SteveShannon

Just for the sake of correctness.  It is not + .5 MHz ; it’s + 5.0 MHz. That’s a big difference.
Some repeaters continue to transmit for a short period of time after a person lets up on the PTT. You might be hearing that.

That's what I'm using at home M&P Hyperflex 13.  It's been water infiltrated. 😪

Not exactly true.  In order to pump the same amount of water you need to increase the flow rate through the 1/2" pipe.  As you do this the friction loss increases and eventually regardless of how high the pressure the flow rate will actually decrease.

I have had a few radios that did this with DTCS tones.. Switched to CTCSS and the problem went away on all of them.

Have you simply done trial and error by, wait for it, trying ctcss rather than DTCS and see if your problem goes away?

Wow really!!! All he did was asking to confirm the rules that's all. If you had to do that I rather you didn't answer or give your 2 cents worth

There is no doubt that a known brand helix is the best way to go. For my GMRS repeater, my LMR400 coax run is just shy of 50 feet, with an arrestor, but it is a known quality brand coax used by commercial radio shops.
Also, I am using a Laird FG4605 Omni 5 dB antenna with the tip at 30'. On relative flat terrain, I am able to hit the repeater with a portable approx 15-17 miles away.

The information above is technically accurate, but should we caveat that for the woods?  Since the forest isn't consistent in density, levels of foliage change, the amount of water in the trees vary, etc.  actual results may vary.

Because RF is emitted in all directions equally from an isentropic antenna, one way to compare the range of different power outputs is to think in terms of the volume of a sphere:
Two watts fills the volume of a sphere of a radius of 0.78159 (the units in this case end up being the cube root of watts.)
Five watts fills the volume of sphere of 1.06078.
So, all other things equal, the range of a 5 watt radio compared to a 2 watt radio, to produce the same RF strength, will be approximately 36% further.
Increasing it to 10 watts (five times the power of the two watt radio) results in 70% greater range.
Increasing power to 20 watts gets you a little more than twice the range of the 2 watt radio (2.14 times to be exact).
Finally, increasing it to 50 watts gets you less than three times the range of the 2 watt radio. (a factor of 2.917).
Hopefully this illustrates how little/much RF power actually matters. 
Edited May 14, 2025:  The above should have referred to the surface area of the sphere, not the volume. I regret my error.

For GMRS, the FCC allows plain language voice communications:
95.1731 Permissible GMRS uses.
The operator of a GMRS station may use that station for two-way plain language voice communications with other GMRS stations and with FRS units concerning personal or business activities.

Earlier, in the overarching Personal Radio Services definitions (which apply to all of the personal radio services) the FCC tells us what is meant by plain language voice communications:
95.303 
Plain language voice communications. Voice communications without codes or coded messages intended to provide a hidden meaning. Foreign languages and commonly known radio operating words and phrases, such as “ten four” and “roger,” not intended to provide a hidden meaning, are not considered codes or coded messages.
Even with an executive order to establish English as our official language changes to the above rules would need to be made if the government determined that radio communication must be done in English.  Of course legislation could do it, assuming it withstood a constitutional challenge.

In the description it says it can be used as a base station.  Some people take that literally and think it'll do 1-23 plus the 8 repeater channels.  It will not.  It can't because it has the duplexer built in which would kill the incoming simplex channels. 
It's designed so you can respond with the repeater on the repeater stations with the microphone instead of needing a separate radio to transmit to the repeater to talk.  Some people.... don't understand this.  Even Randy was hoping the description of the "base station" was that of a full range GMRS radio as described.  But he to, found out it can only transmit on the repeater pairs while only receiving on the 467MHz side.

It’s against the rules to transmit on GMRS frequencies using a radio that hasn’t been certified for GMRS.  But unless you’re doing far worse things nobody will probably ever know or care and the FCC will not cite you.

I just randomly came across this review of the RT97L that was published on Youtube about 3 minutes after you made this post:
 

We have limited stock of the new Retevis RT97L repeater available and ready to ship before the tariffs are in place. Like most things we sell, these will undoubtedly be bumped in price, so hurry up and get them before May!
Purchase the Retevis RT97L
Like the RT97S, these are waterproof (IP66 for this model), have an all-metal chassis, a built-in pre-tuned duplexer, and a DB9 accessory port. 16 channels are supported, in wideband or narrowband mode. CTCSS and DCS codes can be programmed with the included USB cable, but default to 136.5 Hz with the built-in channels. The antenna connector is a UHF (SO-239) connector. There is also a built-in heater to allow cold-weather operation, and it will reduce output power if it's starting to overheat, so it can stay running for longer. The transmitter duty cycle is 100%.
RepeaterID will also support these with a model specifically for this repeater. The pinout is slightly different than the RT97S series, so the original RepeaterID is not fully compatible.





 

The payment should be associated with a FRN and show up as unused funds. If you apply for a new license using that FRN, instead of paying through the payment portal you should see your $35 there and a balance due of  $0.

I would check/confirm but mine is all boxed up and ready to give away to someone on Youtube.
You should email the BTech Support with your questions - they are very good and very fast/responsive.

You know, having seen that graphic many times, I just noticed a couple things I hadn't before. First, there's no rating for a hood lip or fender mount, just a mag mount. Second, the permanent trunk mount is actually rated more loss (-2.8db) compared to a mag mount on the trunk (-2.1db).

The problems are that it's on a small phone screen and it seems like I have to be logged into something before it's usable.  Not sure if that second part is a requirement but it's damned irritating and smells like some sort of click-bait.  If worst comes to worst, I can do that, but I'd rather use CHIRP.

I've used a UART gizmo in the past for connecting stuff to my home theater PC with good success so it's good sign that the K1-USB cable has that in it.

It  (scanning for codes) is now common for most all radio's to have this feature, as I understand it.  Interestingly, while my Midland MXT-400 has this feature to scan channels, my Operators Manual is moot about the feature to scan codes, which it can also. 

Call customer support at the FCC 

If it’s just a USB cable, there’s nothing to recognize in the cable itself.  That doesn’t mean something isn’t working.
If the radio is plugged into a regular USB cable and the USB cable is plugged into the computer Windows will attempt to recognize the chip that’s in the radio itself.  That can only happen if a driver has already been installed that is appropriate for the radio. Windows has some drivers pre-installed but not always the right ones. If the radio manufacturer recommends a driver, the driver must be installed before plugging in the radio.
The cables that work with the K1 connector have a chip built in, called a UART, that converts USB level signal to audio signals that are connected via the earphone and microphone connection.  It is that UART chip which requires a driver on the Windows computer.

And not just any radios nowadays.  My Jeep (2015) in dash radio failed on me and I found it too was suffering from the same issue on at least one chip (AM).  I used a heat gun to run the solder and all was good...  for now!

Here it is, from ARRL:

Good morning,   The serial number is a sequential number, starting with 1 for your first contact, 2 for your second contact, and so on.  In the case of the 10 Meter contest, stations located in the US, Canada, and Mexico send their state or province abbreviation, not a serial number.    In the ARRL International DX contest, as a US station, you'd be sending a signal report and your state abbreviation. It's customary to just give a 59 (or 599 if CW) as a signal report and then your state. The DX stations will send a signal report and their serial number, when then goes in your log for cross checking (we check to see if you receive the number they sent you correctly by comparing the logs.)   I can add that term to the glossary which is located at the end of the contest rules PDF files on the ARRL website.   73,
Paul Bourque, N1SFE
Contest Program Manager

Copy and paste is your friend.  That was the only way I could get anything in there.
 
Low power on the repeater is 5 watts I believe.