wayoverthere

I don't disagree...I'd have loved to be able to say the same codes about "control operator" apply to gmrs, but no such luck. (it's in part 97, not 95)

It's a combination of factors; better antenna is one of them, "more sensitive hearing", as you put it. the second big one is height, "height is might", as the saying goes. many repeaters are sited high above the surrounding terrain; in the flatter parts of the midwest, some of them may be a thousand or so feet up a commercial tower, while in the hillier parts of the country, they may be on top of a mountain. with the right antenna, even talking to satellites on 5 watts becomes possible, and it's sometimes doable on less that perfect. California has a huge number of repeaters down both sides of the valley on top of the mountain ranges; i know of half a dozen, both gmrs and 70cm that i can hit from my patio on a 5 watt handheld, and most of my mobile work was done with handhelds and a mag mount antenna, which only helped both sending and receiving. on the other hand, handheld to handheld on flat ground, you're looking at something around 6 miles before just the basic curvature of the earth becomes an obstacle. now if you and a friend were on top of hills, with line of sight between you? 30 miles between handhelds isn't impossible, and there'd likely be a lot of false advertising lawsuits on some of the radio manufacturers (one in particular) if it wasn't at least possible for their "up to 30 mile range!" in ideal conditions

While I know it exists in the real world (mostly a regional thing, I think), gven that that's not a common phrase used on the forum , that was the first clue to me that it was hyperbole for comedic effect, along with the wording about "with all your fancy...." That said, I won't disagree it was subtle, and I know without the inflections that would go with it in person it's a lot harder to catch

I didn't catch a location for Dave to know if that applies to him specifically or not, but there definitely are some states where common law marriage is a thing...agreed that CA is not one of them. And the emergency provision is in the same section I linked, just a different paragraph from the definition of "family members" (I think it was the next, actually)

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/95.1705 This does lay out who qualifies as a family member to share usage of your license. One thing that was brought up elsewhere is the implication of common law status (in states that have it...may come into play for you). While I dont disagree that I'd like a little more flexibility in allowing someone use of my license (like ham offers), the reality is the code is pretty specific about who can. Short answer: unless you can make a case for her being a common law spouse, girlfriend doesn't qualify to use your license.

agreed. regardless of the incidental chatter, the licensee was still in control of the radio...it wasn't someone outside the permitted list being allowed to operate under your license, it was the licensee(s) operating under their license, and there happened to be someone else talking in the vicinity at the same time.

I'll leave it open to those with knowledge of the Front Range network, but this looks to be a "keeping track" kind of thing; the Tucson GMRS group does something similar. There's a link on the front range gmrs network page (linked from that repeater listing) to request access;once they verify you have an active gmrs license, they'll either send the programming info (tones) or provide a password to a protected page with the information.

First, welcome to the site! Most repeaters will require a code (tone); since there are limited channels to use, tones are used to prevent other transmissions and interference from activating the repeater. If you're signed in, you'll see either a decimal number (such as 141.3hz) which is a ctcss tone, or a 3 digit number, sometimes followed by a letter (such as 023N or 023i), which is a DCs tone. Travel tone refers to the Open Repeater Initiative, and generally means ctcss tone 141.3hz. The "members only" thing may come down to their keeping track of who's using the repeater (especially when it's free). That said, it would help to identify a repeater you're looking at so those with knowledge about the specific repeater can chime in.

To be specific, it's the p25 stuff, both UHF and vhf. They seem to come and go reasonably regularly, and they're apparently still approved for firefighters' use.

I would say the fact that there's enough market to support aftermarket programming software is pretty telling in itself (RT Systems), though that does have a few quirks in it's interface as well.

Glad to see a little confirmation to what I strongly suspected (and have alluded to a bit lately)...between the current state of things, and info I've run across on both both wouxun and retevis regarding quantity buying, I've had a hunch it was really the distributors more to thank than just the manufacturer. I know BTWR also has a strong presence on Reddit gathering feedback, I'm fairly sure bettersaferradio does also. That combined with another distributors experiences theyve been quite public about. While I do have a little issue with some of BSR's marketing (all the "SHTF!" and similar buzzwords), I can't fault their or BTWR's efforts at getting better products to the market. It's kind of cool seeing the market finally get a little focus on better products, and i do think there's room to get above the bare minimum and keep an easy to use radio for the basic simplex crowd while including enough features for the somewhat more advanced user (and spreading the cost across both)...the current growth of options would seem to support that.

I remember reading something to the effect of the "Pofung" name came out of a their version of a trademark dispute between two companies using "Baofeng" and making similar products...so one switched to "Pofung" during the dispute to differentiate, and chose that because the pronunciation was close to the proper pronunciation of "baofeng"

Their website is kind of unhelpful. I've been eyeing some of their LMR gear, and in digging there's a lot of their LMR stuff that exists in their website still, with little to no leads as to whether it's current product or not. They do still appear to have some LMR product on the market, at least.

I think that sums up the markets they're mostly aiming for...."if you need more, oh well" Which...agrees with the above....they have markets they're aiming for, and make a product good enough for those markets, and that's it. On split tones, I've run across a couple out here that used it as a control for whether the repeater would link or be in standalone mode (more common on the ham side), and spotted a a few in the database. I've also run across comments of repeater owners that did it with the specific intent of excluding Midland users from their system (this may go back to the lack of licensE issue too, general inexperience, or both).

Interesting to note what it's drawing on the 120v side of things. Also slightly curious why receiving draw would be different depending on transmit levels. I was curious what my mxt115 draws, and since my alinco psu has power poles on the front along with a digital display, I put an adapter together and plugged it in, got 1.4A on low power and 3.5A on high, iirc, both at 13.8v.

It was one (or more) of the newer overseas entries coming with preprogramming issues. Midland is pushing hard (from a sponsorship standpoint) on the overland/off-road community, especially in the move from cb to gmrs; can't argue with this as a smart business tactic. Also can't argue with Midland being very good at things being off the shelf ready. The weakness until the recent updates has been their missing tones and lack of ability for split tones (minus compute programming the mxt400), though this is less of an issue with simplex use. The whole tone to code conversion you have to do to change tones isn't exactly intuitive either. Maybe repeater usage is more of an afterthought, and their main focus is simplex users. The other manufacturers just don't have the presence here that Midland does to get behind the marketing, I think. Wouxun is definitely making some big progress in terms of product with others not all that far behind, but how much of that is wouxun, and how much is it more them custom programming something for a given vendor, with the vendor being the one taking the big risk to put something better on the market?

Looks like the same radio sold as the tyt th-uv88 as well, just locked down for gmrs (like so many others) That aside, DPL is another name for DCS, where PL is equivalent to CTCSS.

Trying not to, though someone turned up a pile of punch cards at work not too long ago. I hear we actually still have things running on COBOL, not that they let me near much of anything...I've ticked off too many of the helpdesk techs over the years.

I wouldn't doubt it. Waiting for that last programmer familiar with COBOL to be available, perhaps? ?

Yes, give it a day or two. There are sometimes delays in FCC getting the data out, and there's been an ongoing issue with a bad character in the data file that FCC puts out causing issues with loading the into the site's database, but it's usually sorted in a day or two.

The overlap between simplex and repeater could be a good thing if you're using a "highway channel" for max range, as anyone tuning in for this will hear both the repeaters and the simplex calls. Another plus of .675 is higher power vs 5 watts on the 462 interstitials.

The list of p25 repeaters within 100 miles of me is...pretty long. NXDN on the other hand, 1 with 100 miles, and it takes opening up the search to 200 to find a second. So yeah, NXDN is somewhat exclusive in the middle of CA. (According to repeater book, anyway)

yeah, the update @AdmiralCochrane posted on the last page indicates they're holding off dropping the fee for GMRS until they can redo ALL the fees at once, GMRS, amateur, etc. (sometime next year).... Making sure they don't drop this side to $35 till they can get their $35 apiece in on the ham side, i guess. (I took advantage and did a vanity request for the ham side while it's still free)

So, up front, I'll say that the "stated intent" of GMRS is more of a "FRS-plus"...so a lot of users tend to stick to their group, run tones to filter out those outside their group, and generally not answer an outsider. This does vary from area to area, sometimes quite significantly, but the reality is many areas don't have the hobbyist presence that we see on the site (not all areas have a ham-lite mentality). Definitely not trying to be harsh, but it's important to go into it with reasonable expectations...I was a little disappointed when I started, to be honest. That aside..let's talk technical limitations. You likely won't have dealt with tones on CB. There's two types, and they go by a few different names...PL and DPL (Private Line/Digital Private Line), Quiet/Dequiet, or just CTCSS/DCS (Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System/Digitally Coded Squelch). In simple terms, these act as a filter on what you hear; if a signal has the same tone the filter is listening for, you hear it. If not, it doesn't get through. The same is in play for most repeaters; you need the right tone to get past the filter to be heard. Many family (or other closed) groups will use tones so they only hear each other. After the technical blocks, there's the mere range. The more serious repeaters often run much higher gain antennas than any of us run on our cars, or most are likely to have at home. One thing you can try is picking a repeater and driving closer to where it's expected to be; you can sometimes be a little more precise if you can find info on a repeater from a club or association site. If the repeater is hearing you, many times you'll hear a blip of static or a tone after you unkey...if you hear that, you know you've at least opened the repeater, and if it works at that point, you know it's a range issue. Finally, there are some inactive listings in the database. Unfortunately, there is some level of dependence on the repeater owners to keep their listings up to date, and there isn't currently a system to 'vote' when the last confirmed usage occurred. This shouldn't be an issue if you can hear people using the repeater, though. Hope this gives you some things you can check off, and at least narrow down if it's a signal issue, an access tone issue, or people simply not answering. p.s. One final thought for the Btech, which is another roadblock I tripped over. The preprogrammed channels are all you get for transmit channels; you CAN program more receive channels past the base 30, but they'll only ever be receive channels, even if they're in-bounds for GMRS. I found this one the hard way, as i have two in my area on .575 that use different input tones.

Very nice ? my 824 was similar...saw a deal and jumped on it. 2 of the 3 EVXs were a good deal, buy kind of an ordeal with the seller (ongoing contact about thinking they'd shipped 4 instead of 2, and leaving info off the address), but they came packing larger capacity motorola batteries and included a speaker mic for $60 apiece. The third was from a different seller, a little steeper price but better fit what I wanted, and was easy as pie.