WRWE456

Hello and welcome! Sounds like maybe you have not found anyone that wants to talk to a stranger yet. GMRS is kind of a bring your own contacts radio service. Most people use it to talk to friends while doing activities like hiking, camping, off roading, shopping, traveling with multiple cars etc. Most users are not interested in talking to strangers. If you can find a repeater that is close enough that you can reach you may have better luck. Get a friend to help test how far you can reach. Take another radio and see how far you can talk in different situations. That will tell you if the radios are working properly. Also just because you can receive signals from far away does not mean you are close enough to reach them. Best to test for yourself. If the radios are working fine then its a matter of finding someone willing to talk to you. It is also likely that many are using "privacy tones" and will not hear you.

Hey glad I could help. We have all been new at this. Feel free to ask more questions.

Hello and welcome! The standard first question we should ask is, have you read and "studied" the manual? I do not have that radio but just looked it up and read through the manual and it's reasonably well written in good English. The first thing to learn is how to navigate the menu and successfully make changes to settings. Practice changing things like squelch levels and turning on and off the Rodger beep or the display brightness etc. The F button brings up the menu, the up and down arrows scroll through the options, F to select the option, up down to chose the setting to change, once chosen F to confirm then A/B button to exit menu. (That is clearly described in the manual) Once you are comfortable with getting around the menu and making settings changes you can move on. You really need to know how to work the radio. Couple of other points: In order to make Programing changes to a channel you must be on that channel. To transmit (TX) on GMRS channels you must be in "channel mode" not LSO mode (called VFO by most others) which is frequency mode). LSO is for "listening only" to non GMRS channels/frequencies. GMRS frequencies are channelized to make it easier. Rather than memorizing say frequency 462.5625 its easier to just remember channel 1. Hope this helps. When asking further questions give as much info as you can. Details matter with radio. Good luck!

Welcome! That radio is a ham radio not a GMRS and of course the antenna is not right either. That is kind of a hard way to start in GMRS. Much easier to buy a dedicated GMRS radio and antenna. Can get both for under $100. What you are asking can be done but there is a learning curve.

I missed the mobile part. Thanks.

Have you considered a scanner? They are much faster at scanning than any two way radio. Also you may need a different antenna to receive air band well for a two way radio unless you are close to the action.

Welcome! Now you are on your way to becoming a "radio dork".

That is surprising given the price.

It's not so much about the added power as it is about a better antenna mounted outside the vehicle. If you had a handheld that had a removable antenna you could connect it to a good mobile or base station antenna and greatly improve your range. That's the main reason I don't like Midland HT's. Remember GMRS is UHF which is mostly "line of sight" If the two antenna's can see each other they can communicate. I live on top of a hill that has line of sight to a large foot print repeater on a mountain East of Seattle that is 92 miles from my location. I can easily communicate with it using a five watt Wouxun KG-935G+ hand held connected to a roof top antenna.

You can have it both ways. If you use an NMO modular mount either through the roof (drilled hole) or magnet mount you can use a tall antenna and just unscrew it and swap it for the short one when you carry something on the roof rack.

Midland handhelds do not have removable antennas that I am aware of.

Ya I have all my radios setup with BNC connectors, including the KG-1000G+ in my truck. That way I can hook up an HT or scanner if needed or for testing quickly. I used an HT for a mobile and as a base radio for over a year. It works good with a mag mount antenna and speaker mic for both applications but It does get old after a while. Plus I was worried about the wear and tear of constant plugging and unplugging of connectors. And a base/ mobile would be even worse. Bigger heavier to pack from the house to car and back along with everything else I bring. The HT I can throw in my lunch box.

To swap NMO antennas you just unscrew the the base from the mount sticking through roof and screw on a different one. You can swap them as needed for different applications.

When a repeater asks for an input tone that is the tone your radio must transmit TX into the repeater. If the repeater asks for an output tone that is the tone that your radio listens for to hear the repeater RX.