WSAQ296

It's because it really is irrelevant. Unless they give you height above terrain, it means nothing. Even then, unless you're familiar with the topography of the land, it can mean very little. My antenna is 40 foot above ground. However my elevation, while not bad for 'the area' is bad for my exact area, as everything around me is taller. Found a house we loved, if only it'd been on a mountain, or at least not in depression by a river. I can run 40 watts, or 100 (only in testing) and my distance is maintained. My next hope is to buy an old tree trimming truck, and turn it in to a tower lol.

They lost the 220 band?

Yes, and officially, No. There was a group that linked a bunch of repeaters, GMRS and Ham bands and created their own internet backbone for doing so. They undid the public info about it, and no longer list the GMRS linked repeaters on their site. However it seems they still see action. If that's what is going on, this would be the repeaters they 'used to' link.

Late to the thread, but bored and going to post anyway. Unless we're all using the same equipment, any circles like this will only cause frustration. I'd be more interested in color coding based on verified last useage. ie: You could drop in and click on it if you recently used it. Then those clicks would age, green to red. It sure would be helpful to see this, and eliminate the guess as to whether the issue with the repeater is your setup, or a now dead repeater. It's not as big an issue here as it is on repeaterbook, but I still see them here and there. (Usually repeaters imported that are older than the site itself)

You were very likely listening to a linked repeater. There was a group in Michigan that linked a large number of GMRS repeaters. At one point, when it was thought to be quasi-legal, they even had it on their powerpoint they presented to the State Police on why they should get some grant money and how they offer a public service. (They are using their own backhaul, on their own towers.) They removed all information of the GMRS linking off the internet when the FCC redefined their thoughts on it, but did not stop linking the (their) repeaters. The info is still out there, just not on their website anymore. Here's a map of their linked GMRS receivers. Whoops, won't let me upload a screenshot. But search on Mi8 GMRS. Look at the document that shows up on a .gov domain.

Well, unlocked what bandwidth options does it give? 12.5 is always narrow, but 25khz is wide in commercial and ham, 20khz in GMRS. splitting hairs I know, but still. I guess the minute it's unlocked it's not legal on gmrs, so if it's out of bandwidth compliance who'll really know/care?

Clarify, because while you understand your original post, I do not. You have two identical radios programmed and one does something the other doesn't? or you have two channels and one doesn't work. Tsquelch means it will only allow you to hear signals with a matching PL tone. So if you're wrong, you'll hear nothing. TONE is transmit, and if it's wrong you won't activate the repeater, but you'll hear it just fine because you have nothing filtering the receive.

are we honestly worried about only having one 30 dollar radio for both ham and gmrs? nobody is going to hear you with it anyway, so buy the band you're most likely to be on and monitor the other with it. I am curious tho, to those of you 'unlocking' the ham style, how are you complying with the bandwidth of gmrs? Oh, ha ha, that's right, to heck with the rules! LOL Seriously, keep it simple. They are 30 dollar radios. You'll need spare parts quickly enough anyway.

Bah, it won't hit like you think. Prices have gone up over the years already. BUT, it is a good reason to buy that radio NOW and not later. Great excuse for the spouse, you'll be 'saving' money. I bought my Icom7300 many years ago on the cusp of potential tariffs back then, which never materialized.

I have the original and the Pro , both for DMR on the ham bands. They are great radios.

So you imagine a scenario like this? : Dirtbag "I got my gmrs radio on, let's do us some listenin!" You: Okay honey, lets stop at the next rest area, WABC123 Dirtbag "That's it, we have his address, let's drive 300 miles and hope his house is empty and unsecure" Yeah, I think you're worrying about the wrong stuff. Much more likely to have a neighbor kid break in when he sees you driving away all loaded up on what's normally a day off.

They are effectively the same radio. Depending on how you order depends on the antenna(s) shipped with the unit. Upon powering up, there's a sequence of buttons that can be pressed to change it from gmrs to ham or 'normal' (open to all). I leave mine gmrs, as the whole point is to be able to hand a channelized radio to someone for use, not to accidentally have them dial up some unknown freq.

Late to the party on this, but if you haven't tuned the GP9 for GMRS, it's not going to perform optimally. It's usually a 2m/440 antenna and at 20mhz above 440 it's not optimal.