Blaise

Do they just... burst at 50?

When I was a boy, we wrote with our fingers. In the dirt. Then we hoped it wouldn't rain before we needed to remember what we wrote!

I recognize that my particular extreme use-case might stretch the limits, but that case also incudes often having the good/bad luck to have a number of mountains with above-treeline summits for nearly perfect line-of-sight. Thinking about it, Yagi antennae might make this totally doable...

???

It might be helpful to suggest the *users* to select, so that.... Oh, I see what you did there!

I'm sure your wife won't be checking under your hood...

Well, it wouldn't *be* on UHF, would it?

Agreed that that is the stated intent, but it seems like if they really wanted to restrict it like that, there would be only current-FRS-equipment-restricted GMRS or FRS, not both. Using a GMRS radio requires technical activities like programming and tuning antennas. That's not "Mom wants you home" or "Joe the lawn service guy" personal, by any means. "Hobby" or not, it's a technical service! Besides, we're talking about *changing* GMRS, so definitions may shift... I agree, but I wasn't suggesting that. I was talking about covering a couple of counties. Maybe 200 miles max, for my examples. For people who really need the range, but GMRS falls short. For example, trying to hunt down a weather-balloon experiment gone horribly wrong (not that I've ever done that multiple times ) can require coordinating dozens of search units in a four-county search that covers thousands of square miles. As the crow flies, the max spread might be 150 miles, but especially in places with mountains, you end up with five or six people driving out to high spots and relaying messages back and forth like a big game of telephone (which would be a better solution, if there were any towers nearby) being able to take a pair of long-range linked repeaters to the top of strategically tall and unobstructed geographic features would enable GMRS to cover all three counties directly...

I mean, isn't that practically the definition of GMRS? We already have repeaters. Having some that can talk to each other on a more distance-friendly band isn't exactly a stretch... Imagine FEMA or some disaster-relief group being able to set up a small network of these things such that one or more GMRS channels are connected and reachable across a three county disaster area. Not for emergency responders, but for moms to figure out where their kids are, and churches and community Centers to tell neighborhood members they are open and receiving displaced/hungry/cold people! Three devices set up atop a few important hills would be a trivially cheap investment, and because the network is cross-band, even kiddie radios could have access in an emergency. Then you just hand out boxes of sub $10 radios to anyone who needs them. Or in normal use, local groups who want to be able to connect/coordinate over fairly large areas, like hunting/camping/search parties/storm watchers/etc. could set up a couple/three and stay in touch over tens of miles, rather than just miles. And no worry about people who don't want/need to get ham licenses, because now, they only have to spend 3-5 hours finding some forms to fill out at the FCC and some cash.

Maybe instead of thinking of this as a "One band can't do both those frequency ranges" *problem*, it should be looked at as a "maybe GMRS should have cross-band repeaters, and maybe they could be used to build networks of repeaters with "not public network" connections..." *opportunity*.

When *I* was a boy, we had to smack together quartz crystals we dug up ourselves to send radio signals. And we could only receive by hanging a cable on a tree and holding it with our tongues! These damned kids, with their "electricity" and "antennas" are too lazy and stupid to be allowed to have radio!

I was thinking about that too! Although, I think this would decrease power for all of the settings at once, not just low power, but I haven't dug into it...

Hey all, I just ran across this Baofeng modification video. Brass tacks, just how bad an idea, from a technical standpoint, is the power mod in this video?

Well that's sad and disappointing. I guess humor to make a point about too many threads on the same topic was too much? Someone tell Steve I apologize for upsetting his applecart...

Obvious misunderstanding of the 'obvious trope' is obvious!