wrci350

Yes. That tends to work a lot better than an HT (with rubber duck) inside a vehicle.

Take a look at the Alinco DJ-G46. My experience has been that it has a better receiver than other GMRS radios I have.

Leo, your call sign is WSCI776. That's the letter "I", not the number "1".

Sweet. What are you doing for an antenna?

Just one more note on the DJ-G46. RT Systems has released their programmer software for it. I purchased it this past Monday evening, downloaded and installed it, and right away I noticed a bug. I read the programming from the radio (that I had done with the Alinco software) and the frequencies for the custom repeater channels I had programmed were totally off (578.xxx receive and 583.xxx transmit). I contacted their tech support via email Monday night, and after I supplied a copy of my programming file via email (which was delayed because I was away from the radio and computer on Tuesday) they found and corrected the problem and issued an updated version of the software by Wednesday morning! As I said in my review, this radio doesn't have a 'menu' system so the changes you can make without programming software are quite limited. The Alinco software is "ok", but I would highly recommend the RT Systems software and cable instead, not only because it is more polished but because of their excellent customer support. I really like this radio. Hopefully it will be a success for Alinco.

OK please pardon the ignorant question, but what is the orange bar on top of the hood? Nice looking vehicle and radio install, BTW.

It's not designed to be tuned, but it IS designed to have an SWR of 2:1 or less on GMRS. I have one and it sweeps at < 1.7:1 on 462 and 467. So should work out of the box on GMRS. It's a tall and ugly antenna though!

If by "private" you mean, "no one else can use the repeater" (or at least "someone needs the non-standard tone to use the repeater"), sure. If by "private" you actually mean PRIVATE, like no one else can hear you, that's absolutely not the case. Anyone listening to the repeater with squelch tones turned off can hear everything. But you knew that, right? Keep in mind that someone doesn't need your secret tone to jam your repeater, either.

Some of the models will; some won't. https://www.buytwowayradios.com/wouxun-kg-805g.html Scroll down and there is a table listing four. 935G does, 805G, 905G, and S88SG do not. And having a dedicated NOAA radio that runs off AA or AAA batteries is a good idea. That way you aren't dependent on the battery in an HT.

Businesses are allowed to use encryption, yes.

No.

You can either turn the receive tone back on, in which case you will only hear transmissions with that tone, or you can leave it off (and then you will hear anything on that channel, either from the repeater or simplex). Many repeaters do not send a CTCSS tone when they identify, so people running with the receive tone on don't [have to] hear the ID.

Yes but Baofeng's are ... special. They all used to ship "unlocked" with a bunch of random test frequencies programmed at the factory, many of which were in US public safety bands. After the FCC finally woke up and complained, they started shipping locked to amateur frequencies, but of course everyone who buys them unlocks them. But here's another suggestion. Buy a $150 Windows laptop and then you can run the Yaesu software, or the RT Systems software. I have nothing against Chirp specifically, and I am a long-term supporter of "free" software, but Chirp is not the be-all and end-all that many think it is. I cringe every time someone buys a "good" radio and wants to program it with Chirp.

Maybe because it's a ham radio, designed to be used by licensed amateurs on amateur frequencies? Out of the box, that radio will only transmit on 2m and 70cm frequencies. You put in the magic code to "unlock" it, and that's exactly what happened. Here's a suggestion: Keep your finger away from the PTT while you're scanning those Arizona Highway Patrol frequencies.

Tell us more. 200 miles simplex on UHF? Are you on top of a mountain, surrounded by desert?