AdmiralCochrane

Yes, length is the surcharge even if its not real heavy. I think it starts at 80 inches

GMRS is more closely related to ham UHF. It actually is in the UHF frequency range, just not in the assigned band.

I was surprised at the number of grandfathered licenses in my area

I have a 333 at about 35 feet. My nanoNVA says its tuned slightly better for 65cm than 2m. As a simple matter of convience I am not using it on 1.25 right now, but the nanonva shows its tuned very well there as well. If I recall, the readings were 1.27 on 2m, 1.1 on 1.25 and very close to 1.19 across the parts of 70cm and 65cm that I use

Companders are speech processors, nothing else. They improve signal strength by slightly increasing weaker microphone modulation, but mostly change the person's voice to ranges that the listener's ear hears clearer. I run compander ON on most of my radios, but if adjustable at the lowest setting. Right now my voice drives any decent mic as well as a professional quality mic, I get a lot of compliments and questions about what equipment I use, but its mostly good luck coming out of my mouth; hardware provided from above ? .

My experience with 2 meter vs 65&70cm is that UHF can work better where knife edge refraction and reflection help UHF propagation and the terrain otherwise inhibits VHF, outside of that exception, VHF is generally superior. My greatest distance using 2m simplex has been approximately 11 miles in the lumpy hills valleys dips and ridges of central Maryland. I echo MichaelLAX that there is no reason to think same would not have happened on UHF.

I agree, Fong wins on marketing, not design, but is there a better pre-assembed antenna at the price?

Meteor trail and moon bouncing are common with VHF guys chasing confirmed long distance contacts. I am not certain any of the 20 or so hams that have made contacts with all 50 states on 1.25 meters did not use one or the other for some of their contacts. Bouncing a signal off the moon is called EME, for Earth Moon Earth. A lot of specialized equipment involved, high skills and PATIENCE. I have heard ducting from NYC to MD several times, conveyed along the edges of weather fronts, which is similar to true tropospheric ducting where the radio signal is trapped in a temperature inversion, the same temperature inversions that can transmit mirage visable images across hundreds of miles.

Grounding makes a difference too. Possiblity of better grounding AND possiblity of antenna location on the vehicle promoting propagation better in some directions and worse in others, depending on the placement of the antenna and orientation of the ground plane. In general, you will have gain across the longest path over the ground plane; possible signal degrading along the shorter paths over the ground plane. An antenna connected to a SWR meter functions as a field strength meter to survey and determine this.

My first VHF/UHF power supply was a hand me down UPS that my wife gave me when she upgraded the UPS for her computer. I just cracked it open and tapped onto the battery. Not long after that I saw a video about converting computer server power supplies to power ham equipment. There are some units that only take a little bit of mods to get you a 500 watt 13.8v power supply. Install 1 jumper and turn a potentiomenter to jack the voltage to 13.8. One I gave away was rated for 750 watts at its nominal 12v. I think I paid $30 shipped on eBay. There is suspiction that these may have some RF noise at some frequencies, but if so, no one has found noise in any common ham (including most HF), LMR or GMRS band.

nanoNVA is better for trimming antennas anyway

I love the FUN button

100 watts would not increase the range as much as you expect; almost all the contacts you can make with 50 watts can also be made with 25. Unobstructed line of sight prevails as the significant working feature.

My stereo speakers are near field receivers (LOL) for the freebanders that travel on a highway near my location. Wasn't sure what band they were using until I caught them on my scanner. Was between 10m and 11m and they definitely were not "authorized users" on the frequency.

I talk to a traveller about once a week on 146.520. Sometimes people just call out, other times they are travelling across a ridge or bridge at high elevation and know the propagation will be tremendous so they call knowing the likelihood of being heard is greater from those locations. Just one time I talked to a trucker who called out on 520 asking for some local knowledge. It was a great QSO.

Sshannon, here's the same old saw - GMRS has very limited range in most conditions. Without being on a pointy mountain top, a hand held usually has a mile or less range, a vehicle mounted mobile might have 3 or 4 miles range to a similar vehicle. For effective use, learn if there is one or more repeaters in your area and learn if you can become authorized to use it. If so, program your radio to use it and figure out where and when its useful. The best advice is become licensed and use it. In some areas it will be a good standby and alternate comm mode, in other areas it will be completely useless. You won't know without using it in situ and no one can really tell you EXACTLY how it will work for you and YOUR locations. A lot of people say they want something for alternate comms if cells are down - if cells are down, most repeaters will be down too and many GMRS frequencies will be flooded with people with little or no knowledge of using a radio. In my area there ARE several well located repeaters on commercial towers with backup power, but in reality, its rare outside of MAJOR metro areas. There are many repeaters here, but almost none have back up power and most are poorly located. Out of 50 or 60 around here, only 3 or 4 would be useful.

I wore the cables out over and over so I gave up and bought a regular mobile rig. Was still a great way to start, made lots of contacts and friends

Took me an hour with a 3 lb hammer

Wait, ... the Earth isn't flat?

The licensing fee has been authorized to change for a year, it has NOT CHANGED. Its not going to change until they have the software in place to charge for ham licensing, upgrades and vanity call signs. Glad I did my ham license upgrade before the fee was initiated.

I don't see anything to be confused about. GD1 asked specifically about pushing buttons.

Buttons vary more between manufacturers and models as much or more than between GMRS and ham versions from the same makers. The only time you have training advantage is when a manufacturer makes a ham and GMRS radio with the same hardware and only the firmware differing between the two. A clue to this is a GMRS model that ends in G that appears physically the same as a ham model with the same beginning model nomenclature without a G suffix. GMRS is essentially the same as the Technician class UHF 440 aka 70cm band. Some ham radios similar to GMRS radios may also be dual band 2m/70cm radios. Here's a graphic that shows how much more a Tech gets vs GMRS with arrows pointing to the similar 70cm band. I blanked out the bands that require higher ham licensing.

Neither am I. It does not occur as such in page 1 of my searches. Note that GOOGLE changes your search results based on cookies; the results you see ARE NOT the results everyone sees. Its probably a bigger data chaser than Facebook.

My comment about my search engine use being deficient was in regard to the fact that the often quoted Youtube result does not occur in the first page of results I get. Nor does any website that suggests 19. I must be doing something wrong.

I guess my search engine use is deficient. Another info source these days is Reddit. Some of (maybe close to half) of my younger friends that are in the age group most likely to be off road fans ignore Google, Youtube and Facebook and instead rely on searches and discussion on the Reddit platform that is not always found by search engines. I have not looked into what the prevailing opinion on Reddit is for this question.