breakfasttaco79

Thank you. I think I understand how this works better now. The radios work great at our ranch in West Texas (a little over a mile apart at the furthest points) but struggle back in the city. It sounds like I'll be putting an antenna on the roof and getting a base station set up at home soon. My wife is excited about it.

Thank you guys for the response. I understand the concept of a repeater broadcasting from a higher point with more power thus allowing it to reach a much greater area. The part I am wondering about is, doesn't my ht have to transmit far enough to reach the repeater? If that is the case why can I transmit from 10 miles away to the repeater but only 1 mile to another radio? Or does the same large net that the repeater cast when transmitting go for when it is receiving my signal as well?

Good afternoon everyone. I am new to radios and just got my GMRS license a couple of weeks ago. I purchased a Baofeng AR-5RM. I plan on checking out some other radios before figuring out which ones I like best. I have been able to program it with CHIRP and connect it to a repeater close by. It is my understanding that when I transmit on the repeater frequency, the repeater picks up my broadcast and then retransmits it to extend the range of my radio. I have noticed that I can transmit from 8-10 miles away from the repeater and it can pick up and retransmit my transmission with no issues. However, if I am on a regular simplex channel (21 for example) my range is nowhere close to that for a radio-to-radio transmission. When using radio to radio channel 21 if I am more than a mile apart they don't seem to connect. Can someone help me understand how I can broadcast to a repeater 8-10 miles away but not to another radio a little under 1 mile away? Thank you