gortex2

Yes, a genuine kit would include the cables with the correct orientation tabs. But, the really cheap $10 "repeater maker" cable kits sold on Ebay have no orientation tabs, and can be plugged in either way.  I have also seen people totally jam in the correct cables upside down, because they were convinced that the tab orientation was incorrect - since it didn't match their old MaxTrac.  They never even noticed that the M1225 dust cover has a diagram molded into it showing the correct orientation.

Another option, the Vertex VXR-1000 "in car repeater" has Part 95 approval, and you could connect it to the back of your commercial radio's DB9/25 connector and have HT access to your base station throughout the house.

AGREED! A TK-890with dual heads sounds like a good option

Well, geeze, if it's not a hobby, then there wouldn't be guys putting thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars into building sites and systems.  And I certainly would not have put up 3 repeaters on the same site if they were ONLY for my personal communication.  Of course, is my hobby building sites, or radio in general... I honestly can't answer that.  I enjoy the site building more than the talking.
 

I think I would just put a repeater in at my house and walk around with my HT before I spent money on a combiner.  Then it won't matter what room I am in, if I'm in any room at all.

I think what you are looking for is what many companies used back in the day and probably still use today. It requires one radio with what they called Remote bases or remotes stations. The picture shown here is called an extended local remote. The draw back is that you cannot generally change the channel in your situation but if you are looking to monitor one repeater or simplex channel, this is about the closest I can come to what you are looking to do. I worked for a newspaper company when I was younger and they had these spread throughout the building for their radio. To the best of my knowledge, they require one radio, not two.

Why anybody would need a justification from others to do what he/she wants to do? If GMRS is a hobby to you, great! It is not to me, but why would you care how I use the service? You only care about how YOU use it. Do whatever you want, while being a good neighbor to other users. It's a free country.

Yeah i agree.... listened to hams for a gazillion years and always the same year after year they just move around to the different repeaters. The extra knowledge to me doesn't seem as special as full time hams make it out too be. First year solders know just as much as a tech or general in the basic radio stuff they get and well its just not that special and they come of as haughty and self righteous. Course all that than non sense is to be ignored is true but i think intelligently correcting might go further I think many years of doing nothing but ignoring empowers it but that's just my opinion...
 

He's speaking the truth, and being a veteran myself I understand and respect his plain speaking. I'm a ham myself, and came to GMRS because of the sad hams.

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Thanks for the update Marc. I want to grab a 575 also to play with but can't justify the cost when my 275 works fine and where I need more power the APX does the trick ! ?

So, I never provided an update on my situation.  I did some serious testing and I discovered that the noise issues I am having are directly related to my Jeep.  I have been driving with my roof and doors off all season.  The noise issues I have been experiencing are 100% due to some obscure airflow while the Gladiator is stripped down, causing static electromagnetic interference, and just with one antenna location.  If I switch to my secondary antenna mount in the rear of the pickup bed or if the roof and doors are on, I have zero issues.
 
That said and after experiencing a tad bit of frustration due to no fault of the gear, I will still contend that the top two over the counter mobile GMRS radios are the KG-1000G and the Midland MXT500. 
 
The MXT575 seems decent, too, but I have only experienced it from using one installed in another persons Jeep.  Though, the MXT575 doesn't have a Compander feature (I don't see it in the manual or menus), which isn't a must, but it is a nice feature for Midland to Midland communications when both have the feature.

Ive said it in the past. I run the 275 in both my Jeeps and the 115 in my parents vehicles. Also had a 115 in my Motorhome we just sold. I have yet to find issues with any of the radios. With that said I run good NMO mounts and 1/4 wave antenna's on all of them, except my mothers Renegade. We have a Larsen glass mount on that. They work great on my repeater. 99% of my traffic is simplex when traveling for Jeep events or camping. When at a camp ground I had my repeater in the MH and would use sometimes. Even when traveling up and down the east coast I have yet to find a repeater I could not access that I wanted to. I guess its all on what you expectations are . I find the ease of use and basic controls a plus especially for my parents who are in the 70's. Been doing GMRS for a long time and other than my public safety gear all my GMRS stuff is Midland for the purpose above. Simple. Reasonably priced.
If your in an area where you are bouncing all over repeaters and split tones and such I guess they aren't the best option but I find many worry about that when its not really an issue. YMMV

If you are wanting to have two or more radios on a single antenna you are out of luck..... you need two antenna's one for transmit and one fore receive... If you are willing to run 2 antenna's you can run a control station combiner that allows you to run as many radios as it has ports.  4 is usually the minimum but 8 is more common and they can be expanded to 32 ports which is the largest I have seen. With tow antenna's. 
Now the pricing isn't for the faint of heart, typically about a grand per port on the smaller ones and can get down to 500 per port on the larger units.  Plus of course the two antenna's required.  Signal loss though these is pretty high as well.  Looking at 6 dB both directions.  SO a 50 watt radio will have 12.5 watts out, but it's typical to turn the radios down to 20 watts so you are looking at 5 watts out.  Incoming signal is also 6dB down so you need to be fairly close to the repeaters you are talking to.
 

Having a license one should have a basic understanding of the rules. Where some ambiguous areas are found these forums are a resource to use to get some clarification.
What is a bit distressing is when people ask questions before actually reading the rules FIRST. That would eliminate a lot of the more obvious questions.

Personally I think the RT97S is ideal for 90% of the folks who want a quick repeater. Location and antenna is everything. If your only using a 4 watt HT to talk to the repeater it will work just as good as a 50 watt repeater. People get hung up on that part alot. IF you have a great site, good antenna system it will work really well. My sites all run Part 90 repeaters (MTR2000, Quantar and MTR3000). 

same way...just select ZA

Personally I think the RT97S is ideal for 90% of the folks who want a quick repeater. Location and antenna is everything. If your only using a 4 watt HT to talk to the repeater it will work just as good as a 50 watt repeater. People get hung up on that part alot. IF you have a great site, good antenna system it will work really well. My sites all run Part 90 repeaters (MTR2000, Quantar and MTR3000). 

Creating a repeater out of two radios that meet Part 95 does not mean you've got a Type Accepted Part 95 repeater. As mentioned, it is also quite expensive compared to the (IMHO better) alternatives.
Vertex. Motorola. Kenwood. They all made good Part 90 repeaters. Some will put out at least 50 watts at a 100% duty cycle. Used units are available that will outperform a Bridgecom - and do it at a better price point. They also have a history of performance, along with available support (that you will probably never need).

So, there is a difference between the older Part 95 and the newer Part 95e certifications. Back in the day a manufacturer could get an "add-on" part 95 certification for just about any part 90 certified UHF product. That was the Part 95 cert. Now there is a separate certification process and that is the Part 95e certification.
 
I point that out because there a couple of Kenwood and Motorola repeaters that were certified under the old system which are grandfathered in, so we can use them for GMRS. Here are a couple:

Kenwood TKR-820 repeater
Kenwood TKR-850 repeater
Anyway, hope this helps.
JG

MY opinion is they should go harder on him. This happens more than folks realize and many walk away with a warning. Other forums have hundreds of pages about hams thinking they can talk on any channel they want if they feel the need. If more folks got fined maybe these yahoos would think before they do stuff like this. If he had info he could have picked up his cell and called the command post. 

Well, I have only be a ham for 20 years.  Do I have an agenda, yes, I dislike stupidity and to a lesser degree, wackers, or wanna be public safety types.  These aren't the average hams that want to do their part, pass traffic in a disaster situation and conduct themselves 'professionally'.  I am referring to the clowns that have a light bar on their car, a big sticker about weather spotting, fake radar dish on the roof of their car and the mandatory ham radio 'police badge' further indicating their self importance.
And the modification to the radio makes it 'illegal' under part 90, not part 97.  The radio was never type accepted under part 90 so if it transmits there it's automatically in violation.  This is regardless of any other regulation or stipulation in the rules that says any means at your disposal.... if you take a ham radio and transmit in another part of the spectrum that's regulated under a different part of the regulation, then the radio has to meet the requirements of that part of the regulation.  Ham radios are NOT part 90 approved, therefore they can't be transmitting there.  It's just as illegal to spin the dial on your HF radio down to the AM broadcast band and start transmitting there.  Again, not because of the part 97 regulations, but because of part 73 that regulates AM  FM broadcast.  And the number of regulations they have to follow is FAR more strict than ham or even part 90. And that's a piece of the spectrum that WILL get the attention of the FCC if you go messing about in it.
 
Here's the problem with all this.  This lie has been being told to other hams for YEARS to the point it's common.  The League refuses to set the matter straight, and tell hams to stop spreading this myth because it will drive away some part of the ham community as a whole that believe they need to be able to talk to the police or fire dispatchers directly 'just in case'.  And the truth is a lot of those guys are one step away from getting a Crown Vic and turning it into a wanna be police car and ending up on the front page of the newspaper for being arrested for impersonation of whoever. 
 
Now all that being said, if you are stuck on a mountain top and you are in trouble, can't get down, or whatever the case may be.  If you have a radio that will talk on the police, fire or dog catcher channel and you call for help, NO ONE is gonna fault you for that. And I seriously doubt you will end up with a fine from the FCC for transmitting a distress message.  But there are limits to when it's acceptable.  And with this specific situation, none of those limits were met. 

You need to reread the section of my post mentioning radio modification. I don’t recall saying anything about transmitting out of band much less what specific service.
Personally I have a fleet of radios FCC certified for Parts 90, and 95. They are also legal to use under Part 97. As long as I hold a valid license for the particular service I don’t have a reason to worry about the FCC. I keep electronic files for every radio I own. That includes manufacturers brochures, operating manuals, service manuals, FCC certification grants etc. that I can locate. I know what I can and can’t do with a radio. 
 
You would be surprised by what shows up. Some of my commercial analog/digital radios have Part 95 certification. Until the FCC authorizes digital voice modes I just can’t use that feature. The radio is still legal to use on FM.

When invoking the 'any  frequency and time' rule in an emergency (as @WRKC935pointed out) it doesn't matter the type acceptance of the radio.  The valid invocation of the rule/loop hole has to do with it being a genuine life at risk AND there is absolutely no other means to contact help.

Really, it's pretty simple to understand this, but as others have pointed out, there is a cross section of many radio hobbyists who fancy themselves as authorized auxiliary police, fire, and rescue personnel who constantly self justify the use of the rule/loophole.

If you look at the cases where people have been cited by the FCC, virtually all of them had zero justification to do so.

As far as ham radio, yes, in an emergency you may use any mode/frequency within the ham bands, including those beyond your license class.  That said, like the 'any frequency any time' rule/loophole, your actions will still need to be justified to avoid a NAL
 

Believe it or not, I have heard many hams over the years and probably more so regular civilians, tell me that if you have a ham radio license, you are authorized to transmit on ANY frequencies in an emergency, public safety included. When I went for my ham ticket back in 1996, that's not the way I read the rules. The way I read them is that in an emergency, I may use any HAM frequencies, but only during that emergency and related to that emergency. If there was an emergency and one of my radios could transmit out of band, I wouldn't dare call over public safety. I would use a cell phone and if that didn't work, I would use my brain to devise a plan to rectify the situation. I've heard of people using public safety frequencies on an out of band radio in a real valid emergency and getting in trouble for it. If you do happen to do that, it had better be that you are using actual public safety radios and the staff in possession of them are down and out and you are rescuing them by using their radios to call for help. 

If we are to take anything on "basic face value" as suggested above, we must do so exactly as written and assume that terminology used doesn't create obscure or unusual definitions that would be beyond a common person. So on basic face value, No provision of FCC regulations prevents an amateur station from using any means of radiocommunications at its disposal to provide essential communications needs in connection to the immediate safety of human life and the immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are unavailable.

You could argue that normal communications were unavailable because someone didn't have their cell phone within arm's reach, but that would make you a weirdo. It seems in this particular incident, the relevant questions are: Was life or property in danger? and Were normal methods of communicating unavailable? I haven't read anything to indicate otherwise so I'll assume both are yes. I'm also going to assume that some standard procedure was followed, and the initial call was logged and comms tech/dingdong was instructed to clear the channel or monitor another channel (or method) should someone wish to contact him. That should have been the end of it, but for reasons known only to him he intervened on public safety comms at least 7 more times. IMO that makes him a moron, who deserves more than a strongly worded letter and fine which may or may not be enforceable. Finally, if he really was just concerned about his own equipment burning per that other thread, he should have paid a private fire protection company to get a truck up there and stayed off the radio.