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With me, and I'm not sure how guilty I may be, but if I do it's habit. A habit, because it's required on my work radio. It's only natural that some of those habits follow me. In my case, I'm usually checking for warrants. CCSD -Britt

I agree that it is courteous to ask for permission to use open repeaters. But it's definitely not required. As the custodian of our GMRS repeater that is open, I always try to approve requests to use our repeater when I receive them. If they are courteous enough to ask then I will be courteous enough to grant permission quickly.

Local ham fest's are another good place to look for used equipment. There are pluses and minuses on buying a shack in the box radio that does everything. One major downside is if something goes wrong then you lose everything at once. Another negative is that shack in the box radios are Jacks of alll trades but masters of none. The big plus is that you only need one radio. I personally prefer separate radios for home use. You also have CW privileges on 15m and 40m as a technician along with 10m AM/SSB, CW, and 10m digital modes. Since you recently got your tech license, now is the time to study for and take your general test as everything is still fresh in your memory. There really isn't much differences between the tech and general tests. Like any hobby, radio can get expensive if you let it. There are so many different things you can do with an amateur license, especially once you step up to general or extra.

I was using a DTMF switch that required an HT transceiver to remotely shut down my repeater. It worked but wasn't always reliable. One of my friends told me about an eWELink WiFi switch he uses for his garage door opener that works off a free eWelink phone app.. (both androoid & IOS). I bought one on Amazon along with a fused 30A relay. All together $12 bucks. Tested it out on the bench, works great. I can shut down the repeater anywhere in the world and it's pretty much 100% reliable.. Just got done printing up a case to hold it all.. thought i would share for anyone looking for an easy solution.. If you want the 3D box print... message me, i'll send it to youl. The eWeLink switches come in a one Ch, two Ch or 4 Ch DC configurations. i used their 'one Ch.' for this project. IMG_3172.HEIC

Hey guys! I’m new to GMRS, just got my callsign almost a week ago. I work in armed security and get bored so I’m always listening. i currently live in Bradyville and I work in Smyrna, Murfreesboro and sometimes get sent out to other odd locations and cities. i monitor Rutherford650 the most as well as the Woodbury (chainsaw575) please talk! I love banter and to listen!

First order of business is do some research on-line, see if anyone else has tried it. If so after reading reading the procedures you might change your mind, or go out and buy the required test equipment and give it a try. Also you'll need the service manual(s) for the radio to study before you even start. Just remember the "Golden Screwdriver" has killed many radios when used by unskilled/unknowledgeable hands. The worse that can happen is you get a non-functional radio. Which is basically what you have now anyway since it won't work on the frequencies you need.

*Researches* Holy shit! Of course the atmosphere has different refractive properties depending on density! With all the "Fields and Waves" bullshit they shoved into my head, I have no idea how I never realized this. The atmosphere is a gradient prism...

I have BNC connectors on the radios I use a lot. It makes connecting to a mag mount antenna much easier and doesn't stress the SMA connector nearly as much.

My repeater is open to anyone that wants to use it, following rules of course.. And i do reserve the right to shut it down on the ocasional 'jack wad'.. Dosen't happen offten but it does and usually due to one 74 year old looser named Ron Antonson

Listing a repeater as "open" is typically taken to mean no permission is required. However, politeness is never out of style, and there's no harm in contacting the owner to say thanks.

Make sure you join our weekly check-in net on every Wednesday at 8pm on the Brentwood Repeater at 462.600. The tone is 123.0. Normal +5 offset. *NOTE - the location has been changed from Brentwood GRASSLANDS at 650 to Brentwood 600, as of 7/23/25.*

Couldn't resist the price so I picked up a couple of these to play around with. Enjoy the video and thanks for watching.

The NotARubicon approves!

I’ve reported your post to the owner. He’s the only person who can help.

Installed a Midland MXT105B with a MXTA26 Antenna using a Midland Magnetic Base NMO Mount.

Kinda same, honestly. Unless I'm testing out a new radio or install, I basically never talk on the radio to talk on the radio. We're at the track or strung out along a hiking trail or in a group of vehicles driving somewhere and we need to talk amongst our group, not really to anyone else. Other people on frequency means we're moving to our secondary channel haha

I have a Quansheng UV-K5 (8) running a custom firmware. These are neat radios than can do quite a lot. With the proper firmware, they will even do double side band on the 2m band. I don't know about your radio but there are add on boards for the Quansheng to allow it to transmit on HF. I haven't tore into mine yet to add the board and second antenna.

And if you bought a mobile unit you would have to purchase some sort of antenna anyway. This is a good way to prep yourself for the upcoming upgrade to a mobile unit in the future.

Thanks, everyone for the excellent advice! Much appreciated! I decided to purchase a mag-mount antenna for myself. It will give me the additional flexibility of being able to put it on another vehicle, in case I'm driving the church van with a bunch of boys and dads, instead of my personal vehicle. Plus, it was a lot less expensive than the mobile unit! Maybe I'll eventually be able to convince the other dads to invest in one as well (first have to convince them to get their own handhelds and license!) Thanks again!

I agree with you. Its place in my lineup is as an EDC general-purpose radio. IMO, the UV-5r/BF-F8hp is too small to manipulate easily. It's fine if I don't need to change anything, but the tiny screen and buttons make it a pain to work with "on the fly". The AR-5RM/5RH Pro GPS has a larger screen and buttons but is too large to carry easily. It needs a belt case, or at least a clip, but I prefer to be able to carry it in a pocket. The K61 is intermediate in size, making it easy to deal with if I want to change something, but still small enough to carry in a pocket. I like the color screen of the 5RM, but it's really hard to see in bright sunlight. The K61 screen doesn't wash out much in bright light. It stores 999 channels, meaning I don't have to decide what to leave out vs the 5RM channels. I still like the 5RH Pro GPS best because I can store the channels in banks, but if I'm going to carry the radio quite a bit, I go with the K61. Edited to add: I forgot to mention that in addition to 70cm, 2m, GMRS, and MURS, it works on the 1.25 meter band, which I do use.

I ordered my h3 plus as a GMRS version to play with the Bluetooth programming. I did manage to get my h3 plus to program the ham stuff simply by selecting h3 in the program tab at the bottom of the OD Master app. I think I read the radio and made changes in the programming and wrote to the h3 plus. I haven't explored updating the firmware as I don't have a programming cable. Hope this helps. Doug

Excellent, congratulations! In your pursuit of a good rig, you may want to look around the used market for a decent priced Yaesu FT-991 or similar "shack in a box" type rig. Gives you the 10m and 6m bands you're licensed to operate on as well as 2m and 70cm all mode. As a Technician, you are licensed to operate digital modes on 10m as well, and there is activity, especially on FT8 mode quite often when the band is open. And it may, or may not, whet your appetite to upgrading to General and/or Extra if you find HF operating to be a thing you want to pursue down that rabbit hole. AS to where to look, if you're in the market, I would avoid FaceBook Marketplace, too much scamming there. Local buy/sell/trade nets on 2m usually have something to offer as well as local HamFests. Local Clubs are also a good source if you can find a good one. Enjoy your trip down the RF Rabbit Hole that is two-way radio!

From what I was told, even the US military went away from using a hardware key loader for at least the SINCGARS radios. Encryption might be fun to test but remember that the FCC states that encryption is not allowed on amateur radio bands or on GMRS channels. I find no use for AES256 after having to deal with it all of the time while in the Army.

BNC connectors is the way to go if you plan on connecting and disconnecting the external antenna often. Breaking the SMA connector is always possible when using a SMA to SO-239 adaptor cable.

Assume you mean AOAA in PA ? We will be there this weekend for Jeep Jamboree. Got home from Uhwarrie last night and had enough time to pressue wash semi clean to head north Wednesday night.

Just as a side note, my Modified UV-17 Pro GPS CPS and the BF-F8HP Pro CPS were done by "decompiling" the UV-17PG factory CPS starting with 1.2.4d. Earlier ones were done by patching the executable. You don't get any of the comments that were in the original source code, but everything else is there, including variable names. OTOH, trying to do that with a radio firmware file is a different kettle of eels. The CPU in the radio only has 128KB or 256KB of flash memory for its firmware. There's an external serial flash of 1MB or 2MB that stores things like the user configuration, fonts, voices, startup picture, calibration data, etc. - but the CPU can't run code from there - it can only access it as data. The normal Baofeng CPU these days is an ARM Cortex-M4 class CPU in a custom chip with other components, from some some manufacturers you've likely not heard of like Gigadevice/Artery. ARM cross-development toolchains / disassemblers are typically commercial products sold at inflated prices to large-volume purchasers of the CPUs. Some people have made progress using Ghidra, but since some of the parts of the radio firmware are supplied to Baofeng as "binary blobs" from the chip manufacturers, it will be a (steep) uphill struggle to completely decompile the firmware. For one thing, with that tiny amount of space there's no way to include the symbol table, which is one of the things that made decompiling the CPS possible/useful.

I have to cancel my trip California. I was looking forward to doing some wheeling on the Rubicon Trail and (possibly) wheeling with @OffRoaderX in Southern California... but 2 years in a row, my job has taken priority. I did get out and play on some East Coast trails last weekend. Of course, GMRS was our primary comms method, which was a great asset as always. I'm going to put a full-length video together soon, but wanted to share a teaser video with my radio-dork friends who are also my offroad-dork friends. LoL Mine is the white Gladiator. Can't wait to share the full video.

We are happy to announce we will be having a monthly test & tune day. This will help provide a platform for members to test radios, antennas, locations and things one needs to better further their knowledge of their GMRS radio operations. We hope once a month isn't enough and test & tunes will become the GMRS get out and find out days/weekends. More to come. Contact me if anyone has a day they might be testing. WSHD977 - Bob

Same here. I ask permission and offer thanks with a note that I will assume "open" means just that and requires no response from the owner. Long pause... ...due to traffic on Daytona 650, which is permission only. Turns out it was the owner asking for a radio check. We chatted for a while and he said the repeater had been unlisted for a couple years and recently made available via MyGMRS with permission only. Nice guy. This is a great example of asking permission, promising to follow the rules and getting to use someone else's gear. DAB650 has very little traffic. If the SHTF I'll move from wide open Orlando 700 to this little guy because 700 will get swamped.

There should be an option in the menu for naming the repeaters, i have my ar-5rm set up this way, witha ll the repeaters names... then it was just changing a setting in the menu of the radio, or in chirp for the name to show instead of the freq...

itll look like this when done..

With a 30 second period it sounds like it’s part of some signaling system. For a while various devices were sold that used FRS/GMRS frequencies for non personal radio purposes. Baby monitors, home weather stations, etc. Perhaps it’s something like that. Nothing prevents transmitting multiple CTCSS tones simultaneously with strings of data that include DTCSS codes, especially if those codes are being used to carry other data rather than access codes. Because they’re very short and audible CTCSS tones and DTCSS codes are extremely simple to inadvertently include in a transmission if a transmitter isn’t explicitly filtering them out. Our radios do that; they intentionally filter them out before adding specific ones in while transmitting. Someone’s home control system easily might not. Given the fact that you are able to anticipate when it’s going to be heard you should be able to track it.

I'm not near by... but this meter is "good enough" for GMRS users... this only works with analog signals, but gives you the SWR, power, and confirms frequency. Used one for years with no issues. https://www.amazon.com/Surecom-Gam3Gear-SW-102S-Connector-125-525Mhz/dp/B01M7QPXEY/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3RFKA6QH45YCA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ZkiREUuZSuQ_oim0vPoJNR_XM8V107XuS6AWXOeokubOCdVxUszbsKjYfCMesBgDp0ED-JqnC3OpZFW4o_g9PGSBkuFL2j4IZPFk3CoqQtXtTVcZmhLNCalFueW19_w8c_4aN7j73w3ESPkSo0BJvTbPjalgndvePMuQ2l0yo3jX7dG8rO5j-O0JV9tGiqv6ffrbIlMX1j7L9krlfPTsdVUze1ei91Y1hHXdZF5Vv4eu5WRuQWdoCfWU-CP7j7Xpw2aAIDmENQU2G5jxHgEz9A0hxumCAdjtYy0YxWKpLHs.38rQMOMVtYmxFlocGEF6qZuGHBYm0il4_YdCDkAtnWY&dib_tag=se&keywords=sw-102+meter&qid=1753635739&s=electronics&sprefix=sw-102+meter%2Celectronics%2C65&sr=1-2

Very good point.

Yeah, hams are fun when they end up with commercial radios. It is technically legal to program ham stuff in a Part 90 radio since they can basically use anything for a radio that will work on the frequency band they are allocated. For a long time they wouldn't program anything ham into radios at my shop. Then they figured they would have me do it since I was a ham. I wrote a 1 page agreement and instruction sheet for getting a commercial radio programmed with ham stuff. It basically stated that the owner was required to provide a spreadsheet with the column's that were laid out for TX and RX frequencies, TX and RX PL/DPL tones, channel alias, a column for channels in the scan list for the zone, high and low power and a couple other things. Then if they wanted anything commercial with transmit, they would need an MOU on letterhead from the person listed on the license or a chief or high ranking official with the agency or department that owned the frequency. The MOU's and the channel lineup would be kept on file and if a programming discrepancy was noticed that the sheet would be checked against what was in the radio. If it matched what was provided, they would need to pay to get it changed. We weren't going to be researching PL /DPL, TX frequencies or any of that. What was on the sheet was going in the radio. IF the sheet was wrong, the radio would be wrong. It set a price for a single zone with 16 to 20 channels. If multiple zones were requested, and it explained how to create the spreadsheet for that, it would be done on an hourly rate with one hour minimum. Which was at that time 130 an hour. I had a copy of it laminated and put at the front desk for the greeter / customer service person to have them read when they came through the door. It also had the contact info for the state agency that was in control of the state radio system and that they would need to get a radio ID from them and an MOU for the talkgroups they wanted if they were requesting access to the state wide trunked system. I already knew that they wouldn't issue ID's to private citizens directly and that some agency that was on the system would need to sponsor them to have a radio on the system, so that wasn't gonna happen. But when you establish a policy, and put price tags to it. It stops them cold. Oh, and we charged $500 for codeplug creation for a state wide system subscriber. Which is what we charged everyone else. Most of them would leave in a huff, a few would do it, and we were happy to have their money and their understanding of what they were going to get for it. I finally decided we weren't going to do anything with the ham DMR stuff or it would be strictly hourly rate to program with a 2 hour minimum. Because DMR on commercial radios when they want a bunch of group calls and crap takes a LOT of time to create. And the codeplug was a one off. What one guy wanted in his radio wasn't going to be in 100 radios, just his. The next guy would want different stuff in different places and it was all a big PITA so they were going to pay for it. And we didn't and don't program ham radios, if it didn't say Motorola on it, we weren't touching it.

I don't disagree, but I'm not sure where the lies and misinformation statement comes from. There are regulations on the books that restrict the stuff we are talking about. The FCC choosing to ignore the enforcement of those rules doesn't void them. And there are things that many of us do that violate those rules. The big one is running channels 14-22 wither wide band of in a radio that will not turn down to the legal power level. Then there are the guys with high power XTL's and such that don't turn their power down, running 100 watts on GMRS, either simplex or through a repeater. Hell, I will admit to the fact my one GMRS repeater is putting 75 watts out the back of it. Mind you it's going into a high loss transmit combiner, and that 75 in results in 18 out the other side. But it matches the receive very well at that level so I don't talk out farther than I can hear with mobile coverage. Portables can hear it farther than they can talk back to it, but that's a 10dB difference in power output causing that. And since it says NO LINKING I can't even add receive sites to equalize the portable coverage at this point. And again to your statement, who would know or care if I put up satellite receivers that were linked and voted back to the transmitter. The point is there are rules. You should at least TRY to follow them. Even if others don't.

Finally! Checked in on a local net and got to talk to real humans!!!!! Totally stoked, rabbit hole, here I come!

They either mean what they say when they label it open or it’s not really open. I would use it without seeking permission but if you get a chance contact the owner to say thanks.

And less than half the price.

Will be 4 next month. Says he's ready

A guy on one of the FB Groups for GMRS/FRS/MURS/CB posted: "I'm thinking off throwing out a call on my MURS Radio to see if anyone is around to talk, what do y'all think?" Besides the obvious reply about it being pretty much used for businesses for short distance comms. etc., my question back was, "what will you do for a callsign, given there are none for MURS; 'This is Cleanup on Aisle 9 monitoring, anyone around?' "

RF Agitator

I recently picked up a Baofeng AR-5RM. The kit included the radio with battery, a standard "701 clone" antenna tuned to FM (broadcast radio) / 136-174MHz / 400-520MHz, an Abbree AR-771 VHF/UHF antenna, a desktop charger, wrist strap, belt clip, and a manual which turned out to be better written than the manual for my old UV-5R radios. For those who are unfamiliar with this radio, it is pretty much identical to the UV-5G Plus, the UV-5RM Plus, and possibly other Baofeng radios. It's marketed as pushing up to 10w transmit power. The radio is quite a bit larger than the older UV-5G (UV-5R sibling). The screen is much nicer, though I've seen complaints that it's hard to read in bright sunlight. I suspect that's true, though it's still legible to me. The menus seem better laid out, but maybe that's because the display has more characters, so it's easier to understand what the menu is saying. Compared to the UV-5R's 128 memory locations, this radio has 999. Just about the first thing I did was use my old Baofeng UV-5R USB cable to program it with Chirp. This process went smoothly, and the data upload/download is about twice the speed of data transfers with the older UV-5G. Chirp is going to be Chirp -- if you know how to use it with one radio, it works just about the same for any compatible radio, with the addition or subtraction of a few field columns depending on the radio you're programming. I noticed that this radio allows up to 12 characters in the channel name field. And it offers three power levels, low, medium, and high. Through some testing I determined that these equate to about 2.5w, 5w, and 10w. Spurious emissions.... When transmitting with my older UV-5G and looking at the spectrum waterfall on my RTL-SDRv4 I would see a sharp peak at the frequency center, with two short peaks a few kilohertz away in either direction. This isn't terribly surprising, as my SDR's antenna is only six feet away when I test. But when I transmit with the AR-5RM and observe the waterfall, I don't see those secondary peaks on either side of the frequency center. I also used some software to do a wider scan with the SDR to see if there were other significant emissions across a broader portion of the UHF spectrum, and really didn't see much, in my unscientific test. Next I hooked up the Surecom SW-102 along with a dummy load, and tested power output at 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS frequencies. At low power, the output was usually in the 2.3-2.7w range, with a bit of a dip, closer to 1.9w in the 1.25m band. At medium power, there was another dip down to just over four watts at 1.25m, but in other VHF and UHF portions of the RF spectrum power was very close on either side of 5w -- sometimes a little over, other times a little under, but just barely. At full power it came in around 8.2w in the 1.25m band, but everywhere else was between 9.4w and 10.2w. It's worth noting that as a GMRS radio (for which it isn't type approved), it would be inappropriate to set it up to transmit on GMRS channels 8-14, since they're supposed to be 0.5w channels, and this radio really doesn't go below about 2.5w. For MURS (for which it is also not type approved) you're also pushing it a little, since MURS is supposed to be <2w. But 2.5w is only 25% too powerful, versus 5x more power than it should be putting out, which is the situation for GMRS 8-14. The antennas: I did sweeps with a NanoVNA within each of the ranges mentioned above; 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS. The included antennas perform fairly well. The shorter one had an SWR of <2.5:1 throughout all the ranges except 1.25m, where it was something like 3.5:1 -- not appropriate for use in that band. The longer antenna scored consistently better in all of the ranges I tested. Still not really appropriate for 1.25m. With both antennas, they tended to see a bit too much rise near the top of the Marine VHF spectrum. If this spectrum is important you would probably want an antenna better tuned to that set of frequencies. But they both did pretty good at 2m, MURS, 70cm, and GMRS. I compared a Nagoya NA-771G, and it did even better at GMRS frequencies, at the expense of slightly higher SWR in the lower parts of the 70cm band. The 771G did okay in the upper portions of the 2m band, and MURS as well, though it's not designed to be a dual band antenna. Testing with the long antenna (the Abbree 771) at 5w (medium power) I hit the Ogden repeater (43 miles away) and the Promontory repeater (64 miles away). It helps that I have line of sight to those repeaters. Over Simplex I tested at about 3 miles and 5 miles from my home at each power level using both the shorter and longer antenna. The 5-mile test was more interesting, so I'll rank the results of that test from best configuration to worst. First, though; I did manage to get through to my home, with where I had a VOX recorder set up, using each of the configurations. I'm going to mix my RA-87 (40w radio) with MXTA-26 for comparison: Best to Worst: Retevis at 40w: Full quieting, no static at all. Crisp sound. Retevis at 25w (M): Nearly full quieting, no static. Crisp sound. The noise floor was just very slightly higher. AR-5RM at High with long antenna: Obviously it's going to sound a little noisier at 10w with a 771 clone antenna than the Retevis, but still very good. Retevis at 5w (L): slightly higher noise floor than AR-5RM at 10w. AR-5RM at Medium power, long antenna: noise floor was just a little higher than before. AR-5RM at High power, short antenna: I had to listen several times to hear the difference between high/short and medium/long. But medium/long won by a hair. AR-5RM at Medium power, short antenna: Still pretty good, but high/short was a little less hiss. AR-5RM at low power, long antenna: Noise floor was quite a bit higher, and some static coming through. AR-5RM at low power, short antenna: Considerable hiss and static, but my voice was still very clear, easy to make out. I should have tested against my older UV-5G but I ran out of time. At higher powers, the difference between the long and short antenna wasn't as important. At lower powers, the antenna length mattered a lot more. Overall, though, antenna length seemed to make more difference than power level. Configuration: I don't see much point in draining the battery and singing my eyeballs by transmitting at 10w all the time. The sound quality at 5w from 5-miles away was pretty good, particularly with the longer antenna. And I was able to hit those distant repeaters at 5w. Therefore, as I configured the radio with Chirp, I set channels 1-7, 15-22, and repeater inputs to medium - 5w. I set MURS to Low, 2+w. Marine VHF/16 and the 68,71, etc working channels are set to Low (2+w). I haven't tested it with an antenna -- only with dummy load -- at 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm, and currently have it configured to not be able to transmit on any frequencies. And I've set GMRS channels 8-14 to not transmit, since its minimum power level is way too high compared to the requirement of staying below 0.5w on those channels. To configure it to not be able to transmit on a frequency that you have programmed into its memory slots, you set the "offset" to "off." At that point, when you hit PTT, nothing happens. In Chirp there are four possible offset modes: (blank) which is no offset/simplex; off which is no transmitting possible, + (positive) offset, and - (negative) offset. Air band: I've listened to air band with this radio. When you set it into the airband (108.0000 - 135.99875MHz) it automatically switches to AM, and will not transmit (tested with a dummy load). It does pick up ATC just fine. Battery life: I've never run it all the way down, so I don't know. But I do like that you can charge it either from the desktop base, OR with a USB-C plug. In the spirit of avoiding surprises: This radio, at least in the package I bought, doesn't come with a USB data cable. But it works with the same data cable used with the UV-5R or UV-5G. And within Chirp you chose the Baofeng 5RM profile (my UV-5G uses the Radiodity UV-5R profile). The green button (search): Hold the green button for a few seconds. The phone will say "Search." Now hold the PTT on another radio. In a few seconds this radio will show the frequency, and a second or so later, will show the DCS or CTCSS tone. Then it will let you save it into a memory bank. I can't remember for the life of me how to delete it (other than with Chirp) but that's in the manual, for sure. The point is that you can pair it up to another radio that is already set to a frequency and tone quickly and easily. I tend to be the one setting up my radios and handing them out to family members when we go skiing or hiking, so it's probably not a feature I'll need much. But if you find yourself bringing a radio to an event where you know others will be using GMRS or FRS to keep in touch, you can get paired up to their radios easily. I'm well aware this isn't a $50, $80, $100, or $150 two-way radio; it's a $35 (with extra antenna) multi-band two way radio; it should, by all rights, be a much worse radio. But its power levels are quite close to what's advertised, within about 5-6% of advertised across most of the bands I tested. 1.25cm is kind of the exception, being more like 10% off. But still, this radio is better than it should be. It feels pretty solid. Its sound quality is quite good. Listening to my recordings, it sounds like it transmits clearly. Scanning is pretty slow -- scanning is always slow on 2-way radios I've used. Squelch isn't perfect -- scanning 2m repeaters I keep getting hung up on one that must have another more distant one on the same frequency, too far to hear, but powerful enough to break squelch even when I have it set high. When people review equipment there's often some level of confirmation bias. I'm probably looking for reasons to like the radio, and to defend my purchasing decision. If I were looking for negatives, things not to like, I would come up with a few: It's quite a lot bigger than the UV-5G / UV-5R. It doesnt' fit into a pocket as easily. The included ABBREE 771 knockoff antenna feels cheaper than my Nagoya 771G, and the 701 knockoff is even cheaper than that. The scan button requires a long press, and an accidental short press puts you into a DTMF transmit mode that you can't seem to get out of except by hitting the "monitor" button once, which is an undocumented path. The antenna jack is SMA-M, whereas the UV-5G was SMA-F, so I had to order different adapters to be able to use an external antenna. The dust cover over the mic/speaker/data ports feels like it could wear out if you're opening and closing it a lot. Unlike the UV-5R/G you can't alter the levels associated with the squelch settings. That was a common customization people made with the UV-5R series. The USB-C charging light on the back of the battery shows a dim green when fully charged -- too dim to see in outdoor daylight. You can't set the power level low enough to meet power requirements for GMRS 8-14, but I don't really care about using those channels anyway; my mobile radios can't use 8-14 either. In the overall picture, those are minor things, for a $30-35 radio.