GrouserPad

Fed

Thank God you have zero authority over who can or cannot use GMRS. There are many people who use it for many different reasons.  Neither you nor I have the authority to say they don’t belong.

It’s simple. If you’re not with a concerned group of people with utility of the GMRS service. Beat it…
It’s not a radio AOL chat room. It’s concerned groups and families doing THINGS. 
 
Don’t clog up a repeater pair with your money if you’re not with that vibe. 
 
The technicians class and the 440 is SOOO available for you guys…  And you’re right at home there. You can just pour over your latest dialysis treatments and all the rest, and they’ll hang on your every word.  
 
But the GMRS/FRS is just for the groups, friends, and families just trying to keep in touch in the field. It’s wives, 13 year old girls, and dads. 
 
If you made a repeater, and this type of traffic isn’t welcome, then actually… YOU need to vacate. Free up that repeater pair for the 5 watt repeaters that actually need to be there..

Overuse of call signs are the guys that set their auto CW's on their repeaters every 15 mins of the hour regardless of traffic.  Especially the ones that have to announce the date, time, temp, and city..   Crazy as hell 

I've always preferred to run my antennas center of the cab to give me the most omni-directional signal as possible. I have a pickup truck and was thinking of running my gmrs magmount 5/8over5/8 antenna infront of a base loaded wilson 2000 cb antenna. There would be about 1.5ft between the antennas loading coils. Does anyone know if this setup will cause one of the antennas to become a reflector of the other and make me extremely directional? What other effects might this cause if any? I'm more concerned about their proximity to one another negatively influencing my gmrs range, as gmrs is what I use to do coms with my home base often. And unfortunately it seems I'm always on the fringes of gmrs service so I'm pretty concerned about the negative effects if there is some.  CB is only for interstate road trips and takes a backseat to my gmrs all other times.  If this is more in-depth than gmrs ever was ment to be I apologize and you can leave this thread to die in the weeds of the forum. I know I tend to get a bit obsessive about details. I apologize.

Picked up a BTech Nagoya UT-72G for my SUV. Very poor RX/TX, even though plenty of steel roof ground plane. 
My stock-stubby HT outperforms it from inside the vehicle.
I plan to buy another antenna to compare against before returning it.
So, what are your favorite magmount options?
Primary use is Simplex. Urban hills (no buildings over 10 stories, but plenty of hills. 3db?). Need to stick with removable for now. No drilled holes.  Would consider bracket mount for top of rear hatch (but worse ground plane?)  I haven't done SWR sweep; don't wanna focus on numbers just yet - would rather stick with analogue comparison initially.  
It'll be easy to compare. The UT-72G is performing noticeably worse than any HT in the vehicle.
Thank you. 
[UPDATE] I purchased a TRAM 1192 to test through-glass before I spend more on sexier magmount options.
Will update. 
 

100%, grandma kept telling him to turn it off to save the battery whenever he wasn't using it. Kids left to their own aren't going to be thinking those invasive thoughts; they'll leave it on in their sock drawer for six months, or until years later when you clean out their room after they moved away to college (whichever comes later).

Went on a road trip and my 6 year old rode with grandma. I gave him one of my radios and we kept the other. Thought it'd be a fun way to try to talk. In the 20-ish hours of driving:
Kid turned off his radio "to save battery" Kid turned off his radio because he wanted to watch Minecraft videos on the iPad Kid dropped the radio and couldn't reach it Kid couldn't hear his radio over his headphones while watching a movie on the iPad Kid said "hi dad, I love you" and a construction worker on the same frequency responded "what?" and my kid went "what?" and the construction worker went "what?" and my kid panicked turned off the radio when he realized he wasn't talking to dad We talked about how big windmills actually are when we passed a blade being transported All in all, a fun experiment. He enjoyed using "dad's radios" and getting to use walkie-talkies somewhere other than the backyard (when it was turned on).
Also, sorry, random Illinois DOT guy.

Here is my Audiovox FRS-1000 base light grey, and my Audiovox GMRS-2000 Base dark grey radios.

Sir, this is a GMRS forum.  GMRS people and normal people don't know what a QSL is.

Because the reality of everyone being able to very quickly look-up where they live will hit them. and.. Because they would likely realize that anyone obsessive enough to look up their callsign, find their address, and write a letter for something so un-necessary is clearly a very socially unbalanced and possibly mentally-ill person.. that now knows where they sleep...  

If someone sent a letter in the mail requesting access i guarantee the repeater owners would be horrified 

I figured I would let everyone know, I updated Chirp tonight and saw the Radioddity DB20G is now on the supported radios list. Which Im sure means the other brands of this same radio likely work with it as well. Consider this a friendly heads up. I think we all prefer Chirp over most all oem software. 

I started playing with a Baufang UV5R  (before they locked them)  in the HAM bands.  Got bored with the HAM world and programed it to the GMRS side and thats when i began having fun with radio...  My first GMRS radio (and favorite) was a Wouxun KG935 HT.   I still dabble with HAM but for the most part i enjoy the GMRS side.  I never did try a UV5G but did program one of my UV5R to GMRS only.   Since these radios are all locked now i would recomend a UV5G or a Wouxun GMRS only radio, they have a few versions now.. 

Welcome to the new world of written communication brought to you by young people with limited education. 

 

Hahaha 😂 @marcspaz 

Hahaha 😂 @marcspaz 

I must admit I’m enjoying this thread—and a few years down the road, I look forward to the “kid misadventures of radio” all mentioned😂. I own 15 acres of woods on the side of a mountain, and my wife and I have taken to using HTs if I go for a walk and want to leave the cell phone (and the rest of the world) behind. But I totally see in the future, when we have a couple munchkins of our own, using said radios to call them when supper is ready…and all the fun that will come with little explorers chit-chatting through the woods…😁

Even though they don't call it GMRS in Iran this is the perfect situation to offer cheap disposable GMRS radios to the rescue workers to facilitate efficient communications. 

It stands for "Oh, Shit! Over!"

Over the weekend my son’s phone was dead so he put in his Sonic order to me over the repeater.   Oh well…. 

Me: I set our radios to channel 9 and locked the controls. Just use the side button, you don't need to touch anything else.
KId: Okay, thanks dad!
[fifteen minutes later]
Kid: I pushed a bunch of buttons and now I can't talk to you.
Me: Well, you unlocked the controls, set the radio to channel 3, set a PL tone, turned the volume all the way down, and... turned the roger beep back on.
 
Little man loves his roger beep.
They're FRS radios with a .5W TX max - we did a test and I can't pick them up outside the neighborhood. He did turn it to CH 15 (462.550) once and freaked out when it picked up local repeater traffic. That was fun. Couple of older guys talking about lunch and sports.

My kid likes running around outside with an FRS radio and talking to me, which is fun for both of us.
He also likes kerchunking and hitting the call/alarm button until I take the radio away, which is only fun for one of us. But we all start somewhere.

My wife is heading up to NYs to babysit our 2 grandsons while my boy does his bowling tournament thing.  I came home for lunch to see her off.  After she got settled into the car I took off and by the time I got to the shop she's calling me on the radio.  She doesn't have a radio in her car so she was in the house.
Turns out she couldn't find her phone and radioed me to call it so she could hear where it was.  I did, she found it LOL.
 
And that's why a radio is better than a phone, in this case LOL.

Another quirk to the oddities here..      Now days its hard to tell if you are getting hit with a malware attempt to steel passwords.   I remember a bunch of people at work a year ago getting similar notices from Microsoft.  Turned out that was an attempt to steel peoples usernames and passwords.    I actually went to my profile here and changed my password that route and the notice went away