WSLH454

My situation is similar to yours. Wanting to get a hold of friends and family nearby within a reasonable distance. Closest repeater is barely within reach. Have you checked the overall range of yours? I'm still weighing all my options here

I'm thinking 25 watt might help here, but 5 watts not so much. We're on a hill but the only true line of sight is to our south and southwest. The rest is a pretty thick line of trees

Looking at one of the Retevis 10 watt repeaters and saw the actual output is roughly 5 watts. Well if my HT is already 5 watts and used either one to transmit from my house, what do I gain here? 5 watts is 5 watts last time I checked. If the repeater was 1 mile or 1 1/2 miles up the road on a pole, I might see the point of having it. Maybe if you have a large farm etc... it would be useful. Or am I missing something here? Seems like if someone got a repeater, get the 25 watt version and you get about 22 watts out of it. Then even if its at your small property you'd gain something. Maybe I need to buy 5 acres lol. The 10 watt seemed like a possible waste of $$$ Thanks

Just stumbled across this old post. Well I've still got a Regency 23 channel CB in the garage. Purchased in 1975 it works fine. Toyed with the idea of making an antenna for it, and getting a cheap mobile. Probably 12-15 mile range easy at 4-5 watts. GMRS HT radio's give me 2-3 miles. CB frequencies in most areas are dead for local traffic. GMRS isn't exactly booming with traffic either

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised at the range. Plenty of trees here and single family homes out in the country. We're in a small community so I can go to any store here, and talk to someone back at our house.

USPS was dragging the feet as usual but I finally got my 2 Nagoya 771G antennas Monday. I was having issues getting a solid local on the one repeater closest to me. I was able to lock on to it finally. I did a test using both Radioddity GM-30 radios this morning. Simplex 5 watts with one radio in the house, and the other one in the car. Great signal at 1.75 miles, signal was somewhat broken at 2.3 miles. With the stock antenna 1.5 miles was all I was getting before, so yeah the Nagoya antenna was an improvement. If I'd have been outside the car the signal at 2.3 miles probably would've perfectly clear with the new antenna. My brother lives at that 2.3 mile point so maybe I'll have to get him a radio lol. So I wasn't sure if the Nagoya genuine antenna was all that but I was impressed

Well I might have it worse here lol. 17 repeaters in our metro area which is about a 40 mile circle. Six are paid, Three say permission and two of those are actually paid, eight open repeaters, and five of those cover 10 miles or less. So basically there's 8 good coverage repeaters thru a local GMRS group, and the cost is $31 a year to use their repeaters. The two open ones that cover 98% of the area don't quite hit the outer areas on the map. I've ordered two antennas hoping I can get a better lock on the only repeater that will work for me. If I drive 5-10 miles east I would lose it also lol. I'd gladly donate a few $$ to the open repeaters, if I was able to hit them and use them. Sorry I'm not wanting to join someone's club at 67 years old lol. I'm guessing most all the GMRS repeaters around me are on towers owned by ham guys

We had a tornado hit our small town about 4 years ago. Wiped out 100 telephone poles! Surprisingly after days without power we still had cell service. I wasn't counting on that though. I've got a 3500 watt generator to power basic things in the house. Only thing we can't do is take a hot shower (electric water heater). Our home was spared thankfully but we lost some 100 foot pine trees in our yard. While others look to the government to help, our community pulled together. There were truckloads of bottled water, free pizza, Chik Fil A, and a room in the school was setup up with all necessary essentials...toilet paper, diapers etc...Fire departments and volunteers from 50 miles away were cutting up trees for a week. GMRS is just another tool in our arsenal here. Just a side note the Red Cross had a table where you could make a donation. They provided zero assistance to anyone though.

I'm thinking of testing a mobile mag antenna on a cookie sheet where I'm at. I've got a few 15" whips coming for myself so I'm going to try them for myself first.

Yeah I'm going to suggest a few things to them and see what they want to do. An antenna outside would certainly help them. I'm 200 miles away from them so I'm not going to be able to help much. FRS radios would be the easiest for them to use, but I don't see those working out. GMRS 5 watt would be their best option. My understanding is most of these are older women that live on this road, so no tech guy to help them out with setup etc...

But aren't you still paying for Starlink? I saw something about T Mobile/Starlink $10 but not sure what that gets you or how that works. I got my GMRS radios in case something happens, and there's no cell service around. I had a rotary phone back in the day and you got it from the local phone company. Once Radio Shack started selling aftermarket phones, we had extension phones in several rooms lol. Yes I remember dial up and those 56K modems too. Will GMRS be around for a long time? I think so since its a simple purchase of the radios and then you're done. No monthly fees etc...You can upgrade to better units, antennas etc...Spent as much or as little as you choose. As far as HAM radio goes (I'm not a HAM), I see still being used to talk around the world for years to come. 2 meter etc...not sure how long it will last. You don't need auto patch like you once did. Cell phones have replaced a lot of things we once had or needed. In some peoples mind I've got a house full of obsolete electronics lol. CB channel 14 walkie talkies, a Bearcat scanner, reel to reel decks, cassette decks, multi band radios etc...Things are changing faster than we can keep up I guess

I've got a friend in Michigan that needs some way to communicate with several neighbors within a 3 mile radius. I mentioned GMRS and repeaters etc...First of all none of the neighbors are tech savvy lol. I looked for any repeaters near them, and I'm not sure they could lock on to any repeaters. I didn't see a repeater that was close by. Battle Creek is 12 miles away but I didn't see any repeaters there. Maybe I missed one? Charlotte has a repeater, but doesn't look like they could hit the repeater from Marshall. My next idea is to just have them get some 5 watt GMRS radios, which they should be able talk to each other within 2-3 mile radius. Having access to a repeater would be nice to have though. They'd need an easy to use radio without all the bells and whistles. Something very simple to use. Any ideas etc...as to what to suggest to them is appreciated.

I was reading thru all this post and replies....long read. I saw someone mention a hospital paging system maybe. Several hospitals near me are I think are around 900-930 MHZ and use Pocsag. DMR... I can hear that on VHF & UHF frequencies near me on a bunch of paging systems. Even a few schools near me have gone to DMR over analog for the school bus drivers.

Not sure you'll convince him either way. If he's not sure that two way radio is something your family maybe needs at all, then HAM is probably out. You could sink a lot of money into it as some have. No HAM has just one or two radios lol. CB would be a waste of money nowadays in my opinion. Base unit, mobile unit and antennas etc...GMRS is a lower cost way to see if it's be something you would use, and maybe later consider getting into HAM radio etc...$100 or less including your license and you're set with GMRS. Maybe try and convince your dad, with the idea of emergency communication in case of a disaster. In some situations we might not have access to cell phones etc...Best of Luck

just change the bandwidth and power between GMRS and FRS. Yeah I like your idea better I'll give that a try