Lscott

I'm not shelling out the price I see being quoted of $750 to $770 each. The D75A is a nice radio but it doesn't seem to offer enough in major functionality to justify spending the money. If nothing else I wanted to see AT LEAST split band programming. Also a DMR version would have been the deal maker. At best it's just a slight update/refresh of the D74A. Oh, the battery life on the D74 sucks.

You buy what works for you. GMRS isn't the solution in all cases.

I got a super good deal on the TH-79A at a swap. Couldn't pass it up. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/253-th-79ajpg/?context=new

Yeah, now you have to look for some NOS, new old stock, tubes to keep it going. Likely cost you more for those than what you paid for the radio.

I was at a local Ham swap a couple of years ago. One of those radios was on a table. I picked it up to look at it. The guy said I could have it. Didn't even want any money for it. Just take it away. I did have to spend a few bucks to get a charger base for it since the one in the box was missing. I programmed it up. It seemed to work OK and that's about the end of my experience with it. It's packed away on a shelf along with a bunch of other radios. I have the documentation for it, brochures, FCC Grant, user manual and service manual with schematics. KG-UVD1P.zip

A vendor wouldn't have to do it deliberately. The battery packs are likely sourced from an outside vendor and they just slap their label on it. Unless they do some in-house quality control check they might notice notice until the complaints roll in.

My radios are used mostly for scanning the local Ham, GMRS and business frequencies. Occasionally I'll get motivated and talk to somebody. When I'm not at the gym working out I head for the local mall to go walking for some low intensity exorcise. In the later case I take my UHF HT with a D-Ring ear hanger for something to monitor. You would be surprised what some store employees talk about over an open channel. Shame on them, R-Rate material. I keep the radio under the coat, or when it's warm outside under an oversized shirt on the belt so it doesn't show. Route the ear piece wire up through the shirt. I don't need people staring at me thinking I'm some kind of under cover cop or mall security dude. Yes, I've had that happen when leaving the men's restroom at the mall one Christmas season. I had the radio pulled out of the coat to make some setting adjustment. Some guy saw me and the look I got was pure surprise from him. I also don't need some paranoid person thinking I'm a terrorist and get mall security involved, maybe even asked to leave.

I get it. The wife goes shopping. Sees an item that costs $2 but it's on sale for $1. So she buys it. You go shopping. See the same item on sale. But you decide you don't need it. Later you both can legitimately claim you "saved" a $1. The difference is you still have yours.

The FCC generally gives preference to the licensed service. After all they paid money to use the spectrum. I generally never use RX tones. I want to hear all the traffic on the frequency.

Why would I do that? When I need to use the repeater, or another station, it’s not like the repeater can just flip a knob and change channels. At the time it was the ONLY operational repeater in the area. The kids just had to move. GMRS is a licensed service, FRS isn’t, and that’s what the kids were using, no call signs were ever used. My understanding is the licensed service has priority.

Not my problem.

I run Firefox. One of the ad-ons is AdBlocker for YouTube.

But it does! It’s call FRAUD. I had a buddy tell me he had opened up some cheap suspect Chinese battery backs. He found a chunk of steel in them to add weight to cover up the lower weight from the smaller low capacity cells that were used.

I purchased two new Chinese clones of a Kenwood Lithium Ion battery back. They absolutely refused to charge in the official charger base. I even tried some of my spares I had of the exact same model, no good. Turns out the packs were missing an internal connection to a resistor that identifies the type of pack to the charger base. The charger base can do multiple battery chemistries so it has to know which one. I had the charger base service manual with the various battery pack internals documented. I discovered a missing connection between an external charger connection and one side of the resistor. Making the connection externally using some fine gage wire the battery pack then charged up just fine. I contacted the eBay seller to get a refund on the two packs. They said the problem was my charger base. Well I sent them the documentation to prove otherwise. They still argued so I got eBay involved and got my refund. I also left some very negative feedback about the seller too. They later begged me to change the negative comments. I told them NO. What likely happened is the Chinese battery pack manufacturer had a quality problem where the packs got built without that one wire connection. So, instead of scraping them out sold them to a reseller, likely for a really good discount. They in turn figured they would turn a quick buck by selling them to unsuspecting customers who don’t know any better. Well, I was one who did. Anybody who complained got the charge base excuse. I’m very sure they knew the packs were no good. They had a healthy supply of them and I can’t be the only one who complained.

Would be interesting to test one and see if the rating comes anywhere close to the real capacity. The Chinese are known for wildly inflating specifications on radios and other stuff. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/248-2117323252_batterypacktestingjpg/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/258-104331801_testedbaterypacksjpg/?context=new

I know. I do use an ad blocker. YouTube for a while now is hiding the yellow dots in the time progress bar showing where all the ad's are in the video. I see too many dots I just don't watch it. Now you can't tell, thus the ad blocker. It's so nice not to get ambushed by stupid ad's every few minutes.

I'm not on YouTube.

I would avoid using the repeater channels as "simplex", transmitting on the repeater output frequency directly to another radio, if possible. It's not illegal to use them as such but it can cause problems. Transmitting on the repeater output frequency may result in you jamming another station that's trying to listen to the repeater's output. Also very likely the station transmitting to the repeater can't hear you and will simply jam your communications. I've gotten rid of a few kids using FRS radios on the local GMRS repeater's output frequency a few times. When the 50 watt repeater got used, only about 4 to 5 miles away, the kids got the message and disappeared real quick.

You can conduct commercial activity on GMRS. On Ham it's strictly verboten except for very narrow exception like a talk in for a swap or announcing equipment for sale during a net. Oh, encryption is allowed on Ham under very limited conditions, such as a ground control station for a satellite.

A few do it because they like the prestige of being a repeater owner. Yeah, there are a few guys hung up on ego's out there.

Somebody once said " I might not be right, but I'm never wrong." Hang in there.

You can try counting them. It's like the old game guessing how many marbles are in the cookie jar. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/249-934916052_radiocollectionjpg/?context=new

Does your state sell lottery tickets?

Some of my radios have the OST feature programmed to a button on the radio. What sucks is the tone list is limited to 38. That’s enough for analog PL’s but sort of useless for digital squelch codes.

Way too many. I have so many I keep an inventory sheet to see which ones I have and the unit count.