cwheeler

All respondents have great input & info here so I won't presume to pre-empt anything said, merely add a little.A more pricey addition to the bubble pack and\or Chinese radios mentioned is the Garmin GPS+GMRS combos out there. Ebay tends to have the best prices & these aren't cheap but the added fun or the GPS, location tracking between like-unit (can locate within a few feet where Bubba is each time he transmits..and he - you) & now even one with built in 5 or 6MP geotracking camera...cool stuff & repeater capable (again except for the oddball reversed TX\RX freqs or using DCS Vs CTCSS for the enable)
I do have a couple 1 Watt Moto units that I recently tried with a local solar power repeater here in southern AZ...I found I had to be high enough with relatively few LOS obstructions to hit it from >2mi but on the RX side it performed marvelously some 15+ mi from the repeater which I think is set @ ~15W on the TX side. 
My own experiments getting ready to find a home for 2  home-built repeaters have shown that if I forgo using a duplexer & use the two Moto GM300 mobiles tied together with two 5+dB gain omnis that I boosted the RX performance some 30% with the little 1watt as my test radio by adding a GAsFET 25dB gain .7dB noise figure pre-amp @ the RX antenna...and the non-LOS (line of sight) performance was upped a good 40-45% over the previous barebones configuration...despite the added expense of a second coax & antenna I'm thinking I'm going to go this was....it does make those little bubble radios a lot more useful when a repeater is needed & available
Anyhow, 1st time posting in the forum although I've been in the GMRS world 20+ yrs off\on. Howdy to you all...
If anyone in the Tucson or Oro Valley area has a nice high tower or Mt Lemmon spot that I could access I'd love to give one of these repeaters a home...solar powered so no need for AC off a pole..
I've got a son\daughter-in-law in Sac so maybe I'll talk to you on a repeater out there sometime as I visit frequently...
Cheers
Al-WQRS220

Are you talking about ID'ing on your regular station or something like a repeater?
 
You have to identify at the end of each communication or series of communications.  That means the end of a contact/conversation, but it does not mean you have to ID every time you are unkeying the mic.  During longer contacts you have to ID at least every 15 minutes and at the end of the contact.
 
How you ID, whether in English or Morse code, doesn't change the interval.
 
In the GMRS, a repeater does not have to ID as long as the stations using the repeater ID themselves properly.
 
You are not required to use PL(CTCSS) when identifying.  It is not uncommon for stations like repeaters to ID without buzz so that mobile stations don't have to hear it.
 
See §95.119.

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