WRYZ926

Yes the general rule of thumb is to quadruple your power in order to make a noticeable difference. But just doubling the power output can sometimes make a difference. For the OP, he would be quadrupling his power output going from a 5 watt radio to a 20 watt radio the using a base antenna with both radios. He will definitely notice a difference going from 5 watts to 50 watts. I know HF is a different animal compared to UHF. With HF you really don't notice a difference until you quadruple your power say going from 100 watts to 400 watts. Most won't notice a difference on SSB going from 100 watts to 200 watts.

This is also true. And the same goes for mobile antennas too. A 9 dBd antenna will work better in a more wide open and flat area where a 4-6 dBd antenna will work better in hilly/mountainous areas. The higher the gain is, the flatter the radiation pattern is. The simplest way to explain the effects of gain is to use a beach ball. Lower dBd will have a more rounded radian pattern. The higher the gain is, the flatter the pattern will be. Yes you can get out farther with 9 dBd of gain but the pattern will be narrow compared to 4 - 6 dBd. The advantage of lower gain is the pattern is more spread out and has a chance to get around some obstacles. In my case, I was getting into that repeater 50-55 miles away with 20 watts. But other people had a hard time hearing me due to noise on my signal. Switching over to my 50 watt radio made the difference and everyone could hear me clearly. I have another repeater the same distance away in the opposite direction that I can hardly hear let alone get into. The difference is the height of the two repeater antennas and the terrain in-between us.

I agree when everything else is the same when it comes to antennas and coax. My own experiences have proven that.

This is true. We see people go cheap with Amazon chinesium coax or the wrong type of coax. Or they buy the cheapest (and lowest quality) antenna they can find on Amazon. No amount of power out of the radio will overcome lossy cable and/or a craptastic antenna. I had to say something to a guy that lives 300 yard down the street one time about this subject. He accidentally swapped his coax cable on his HF and VHF antennas. He had the RG58 hooked up to his VHF radio and wondered why it wasn't working like ti use to. So his answer was to hook up a 160 watt amplifier. All the amplifier did was cause me grief since we are so close to each other. I told hm that ne needed to swap the coax cables back around. But I have no idea if he did it or not. At least he isn't running the amplifier anymore.

I can give one example where 50 watts helped compared to 20 watts. Otherwise I have to agree with everyone that antenna height and quality coax makes more of a difference. My shack setup as far as the antenna goes is; Comet CA712-EFC with the base at 22 feet above the ground, 30 foot of LMR400 from antenna to the wall pass through and a 15 foot LMR400 jumper inside. There is a repeater that is 50-55 miles away. I can get into it with my Wouxun KG-XS20G but there is quite a bit of noise in my transmission. I get in to that repeater and am heard clearly with the extra 30 watts from my WOuxun KG-1000G. Going from 20 watts to 50 watts did not change how far I can talk but it did make it so that I am heard better at the longer distances. Now getting my antenna up another 10-20 feet and away from all the trees in my yard would make a big difference over actual output power of my radios. To answer the original question. YES you will see an improvement when going from a 5 watt radio to a 20 or 50 watt radio. You are quadrupling the power going from 5 watts to 20 watts. This is when everything else is equal such as connecting both radios to the same antenna and coax.

While I do not have a metal roof to deal with. I do have main power lines on three sides of my 1/2 acre lot along with two transformers. The neighbors power runs above ground on the fourth side. Granted the main power lines are across the streets from my property, but there are the phone and cable lines along my property line on one side. I do not have any noise/interference issues with my VHF/UHF radios. I occasionally will get some noise from one or both transformers during a heavy rain storm on HF.

I will agree with what he said. As long as the mast and antenna cannot come into contact with power lines then you will be fine. I am using 1 5/8" fence posts coupled together for a total of 22 feet. The bottom has a couple that fits on the old pipe from the TV antenna mast. I have a wall clamp at the peak of the gable along with a couple on the wall. I also ran three guy ropes from the mast right below the antenna. Two go to eye bolts in the gable and the third goes out to an extended fence post at the edge of the yard (15-20 feet from house). I also have a 10m inverted V dipole hung on the same mast a couple of feet under my vertical antenna. I haven't had any problems with snow, ice, or high winds. Yes I over did things with the three wall mounts and guy ropes. But it's better to overdo things than have the mast fall over..

But is the center conductor of the antenna making good contact with the center of the NMO mount?

The antenna should still screw on far enough that it seals completely against that rubber washer.

I grabbed the only NMO mount I had handy which is a Melowave magnet mount. Here is what they should look like. So far I have only used the Melowave and Midland NMO magnet mounts and I have not had any issues with my antennas fitting correctly.

Yes that is a problem. You want the antenna to sit down all the way onto the mount.

Reminds me of watching some of the Project Farm videos on YouTube. That guy talks fast.

I've tested hand held radios in different rooms that are next to each other without issues. Normally a wall is enough to keep two hand held from defensing each other. If not then get more distance between the two radios. If more distance between the radios and/or turning the RX tones off does not help, then you will want to double and triple check the settings on the two radios and on the repeater.

I agree.

There lies the problem. A lot of people now days do not have any respect for those that have different opinions. That seems to be a lost skill that left us years if not decades ago. I've seen too many people not wanting to hear the other side's opinion. The lack of listening, respect, and understanding leads to arguments. Politics and religion are two topics that will ruin a conversation quickly. I've had it happen in my own home with family. And to save me the heartburn and headaches, I do not allow politics to be discussed at the table since no one takes the time to listen to the other side nor do they want to hear opinions that are different. If family can't even be civil to each other, then how do you expect people to be civil to each other when they are not looking each other in the eyes such as on the internet or on the radio. I know most repeaters in my area do not allow politics or religion to be discussed and that goes for all of the 2m, 70cm, DMR, and GMRS repeaters. For those that want to allow any and all topics, then I suggest they setup and run their own repeaters.

This is very true and why politics are not allowed on our repeaters. And the name calling/anger/stupidity/ranting usually ends up involving foul language being used. It's easier to just ban certain topics versus having to play referee, shutting the repeater down, banning people, having others ran off from using the repeater, etc, etc.

The subject of politics has come up a time or two. But the decision is always the same. We are a 501-3C non profit that relies on donations. And the donors come from a diverse background with some donors being left leaning and other donors being right leaning. The decision was made years ago to just keep politics off the repeaters so that we don't take a chance of loosing donations that we need to maintain the repeaters. The choices are simple, abide by the rules if I want to use the repeaters or disagree and find other repeaters to use or stick to simplex. And I have found that the no politics rule is instituted by quite a few organizations/clubs that run repeaters in my area. And they state that it is for the same reasons as our BoD has stated. Discussions range over a wide variety of topics on our repeaters and no one complains as long as the conversations are clean and not political.

Well said @SteveShannon and @tcp2525.

The ban on talking about politics was a decision made by the board of directors years ago. I don't sit on the BoD so I can't even suggest making changes one way or another. And no I do not always agree with the organization's bylaws and rules. But I do have to abide by them if I want to use the repeaters.

Unfortunately there are no coordination efforts nor any repeater counsels for GMRS like there is for amateur band repeaters. Plus the fact that GMRS repeaters are limited to just eight channels doesn't help. I am glad that we are in the middle of the state which made it easier to pick a channel. There are quite a few GMRS repeaters in the St Louis and Kansas City areas.

Merry Christmas everyone.

It's a shame that happened like that. We decided right away not to even consider linking our GMRS repeater. We already have our 2m repeater linked to AllStar. We don't have many rules outside of following the FCC regulations on our repeater. The three big ones are: no foul language, no discussing politics, and no business uses. We are strict about no foul language since there are kids that use our repeater on a regular basis. And politics usually leads to arguments. After talking to another local GMRS repeater owner, we decided to follow his advice and not allow business use. He had a big problem with the big commercial farms wanting to tie up his repeater and we didn't want that to happen with ours. We checked Repeater Book and My GMRS along with listening on all of the repeater channels first. We then reached out to the other GMRS repeater owners within a 50 mile radius of our location. SO far we have not had any issues with unlisted repeaters. We do occasionally pick up a different repeater on the other side of the state when there is a band opening. Merry Christmas everyone.

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.