Davichko5650

T there especially likes to chew on 1st Gen Explorers. Luckily mine's a 2nd gen! NO rock crawler, but keeps right up with my Jeep buddies up on the Iron Range OHV Park and elsewhere...

Modus operandi hereabouts; your close friends you insult like crazy. People you've never met you treat with utmost dignity...

Greetings from Minnesota! Just the base unit there or do you run mobile and/or portable (HT's) as well?

If you were engaged in a task or activity where you are 1/2 mile from another person engaged in same, and needed to talk with them, but couldn't leave your location, you'd be hard pressed to yell loud enough to be heard. Vehicle to vehicle comms are very much something GMRS is good at facilitating. As well as, in my case, not having to yell when working around the house/yard where I need something done but can't leave my location. Sure I could use a cell phone, but the ease of pusing a PTT switch on a radio gets things done with less delay. Many more examples are out there, but I'll leave it at this...

My method as well for repeaters possibly in range of the areas I'll be off road trail or logging/forest road tripping. With a pile of memories on the RA87, easy enough to do!

In the ASA we used what later was packaged as TRAFFIC JAM AN/TLQ-17 and the AN/GLQ-3 systems for HF/VHF. A nice 1500 - 2500 watt set up to make sure either no one heard you, or you heard no one on your radios. Both systems served the ASA and later INSCOM well into the 21st century as they just worked!

Poor old P'Nut.....

We live on an very busy 4 lane street, so usually get no kids. A couple years ago we got 8 - but is was actually 4; my son gave the 4 kids each a large Hershey bar. They went around the corner, changed costumes with each other and circled back. I gave them credit for ingenuity and gave them more big bars. Otherwise nobody stops by for candy so we don't buy a large bunch of it.

But won't "Some People" tell him it won't work???? But I'm with you, try it! Be interesting to see how being folded down close to the vehicle body will affect SWR.

I feel ya - I used to work inside a metal Trailer parked inside a metal building. Our base radios had nice Yagi's pointed at the main receive site of our UHF NXDN repeater so that was all good, but to use one of the HT's, either open the garage doors or run outside! Current employer we piggyback 900 mhz HT's on the ARMER system the county uses and we get coverage no matter where we are in the city. My house is stucco, so wire mesh, but all my antennae are outside and up high above the roof.

Has been AM pretty much from the start for Aero. No Capture affect so everything can get through. You'd think hearing the aircraft wouldn't be an issue other than if they're behind the window location and signals are blocked, since they have pretty good LOS being airborne. I work about 1/2 mile from a semi busy City airport. Not a main terminal but lots of GA and Biz Jets, as well air Army NG Helo's and get pretty good signals on a rubber duck. But it's not a metal building for the most part...

Specious emissions!

Multitask! Seriously, do whichever of these you feel to be most important to achieve first. Extra Class ticket gives you more frequency allocations which works well for cw and phone, especially DX. Radio Projects completed may play into honing your cw skills on the air. Choice is yours, but any of them is worthwhile to pursue.

If price is no object, absolutely. But pure Kenwood is $$ - $$$ these days from what I've seen online...

Not to mention all the clocks in our schools here would need a new frequency allocation for their time synchs, as they;re on the 4 metre band....!

Damn right they do! Especially with a tube amp!

The answer is similar to "what radio should I buy?" It depends. Scan the channels and you may get a read on who is on the channels most often. In my area, Twin Cities in MN, most of the lower gmrs and frs channels are businesses and kids, a couple school. There are a few of us on my side of town that park on ch 18 to chat. Scant traffic on any of the repeaters in town. I use ch 15 around the house, and either 7 or 16 when on group off-road rides in the truck. Best advice again is to scan the channels and see what you hear. plug in the tones for any repeates you know of in the area and monitor.

In his defense, at least my buddy did not use the "Ham LIte" phrase in his gateway postings....

Pretty much what I pointed out to my friend on FB. Most amateurs I know into gmrs are like me, got it going after they got their amatuer tickets to use with family out and about. Most people I know that use gmrs only, got into it for the same reason and had no other radio interests. He's involved in pretty much all 2 way radios as a hobbiest, Fireman/EMT, volunteer trail guy, etc. He also bugs me in many of his posts as he almost always calls it "Amateur (Ham) Radio". We kinda fell out a little when I replied to a post where he talked up that we should all monitor amateur/gmrs/murs when out and about in the woods hiking, biking, whatever. I explained while I sometimes have an HT with me, I mostly like hearing the sounds of nature out doing these things, not a bunch of squawking kids on bubble packs. Pretty much any where I'm out and about has cell service, so no real need to really bring the Boofwang along. He took umbrage at this.

These mirror what a buddy of mine posted in a FB group where he was talking up GMRS as a "Gateway" to Amateur Radio. I don't have solid stats on it, but I'm told the total number of Amateur Licensees is around 750k. The question I posed to him was, how many of these licensees in either service are active on the air with any regularity? As for the gateway, I got into GMRS 25 years after getting my amateur license; needed something to overcome a lack of Cell coverage up north so wifeypoo, who doesn't care at all for any radio hobbies, could call me out on the boat when out fishing.

I'll keep running my old Exploder. Proudly assembled in Canada with world sourced parts. Can count on one finger the number of times a Jeep pulled me out of a stuck. Can count on both hands the number of times I've winched out Jeeps from stucks! Mostly I run solo, and I have had to winch myself out a couple times from mud or deep snow, but it keeps on keepin' on.

Pretty much the same hereabouts, albeit there was only one M&G set up by local GMRS users, not sure it was a Club event but a get together arranged via FB Group here in MN.

It's a well known fact that you get 6-10 dB gain when you install antennae during snowstorms or below zero weather!

Dunno who that handsome stranger was, but he had a mighty fine lookin' veehickle!

Not gonna quote, but the point they made that GMRS is a radio hobby and most use it as such, I have to disagree with. I'm of the opinion that most GMRS users are not radio hobbyists but people who get the license to use the Service as it is; short range communications to assist users in their various pursuits. Yes, some are drawn to the Service as an adjunct to the other Services they're involved in, more power to 'em. Some as the so-called "Gateway drug" into the Ham world. Myself, I got into GMRS as a good way to have short range comm's from Cabin to boat or car up where cells phones are nice looking paperweights. Use sporadically around the home as well, easier than yelling across the yard. Have a couple friends I talk to simplex and rarely use a repeater.