WRYZ926

Actually there is a version of the UV-5r that is Part 95 certified. BAOFENG UV-5R GMRS Handheld Radio

To answer the original question. It depends on the radio manufacturer on how they list the 8 repeater channels. Some manufacturers will list them as Channels 23 through 30 while others will list them as repeater channels 1 though 8 and will abbreviate repeater as RPT. so the radio screen will show RPT1 though RPT 8. No matter how each manufacturer labels the repeater channels, they are the same across the board. All GMRS radios will transmit on 467.XXX to the repeaters and will receive the repeaters' output on 462.XXX. And all GMRS repeater use a positive offset of 5 MHz. Again, I will leave the arguing about if it is okay to use the repeater input channels for simplex to others. The FCC regulations have been posted for those who care about following them.

Am I on the mygmrs forum or Facebook? And I agree with @SteveShannon, I can see where someone that is disabled or has a family member that is disabled would take offense to comments about being disabled. Myself and my wife are both disabled, though neither of us are wheelchair bound. I'll let others argue about using the repeater input frequencies for simplex outside of testing. I have done it for testing purposes only and will use them in an emergency if needed. Okay back to trying to get the excess blood out of my caffeine system.

I have two repeaters within 50 miles of me that are on the same channel. One is east of me and one is west of me. The east repeater does not use tones while the west repeater does use tones. Most of the time I don't hardly ever hear the east repeater due to terrain between us but I can easily get into the west repeater. At times I get both repeaters. When I am picking up the east repeater it is usually at an s4 or s5 on my radio's signal strength meter. And I normally get the west repeater at an s6 or s7. The east repeater without tones definitely interferes with my ability to talk on and hear the west repeater when I am receiving both at the same time. So yes two repeaters that are about 100 miles apart can and will cause issues with anyone in between the two trying to talk on just one of the repeaters. Conditions and locations will have an effect.

I get trouble about that too. One guys calls them Hop Sing radios. But the Wouxun radios work well. And just because a Radio says Icom on it doesn't mean it is a good radio. My Icom IC-T10 is no better than the UV-5R. @WSFW950 I have zero experience with the Wouxun UV-8H but have used the UV-9D Mate and own the KG-Q10H. Both of those are good to go. I also have the KG-935G Plus and it has been good to go. I know the menus are the same for the KG-935G and the KG-XS20G and easy to use.

I do have the instructions for setting up the Bridgecom to use an external controller along with a sheet showing the cable pinout for connecting the two. Our plans are to connect the Bridgecom GMRS repeater and one of our 70cm repeaters (Motorola) to an ARCOM RC-210 controller once it arrives. I forgot to add earlier that we bought our BCR-40U without the built in duplexer. We had a spare duplexer that is higher quality sitting around so decided to use it instead. My biggest gripes was the lack of customer support and the fact that they deleted any negative reviews on Facebook. I bet they do the same on their own website too. I figured I would post my review to help save people some headaches if they are looking to get a Bridgecom GMRS repeater and want the CW ID to work as expected without having to buy an additional controller.

I also found out that e-ham will delete any review that says anything negative about customer service. Shouldn't that be included in any review?

Well I figured it was time for a review of the Bridgecom BCR-40U repeater now that we have had ours on line for 12 months. The good; The repeater works pretty good for the most part and the sound and duty cycle is good. The bad: First the built in CW ID cuts people off and no one can transmit on the repeater while the ID is transmitting. Second, the CW ID is ONLY transmitted without tones. So if you have receive tones set on your radio, you will never hear the CW ID which leads to the first problem of getting cutoff mid transmission. The UGLY: Bridgecom customer service is non existent when it comes to their repeaters. I submitted my first support ticket only to have them reply to shut the CW ID off. To make it worse, they closed the ticket before I could even reply to them. I then tried contacting them by phone and on their Facebook page to try and get some answers. This went nowhere. And Yes I was polite every time I contacted Bridgecom. I had to submit yet another ticket and explain everything over again along with asking them not to close the ticket before I could reply to their answers. Well they did that. But their answers were far from helpful. Again they stated to just turn the CW ID off and they had no clue why it was cutting people off mid sentence. Their only other suggestion was to use an external control I try my best to be polite with customer service since I know how people can be. But there was no excuse on how I was treated. To make it worse, I made a comment on their Face book page only to have Bridgecom delete it. It seems they don't want people to see any negative reviews or negative comments. Needless to say I will never recommend any of their products again based on their poor customer service. Here is a screen shot of my comment when I received the notice that it was deleted.

The poor horse should have been beaten so much that it is nothing but liquid puree by now.

A generator that is NOT properly shielded for EMI and RFI will definitely jam radios. You would have to be within 150 feet or less with the generator though. And yes I know this is a fact since I would purposely jam certain peoples radios with my truck mounted machine shop while I was in the Army. The truck had a PTO driven 25 Kw generator that would jam all commo equipment within a 150 foot radius of the truck when running.

Yes he was on our 2m repeater. We would have just told him to use the proper callsign if he was on our GMRS repeater.

I should have been more precise when I talked about the kid. He is at least old enough to drive. He was driving grampa's truck the time he used grampa's call sign. The email to grampa was nice in that we offered to help the kid get his license. We also stated the consequences of what could happen if the kid continued using the radio without a license. Grampa has only been licensed for a couple of months. I bet grampa was pretty upset when he found out the grandson was using his radio(s) without permission. Like I said, we haven't heard the kid on since we sent grampa an email.

We had a kid that was using his grampa's radio without permission. He kept getting on the repeater using CB lingo. We ignored him. Then he tried using a totally made up call sign. Again we ignored him. Then he was dumb enough to use his grampa's call sign. One of our members then started talking to him. We got his grampa's name and address from the call sign. We then send an email to the grampa. We haven't heard the kid on the air since. We have had instances of kerchunkers bouncing from our GMRS and 2m repeaters in quick succession. Again we ignore them while members try pin point the person's location. We have found a couple and just the threat of FCC fines was enough to stop them. We also programmed our repeater controllers with an anti-kerchunk feature. It keeps the people that just push the PTT in for a second from even opening up the repeater. That has took the wind out of a few kerchunkers sails. Sometimes a cease and desist letter is enough to stop people and other times it's not. A cargo van with a bunch of mag mount antennas on the roof parked across the street is enough to stop some people too.

Here is an interesting video to watch. How the FCC Finds & Fines Radio Pirates, Jammers and Interference Generators

I agree with you. The FCC stated themselves that is what they will actually take into account before thinking about investigating. That does not mean they will actually do anything. Their own track record shows they do not do much at all.