I have no real preference concerning the roger beep but "some people" really get their panties in a wad over it. One morning on my way out of town at about 4:30am I was using a new UV-5R and the roger beep was on. Some guy came on and chewed me out for about 15 minutes. Some people really need to get a life.
I agree with @WRYZ926. A dedicated GMRS antenna will be better but there are others that will work quite well. The Nagoya UT72G is a GMRS antenna but I'm using the UT72 VHF/UHF antenna and it is working just fine.
Welcome @WSAG780 and @WSAH452. GMRS is a great service and I know you will both enjoy it. As @gortex2 you should use type certified radios but don't sweat it. Half or more of the people I talk to on GMRS aren't using type certified radios and no one cares as long as they stick to all the rest of the regs.
Just a little anecdote on commercial radios. A few months ago I was given an old Kenwood TH-75A. I also have a brand new Baofeng UV-5R8W. Last night I was listening to the NOAA Galveston station and decided to check out the difference between these two radios. I still like the Baofeng but WOW! the Kenwood sounded significantly better.
@RogerCarper Repeater channels start at 23 and go from there. 1-22 are simplex channels and will not transmit on repeaters. Also, some GMRS radios will not let you do certain things in VFO mode so make sure you are in Memory/Channel mode. Programming with a computer is almost always much easier than programming directly on the radio.
If your radio has repeater channels, they will already have the offset. Otherwise, you will have to add the offset. And yes, GMRS repeater offset is always +5MHz.
@Sshannon and @Radioguy7268 Not trying to hijack the thread, it's just that this is what caught my attention. I would like to find out more about this. If I need to start a new thread I will gladly do so. I'm just really interested in finding out more about this type of repeater build.
EV's have a long way to go before I feel comfortable buying one. A friend here at work just went through a long ordeal with his. It's brand new and it was in the shop for about 2 weeks.
Man, that really sucks. I hope you can get this all sorted out. If I were the judge, I'd tell Btech to replace the radio warranty or not since it's not what you actually ordered.
I'm not familiar with that specific radio but if you use one of the designated repeater channels, it should have the +5 already set. You should only need to enter the tones. Being a GMRS radio that is probably the case. When using non-type certified radios you will have to enter the offset.
Correction:
With CHIRP you do have to enter the +5 offset. With most factory GMRS software you don't.
@Tiercel That is exactly what I was talking about. When you "Uploaded from Radio" CHIRP created a file specific to that radio. That is the file you can download to that specific radio. You can copy channels and paste from any file but the file itself is radio specific. I can't even use a UV-5R GMRS file with a UV-5R8W.