kipandlee

That sounds like the perfect application for the RT97 or 97s. 
There are also those antenna bases that you roll one of your tires over.  That might be nice if you don’t want to unhitch a trailer.

Never mind the fact that Huawei actually makes chips designed to connect wirelessly to the internet and manufacturers were buying them by the literal boatload and embedding them in computers where their owners were telling them their SSIDs and passwords and where they were ideally situated to spy on whatever activity took place on the computer. 
Never mind the fact that your cellphone is also connected full time to a network and has a gps built in and carries your most intimate pictures and messages.
If you fear your Baofeng UV5R then logic dictates you simply must avoid every Chinese made electronic device, because they are all being manufactured under the same control of the Chinese Communist government that would co-opt Baofeng.
Fortunately, my Garmin was made in Taiwan.

Amen.

Dumbest thread ever. 

Those boneheads should be more worried about some of the Chinese apps they put on their smartphones.

Did they explain how the radios hack into and connect to a WiFi with a password?
PS - I am not only a Navy Pilot, but also an Army General, so you should listen to what I say.

Thats an awful lot of equipment and feedline for a UHF repeater at 45' off the ground. Are you on a 5000' mountain ? If not I dont see why a decent duplexer would't work better than trying to be separate antennas. Normally when separate antenna's are used its adding multiple TX and RX channels to a system. For a single GMRS/ UHF repeater I'd just use a duplexer and a single antenna. 
What is the reasoning of using 2 antenna's vs one ? 

I agree.  I use expressions like "I'm Oscar Mike" and "my other radio is Tango Uniform".  It's not really perceived as code.  I'm just using nuanced words to convey the meaning of a thought.
 
Or, when I am going to meet friends somewhere, I'll say "I'm 10 minutes from the spot." if I want to give someone an update.  It's no one else's business where "the spot" is.  No one could even remotely argue that you are being deceptive.  If I am talking to my wife and say, "okay, I'll meet you at your mom's house.", someone can't seriously accuse us of using code, false or deceptive language because I didn't provide 123 Main St. Smallville, US as the destination.  Mom's house is good enough and it's no one else's business.
 
That said, if you're talking on the radio to a 'friend' and you say you are about to deliver 22 kilos of white bananas to the warehouse and you're expecting the customer to have 9 million gallons of green paint ready for pickup, I think that will raise some eyebrows of anyone listening.  LOL

@Radioguy7268  to restate the obvious, is a rule unenforced, really a rule at all?

Given how Motorola has entitlement keys you write to a radio to enable various features I just can't see how anyone could make a definitive claim. I have a bunch of Kenwood radios, and a few Motorola's, myself and some look identical. Can't tell them apart without looking at the tags on the back side under the battery pack.

You find out real quick just how serious people are about it when the repeater owner starts asking for money from the users to pay for it all. Not surprisingly most of the interest fades fast at that point.

They wont be for sale until the 18th so nobody has one..... I have one, but i cant talk about it until the 18th..

I heard a rumor that a GMRS YouTuber will be making a video in the next few weeks showing how "compatible" the Retevis 40W amp is with the RT97 repeater.

IMO, do not let the radio snobs discourage you.  
As a long time Ham, from a family of Hams, the hobby is about learning and having fun. You can setup a simple repeater on your kitchen table with parts you probably already have, or easily and cheaply acquired from ebay.  Go for it, just be considerate and don't cross over established repeaters. Some people way overvalue their role in the hobby.  
They even have a pre-made HT to HT relay box just plug and play for like $15. Sure it is not even close to a commercial repeater, but fun to experiment with, and if in a prime location it might get you to a location you could not reach before.
If the FCC does not have a problem with it than neither should the rest of us.  The antenna saying is a bit dated, get a VNA and tune the fudge out of a reasonably priced antenna. Again IMO.    73s have fun out there.

You can try this one: 
  135K4414K073AWGG
 
 

So, something new that I am extremely disappointed about with my MXT500.
 
When I got this radio, I did not bother doing any real testing of the receiver for noise rejection, filtering and selectivity.  And today I don't need to because I know it sucks. The receiver is so bad, that I may send this back to Midland for repair and then sell it, because it's not reliable and therefore not usable. 
 
I went offloading this weekend and opted to use my MXT500 because it is water and dust resistant and my other radios are not. I used the radio for about 14 hours a day for 3 days, out in the mountains of PA. This was the first time I used the radio for more than a few minutes for testing and getting familiar with the radio.
 
On the first day, after having the radio on for about 30 minutes, a few people I don't know started chatting on a close-in repeater. The repeater is close enough to me that I receive its signal well enough that there is zero noise/static in the signal. After just 3 minutes of hearing the chatter, the receiver started cutting in and out. Not the audio, but the actual receiver would flutter as I watched the signal meter and hear the audio just go away and comeback rapidly. 
 
I turned on my handheld, just to confirm it wasn't the repeater or interference and the handheld was receiving the conversion perfectly.  This issue persisted over the entire 3 days. If a conversion went on for more than a few minutes, the receiver went to crap.
 
To make things even worse, it started raining on the second day and it rained all day.  The whole time my headlights were on, we could hear a distinct crackle and interference with the receiver. Also, every time the windshield wipers moved, you could hear the wipers motor in the receiver. On top if that, my Jeep was completely off and a buddy pulled along side me to talk, and I could hear HIS windshield wiper motor on my radio.
 
This is not a wiring issue with my Jeep. It is not an issue with filters on my power lines or my antenna cable. I simply unplugged my existing amateur radio equipment and plugged the MXT500 into the existing power and antenna system. None of my other gear has any issues on these connections. 
 
Now, as if that wasn't bad enough, listen to this... I was talking to someone at their home, on my local repeater while driving around last night (just dealing with the noise and receiver flutter] and I needed to jump out of the Jeep and run in a store.  The repeater is about 25 miles from my neighborhood. So, I hoped out and grabbed my handheld so I could keep chatting while walking around in the store.
 
The guy I was talking to asked me if I made any adjustments to my radio. I said "I just got out of the truck and switched to my handheld". I thought he was going to give me a bad report, but instead he said that may handheld radio had a better signal into the repeater and the audio was much much better. 
 
When I got back outside, I confirmed the Midland was in wideband and on full power.  I'm so disappointed that the transmit signal of the Midland and the receiver quality or so bad. I mean, my quality into the repeater was better with a 5w HT while inside a building from 25 miles away... my heart sunk even more.
 
I know you can't see it, but im making my sad face. 

I won't say direct experience with CE82, but I've had good luck fooling the CE package that covers my VX-4200's (and VX-920) by changing my system time to something well before that Jan 2013 date (I usually just leave the rest of the date alone, crank the year back to 2005, and use the actual edit date in the filename when saving) before starting up the software..

QFT!
 
I have been chatting with folks like Axorlov for some time... I think many of us have figured out when we're messing with each other and when we're serious. Though it may not seem that way to others.

link for software  https://hamfiles.co.uk/index.php?page=downloads&type=entry&id=radio-programming%2Fkenwood-programming%2Fkpg-76d_v100 also can confirm that the programming cable is 8-pin however it only utilizes 4 ( 3v txd rxd and ground ) cant recommend a cable as I build my own using a usb to ttl converter CP2102 , have heard a lot of good reviews about bluemax49ers cables https://www.ebay.com/usr/bluemax49ers?_trksid=p2047675.l2559

Congrats!!, it sounds like you've reached the same conclusion I've reached as well. Motorola is not hype as they would have you believe, that is for sure.
Totally agree, experience wins a lot of contests, for sure.
@gortex2The only reason the "do it cheap crowd" gets away with their cheap stuff because guys like @JB007Ruleshave spent 5 figures on their repeater setup, so the overpriced pieces of garbage trash CCR radios have any hopes of working: Simple as that.
Well, I think depends on what 30 dollar radio you are talking about, but in general most cheap radios mated to a 1k antenna will desense really bad, so you'll end up with a deaf radio. You'll need to add several hundreds of dollars of filtering to the 30$ radio front end (or lack thereof) just to make it work.
I am certain the ISOtee on that Quantar is off-the-charts good... and all Kenwood radios I've ISOteed were not that great. Even the Vertex Standard radios were only marginally better, but there was a jump going from everything else to Motorola, even the 6550 receiver beats every Kenwood radio I've tested to date.
Tuning goes a very very long way (understatement here). as I've found that tuning the radios correctly can make the difference between 3 miles and 30 miles with ease!!
Given the cost of used Motorola gear, IMO, once your eyes are opened, there is no reason to ever go back to inferior equipment.
G.
EDIT: Forgot to say this (again), but there is a reason why the longest running, furthest reaching radios ever made by humanity are made by Motorola. Yes, the Voyager probes have Motorola radios...  been running non-stop since the 70s, and they are past the Heliosphere, or about 14.4 billion miles from Earth (as of 11/2021)... so, if you want range, think only Motorola (except the R7 turd... ) How far does your light shine?
 

Yes - along with some amateur repeaters that also run reverse split - but not in GMRS, and still certainly worth questioning the information given when someone tells you that their repeater is going to Transmit on the 467.xxx, and Receive on the 462.xxx   
That's more than an "I screwed up".  That's closer to "I didn't have a clue."
 
 

I'm sorry, but anyone who couldn't pick out the proper programming for a repeater (high/low vs. low/high) doesn't appear to be qualified to tune a duplexer.  I'd also be curious how they managed to tune it to the "wrong" frequencies if you just flipped the high & low sides.
 

Hey folks.  I have had a small group of people ask me about tones and GMRS/FRS basics in the past week.  I figured I would take one of the conversations here and share it for people new to the service.  Hopefully it will help you understand Private Lines, Privacy Tones, sub-channels, tones and squelching methods, in general.  I am only covering the two most popular in GMRS and FRS, but there are many others available as you move into different radio services and technology. 
 
Before we get into what all that stuff is, lets talk about why it exists.  Per NOAA and the US Census Bureau, the lower 48 states is approximately 3.1 million square miles.  Also, 83% of Americans live on 10% of the total available square miles and 40% of all US citizens live on the east and west coast in counties touching oceans.
 
Following this logic, about 500,000+ licensed and unlicensed operators (estimated by me) are sharing FRS and GMRS radio space, in roughly 310,000 square miles.  So, how does 500,000 people in close proximity, sharing 22 channels, all use their radios at the same time without interfering with each other?  Motorola brings you PL tones!
 
Lets get this out of the way...  regardless of what the manufacturers may tell you or how they label their products, there is no privacy.  Period.  Private Lines (PL), Privacy Tones, Sub-channels and any other name for the same service, does not stop people from hearing you, it stops you from hearing them.  I know... seems like a day in Opposite World, but that's how it works. 
 
I suppose the first thing to do is explain what the PL tones really are, what the more common types are and what each of them do.  A traditional squelch is a signal level squelch.  Meaning, no audio will come out of the speaker until a strong enough signal is received.  Then there are also user squelch types.  With analog radios, the most common type of user squelch uses encoding called Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS.  This feature is defined as being used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio channel.  So, as mentioned above, its not that you as a person speaking have any type of privacy, but rather you don't have to listen to everyone on the same frequency.  Hopefully the third time is a charm.
 
Many GMRS and FRS radios only have simple CTCSS functions called Tone Squelch, often displayed as TSQL on the screen when enabled.  This means two things.  One is, regardless of what you do with your squelch knob or set your RF squelch to, no audio will come out of the speaker unless the tone you selected is embedded in the signal you are receiving.  The other thing it does is, when you transmit, what ever tone frequency you have programed gets transmitted with/in your signal to unlock or open the squelch of other radios configured the same way.
 
There is another method of CTCSS called "split tone".  This means that you can use one tone when you transmit and another for your receive.  This comes in handy when repeater owners are trying to limit who can access the repeater, as higher cost radios typically have split tone capability, compared to poorly built and inexpensive radios that would be problematic on a repeater do not.  Also, this makes it a bit more difficult to "discover" the input tone by using scanning tools.
 
Another function of split tone CTCSS is that you can also set your radio to transmit a tone to unlock a repeater or other radio, but leave your receive tone set to null (nothing).  When this mode is enabled, there is typically a display on the radio that either reads TN or TONE.  That means you can bring up a repeater or unlock a radio squelch, but also hear everyone else regardless of what tones they are running, if any at all.  This is actually a great feature for GMRS radios since Repeater Channels share FRS frequencies and GMRS simplex frequencies.  So you can tell if the frequency is in use as well as being able to talk to others who many not be using the repeater.
 
CTCSS is an analog squelching system.  There is also a digital squelching system called Digital-Code Squelch or DCS.  It has similar use cases as CTCSS, but it is sending digitally embedded numeric codes instead of a sub-audible tone.
 
I apologize in advance, but this next portion may get a little confusing.  If you have questions, just ask and myself or one of the other knowledgeable members will be able to help.  All of the numbers below are simply random samples I selected for example.  Last I checked, there are 38 standard tones and an additional 13 expanded tones (not available on every radio) for a total possible 51 tones and 83 DCS codes.
 
Along with the use examples above, you can get creative with DCS, because we are dealing with binary numbers instead of a tone.  You can have the numbers used in a bunch of different combinations.  For example, the number 411 in binary is 00110100 00110001 00110001.  The reverse of this would be 11001011 11001011 11001110.  So we are swapping the meaning of a 1 and a 0.  So the combinations could be as follows:
Normal-Normal = Transmit sends 411 and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in the standard format 00110100 00110001 00110001.
Reverse-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 reversed (or bit swapped) and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 reversed, meaning 11001011 11001011 11001110.
Normal-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 standard binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a reversed binary format.
Reverse-Normal = Transmit sends 411 in a reversed binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a standard format.
Unfortunately, I am unaware of any radio's that have a DCS option to leave your user squelch open while transmitting a DCS code.  If DCS is enabled, you cannot hear anyone else unless they are using the same DCS number and binary combination.
 
CTCSS tones can also be "reversed".  CTCSS tones, since its analog, we have a phase reversal, often called "reverse burst" when it is only reversed at the end of the transmission.  (Something to Google in your spare time.)
 
On some high-end radios, squelching can get really exotic.  You may be able to create your own custom tone instead of using one of the standard tones.  You may also be able to combine CTCSS tones and DCS codes.  For example:
User-CTCSS = Transmit 2600Hz tone, squelch opens with 2600Hz tone. (random number example)
T-DCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 code.
DCS-T = Transmit 411 code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone.
T-rDCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 bit swapped code.
rDCS-T = Transmit 411 bit swapped code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone.
 
Now, here is the kind of disappointing part.  Some manufactures try to make their equipment sound like something its not.  They will use things like there own custom number code to identify a traditional CTCSS code.  For example, Midland uses code number 22 (also known as a sub-channel) to indicate the tone 141.3.  This makes coordination on tone selection a bit cumbersome between some brands.  It also means that if your radio doesn't display the actual CTCSS tone or DCS code, you need to keep your owner's manual handy for reference. 
 
So... I don't know if that explanation made things better or worse.  LOL  Anyway, some companies use verbiage like "Privacy Tones" which adds to the confusion for some people.  If you are using a true full CTCSS, it just means you are limited to whom you can hear, but everyone can still hear you.
 
The examples I provided above for DCS are not what actually gets transmitted, but rather a conceptual process to help understand at a very basic level of what occurs, simply to understand the difference.  DCS adds a 134.4 bps bitstream to the transmitted audio. To move past concept to the weeds, this video does a great job.

don't forget your jumper from TX to the duplexer has loss. If you use a cheap jumper I have seen some with almost another DB of loss. Did the duplexer get tuned for the channel you are using ?