wayoverthere

It's definitely a learning journey, including separating some of the real world application from the marketing fluff. I have a set as well, and I have to give Midland credit for being beginner friendly gear. That said, one part of the journey is going to be research...varied levels of radios, and differing features. Some have all the features we want, some don't, and some of that we can learn from others' experience. Case in point was my hands discovering that the method btech uses to lock down the gmrs 50x1 is an inconvenience with the repeaters near me, where the kg805g handheld doesn't have the same limitation.

Yes, you're understanding correctly. You may be able to hear repeaters (as the repeater output frequencies, and the simplex frequencies for ch 15-22 are the same), the gxt's are not able to transmit to the repeaters.

Thanks for the tip; I held off ordering the cable for the HTs till they actually showed up, and glad I did...still waiting for word from UPS where those are. On the 4207, we'll see how it goes. Bluemax49ers stuff seems to be well regarded for working, but he's sold out on the one for the 4200 series.

Took a gamble on a less expensive option...cable and programming software for $49 from the antenna farm. We'll see how it goes. Radio itself is a vx4207-6, 400-470mHz range

I'm curious how the vertex stuff does; the evx539's I tried for seem to have disappeared in UPS hands somewhere; I'm on the edge of pulling the trigger on a mobile. Edit: I went for it. Ordered a programming cable too.

This. The power draw simply sitting idle receiving (or programming) is pretty much negligible; it fluctuates betwen 0.1 and 0.0A on my alinco psu's digital readout. edit: was doing some other testing tonight (whether switching power supply is inducing noise on gmrs); for my alternate power, i dug up a couple 6v lantern batteries, and wired them in series, and my 50x1 powered up just fine, showed 13.3v (it seems to read voltage a little high, it usually shows 14.2v when the psu is set to its 'set 13.8v' mode, and a multimeter on the batteries in series showed around 12.15v) also corrected amp reading above...it fluctuates between 0.0 and 0.1A.

Does friend by chance have led drl and or taillights? I know I get some pretty bad interference on the cb from the drop-in led headlight bulbs I have in my truck, though I haven't noticed any interference from any of the others 3rd brake, dome, reverse, and tails).

your understanding is correct. The 50x1 will only transmit on low power on 1-7, and your choice of level on 15-22 and the 15-22 repeater inputs (gmrs 15-22 and Rept15-Rept22)channels. everything else, including 8-14 are receive only.

Took a quick look, this tyt looks quite similar https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CY6CRZH/

Realistically, if you don't have pl tones input on the simplex (15-22) channels, you'll hear any traffic coming from the repeaters as well, since the receive side of the repeater channels 15-22 is the same as their simplex counterpart. Not exactly convenient to respond to something on that repeater, I admit, since when you come off scan it goes to whatever you were on prior to scanning

Miklor.com has a lot of good info on a variety of baofeng/btech models. The baofengs I have, I got the cable off of amazon at the same time, and it came with software, though chirp covers a lot of models as well (chirp.danplanet.com)

It was one of those "its time to replace it anyway" things, and I already had the replacements on hand...seemed like a good time to get some foolishness out of my system.

Are you testing with the radios close together? If so, it's possible that the transmitting radio is overloading the other, hence not hearing the audio come back from the repeater.

Pretty much. Setting both tone and tonesql, the repeater will hear you, and you'll only hear the repeater. If you set tone only, and leave tone sql blank, you're spot on, you can still talk to the repeater, and you'll hear the repeater and any other traffic on that channel.

Glad to help. It's definitely been a learning curve for me too. there's a ton of useful info here to digest (and helpful people) that's applicable to more than just gmrs, if the interest takes you that direction. One thing I will give btech credit for is at least getting instructions translated (or wholly rewritten) to reasonable English compared to what you get with the average baofeng stuff.

In simplified terms, tones act as a gate, signals without the key (correct time) don't get by. the 'tone' is the transmit tone, so the repeater hears you. ToneSql is for receiving; setting a code there (tone->tone) means you'll only hear signals with that tone. Leaving tonesql blank (tone->), you'll hear EVERYTHING on that frequency, repeater or not. The variety of radios and menus and various settings does make it a bit of a puzzle to figure out sometimes

his username is bluemax49ers. Looks like he's on Amazon as well. https://www.ebay.com/str/bluemax49ers

Glad to help!

Here's a little info specific to the gmrs v1 : https://www.miklor.com/BTGMRS/BTGMRS-FAQ.php#TransmitterReceiver And the main info page: https://www.miklor.com/BTGMRS/ Looks like the menu item you want will be named r-ctcs...that either needs to match the repeater's output tone, or be set to none/off to hear the repeater (the tones are effectively a filter; the MONI button bypasses that filter).

Photobucket is pretty bad now as well. As of late, I tend to use imgur.

this one is a cool alternative. i've always used the scadacore one, but that one does require some work to get the points right (either a lot of click and drag, or looking up coordinates).

Online is the main source. To my knowledge, the only repeater capable radios likely to be found in stores are the midland mobiles, I know Walmart and home depot list them online. I don't know of any handhelds they make that are repeater capable That said, do some reading, as they do have their own set of limitations (as most do).

Coming back for a second look, I start to wonder about details of the underlying situations. Is it a case of incorrect programming on the part of the op, that's being interpreted as a directed action? Someone that was trying to have a convo and activated tones to filter out the op? Some inexperienced user actions that annoyed someone? (Roger beeps? 'kerchunking' the repeater?) It doesn't change the tone of the original post, or that the op's only other post concerned using a ham radio for gmrs, but trying to see both sides and possible resolutions.

No offense, but no one is stopping you from using the service you paid to use, all 22 channels of it. They absolutely do have the option of deciding who uses their equipment (repeaters) though, for whatever valid or silly reason they may have. It was a harsh realization for me too, but gmrs isn't a hobbyist oriented service, it's primarily aimed at families and groups having comms within their groups with minimal technical knowledge needed, and outside this bubble we have here, it's pretty much how most people use it, as a utility among their group, and stick to their group....which means they'll generally have their tones set not to hear outsiders. I've had a total of one contact so far, as there's basically almost no hobbyist traffic here either. Also recently got booted from a gmrs group on Facebook, because one of their "instant ban" rules is no mention of other radio services (ham, cb, Murs, etc); guess I slipped and forgot which group I was replying to and supplied some info about online testing availability for ham tickets (in addition to that one, I'm in a couple gmrs groups and few ham groups as well).

Uhf is pretty line of sight, what is your antenna situation? That will have more effect (especially for receiving) than more power. The other issue in a big city environment is noise, and the tendency for the receiver to desense to avoid overload, it may not entirely be a problem of signal reaching, but also picking it out of the noise. If there is a repeater in range of both of you, maybe focus toward optimizing for that? Granted vhf and uhf behave a bit differently, but 5 watts on vhf can reach the space station when conditions are right https://www.qsl.net/ah6rh/am-radio/spacecomm/getting-started-iss.html