Durake

Hi. Motorola doesn't charge for memberships to access their Motorola Online website. They do however charge for current up-to-date software/firmware access on radios that have not yet reached their end of life (EOL) support. If you would like to download software/firmware for radios that are currently supported they will charge you a one time payment for about 3 years of access/updates to that specific software. I believe it costs around $300-400 per software. Hope this answers your question! -Drake.

Howdy. Most consider 675 to be the unofficial "travelers aid" or "emergency" channel. However there are certainly no restrictions on using it for anything. REACT where I live in Dallas, Texas has a 600 and 675 repeater in downtown, the 675 is open for anyone to use however it's reserved for REACT during events. During the downtown shooting where 5 Dallas Police Officers were shot and killed the 675 channel had emergency traffic on it for people downtown that were in the area, and it was heavily used. It was the only actual emergency I've ever heard over any radio service GMRS or amateur, I always have my base station at home and mobile in the car monitoring 675 for both simplex and repeater operation. WQXR714.

Sorry for bringing back a semi-older thread, our Boy Scout camps here used MURS for the staff/rangers, also some of the troops used them too. Now the camps have their own frequency and repeater pair. I got my troop licensed to all the possible itinerant frequencies, before then we were using MURS, blue dot and green dot.

I'm sure there is someone more "qualified" to answer that question but I'd be more than happy to share my insight. I've also heard the same thing. In my experience I've had no issues. I heard on lower frequencies such a HF/VHF it can cause issues but nothing around UHF. That being said, for my car install I have a couple feet of coax coiled up under seat and a longer than need be power cable from the radio to the battery. No noticeable issues, I've even tried shorter cables to compare it and nothing is different. I don't think it's a bad idea to go ahead and keep the cables short to keep it nice and neat but if nobody will see the extra cables I think you're fine.

Looks awesome! Nice work.

Hey Ken, what berkinet posted is a great resource. Myself I usually will just give the callsign that way they don't have to worry about it. I'll simply call them by their name rather than a unit number. But either or is acceptable.

Very well written.. Good information.

Agreed. Plus, if someone could afford a trunking system and have it dedicated to GMRS.......I would say that money would be better put elsewhere. Unless of course free radios capable of trunking are coming with it for all users who want to use it.

My furthest was contact was 100 miles. Dallas, Texas all the way to Waco, Texas down south. It was a really clear night and I was able to hit repeaters on all of the repeater pairs using the 141.3 tone. I was talking to an operator down in Waco on the Waco repeater, I can't remember his callsign but I did write it down somewhere. I was using my Motorola PM400 on 25 watts with a 1/4 wave drilled on the center roof of my car. I was really impressed. We have a 600 and 675 repeater in downtown Dallas and other repeaters on 600 and 675 were doubling with eachother when I keyed up so I couldn't even hear my local repeaters, the band must've been really open that night..

I know some lazy radio companies will put their customers on FRS/GMRS channels and run whatever, analog, DMR, NXDN, etc. Wouldn't surprise me if I started hearing that stuff. I've already heard some construction crews using DMR on FRS channels in my area.

I recommend 400-470 if you think you'll eventually get your Ham license or would like to monitor Ham. If not then 450-512 is fine, but I've never had a need to go past 467. They both work the same for GMRS since GMRS is just 462-467.

Haha for sure. Let us know what you end up doing!

I wouldn't even bother. UHF vs VHF in a dense wooded area? You'll see a huge difference if you take 2 HT's and have them both with identical specs and do a range test on both bands. At all the BSA camps I've been to they've used VHF repeaters, for very good reasoning that UHF sucks in the woods. Here at the Summit for some reason we use UHF, I think it was the sales part on Motorola of how to get the most money out of us, UHF requires waaay more infrastructure to function just as well as VHF would in the woods. Not to discourage you from doing it, but in my opinion, I'd say don't bother. If it's not going to be that great of a system then don't put the money or resources into it.

I've used the M1225 as a repeater setup and mobile, I will agree. Very nice!

I'm a Motorola kind of guy, even if I gotta spend the extra to get it. I use a Motorola PM400 UHF 438-470, 1-25 watts customizable, only 64 channels but that works for what I need. RF goes out to a 1/4 wave NMO on the center of my roof. I have used a couple odd ball mobiles, but I've always gone back to Motorola. Best of luck!