Ian

I thought the point of ORI stuff was to allow opportunistic use by people who are in the region briefly to contact anyone physically nearby?

Since the consensus appears to be 19 simplex, I will be reprogramming my radios.

I'm certainly not doing it to be exclusionary, just to be able to toggle from opportunistic use of ORI repeaters to simplex without changing parameters on the radio. If I could get a MXT275 to scan just 20/22 and 19/xx, that's what I'd have as a priority scan list. I suspect this sort of thing is what dual-watch and dual-ptt was always intended for…

When I'm driving, I set 20(22) -- channel 20, 141.3 Hz CTCSS. 2022 is the year of the travel channel, friends!

Honestly, if you're going to freeband, might as well save the money and get a cheap baofeng. It's not good enough for Safety Of Life At Sea purposes, but if you just want to screw around, you couldn't really do it much cheaper.

VHF/GMRS hybrids West Marine VHF255 (22 channels, AAA backup, 0.4w gmrs) COBRA MR HH450DUAL (no repeater, no interstitials, 3w gmrs, AAA backup) Cobra Marine VHF HH425 (no repeater, no interstitials, AA backup) Uniden Atlantis 290 (black case) and 295 (camo) (22 channels, AAA backup, 3W GMRS, no repeater) Edit: Another ghost-hunter here, it seems! https://www.cobra.com/collections/marine-radios Cobra seems to still be producing the 450Dual, which makes it your best bet, perhaps. There are currently refurbished West Marine VHF255s on eBay right now, but used so YMMV. Happy hunting!

Is it worth picking up a default-programming DLR for funsies?

I use it on the regular, and I hear some telemetry on MURS3 near the Wedgefield GMRS repeater. It's about a fourteen minute loop, with a bit of CWID at the end. Still no joy on figuring out the data protocol, but I've really never actually tried very hard; if I cared, I'd get a SDR for $25 and run the usual SDR tools instead of recording it with a HT and a digital voice recorder as an MP3.

I've got about a half dozen of these, and a few of their base stations. Wanted to add some of their sensor modules for the funzies, but couldn't justify the expense for a toy like that. The radios perform admirably, but their tone codes apply to every single channel, and are not set individually. Fine for the rural family use case for which they were designed, but suboptimal for spying on Walmarts for fun and profit. Performance is really quite decent for two watts. All programming is front-panel, and the menu structure is admirably simple and easy to use. You'd spend more time setting up someone else's cloning system than just hand-programming these. The included nickel hydride batteries are crap by comparison to Eneloops, at only around 600 mAh. Eneloop FTW. (My radios were old, and the batteries they came with were shot) For a base station designed to be wall-mounted, they should really have put the cable connections on the bottom. Ah well. Never did figure out how to trigger their "alert zone XX" thing; it's some kind of subaudible tone signaling but their phone support guys couldn't give me implementation details. The belt clips aren't spring loaded like Motorola's, and the whole thing feels just a little less sturdy than Motorola's commercial grade radios, but these are marketed to people who have to buy their own replacements, and are likely to treat them with kid gloves, so… acceptable?

I always ask "How much radio do you need?" But I also have an unhealthy obsession with "vehicular repeaters" and wireless speaker-mics. So take this with a grain of salt. But sometimes you really don't need much radio -- range or power -- to achieve your goals. We should really be encouraging small garage repeaters on Open Repeater Initiative configurations; there's a lot of coverage holes, and this would help with that.

Can you post the files? They told me to download them but didn't provide active links. It wants me to log into my account, and it'll only let me download software for radios I've purchased __directly__ from them. Amazon purchase? No such luck. Suuuuper customer-hostile and baffling move. I don't think I can in good conscience buy any more Retevis products, and it's making me reconsider their lunchbox repeater.

I run a crapload of security software -- content blockers, adblock, script limitations -- because modern web technologies have made the Goodtimes Virus a practical reality.

They really don't want me to be able to download those files, though. I didn't buy them at Retevis.com, so I keep getting

The RT76P has some seriously dodgy firmware issues. This one's new to me, normally it's getting config files to stick when programmed from the radio's control pad. I highly recommend trying a firmware update and seeing if it resolves that. I'll let you know if it works for me… once I figure out how to update the firmware! Seriously, I'm considering giving up on my 76P and ordering the RB27 at this point. If you have any insights, please share.

I'd like to second the MXT 275. Had nothing but good results with that radio in practice, except for the included magmount antenna. Like most of them, they fail after a year in the Florida sun.

The killer feature that I don't expect but would love would be a second jack for a speaker-mic. https://www.bearcatwarehouse.com/accessories/wireless-cb-microphone The whole house is now your radio shack…

Really, if they added a dedicated jack for the off-the-shelf ID-o-Matic board, that'd solve like every single problem in one fell swoop.

http://www.radio-active.net.au/web3/APRS/Resources/RINO from here: Enjoy!

I routinely reach for Motorola Spirits of the two-channel two-watt variety, on Blue Dot and Green Dot. I also have a bunch of Dakota Alert kit, with the intention of eventually installing some of their MURS Alert sensors, or at least transmitters. (Modified, for example, to alert when the mailbox is opened -- all the better to keep an eye out for expensive deliveries!) I've also got a Radio Shack blue-green mobile unit, though I've yet to figure out a really elegant way to mount that in a modern truck's cab. I kind of wish Midland or Cobra would build a handheld-control-head MURS unit, those things are so much easier to cleanly install.

Sometimes you don't __need__ to know the difference. I occasionally find it useful to hand someone a really stupid radio, and say something like "If you can't hear me on 20, try channel 28" Perhaps hand them a radio with only three channels programmed -- half a watt, five watts, repeater input. As far as a non-radio-person knows, they're just turning up the power… I've been half-seriously accused of "walmart ops" a few times, and such strategies (as well as handing people single-channel radios) definitely make it easier on nontechnical people. Sometimes, a little communication is good enough.

This is the best use for a garage repeater I can come up with. Edited to add: If you're trying to get __into__ a repeater, another option is a cross-band repeater that transmits on the repeater input channel. Were it me, I'd use Motorola's DTR and DLR 900 MHz radios for the handheld terminals, since they can be set up with enough encryption to keep noobs and jammers out of your transmitter. 900 MHz digital is described to have excellent building penetration characteristics, so it should be able to find a path to your outdoor transmitter package without much trouble. If you're not trying to get into someone else's repeater but just want to get outside your house with enough power to get reception, you might consider the Retevis RT97. It's a five-watt "lunchbox" repeater that can be set up outside; all you need is enough power to make it through / around the cinderblock to transmit successfully, however you're going to be relying on your handheld and its indoor antenna for all the reception involved, which is unfortunate. The DTR and DLR radios are (mostly) cross-compatible, albeit with some new features only existing in the DLR1020 and DLR1060. However, the older DTR410 and DTR550 have removable antennas, which might be better suited to building a cross-band repeater. Were it me, I'd use a DTR550 in the repeater box, and a DLR1020 as a wireless speaker-mic to access the rooftop radio in your situation. Alternately, you could consider the (discontinued) DTR410 on eBay, as it may (frequently) be cheaper than a new DLR1020 in spite of greater capabilities in a lot of ways. Yes, I have similar problems with running coax where I live.

Grab a couple to play with; let me know if you figure out how to make them work, I could have always have gotten a lemon.

First: WELCOME! Welcome to the forum, welcome to the hobby. Second: The Midland magmount is disposable. The environmental sealing around the magnet lasts about a year, then the magnet rusts and the thing falls apart. Third: What kind of car do you have? Fourth: What do you mean by "clean install"? Do you want it in-dash, or just screwed to it with a bracket? Me, for example, I went for the MXT275 and a passthrough mount. When done, it'll look utterly factory and stealth. Other options I've considered was ripping out the stock head unit for a single-DIN unit with CarPlay, and a single-DIN two-way radio below it. (None of the links constitute an endorsement, just an example.) Fifth: Nagoya now makes an antenna specifically tuned for GMRS. This may be your best bet. (This is an endorsement)

Update 2: Wrote a review of the 76 and 76P. TL;DR: 76 is recommended, 76P is not.

If I may interject? In 2017 the FCC published a rules clarification that said that they never intended to ban part 90 equipment on GMRS.