WRYZ926

Yes generally you will have to manually set the offset in CHIRP when adding new repeater channels. You should be able to copy existing repeater channels and then add tones along with renaming them.

Then you would benefit from using a 50 watt mobile. I get in areas around here with lots of pine and cedar trees that cause issues. The worst is when those trees are right along the edge of the roads.

I have the Midland MXT500 and two Wouxun KG-1000G's. The Midland is sitting in a box while the two KG-1000G's are in use as my base station and in my vehicle. My base station is a KG-1000G while my mobile setup is the KG-1000G Plus. Both radios are very close in price but the Wouxun is definitely better. The KG-1000G has better transmit and receive audio, a removable face for mounting in vehicles and just seems better made than the MXT500. Even though I don't care for the Midland I would still take it over the B-Tech GMRS 50v2. @WRZX542 you didn't say where you are located. Location, terrain, etc will affect how far you can reach out. You will have farther range in places like the desert southwest or the Great Plains without a lot of hills/mountains or lots of forested areas. A 50 watt radio will help push the signal through forested areas compared to a 20 watt radio. You won't see much of a difference in open areas with a clear line of sight.

One of our club members has the TD-8H and hasn't had any problems getting out on any of the bands. He did use the app to program the radio from his phone.

Also make sure to set all of the channels to wide band if you have not already done so. Midland radios come from the factory with all channels set to narrow band.

How far away is the repeater and were you standing outside, inside a vehicle, or inside a structure? Being inside a vehicle or structure makes a difference, especially the farther away from the repeater you are. I can talk on my local repeater with good signal reports on my KG935G as long as I am standing outside. The repeater is 21.5 miles away. I can make it into the repeater from inside the house but my transmitions are full of static and hard to understand. Same goes if I try to use the KG935G inside my vehicle with the stock antenna. Terrain, structures and trees will also effect things. I have tried my Abbree 17" GMRS antenna on my KG935G but it didn't make any difference when compared to the stock antenna.

GMRS like dual band 2m/70cm radios all have a SO239 connector on them. And @Sshannon brings up good points about having radios certified for the bands you want to transmit on. I am running a 16" Comet SBB1-NMO dual band radio with my TYT TH-7800 and a 20" Nagoya UT-72G with my Wouxun KG-1000g on the vehicle. As I mentioned I have the same two radios in the house for base stations. I am using a Comet GP9 for dual band and a Comet CA-712EFC for GMRS. One thing to pay attention to is the fact that the short dual band antennas will not work for GMRS and visa versa. Now if you can use a longer antenna on your vehicle then the Comet 2x4SRNMO will work for 2m/70cm and GMRS. As always, everyone has an opinion on what they like and think is the best. Stick with Wouxun for GMRS, they are generally considered the best for GMRS by most. Icom and Yaesu are the best when it comes to dual band radios. But don't overlook the TYT TH-7800 or Wouxun KG-UV920P-A either.

I highly recommend the Wouxun Kg-1000g Plus and the Wouxun KG-XS20G Plus for a bae/mobile GMRS radios. The 1000G Plus is 50 watts while the XS20G Plus is 20 watts. The Wouxun GMRS mobile radios are better than any Baofeng/B-Tech or Midland radio. I run a 1000G Plus as my base and in my vehicle while the XS20G Plus is mounted in my SxS. The Midland MXT500 is sitting in a box simply because it is not as good as the Wouxun radios. Where a 50 watt radio will benefit is if you have trees and/or other obstacles to push the signal through. The local GMRS repeater is 21.5 miles from me and I can talk to others on it just fine even with my 5 watt Wouxun KG935G HT (hand held). I used my XS20G with my roof mounted antenna and was able to talk to the repeater sight on simples just fine. When it comes to dual band 2m/70cm radios, I have had good luck with the TYT TH-7800 as a base and in my vehicle. You can get them for around $239. There is also nothing wrong with Yaesu or Icom mobile radios. Though those start around $300 and up. If money is a bit tight then look at the TYT TH-7800.

The TYT TH-9800 is FCC certified for 10m, 2m, 6m, and 70cm. They re not certified for use on GMRS or CB bands. And there is enough difference between a 10m antenna and a CB (11m) antenna that one will not work well for both bands. And trying to use a 10m or CB antenna for GMRS will not work very well either. Now some dual band 2m/70cm antennas do have good SWR reading in the GMRS band and will work for all three. The Comet GP9 and Comet 2x4SR will work for 2m, 70cm, and GMRS. The TH-9800 will work fine with a good quad band antenna that covers 10m, 2m, 6m and 70cm but there is no guarantee that a quad band antenna for those bands will work for GMRS. And none of them will work well for 11m.

I have no experience with the TYT TH-9800 but the TYT TH-7800 has been working good for me.I run one as a base station and another in my vehicle.

Let me grab some for this one.

"Privacy tones" are anything BUT private. As others have said, it is real easy to scan for the input and output tones of repeaters while they are in use.

One problem with solar panels at tower sites is that you have to keep them far enough away from the tower so that ice won't fall and break the solar panels. Now if you live in an area that stays above freezing and/or low winter precipitation then solar panels close to a tower is fine. We have a shed at the tower site for all of our repeaters and we had to build a cage above it to keep ice from falling off the tower and caving the roof in.

I retired from the Army and can tell you that there is absolutely no piece of equipment that is GI Proof. GI's will mess up a steel ball inside a padded room with a rubber mallet. And remember that Mil Spec is a minimum set of standards that equipment has to meet which is usually produced by the lowest bidder.

That was one of the arguments we used when talking our club into adding a GMRS repeater to the tower where our 2m and 70cm repeaters are. We have a backup generator on site and are adding a battery backup system too. We are still in the testing phase with the GMRS repeater but we are averaging 20-25 mile radius. Which is not bad considering the forested rolling hills of central Missouri. The other main selling point we used when pitching the idea was that we could always use another tool in the tool box for emergencies. And we will be adding a GMRS radio to our emergency coms trailer. So far we have all of the HF, VHF, and UHF bands covered in the trailer. No repeater will be online in an emergency without some type of backup power supply. We will be able to run up to 2 days on the new battery backup system plus we will be keeping the generator in place.

I'll second the Comet CA-712EFC, it is an excellent antenna. I am using a 35 foot run of LMR400 to connect the CA-712 to my radio and SWR is 1.0 to 1.3 throughout the band. The 1.3 SWR was on the repeater channels while the SWR on channels 1-22 was flat at 1.0 to 1.1. And yes using a mobile antenna without a proper ground plane is part of your problem. Antennas need some type of ground plane. Base antennas have short ground plane rods at the bottom for this reason. I also highly suggest that both of you get better coax designed for UHF frequencies. LMR400 is what you want to use.

One thing I have not seen mentioned yet is what type of coax cable the OP or his brother is using. I also haven't seen what the length of coax each is using. Using a longer run of the wrong type of coax will definitely effect things.

OffRoaderX is correct in that you have to link repeaters through the internet. Linking GMRS repeaters is just like linking HAM repeaters. Ham uses AllStar while GMRS uses GMRS Live. Here is a good link to check out for more informations: https://www.gmrslive.com And here is a good video showing how to set everything up using GMRS Live to link GMRS repeaters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2b3kQUo5yY

That would be nice if that would happen. As it is, there are plenty of people who have both licenses that are unlocking/modifying their radios to work on amateur and GMRS bands.

TSQL is for setting both TX and RX tones. Or at least that how it works in CHIRP I find it easier to just use the Wouxun KG935G software downloaded from Buy Two Radios to program all of my Wouxun radios.

From the looks of things in the photo, you could remove the dish and then slide the pole up to get some more height. You can try reusing the existing cable with adaptors. But definitely check the SWR with a NanoVNA or other antenna analyzer. Worst case would be to run a better coax cable such as LMR400 to a GMRS tuned antenna.

You will be fine with that. My Comet CA-712EFC which is a dedicated GMRS antenna gets 1.2 on channels 1-7, 1.1 on channels 8-14 and 1.6 on channels 15-22. My Comet 2X4SR (dual band) gets 1.5, 1.2, and 1.8. A SWR of 2 or lower is fine. I wouldn't sweat about the 2.02 SWR reading.

Merry Christmas to all.

The red Wouxun programming cable uses the Silicon Labs chip. The com port comes up as the Silicon Labs CP2010X USB to UART Bridge.on my 64bit Windows 10, Windows 11, and my Mac. I haven't had any issues with it on my Mac mini, Windows 10 tower and Windows 11 laptop with ADM CPU or my Windows 11 laptop with an Intel CPU.

Yes I sure did. Autocorrect got me and I did not proofread before posting. I fixed my earlier reply. Thanks for letting me know.