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It is perfectly legal to us GMRS radio in aircraft over the US and it's territories. I have talked to a friend of mine while in a private plane. I was mobile in Woodbridge Virginia and they were flying as far away as 47 miles from my location.

Being old and liking to talk face to face I solved the problem. First a bit of background. Neighbor and her kids survived a home invasion while on 911 waiting for police. The police showed up a couple of hours "after" the invaders left. I helped her and he husband with the use and purchase of that which can't be mentioned here and had an idea. What about a neighborhood "network" where we could check in on those who are elderly or infirm and also allow a call for help from neighbors during emergencies. I went out and talked to my neighbors and some were receptive. So I supplied a few radios to older neighbors, and some bought their own. Nothing official, but it works. No fancy interweb lists or maps, just good old talking with neighbors.

They seem to be a very popular radio and I'll bet they cranked the assembly line up to 11 to make more radios and many more are failing.

DMR IDs are only sent from/to whomever you contact. Most of the CPS requires an ID but the only purpose is to identify units on the same network.

Likely this. Aviation stuff is wildly expensive. I can definitely see them having 1 air-band radio, using that for unicom or tower frequencies, and then using GMRS or FRS for air-to-air comms. Slightly different use case, but Civil Air Patrol planes do something similar. Air-band for their aviation work, then air to air and air to ground (for SAR / other mission work) is VHF FM on their designated frequencies. (And can be configured as airborne repeaters, which is pretty rad).

Not Boring at ALL ! Quite fun actually, especially for those of us who Don't have the real estate for Full size towers and hf antennas.

95.307…Operation of Personal Radio Service stations in any location outside of those described in the following paragraphs is not authorized by this part. (B)Aboard any vessel or aircraft registered in the United States. With the permission of the captain, while the vessel or aircraft is within or over the United States or its territories, U.S. territorial waters, or upon or over international waters. So, it appears it’s allowed.

Possible you got 2 duds. If you have nothing showing on the meter likely it's showing correctly. What does the working radio show? If that shows 4-5 watts and the other shows zero then you got a dud x2. I've gotten 2 duds out of 16 radios. And they would transmit about 1000 ft or so before getting static and wouldn't reach any repeaters.

Wild azz guess for the win.

I see this question so often that this almost needs to be a direct post about it so it can be referenced. I came up from CB radio many years ago where guys would think that if they had a 1:1 match that they had somehow accomplished something almost magical and akin to hitting the lottery. Or they would brag about how they had a 1 to 1 match and how great their radio system worked and nothing could come close to it's performance. The truth is far less dramatic than that. And when you really start to understand signal levels, delta of signal levels, meaning how much difference in signal level A from signal level B actually is and what the perceived and actual effects of that level difference is, you quickly find out that it ain't much. Now you meter actually SHOWS the percentage of signal forward VS reflected which is SWR. SWR is the RATIO of forward vs reflected power. Of course reflected power is power that is NOT being radiated by the antenna. Some same it backs up to the radio and is burnt off as heat, others will tell you it reflects from the radio back to the antenna and is then radiated (which is BS and due to phase changes would really DECREASE your signal) and there are a few other stories out there of what becomes of the reflected power.. but the crux of it is, it's not going out the antenna as signal. So then we get into the discussion of decibel or dB. And here's where the rubber really hits the road. Because while the radio is rated in WATTS for transmit, the receiver is rated in dBm for receive. And the whole idea of GMRS radio is talking to others. The other guys receiver is what you are trying to effect a response from. And NO amount of power matters if there is no one listening on the other end. That is referred to HAM radio at this point... no one listening. So a cool little tidbit of radio is that wattage can also be expressed as dBm. Now, some might know something of decibels from school and that it's a logarithmic number that is a delta or difference from some other value. That's where the little 'm' comes in on dBm. The 'm' in this case is 1 milliwatt and it equals 0 dBm. so the 'm' sets the reference point of the delta. Positive numbers are values above 1 milliwatt and negative numbers are values BELOW 1 milliwatt. So then we can start looking at something recogniziable. 0dBm = 1 milliwatt 0.001 watt 30dBm = 1 watt 33dBm = 2 watts 36dBm = 4 watts 39dBm = 8 watts 42dBm = 16 watts 50dBm=100 watts 60dBm = 1000 watts Couple things to see here. A change of 3dB is double / half the original power. 10dB adds or removes a zero from the value and 30dB of change is 1000 times or 3 zeros So for every 10 dB of change, you add or subtract a zero or move the decimal place up or down. Now we have that established. We can get into receivers and receiver sensitivity. Most GMRS radios are going to hear down to -115 to -120dBm range. Now that's pretty wide, but that range covers from the crappiest radio to the best UHF receivers you will find. Then we get to the 12dB Sinad which is a 12dB signal to noise ratio receiver test. This is the intelligible signal (receive audio) being 12dB above the background noise in the sound coming out the speaker. Still has some noise but is fully understandable. This falls around -108 to -105. Then there is full quieting at -100 to -90. That is a dead silent signal where only the intelligence (spoken word) is heard in the receiver. These are in 10dB hops. Remember the 10 dB rule right. It's a signal level change factor of 10, one decimal place. Obviously smaller changes can be measured with test equipment. But your NOT going to HEAR a difference in the speaker with less change than the 10 dB hop. So NOW we get to SWR. And we start looking at signal change based on SWR or 1.5 , 1.75, 2, and 3. Anything over 3 is bad. And it's not really effecting the signal levels mean as much as it's creating a problem for the radio that's transmitting. All numbers are based on 100 watts transmit power. 1.50 : 1 SWR is 4 watts reflect and 96 watts radiated or a 0.1773dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 1.75 : 1 SWR is 6.7 watts reflect and 93 watts radiated or a 0.3152dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 2.00 : 1 SWR is 11 watts reflect and 89 watts radiated or a 0.5061dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 3.00 : 1 SWR is 25 watts reflect and 75 watts radiated or a 1.25dB difference from a 1 : 1 match SO... it takes a signal change of 10dB to HEAR it, and these changes are less than 1dB change until you get out in dangerous territory. So from a perfect match to a 2 : 1 match makes basically NO difference in the signal the other guy hears. These are the numbers. All this is on the web, and yes I use a calculator for it because math SUCKS. But it doesn't lie. But this is how I can sit down and figure out if you give me distance, antenna gain at both ends, cable loss at both ends and receive signal strength, I can tell you how much power you are running. There are some other things not mentioned like path loss that are taken into account (that's the distance portion) but it's all numbers once you have a good understanding of it.

There is a designated Aeronautical channel for private fixed wing aircraft for air-to-air communications. That channel is 122.750 MHz. Private Rotary Wing (Helicopters) have their own air-to-air communications channel.

Yea,, when you are interested in only those in your group.. Who cares about those 'other' guys?

for the most part, i have learned to ignore my assigned DMR ID and rely on my unique ID i made up.. As long as it gets programed in all the radios in your group, good to go and harms no one.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is a whole lot more to DMR than H.A.M.S radios networks.

No.. Too much risk, not enough reward.

You require a DMR ID to access amateur radio networks. Sent from my SM-S911U1 using Tapatalk

That's OK. One other point to make. You don't really need a unique DMR ID to use DMR. FCC doesn't require it, and it's not a substitute for ID'ing using your call sign. So if you're not in the official database all anyone sees is garbage. Not to mention spoofing DMR ID's. Yeah people do that and since it's not illegal the FCC couldn't care less. For those than want to register and get a DMR ID this is the place. https://radioid.net/ I also have a NXDN ID too BTW through this site. I also believe people use their DMR ID as the digital ID for P25.

When all else fails, I generally "sniff" out the access tone, and go on the repeater and ask for permission.

That's standard procedure for the military. We would always have at least one ground based forward air controller per brigade and usually had one per brigade combat team. And they used the low VHF band, 30 - 70 (88) MHz. IN the big Army units, the FAC's were always Air Force personnel. They always complained about living in the mud and muck with us ground pounders.

My Kenwood commercial DMR radios can't download any digital ID data base, that's not their market goal, Amateur use. I don't miss it one bit. When one is running around with the radio in a pocket or on a belt, using a headset or speaker mic, I doubt anyone is going to yank it out to look at the display every time they hear something. That makes the builtin DMR database feature sort of pointless.

I can only speculate, but perhaps they reserve the air band radio for conversations with the tower and leave it tuned to that frequency. Chit chat on GMRS doesn’t affect that.

A few months ago, and on ch. 16, I heard what appeared to be aircraft communicating here in the Phoenix Area talking about should they land at Sedona or Kingman for fuel.

Thats cool stuff.

Range will be very good in an aircraft. We have a guy that flies a lot and we can talk to him for a long ways on 2m and 70cm. The range of 70cm will be pretty much the same as GMRS. We really get good range on the repeater while he is flying. The repeater antennas are at 900-950 feet on a 1000 foot tower. We are blessed to have access to the local radio station's backup tower.

Yes that is correct. The reason for that is you need at least 10 contacts to activate a park. Plus there is a bonus point for each park to park contact. Here is the official POTA website and rules for POTA activations. https://docs.pota.app

SWR is somewhat important, but tells you nothing about gain or pattern. A dummy load will test nearly perfectly for SWR.

As someone whose end goal is to RV full time in retirement, I feel like this might be my focus when I enter the world of HAM. I appreciate the insight.

All of the above. POTA allow one to enjoy the outdoors while being on the air at the same time. One benefit is that those living in noisy RF environments can get away from all the noise by going to a park. Some will take a 100 watt radio and some will even take amplifiers. Others like using QRP radios (10 watts or less) to see how far away they can be heard and make contacts. I like using my 20 watt Xiegu G90 and keeping my antennas light and simple. Mostly it is a way to get out of the house and have fun.

Nice ducting this morning on GMRS. Had a Long Island repeater getting into the Baltimore/Annapolis area. I had a momentary "WOW" factor that I would never get with VOIP.

200 watts isn't QRP.

Agree, to me. The point being is if you are talking to someone on the other side of the world over VOIP there's absolutely no reason to get yourself excited as you really accomplished nothing radio related. Do it over the air and see how challenging it can be. Then you will have real excitement.

To you, perhaps.

"This long" has only been about three weeks. I've been a CB guy for the past three decades and didn't even really know what GMRS was until about 4 months ago. All I ever really used it for was communicating with OTR drivers when I was also on the road. Occasionally used it when offroad with others, but largely on the Interstates. I was largely ignorant of "skip" and the "Kilowatt Klub." I started looking into GMRS and HAM with interest about two months ago. Largely informed based on your videos, by the way. As I am, by nature, a rule follower, I made sure to cross the "t's" and dot the "i's." But once I really started to get my mind around the hyper-focused, local nature of what GMRS was and put that up against the absolute impossibility for any federal agency to monitor it, I realized what a paper tiger it all was.

No, I meant: Who do you talk to?

Does anyone think this is remotely a thing that is on the radar of law enforcement? “What ya got Bob? DUI? B and E? Domestic…?” “Na man this guy doesn’t have a valid GMRS license!” “What kind of animal is he?!!”

Probably, but you'd be surprised the esoterica some law enforcement officers know. I once stopped an Army recruiter driving a GSA vehicle and he was dickish about it, so I demanded he cough up a Standard Form 46 (government driver license) before I'd give him the ticket and let him leave. This was a long time ago -- the government driver license hasn't been a thing for decades. A deputy sheriff in the county south of me owns the GMRS repeater in that area. If he was of a mind to be petty, he might demand some kind of documentation of your authorization to operate that radio. If you were operating it while driving, he'd be well with his authority to do so. I'm not saying we should all carry our license(s) on us -- I don't -- but there is a non-zero chance that someday you may wish you had.

Regarding carrying a license copy, Hamcrazy.com has neat "credit card" size plastic license copies you can order. While unlikely I would ever need it for anything, I do carry one of my ham and my GMRS license in my wallet. They now have a version with your ham license on one side and your GMRS license on the other. I figure it can't hurt to have it on you. I mean, if you wind up in a severe earthquake, hurricane, etc, and you are at a shelter that is radio equipped, having such proof on your person might get you sitting at an operator's desk if they need people to man their radios. https://www.hamcrazy.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=14_21

How many people carry a copy of their ham or GMRS license with them in their car? You may be the ONLY one.

It's less expensive than both the KG-1000G Plus and either of the 50W Midland radios, both of which are very good sellers.. So far, based on my sales analytics, this radio is proving to be very popular.

If you mean "international QSOs" I am assuming you are talking about VOIP using a hotspot? Another boring aspect of digital amateur radio