WRXB215

Don't worry about knowing about DMR or any of the other modes for the ham tests until you reach the Extra level. DMR is not an easy protocol to program as there are 3 elements to sync for every contact you want to use.

If it's a TK-3302UK radio the attached software should work. Unzip the file and copy the contents for disks 1 through 4 to an empty folder. All the files must be in that folder. Then run the "setup.exe" file to install. Use the install key found in "SeriaL.txt" file. 
KPG-119D V2.00.zip Brochure-TK-2302_3302.pdf

Programming an AT778-UV by hand is not for the faint of heart. I tried it and couldn't connect to a repeater. As far as I could tell from the menu I was doing everything right. After reading from the radio with CHIRP I could see that the channel I was programming was in cross mode. Still not sure how that happened and not going to try and find out. Just do it the easy way with CHIRP and enjoy the radio.

That could be true, I wouldn’t doubt that, but that’s not the same as they have no way to do it and just because they haven’t doesn’t make it okay if you don’t have permission. Which was my point all along, not much more to say on the subject. 

Scofflaws, ne’er do wells, ruffians… the linkers were a mad bunch snapping their nasty antenna whips, growling at old women and kicking rocks at children. Then law came to town, a man with a badge THE FCC!!! 
…sorry I was imagining a 60’s TV show that never was 🤣
carry on.

Programming an AT778-UV by hand is not for the faint of heart. I tried it and couldn't connect to a repeater. As far as I could tell from the menu I was doing everything right. After reading from the radio with CHIRP I could see that the channel I was programming was in cross mode. Still not sure how that happened and not going to try and find out. Just do it the easy way with CHIRP and enjoy the radio.

This part surprised me.
"You have many other groups that used it as a money making thing. Hell before Texas did what they did they told me they had thousands in the bank. These groups charge for everything. Membership fees, advertising and fees for using there repeaters are just a few."
Not sure what he is talking about. I joined TexasGMRS.net before any of this ever happened. I've never been charged a penny, but I have access to all the repeaters.

This part surprised me.
"You have many other groups that used it as a money making thing. Hell before Texas did what they did they told me they had thousands in the bank. These groups charge for everything. Membership fees, advertising and fees for using there repeaters are just a few."
Not sure what he is talking about. I joined TexasGMRS.net before any of this ever happened. I've never been charged a penny, but I have access to all the repeaters.

This part surprised me.
"You have many other groups that used it as a money making thing. Hell before Texas did what they did they told me they had thousands in the bank. These groups charge for everything. Membership fees, advertising and fees for using there repeaters are just a few."
Not sure what he is talking about. I joined TexasGMRS.net before any of this ever happened. I've never been charged a penny, but I have access to all the repeaters.

This part surprised me.
"You have many other groups that used it as a money making thing. Hell before Texas did what they did they told me they had thousands in the bank. These groups charge for everything. Membership fees, advertising and fees for using there repeaters are just a few."
Not sure what he is talking about. I joined TexasGMRS.net before any of this ever happened. I've never been charged a penny, but I have access to all the repeaters.

Yes foliage will affect UHF frequencies. Pine and cedar trees are the worst. A higher gain antenna won't help all that much to punch through the foliage. Yes you might see a small  improvement. But your best solution is to get both antennas above the trees for a more clear line of sight.
The route I take regularly has a lot of eastern red cedars close to the road. I have dead zones with UHF, both 70cm and GMRS, where the cedar trees are tall and close to the edge of the road. The GMRS repeater antennas are at 400 feet and the 70cm repeater antennas are at 900 feet. I am using a 20" Tram antenna tuned for GMRS and a Comet SBB-1 dual band for 2m/70cm. The radios I am using are a TYT TH-7800 and Wouxun KG-1000G, both are 50 watt radios. While I do get some static in the same area when on 2m, I can still be clearly heard on the repeater. All repeater antennas are on the same 900 foot tower. 
Line of sight is king when it comes to UHF.

They charge a premium for something 🤷‍♂️....gotta pay for all the advertising and event involvement, I guess. In the ends, they're aiming at a certain level of user, I think primarily the on the trail simplex groups, with repeaters as an afterthought. They do out of the box 'just works' for that user fairly well.
I think the group here, by and large, wants a little more than that for our money. Their marketing does work, though, as I suspect a lot of the users here that didn't come to gmrs from a radio background started with Midland (myself included).
 

In some cases it may be a disadvantage. It has been pointed out before that in the heat of an emergency situation a complex radio in the hands of a new user is a bad idea.

I don't have this radio but maybe my two cents will help. As mentioned by @dosw, when programming Air Band in Chirp be sure to select AM in the mode column. Also some radios that do Air Band receive will only do so in the upper display and not the lower. Good luck.

Can't speak definitively to programming airband frequencies, as I haven't tried setting up specific ones. But on my version of Chirp, the Vendor setting should be Baofeng, and the Model should be set to 5RM. If you don't have this configuration you might be running an old version of Chirp. You're using Chirp-Next, right?
 
I can say that when I tried programming 118MHz into Chirp for this radio, Chirp automatically selected "AM":

I set Duplex to "off", as that's actually the setting that disables transmitting, though I'm fairly certain the Baofeng won't transmit on airband AM frequencies either way. I haven't tried uploading it to the radio. But Chirp does accept the frequency and auto-selects AM.

Software worked for me. I don't have a PC and needed to borrow one, but its seemed just fine at programing the radios I received. I like that I can listen to just about anything with these. I was in Gatlinburg and listened to the Ober Mountain operations people. that was fun.

Whether they are icoms, kenwoods, or baofengs, gmrs radios for the most part all use the same channels.  Not much advantage is gained with a fancy radio in untrained hands.  I loan out my radios for social outings, so they need to be durable and cheap in case of mishaps.  I'll be fancy with my laptop though.  Have a real one of those.  alienware m16r2.  When I get my technician ticket I'll look into getting something nicer for ham.  But I'd wager that baofeng makes and sells far more radios than the fancy guys, and there is a reason for it.

It really comes down to your use case. If the cheap radio has the features you want, and isn't having desense issues, (or it's less of an issue and you want less expensive handouts ), you're golden. If not, time to upgrade.
I have a good mix of radios (from the uv5r to vertex and Motorola), and played with some real world testing along the way. Sitting in the same spot, be it on the windowsill or on the mountain by the repeater sites) I've seen hands on where one is receiving while the the other is not, be it poor sensitivity in one case, or desense in the other. On the mountain (in the vicinity of tv, FM radio, and repeater sites), the uv-5r was receiving nothing, while the little yaesu ft4x was still able to use the close by repeater.
When harbor freight will do the job, it may not be necessary to spend the extra money on snap-on.

Standard Windows go to...... Restart the computer! LOL
I originally downloaded the UV-5RM Plus software by accident and got the Failure.
I removed it from the computer and downloaded the actual UV-5RM software, installed and tried it then and got the Failure.
I restarted the computer which cleaned the cache and tried it again and it Read the HT successfully.
Thanks again gang!
Brent

If the subject repeater stations are within the same capture-affect zone would not transmit a tone or code and run CSQ on the downlink and all the mobile stations would cooperate and share alike and play nice, it would work out very well. In otherwords, no simultaneous transmissions from the mobile stations. Have patience and be courteous and considerate to others.

Tested again in the 467 0.5w channels, also didn't see a difference.
Then I switched to the RTL-SDR because the software is easier to take a screenshot of. Also this time I spoke into the mic rather than just keying up. I think that was where my previous measurements fell down.

 
Within the waterfall (the lower section of the screenshot) there are two transmissions. The top transmission (more recent in time) was narrowband, the bottom transmission (more distant in time) was wideband. You can see the bandwidth peaks are wider. 
 
The red shading above is a 20kHz span, 10kHz deviation. The actual deviation of the radio is supposed to be around 2.5kHz in narrowband, and up to 5kHz in wideband. I see some difference when measured this way.
 
In this example I fed the radio on low power mode into the 61.5dB attenuation, and then into the RTL-SDRv4 on channel 19, and used SDR++ to observe the waterfall.

You already seem to have a good understanding of your radios so that’s great. One thing I’ll say is if you have two radios right next to each other they can desense each other. So when testing your repeater contact move them apart maybe 50’. You’re on the right track.

Just because someone's giving a traffic report on a repeater doesn't mean the repeater is 'open'. And even if it's open, I don't think I've seen a repeater that doesn't want an input tone. I'm sure there's probably one out there, but it's not remotely the default.
This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding about how radios work more than a problem with the radio.
 
 

Are you hearing the same traffic on both? If so this would indicate they are on a repeater and you would need to also be on a repeater channel with tones set to reach them.