Thanatos

That's pretty close to correct, but they weren't really in widespread usage until around 1980. When they went to 40 channel, the FCC dropped the max wattage down to 4 watts, and a lot of us hung onto our 23-channel radios as long as we could to get the wee bit of extra power...then I went to 40 channels with a 500 watt linear amp...lol My FAVORITE thing to do with the linear, was when my neighbor decided to listen to his TV or stereo at his "11" volume, was to go out to my Bronco (which my assigned parking spot was in front of his patio), fire up the linear, and completely screw up his TV or stereo when I keyed up. I haven't used a CB in at least a couple of decades though...too much of a circus on it most of the time. What I do think is funny is that I can still remember my CB callsign (from back when you had to have a license), as well as my first 16-digit driver's license number, yet I can't remember what I freakin' ate yesterday!!! Great how the human mind works, isn't it. I think the big difference is that now, we have SO many numbers floating around in our heads (PINs, passwords, phone numbers, and all the other daily crap), when back then there wasn't nearly as much we had to keep in our heads from day to day. Information overload.

I have an app (Space Weather Live) on my phone that notifies me of any incoming or current space weather. Right now, my area is under a level two radio blackout from a current solar storm. I don't have to go check, it pops a notification up on my phone any time something is heading this way or currently going on.

Are you sure that it's actually DMR and not the scramble feature that some CCRs have? The way scramble and DMR sound, in comparison, should be night and day. I run scramble mode on my family's main frequencies that we use, on analog CCRs, but anyone who has the same kind of radio can unscramble it by just figuring out which of the roughly 10 scramble modes it is. All it basically does is just garble the voice up a bit to make it sound like nonsense, not the same type of sound that DMR encryption makes...which as someone said, makes it sound like a chainsaw (not sure that's the appropriate analogy, but close enough, I guess). My guess is that they're using a CCR with scramble on. As I'm sure someone will point out, encryption on GMRS is against FCC regulations; however, scrambling ISN'T because it can be easily "descrambled" with any radio that has a scramble feature. Any way it goes, chances of the FCC doing anything about it are slim to none. Honestly, the FCC REALLY doesn't give a crap about what happens on GMRS...if they won't shut down that POS North Georgia Repeater Network, then they're not coming after much of anyone else for anything but screwing with the HAMs and/or emergency frequencies. The ONLY thing the FCC cares about, is getting your $35 GMRS license fee, for the most part. Hell, most of the people here who use the GMRS frequencies don't have a license, and those of us who do, never give a callsign...things are far more relaxed when in an area where there's VERY little radio traffic ANYTIME of the day...I MIGHT hear someone, besides my family, key up on ANY UHF or VHF frequency once or twice a week, and that's on a busy week...I scan all UHF/VHF frequencies 24/7, and have for the last 5 years, simply trying to hear someone, ANYONE, using the airwaves and 99.8% of the time it's just silence (all the businesses and police depts went to DMR LONG ago, and I only run analog.

As someone who has shot everything under the sun for more decades than I care to remember, skeet shooting is more "difficult" than 1000 yard shot at a still target...in the real world, VERY little that I'd ever shoot is "still". 99.9% of the time, I have NEVER needed to make a 1000 yard shot...for ANY purpose, in most of the areas that I've lived (except current location) you'd never get that long of a shot to begin with. Most game I hunt, at best, you'll manage a 300 yard shot (and that's EXTREME for the area and terrain). This is why the range that I have on my property is set up at 300 yards, but I could easily move it out to 1000 yards if I wanted to have to mow that much further out than I do now. There's also a LOT of ducks and geese where I live, but I have never seen a deer, here, in the roughly 30 years that I've lived here....I deer hunt around my hometown, which is in another state and COMPLETELY different type of terrain. I never bothered with skeet until I moved here, because there just wasn't any waterfowl where I lived before, but there ARE a lot of deer, bear, elk, turkeys, and other ground game....I adapt to my surroundings. If someone wants to really impress me, they'd better be able to shoot skeet with a bolt action .308! To the meat of the post though, I have a GMRS repeater set up because there is only ONE GMRS repeater in my entire county, it's mounted on top of the old police station, on Main Street, dead in the middle of the "city". It's a little 10 watt repeater that you MIGHT be able to hit from 6 or 7 miles away, doesn't transmit much further than that, and doesn't go in the direction that I need it to go in most of the time. So I put one up that transmits more in the area that I need it to. Where I live is VERY flat, with mostly zero trees or buildings...I'm surrounded by a few million acres of cotton and soybean fields, with the occasional small town here and there with no buildings over a single story in most places...with a CCR Baofeng UV-5RM, I can talk approx as far with it as going through that repeater in town, plus we all (family) have 50w mobile radios as well, besides the repeater and base station. Most of the time (except on handhelds), we get better range running simplex than using the repeater, with the mobiles and base running 50w, but the repeater is only 20w...not to mention that the base and mobile antennas are the highest gain that I could find. If we are out of range of anything, then we just either use Zello or text. I could have easily passed my Amateur test 30 years ago, and could still walk in and take the test today and pass with flying colors. However, I have ZERO interest in becoming a HAM because I don't want to talk to strangers over a radio. My radio usage is STRICTLY for family, and none of them want to screw with getting a HAM license, so GMRS it is. I don't want to mess with call signs (NO ONE here uses a call sign, not even the VERY few people that I've ever heard use the one repeater over the years. Repeater owner, who's about 40 miles from me, in another state, who I got permission to use his repeater, told me that he didn't give a crap if anyone using his repeater gave a call sign or not - and he didn't care if they had a GMRS license either. Hell, except for the monthly group meetup on the 70cm repeater, 300 yards from my house, I've never heard anyone on it give a call sign either - just a few old fart farmers on it, talking about their doctor appointments. There's literally NO radio traffic anywhere on VHF or UHF here, and I scan the entire bands 24/7 for the last 5 years or so...it's a radio wasteland here. What traffic there is, are the factories/businesses in the area, and they all went to DMR LONG ago, so I never hear them at all.