOURCE: The record of enforcements over the last 15 years as reported in the FCC's public enforcement database

Either way I was shocked.

i ordered one, i'll let you know.. Shhhhhhh..

That stuff happens because terrain acts like a wave guide, confines and reflects UHF signals to extend range beyond the RF LOS. Many people here have heard the term "Knife-edge Diffraction", but there is also Terrain Ducting / Terrain Channeling aka Guided Propagation.

I am so glad that people don’t act like that here in Montana.

Possibly, but ducting is erratic, not consistent. If he consistently works from that spot, it's NOT ducting.

Strange isn't it, that the radio rule-making enforcers would mingle an unlicensed and a licensed service with no way to distinguish the unlicensed users.

But it is vitally important, if not imperative that they first discuss their recent Bunionectomy and the status of Myrna Mae's Hernia prior to getting into the nuts an bolts of antennae...

I believe bubble-gum is the standard...

I've been hearing that more and more.. Either they are not locking the new ones or they are "accidentally" shipping the non-U.S. models into the U.S.

But only the FrankenRepeaters have the controller dangling from the side and have a Rasperry-Pi sticker on it.

A better antenna, mounted as high above your roof as possible (and the same on their end) might work.

For GMRS Wyoming designated 307 (channel 3, CTCSS tone #7) because the entire state has 307 as its area code. I don’t know anything like that in Montana. Here it would be 406.

Uh huh.. Then... Why do I hear FRS radios every time I'm on any of the GMRS repeater channels? and, why can I hear all of my locked/legal FRS radios on the GMRS repeater channels ? I am very confused.

i mixed a barch with caramel.. May as well enjoy irt

Make more. It's not going to end soon.

Sir, I am a serious Youtuber.. I don't "do" comical videos as they are beneath me and my audience.

Terri, Again I want to express my appreciation for your calm and thoughtful comments and informative posts in response to curmudgeonliness. Happy Independence Day!

The battery isn't - the contacts are on the inside face. It's a 5RM or 5RH variant not a UV-5R.

Thank you for sharing your insider knowledge.

What @SteveShannon said. However, Baofeng Tech has branched out in recent years and are having some equipment made to their specifications by other companies. That's probably why they have kind of backed away from Baofeng Tech in favor of BTech. As a general rule, the Baofeng products they sell are a bit more expensive than from other suppliers, but they often have a couple of extra features and they do back up their products and provide support for them.

Maybe instead of thinking of this as a "One band can't do both those frequency ranges" *problem*, it should be looked at as a "maybe GMRS should have cross-band repeaters, and maybe they could be used to build networks of repeaters with "not public network" connections..." *opportunity*.

Guess what ?? 6 meters was open yesterday and Today !! I made 11 new contacts on usb , and 4 on fm @ 50 watts !

Wanna have some fun? Belch a couple of times and listen as there is a panic to verify possession of all radios by the teacher they are assigned to. They think a kid has one of the radios. Orrr...after hearing names of teachers or administrators (Mr Jones, Mrs Smith, etc) in the school for a while, if you can get your voice high enough to genuinely sound like a kid, say something like "Mr Roe and Mrs Doe are sleeping together." Pandemonium will ensue. Don't ask how I know this.

Oh please people, just relax! Let them give it to us and then we worry about what we do. I am sorry, may be I am the only one with the body of an adult (a sexy one, if you must know, ), but the wonder of a child. They haven’t given them to us and I am already thinking about all the possibilities. Like a child about to get a new toy. Even though, I am sure that the FCC in their infinite wisdom will ruin it but coming up with some crazy restrictive regulations. Our government doesn’t like it when we have too much fun and freedom. Oh well, sometime is better than nothing.

My dad just took one of the paks into a Batteries Plus and they disassembled it, matched the three main cells with new equivalents, and re-soldered up the connectors on the new cells and re-shrinked wrapped them together and made 3 more for all their handsets on that system. I think they charged him like $11/pak.

Actually there ARE still 46/49 Cordless phones still in use, so Not true.

Actually, that would be very interesting considering the proposal is asking for 100 watts and repeater use in the 6M area. Can you imagine the 'FARS' people would get. This would open a whole new game.. I like the idea

Using existing radios, yes. But if the frequencies were given over to GMRS I'm pretty sure someone would find a way to make one radio do both.

The GMRS version of the 5RM series is the UV-5G Plus. Type-approval aside, the 5RM variants (with the exception of the UV-5G Plus) cannot be set to power levels below about 2w. That makes them incapable of meeting the technical requirements for operating on GMRS/FRS channels 8-14, since those channels are supposed to be constrained to 0.5w or less. Aside from that they can be correctly configured for 1-7 and 15-22, though they would still not be type-approved, so still in violation of the FCC rules, which not even the FCC has enforced against individuals historically. It would be impossible to distinguish a 5RM series configured technically correctly on channels 1-7 and 15-22 from a UV-5G Plus. Nobody could tell the difference. And on 8-14 it would be hard to know, though transmitting at 2w when you're supposed to stay under 0.5w is more likely to interfere with nearby repeater mains, so not a good practice. <update> If there is now a 5RM GMRS variant, that is probably going to be something very similar to the UV-5G Plus. And it may even be a type-approved radio. You could look it up in the FCC filing but it's a lot of work to find, and ultimately not worth the bother.

GMRS is another tool in the toolbox. Where some people might not have a ham license, the Gmrs license is good alternative. Even MURS is a good choice for people without Any license.

Ok, repeaters are transmitters. Transmitters must be part 95 accepted. Does any manufacturer sell one that is certified?