WRHS218

We just used ours. My wife had one in the house and I took one with me when I went to the barn to get the snow plow hooked up to our SxS. She kept tabs on me while I was plowing our driveway, a neighbors driveway and part of the road leading to our drive. We also listened to the county sheriff's talking about road closures and all the cars stuck in the area.

Unfortunately, during wildfire activities in my area I use the FlightRadar24 app while listening to CALFire Air to Ground frequencies. I can hear the command aircraft directing tankers and helicopters making their drops. Last September I sat in my front yard and watched and listened to two tankers and two helicopters containing a fire 1 mile from me across a canyon. Due to the critical nature of the activity I can't call it fun but it was very interesting. Those pilots are amazing. They sounded very calm as they fly low and slow that close to the side of a mountain.

I don't consider locking the keyboard dummying anything down. It is using an option available on the radio. To each their own.

My wife and I have a couple of 935G radios as well as several others. She was never interested in getting a license when I got my amateur license and is not familiar with radios. When she first started using the radios she was worried she would hit a button or turn a knob by mistake. I just set up the radio and then use the setting to lock all keys and knobs except for PTT and volume. That solved the problems.

I am not trying to argue but trying to learn... Who decides what digital mode to use? Aren't there three main digital voice modes for amateurs? And aren't those modes used by different manufactures? I have an amateur license but don't use digital. It seems like Midland is trying to do in GMRS what Yaesu and the others have done on the amateur side. But, again, I don't know enough about it to know what is what in the digital world. Either way, I am still not in favor of making all of these changes to GMRS. Of course that is just my opinion.

I might believe this if they were drinking coffee...

You have covered everything I would have tried. If the problem was reproduced with four radios and two different antennas it my be a repeater issue. Hopefully someone on the forum will have a better idea of how to figure this out. Sorry I couldn't help.

I have never used CHIRP but I believe the TSQL is for transmitting a tone. Try using no tone or code, just the frequency.

If you are sure both radios are programmed correctly I would remove the RX code for both radios first. Can you hear any other repeater traffic on either radio? Do you get the same results when transmitting from both radios to the repeater? If you know you are in range of the repeater and everything else looks good I would look at the antenna and coax making sure the connections are tight and there are no crimped or mashed spots on both installations.

I read the document. Wow, there is a lot going on there and I'm not talking about the technical aspects. I am not sure I understand why anyone with an amateur license would need or want to make all these changes to GMRS. Everything the document proposes is available in the amateur bands and is not relegated to the small number of frequencies given to GMRS even with going narrow band to add channels. The most disturbing paragraph to me was proposing people holding an amateur radio license could volunteer to be the radio police for both GMRS and the proposed GMRS+ services. I guess having an amateur license makes one superior to the folks on GMRS. I have a "HAM" license and a GMRS license and I am not better than anyone. I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers for that gig.

You are correct. My experience in the mountains does not necessarily equate to other areas. My time spent in other areas probably equates more. I didn't mention any repeaters in my area, you did. Since I said I couldn't hit a repeater from my home any experience I have would have to be other areas. I gave my experience in a large metro area. I have driven through the Phoenix area and heard a lot of traffic on the local repeaters that are open. That is a very large area. I have been in Flagstaff where there are several repeaters with a good reach and heard nothing even when I asked for routing assistance. After not hearing any replies I asked for a radio check and got a response. The gentleman who responded was local and stated there wasn't much radio traffic with exception of people travelling I-40. The DFW area in northern Texas has many repeaters and I was surprised by the lack of use. I have family in Southeast Texas and with the exception of the Houston Metro area there isn't much traffic on the open repeaters and even some club repeater I had access to. All of this is anecdotal, of course, but would lead to said "predilection". I'm not trying to argue, just trying to clear up the assumptions you made. As in everything in life, YMMV. As an aside, I can hit two 2m and a 70cm repeaters in the mountain area and with the exception of a couple of scheduled nets they are quiet.And yes, I know it is different in Southern California.

You are correct. I am a moron and know nothing. Happy New Year.

There are none in range of my house. I can hit quite a few when I travel out of the mountains. If I throw a roll up antenna into a tree I can sometimes open a repeater across the Valley almost 90 miles. I'm at a little over 3300 feet elevation and the repeater is above 4000 feet. There is a ridge between me and the valley that blocks everything by 100-150 feet.

Merry Christmas everyone.

The last time I checked the Tenmile725 is no longer active. I can't hit the Epic machine.

I was one who mentioned bring your own contacts. While that is true to a degree that shouldn't stop you from trying to make contacts if you want to. Pointing that out was to try to help explain why you may not be hearing much radio traffic. It was not meant to be a discouragement. Some areas have very little radio traffic and other areas have a lot. As someone else mentioned you can get a couple of cheap radios and let people use them that might be even slightly interested. I got into GMRS because my family and friends had no interest in getting a ham license. A long, long time ago I got ham license to use as a communication tool, not to make contacts. I keep my amateur license current but very rarely use the amateur bands. GMRS is a good tool. Use it how you want and try to have fun.

You are going to fit right in on this forum. As our resident Youtube hobo alluded to, GMRS is more of a bring your own contact radio service. I was in a large city yesterday where there are several repeaters and there was no radio traffic, except for me, on the repeaters. I was trying to reach a friend who was on the other side of the valley. He had made some changes to his handheld by accident and couldn't find the repeaters that were programmed into the radio. I did find out that the two repeaters I can reach are now linked.

Theoretically yes. UHF (GMRS frequencies) is line-of-sight for the most part. If you both can reach and open the repeater than you will be able to communicate. If there are trees, buildings, hills between you and the repeater you may not be able to hit the repeater. 50 miles is doable with a handheld under the right conditions and with an unobscured line of sight to the repeater.

Yep, my bad. My typing skills suck. 462.575 is what I meant to type.

Welcome to the forum, I hope you brought your sense of humor. Yes you can just listen. You were probably hearing the repeater auto ID itself. If you can't find anything using the call sign you can search for repeaters in you area. Channel 16 is 462.5250. Not hearing anything else on the repeater can be a normal thing depending on your area. If the repeater is using tones you won't be able to TX to it unless you know what tone they are using. Having no tone set on the receive side means you will here it even if they are using a tone.

Is he really an amateur extra though? He never tells us how long he has been an extra class operator and everyone knows you are supposed to let everyone know how long you have been a ham. I ought to know, I have been an amateur radio operator for over 20 years.

I have owned a couple of Kenwood THG71A handhelds, Yaesu VX6r and VX7r handhelds and at least two Kenwood mobiles (can't remember the models). I also carried Motorola radios for over 30 years in several different professions. All the radios with the exception of the Motorolas were amateur band radios. Motorola commercial radios are a different animal all together, and are designed and built to suffer the abuse of cops and firemen. I have owned 5 different models of Wouxun handhelds (four GMRS and one Amateur band) and one mobile. I prefer the Wouxuns over the Kenwoods and the Yaesus. I like the ease of use of the Wouxun and so far they have stood up to several severe drops. I dropped on of my Kenwoods three feet and it was toast. The cost of repair was more than I have spent on my Wouxuns. The Yaesus are good and sturdy but the two models I have are very small, which can be good if you don't have larger hands, and they have a steep learning and remembering curve. The Wouxun HAM radio I have transmits as well as the Yaesus and seems to be better at receiving. Of course this is all anecdotal and subjective and just my opinion. I have recommended Wouxun to several non-radio nerd type people and they have been happy with them as well.

Perhaps I should clarify my reply since you mentioned not wanting to use various videos... The video marcspaz produced is a very good primer. If you didn't want to use the video in the training you could watch it and make an outline to use in a group setting. OffroaderX answers a lot of questions that most non radio nerds have when they start looking at GMRS. Those answers could be added to your outline as well. There is a lot of good info on this forum. It would just take some effort to distill it into written form.

I know of no written document, however, one of the regulars posters here, marcspaz, has produced a primer type of video. Good information there. Of course offroaderX produces videos for those with a sense of humor.

WRXB215 brings up a good point I had forgotten. Radio clubs often have member only repeaters that don't get listed publicly. I have family in Southeast Texas and there were no repeaters listed in the town they live in. I found and joined TexasGMRS and they have several machines in the area.