@BradleyRN Paying for a premium membership on my GMRS.com doesn't automatically send a request to a specific repeater owner for tones to the repeater. You need to make a specific request to the repeater owner.
Irregular propagation makes this difficult. RepeaterBook has a "proximity" search but that isn't going to tell you any more than the map on myGMRS.com. There is a group researching making detailed propogation maps available but I don't remember who it was or what their progress is.
@WRYS709 Sorry, no I don't have one (yet). I've been thinking about getting one for my wife's car, just haven't pulled the trigger yet. Too many other things have come up lately.
It does seem like this radio would be supported since it is so popular. I guess people like it so much they aren't willing to give one up for development purposes.
What @Socalgmrs said is true most of the time. I have a fring case where I can not activate a particular repeater from my house on medium power but I can with high power. It is a UV-5R8W and there are a lot of trees and houses I have to deal with. In this case the extra power does make a difference.
The letters issue kind of reminds me of the way the letters in the Ionosphere regions came to be. Maybe the lines just evolved over time in a similar fashion.
@amaff good info, thanks for sharing. I think manual programming is something we all should become familiar with on our radios. It can be quite confusing and it's nice to have it figured out before you are out in the field or after a hurricane and need to make an unexpected change.
@WSEW953 In the end, you will just have to do some practical testing in your area of operation. There are just too many variable for anyone to predict for sure what your propagation will be like. @dosw idea of starting off inexpensive is not a bad idea. You will learn a lot in the process and be in a better position to make a good decision on a more expensive radio.
If the vast majority of your coms will be between some point and your house, you could set up a decent mast and antenna with a base station and possibly achieve what you are looking for without use of any repeater.
Also, be aware that repeaters have a 467.### input and a 462.### output. The repeater output frequency matches up with a simplex frequency. As a result, you can here repeater traffic on certain simplex channels.
Don't try to program a simplex channel (1-22) to access a repeater. It must be the appropriate repeater channel (23+) which will have the appropriate +5 offset.
To add to what @marcspaz said, you may want to think about how family members sound on the radio. My father has passed away but while he was alive, he and I sounded exactly the same on the radio, phone, intercom etc. The same was true with my mom and my sisters. The additional unit number or whatever you want to use can be helpful in cases like that.
Seems like people could at least read:
§ 97.403 Safety of life and protection of property.
No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur station of any means of radiocommunication at its disposal to provide essential communication needs in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available.
@WSFA358 for liking a comment, just hover over the circle with a heart in it and it will display the different "reactions" to choose from.
For repeaters, do a search, there is already a lot of info. After that, if you still have trouble, then ask a specific question and you will get plenty of help.
GMRS is intended for families and other small groups. As such, the technology is very limited. If you are looking to do other "interesting" things with two-way radios, you may need to look into ham.