SvenMarbles

They do, but you have to be clear when you speak to them about what the issue is. You have to state that "you'd like to lodge a GMRS radio complaint".

Yes, but in cases like that it's actually best that you attempt to flag them down in the street instead of calling.

If you suspect anyone of an infraction as it pertains to the proper use of their GMRS license / callsign, you should IMMEDIATELY call the police. Do not try to confront the person or sort it out on your own as they could be dangerous.

That's the style of display that I've had bad luck with. Any of those orange dox matrix style displays. Yes, they freeze in the cold and slow down... After about 3 years of winter cycles, I find, they start to die...

The radios I used before perhaps were just not of a very good quality. Both were QYT KT8900 radios. It just seemed like the elements ate them up.

I love that install! I had a little flip down compartment like that on a previous vehicle that I never knew what to do with. Does that fold in and go away cleanly as well?

It's not a topic I see mentioned a lot, but I've gone through a couple of inexpensive mobile radios, I believe, due to the fact that they've lived outside in my truck under very severe cold weather conditions. The LCD display freezes and eventually the contrast of the characters dim to the point that they're not legible anymore. Also, the style of tuning knobs that use that sort of "clicky" method while spinning, will get to the point that the rotation clicks wont register or even run backwards while spinning forward. There's also the matter of the radio cooking in the interior of the car in the summer.. Every radio I've ever owned seems to have resulted in an abbreviated life span due to these type of issues. Do you guys take any sort of measures to mitigate these problems? I've had a DB20G in the truck since Christmas, and we've had a pretty severe arctic stretch during that period. This one seems to be holding up far better than my past mobile radios. The display just lights right up, and aside from the on/off volume knob feeling very stiff when first getting in the truck, it works perfectly cold. It also utilizes button presses to move up and down in channels, so that's one less failure prone component to worry about.... Maybe I've just had bad luck in the past and this one will serve me better..

Regardless of what you decide to do for a permanent base antenna, I'd recommend also purchasing an N9TAX slim jim style antenna and just having it put away. With that, you can have something that is field deployable AFTER whatever type of problem rolls through and busts things up. Toss a line over a tree limb, or something high, or raise a painters pole, and get it up in the air. You can screw it into whatever handheld you have, or even your base radio if you can power it (I believe they're rated to handle 100 watts). Also consider, for a base radio, to instead of buying a power supply box, get a 30ah Lifepo battery, a charger for it, and perhaps even a little solar power setup (harbor freight). The battery accomplishes all of the day to day powering requirements, and instead of having a power supply box plugged in, just have the battery on the plug in trickle charger all the time. This when when things go down you' have some buffer back up power time for the radio. I tested mine, and it'll run my radio with pretty heavy use for about 8 days at high power. This could probably be improved by bumping the power level of the radio down to medium or low power.

Lately, my favorite has been a simple DB-20G (unlocked) I put out in my truck. I made a post about it a couple of weeks ago. It just works perfectly for it's use case.

Power and gain does not defeat a terrain dead zone. Having a central located repeater on a high spot is the correct solution.

It's not that it keeps me awake at night. But this larger invasive mentality that GMRS should be treated as a ham radio jr is a problem, and the little ham call field in the profile areas of this site is an artifact of that..

It’s not in any order of offense, because it technically isn’t even law. It’s FCC rules.

Are we worried about a field search of the FCC police? I wonder why so many people running LMR Motorola aren’t so skiddish,.. Or nearly EVERY gmrs repeater setup, running on Motorola. All type cert scofflaws.. If you have your Gemers license, and operate on the gemers frequencies, nobody cares….

There's not much of a controversy.. You can be a "good boy" for literally noones's sake, because nobody cares, FCC included. Or you can just get on with having a radio that services you better..

Unlock the radio and then you dont have to skip 8-14. plus you can add the ham repeaters as well as police and fire for monitor..