WRHS218

They gave her back.

That is a really good idea.

We were out in the wilds of the Alabama Hills, on foot, last week climbing around large boulders and the 935G+ that my wife had clipped to her jacket fell and bounced down the rocks about 35 feet. The only damage was to one corner on the bottom of the radio and that was just a scuff. The radio still works perfectly. The day before we had been exploring an old mining ghost town. I had a radio and our friends had a radio. My friend's wife got separated form the rest of us and it took us a while to find her. From that point on everybody carried a radio. My wife didn't even smirk when I pulled out the extra radios. We spent three days with very little to no cell service so the radios came in handy.

IF there were a complete, codified, sanctified, canonized list of GMRS air wave rules AND you followed them all of the time AND you never made a mistake, you would still piss people off. A number of radio operators and keyboard warriors are cut from the same fabric. They will get butt hurt and will scream and whine but at the end of the day they are just lonely, sad people seeking attention. Try stuff, make mistakes, try to have fun doing what it is you want to do with your radios. If you do it enough you may even learn to enjoy the cries of the metaphorical basement dwellers.

Again, don't have this radio. Was just trying to help and now I am curious. This is the section from the manual...

I don't have this radio, I just looked at the manual for it. Are you in what the manual calls GMRS mode? That was the only place I saw GMRS mode mentioned so I am assuming that means Channel mode not VFO mode. You have probably already tried but maybe hold down the # button for longer than 5 seconds. Hopefully someone who knows what they are talking about will chime in. Good luck. And if you find out let us know.

Well, I did pretty much say I was a moron and my experiences were anecdotal... The multi-ban antennas on my Yaesu radios are OEM Yaesu/Vertex, sooooo...

This is just a semi-informed opinion with anecdotal experience, but for my handelds I have found that the dual band antennas are a compromise. You can TX/RX with them but they are normally not as good as an antenna tuned to a specific band. On a dual band, tri band, or quad band radio you need that dual (tri or quad) band antenna if you plan to use more than one band on an outing and done want to haul around an extra antenna. I have an amateur band Yaesu VX-6R and a VX-7R. The multi-band antennas that came with them work well enough but if I am headed out with other people I will normally switch to an antenna tuned to the band we are planning on using. Your H8 is (I think) a modified HAM radio. It probably comes with the same antenna the HAM version came with. Since you are going to be TX on GRMS frequencies I would be inclined to use the antenna that is tuned for those frequencies (771G). It has been my experience that you will still be able to RX reasonably well in both 2m and 70cm bands with the 771G. On my GMRS handhelds I either use the OEM antennas or a 771G. And, of course, as Sshannon said, try it and see what works best for you.

How much traffic is on the other repeaters you mentioned? It may be one of those "If you build it, they will come" type of things. If you put it up, make it an open repeater and then post it to this site's data base it will probably get some traffic. Maybe get your group to use it regularly and promote it. On all of my radios I have one set of repeaters with the ctcss tone set to 141.3 and I scan that group when I'm on the road since quite a few open repeaters use 141.3. Having a repeater in a known blank coverage area sounds like a good idea, especially along an evacuation route.

Like Borage257, when I plan a trip I check the repeater map along the route I am taking. I then program all of the listed open repeaters in my radio into a specific scan group. When on the road I just scan that group. I have a KG-XS20G mobile and a KG-935G+. The last long trip I took I just took the handheld with a mag mount antenna. I was stopped in traffic on the highway in one location and wasn't hearing anything on the local repeater so I scanned the GMRS simplex channels to see if anybody was talking about the traffic SNAFU and only heard a lady guiding her husband while backing in their RV into a campsite. I would hear traffic on repeater every now and then but there wasn't as much traffic as I had anticipated.

"Sorry to hear that. You are welcome back to Texas any time." I grew up there. Left for the military in 1978. Came back after that for a while and followed a job out here. Thankfully, I have never lived in a big city here. I have something most Texans don't have though, a declaration from the Texas House of Representatives signed by state congressman Jack Brooks in 1961 stating that I an official Native Texan. I was born in Louisiana and my Texan parents moved back to Texas a couple of months later. For some reason they seriously thought it was important that I was a bona fide Texan. I am more proud of being just a plain old American.

I have a daughter that lives in Southeast Texas and I live on the left coast now. I joined that club (Texas GMRS Network) and got access to their repeaters before a driving trip I took out there. Once I filled out the info it took about 5 days to get my membership email. They seem to be a good group and have a good selection of repeaters.

You can't just say "terrible license" without sharing it (I understand it isn't yours to share). That would be a good thread subject - Worst Call signs.

If I were starting again I would get a repeater capable handheld GMRS radio and just listen. You can learn a lot by just hearing what others are doing on air, both positive and negative. Get your GMRS license and just get on the air. If you have a friend or family member who is interested that is even better. GMRS is more of a utilitarian radio service than HAM and a lot of people use the service to just communicate with friends and family. Normally if someone on a repeater asks for a radio check they will get an answer. It certainly can't hurt to try. Most of all, try to have fun.

What he said.

I , too, have "dual citizenship" (stealing that term). I got the ham ticket because I wanted to be able to use radios for short range communications while off-roading in the desert and mountains. I had never even heard of GMRS until about ten years ago. It really fit what I wanted from a radio service better than other services. Most of my friends and family had no interest in taking a test and really didn't care about radio in general. I am not a fan of linked GMRS repeaters so I don't listen to or use them. If I want to have a conversation with someone I'll use a phone or jump on 2m (I don't do that either). I will ride my own bike and ignore "some people" that don't like the suit of the card I have in my spokes.

You shouldn't have to. You choose the weather channel you want to monitor which is only available in Area A. You can press and hold the AREA button for 2 seconds to enter weather mode. Once you choose the NOAA channel to monitor you can get out of weather mode and go to menu 7 and turn on weather alert. After that go to menu 23 to choose what kind of alert you want, there are 5 choices. Once you are done with that you are done. When the radio is in standby, you are not actively TXing, and there is an alert for the NOAA channel you selected the radio will display the alert according to the choice you made for weather notification. You do not have to be in the weather mode.

It sounds like there isn't much traffic on that repeater. If you are hearing the station ID in morse code that shows the repeater is operational. Keep listening and if/when you hear people talking wait until there is a break in the conversation and ask for a radio check. If someone answers you then you can ask them about the amount of traffic that repeater normally experiences.

Equipment problems are always possible. How far are you from the repeater? Have you spent any time listening to the repeater you programmed and have transmitted to? Have you heard any other traffic on that repeater. Try monitoring that repeater and If/when you hear any traffic try asking for a radio check when there is a break in the conversation. As most people use GMRS to talk to family and friends they might be more willing to help someone asking for a radio check rather than someone looking for a random contact. If you are out and about you could program other near by repeaters and see if you can get a response on another machine.

One nice feature for any radio you get is to be able to lock the keypad. We were using our radios earlier this year and I left my wife the KG-935G and I took the KG-S88G with me into the snow because of its IP67 rating. My wife was concerned she would mess something up on the 935. It has three different lock settings so I locked it so the only thing she could change was the volume. You might want to check what ever radio you decide on to see if has different lock settings.

Correct.

I understand. In my area LEO and Fire all still use VHF and I listen on the 935G. A few small towns are using UHF in the 460's. Unfortunately LA county is using UHF that we can't get on the 935G. Good luck.

If I remember correctly the city of Santa Clarita doesn't have a police department. They have a Los Angelas County Sheriff's Department substation there, Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff's Station. If it is still that way then their radios are above 480.0000 MHz which puts them out of the range of the KG-935G Plus. Hopefully someone can give you a more up to date answer. The KG-935G Plus is a fun radio either way.

Are you scanning a priority channel when this is happening? You might try turning off all the scan functions just to see if that changes anything. Does this happen if you turn off TDR?

I'm going from memory, so take that for what it is worth, but I think you turn the radio off, press and hold the V/M button while turning the radio back on. That should take you to a menu. Make your selection and then turn the radio off. Next time you turn it on you should be in the band you selected. I think when you do this you lose any changes you had made. I don't know for which bands this radio is certified, so keep that in mind as well.