amaff

I wouldn't have put a single dollar on them being different for a $35 radio, but I bought a pair of GMRS, then needed a couple more and liked them enough and accidentally bought a pair of Ham. They are indeed different. GMRS top, Ham bottom: GMRS: Ham:

I honestly can't speak to the Retevis software. I've only used the DB20-G software (as that's the radio I have)

Yup, the use case is very different. With a few linked repeater networks (or if you happen to be in a busy area) you definitely can 'make contacts' with GMRS. But that's not remotely what the majority of people use it for, nor is it its intended use case. They're great tools for solving a comms problem for another activity. A lot of people seem disappointed that 'no one wants to talk to me on GMRS'. Because that's not really what its for. If I'm talking to my friend spotting for me on at the race track and someone else comes on frequency, the first thing that's going to happen is we're moving to our backup channel lol

Oh, there are certainly "some people" who care. You shouldn't care about their opinions, but they are definitely out there.

I'm not sure I really understand the question. Why can't you transmit on those? Who exactly are you trying to talk to? A couple of ol' boys just jawing? Or people out doing something? If I'm out with my friends doing something (road trip, at the race track, hiking, etc) we use CTS codes so that we don't have to hear anyone else talking because we just want to talk among ourselves. We're not trying to chat with randos on the air. Which is a long way of saying, just because they're not answering doesn't mean you can't transmit. It might mean they're not trying to hear you.

It doesn't. But the Anytone / Retevis / Radioddity software...well, it isn't completely awful and it does the job lol

Oh. Then you're good.

I'm guessing you mean for that channel on the radio. In that case, it SHOULD work. There's always a chance the repeater is offline for some reason. In which case, it wouldn't matter what you put in the radio. Can you hear traffic on 675? And do you still hear that traffic with the tone enabled? (IE: repeater channel 20 and simplex channel 20 are the same receive frequency, so on an open (no tones) channel, you can potentially hear simplex traffic even if you're on a 'repeater' channel)

For clarity, on the UV-5R-family, you need to set a +5.00 Mhz offset. On the radio, you'll set the direction (I think is the option) to "+", and the offset to 5.000 That way you're listening on the 462.xxx, but the radio will transmit on 467.xxx

The super restrictive programming is probably my biggest annoyance with a lot of the cheaper GMRS radios. My more expensive ones (in this case, KG-905Gs, so not SUPER high end stuff) let me program in what I want where I want, and enforce the GMRS rules properly for those frequencies. As far as I can tell, I could put a repeater channel in every slot of the radio. Pretty much everything else I have is jailbroken (with the appropriate rules programmed in manually) so I can set them up the way I want to. There's nothing in the GMRS rules that says "the radio can ONLY HAVE 22 simplex channels, 8 repeater channels, and if you're feelin frisky, a handful of DIY channels"

That is fixable

Y'all got hard copies of your GMRS license? That's a thing?

Not a question, but a hack I tried that has worked really well. The absolute worst part of my DB20-G is the mic hanger. It's probably 100% user error, but I could never get the mic re-seated without taking my eyes off the road and sometimes using both hands. It's just a cheap, flimsy design. I saw a family member using an inexpensive mag-mount for their cell phone a few months ago, and figured, no harm in trying on an inexpensive radio with an even more inexpensive handset. I took the mic apart (4 small screws) and removed the male 'bobbin' (or whatever it's actually called) part of the mic that slots into the stamped sheet-steel hanger. I was surprised to find a chunk of metal embedded in the back of the mic. It already feels pretty light and flimsy...I imagine it would feel even worse without it. I trimmed and bent the flat metal piece that mounts to the device (super hack job, but hey it works) and stuck it to the back of the mic. The only real issue was that the adhesive they come with is pretty terrible and fell off in the heat of the car, so I slapped it back on with some super glue and it's been stuck on since. The only thing I'd do differently is probably use one of the smaller round plates instead of hacking 1 of the bigger rectangles, but I'm not taking this apart to 'correct' that since I can't see it, and it doesn't affect the thing *at all*. This thing works *great*, holds the mic super securely (it's way lighter than a modern "Plus" sized cell phone), and you just need to get it close for it to snap into place. If you, like me, hate the mic hangers these cheap radios come with, this may work for you.

Awesome, glad that's all it was

I think they woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

Yeah, it's showing correctly there

Doesn't look like it. I can add a Ham callsign, but if there's a spot to edit my GMRS callsign it's not obvious

Appreciate it. It's obviously not a massive issue. It's just an odd thing I noticed, and wasn't sure if it was just me.

I was poking around in my profile trying to find some settings to mess with and noticed this: Except that's not my callsign. The website shows it Correctly: Given, near as I can tell, they're the same account (I didn't have to do another registration for the forum, I just had to use my myGMRS login to log in to the forum....wtf? Doesn't look like I can edit it even if I wanted to, to correct it.

Looks to be Menu 6 on the radio:

I think you're looking at Channel Spacing (which is, for whatever reason, bandwidth). 12.5 is narrow, 25K is wide. Step size I think can go down to 2.5K.

Try lowering the step size.

Clearly that's how it should be. But with the way this thing's set up...

Odd. I'm not seeing that on any of mine (FW 240401). Haven't heard of this being an issue on them either

in before someone runs down that FCC ID to make sure it's legit