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The key question is your budget and the number of units (radios) needed. CCRs or Cheap Chinese Radios vary greatly from model to model. The Woxuns have a better user rating than a great many of the Baofengs but again, they do have some good units as well. Flea Bay is a good source for used high grade radios from manufacturers like Motorola, ICOM. Vertex-Standard, Kenwood and others. Many of these are not certified under Part 95 of the FCC regulations but are certified under Part 90 which has tighter specifications. That doesn't make it all right to use them on GMRS but many do. Amateur or Ham radios are also not certified for GMRS, but again, many do use them. The best of the bunch will be a commercial or public safety grade unit, but those are typically limited in the number of channels available and require some expertise in setting up the channels for use. Many are best programmed by a radio shop for a fee but you also need to know before hand exactly what you need for each channel. BTech offers a good GMRS handheld that can be programmed from the front panel or through a PC/MAC using a free program. The Midland units are fair but both they and the BTech along with the Woxuns work better with upgrade antennas. The best advice is to do your homework first, build a needs list and the search for radios that come closest to meeting all your needs along with the nice-to-have features.

Measure twice, cut once. A lot of antennas have a little slop at the base which allows the antenna to be made longer. Take a reading with the antenna fully seated in the base then another as you raise the antenna about a 1/4 inch in the base. see which way the SWR changes. That will tell you if you need to lengthen or shorten the antenna. If shortening, cut off about 1/4inch increments and work from there.

In the event of a disaster the FCC won't be actively searching for individuals using radios improperly except those in the public safety bands or federal/military channels. That "grace period" will be short, probably less than 72 hours before they would begin active enforcement. GMRS, MURS and CB radios are too plentiful for much active enforcement unless the user was actively interfering with disaster response units.

Depends. What do you have? I bought a Surecom digital from everyone's favorite online store.

Most of the radios used by members are purchased online. What you end up with will depend on how you intend to use it. For a mobile installation (vehicle) you will probably end up with either a 25W or 45W unit. As far as efficiency, there isn't that much difference between 25 and 45W. It's in the antenna. The same can be said for a home or base unit which is usually a mobile attached to a power supply for the needed DC power. Base station antennas are different than those used for handheld or mobile stations. The Ed Fong antenna from edsantennas.com is a good inexpensive unit. Base station antennas also need to be as high up as you can get them as this affects the range more than power.

Well, I don't have an MXT400 or the desire to get one so I can't speak to the channels installed. However, the issues with repeaters is fairly well documented. First, the wideband and narrowband point. Radios having one bandwidth can, and do, talk to each other over the same channels. Radios on wideband hear the narrowband radio with lower volume while the opposite is true for narrow band radios listening to wide band radios. This has to do with the amount of signal carrying the intelligence. Narrowband radios carry their intelligence or speech using 11.3 kilohertz of bandwidth and wide band radios use 20 kilohertz for speech. More bandwidth, the stronger the received speech volume. Also, the wideband radio will be more intelligible at the farthest range for both. The second issue for the Midlands has to do with the signaling tones used by most repeaters. Some repeaters need a specific tone to "wake up" and process the incoming signal. If the output from the repeater does not carry a tone or uses the same tone the MXT works. It's when the output signal uses a different tone than the input, split tones, that the Midland fails, This is because the Midland cannot assign one tone for transmit and another to receive without modification.

You also need to remember the coverage area shown in those maps is theoretical in they assume certain parameters that may be incorrect. The coverage for a radio signal depends on three things, location, height and radiated power. Location can best be described as where the antenna is physically located and the terrain surrounding the antenna. The second factor, height is how far above the ground at that physical location is the radiating portion of the antenna. Power takes into effect the type of emission, bandwidth the signal occupies and the amount of radiated signal. All the coverage areas shown on myGMRS are circular ignoring the actual terrain at and near the repeater. It is unknown what antenna height is used and the radiated power. I know if I were to put up a site at my location the coverage would be shown as a circle but in all actuality it would be a wedge toward the WSW due to hills higher than my antenna surrounding my location.

Either antenna will work on your top. The addition of an extra thickness of metal as a brace may be difficult because of the NMO mount the antennas use. Often there just isn't enough length on the mount to go through two thicknesses of material. I would shorten the coax just for a neater installation but that's your call.

The FCC doesn't classify receivers, just transmitters. Dual-band means the transmitter can transmit in two different frequency bands.

Good post about DMR issues when mixed with analog on the same or adjacent channels. The two systems don't play together at all. Public safety went through some great pains when MotoTurbo was introduced. It ended up causing a freeze on the four coordinating authorities approving digital license modifications until guidelines could be worked out involving the coordinators and Moto on what would work and what changes to allowable signal levels could be determined.

The frequencies aren't "owned" by any person. The requirement is for your system to not interfere with any other station on the same frequency and to accept any interference. My take is if your site has different tones the other site has no complaint about losing users. It's free enterprise at work and users will use the service which serves them better. To be better prepared I suggest you bring up your repeater using different tones and monitor the existing station for impact. Document the tests so if the other site changes and starts causing problems on your site you have a valid complaint.

A Code plug is a saved configuration that can be loaded into a radio with the programming software.

The MXT400 is analog as digital radios are not permitted in the GMRS frequencies.

Go down to license detail and you can specify active licenses only.

Do an advanced search for city state - no call signs needed.

There are many dual band 25W mobiles available for both VHF and UHF. The Part 90 mobiles from Motorola are over-engineered for general use but are widely available. For the more casual use you are looking at, a radio designed for business use will give you excellent service. The better ones are from Vertex, Icom and Kenwood. A linear is a bag of worms turning into snakes that will come back to bite you. That's not to say there aren't good linears but those designed and FCC approved would cost you more than a used dual-band LMR mobile.

The ULS system the FCC uses for LMR license data can do searches in geographical areas. All you need to do is enter the parameters you want; ZA for the license type and state to return a list of all license holders within the state. You can drill down even further getting those in a county or even city if desired. Yes, the feature of searching the FCC database could be programmed into MyGMRs if Rich wanted to take the effort but its also just as easy to go directly to the FCC and pull the data yourself.

Use the HH as a hand-held and put a second mobile in the vehicle. It's really the best as it would allow you to contact someone in the vehicle while you were out and the person i the vehicle could reach out with a higher power radio if needed. You imply you may be doing some type of search and rescue in the event of a disaster, so quit cutting corners and do it better than cobbling a linear to a HH.

Just pick up a small mobile unit. A 25W unit should be able to use the cigarette lighter socket.

OMG Gman endorsing a radio that doesn't have bat wings!

I doubt you can change the steps. The radio is probably set to step in the standard 6.25, 12.5 and 25 kHz center channel steps used in LMR.

MURS is probably a better choice given the size of the property. Even with the limit of 2 watts there is no restriction on who may use the radio. It is possible to setup a cross-band repeater but may not be entirely permitted by FCC rules. The better option would be to obtain a coordinated frequency or pair so higher power radios can be used. Shopping for a coordinator will result in lower fees and some may also create the application and obtain the FRN for an additional fee.

Along the Canadian border there are some sites operating for cross-border comms. It's primarily in the NE with Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont doing the bulk of it when I quit coordinating in 2015. The practice had been going on for several years but it required a treaty modification to get it officially sanctioned. The treaty change allowed for US frequencies to be installed in Canada and vice-versa on a non-interference basis. Stations in Canada operate under Canadian rules while stations in the US operate under FCC rules. I forget how wide the band is but 30 kilometers rings a bell. In some little towns along the border it's quite a mess as a responder from one country may have to cross the border in order to respond to a call in their country.

The purpose of narrowbanding was to increase the number of available channels. Narrowbanding yielded (on paper) twice the number of channels but in reality it is a little over 40% because of adjacent channel interference.

The channel is 25 kHz wide with 20 kHz containing the transmission. That leaves 2.5 kHz as a guard band on both sides of the transmission.