SteveShannon

And far more often than not, user error / misconfiguration stemming from not understanding how 'privacy tones' (I know, I know...) work.

Looking at the map on mygmrs, the only repeater I see that has coverage in your area is the Mesa Tumbleweed repeater. But you will have to either request permission and the PL tones or try to scan for them. And you might not even pick that one up depending on your exact location.

Welcome!!
Scan the 8 repeater channels for local activity 
Use the Repeater Map and Database on this website 

Thank you very much! I am in.

Using compander adds some audio elements that are not always pleasant. There’s almost always some background hiss in audio. That hiss is compressed along with the desired audio at the transmitter and expanded at the receiver. Some refer to the sound as resembling loud breathing or pumping. I started with compander turned on but didn’t like the sound. I have turned it off now. 

We have a longer hand time set on our 2m Motorola Quantar 125 for this reason.
The Quantar 125 has a pretty high spike in amp draw when it firsts starts transmitting. The spike is fast/short enough that amp meters can't get a good reading. This caused us some issues with our Renogy inverter. The repeater would cause the inverter to throw a ground fault error and shut down. Our fix was to have the Quantar plugged into a line conditioner and the line conditioner is plugged into the inverter.

Okay, I reported your issue also.

I would implement a controller, Surecomm will have something that works with HT's   

The duplexer is passive. It can’t command a transmission. Presumably you powered off the radio before connecting to the duplexer because the noise generated while connecting it to the antenna port could cause VOX to activate. 
Second, although the duplexer might filter it all out, I recommend turning off your B channel. You almost have the national calling frequency (146.520 MHz) tuned for both radios. 
I’ve not built a repeater using two handhelds so I can’t answer your other questions, sorry. But you make me want to try just to learn. 😁

This is not how we radio in a polite society.

All the Sky Warn Nets (weather reporting) are normally done on local 2m repeaters. That's not to say a local group could not run a Sky Warn Net on GMRS as long as the repeater owner is okay with it and you have people that can report directly to the NWS.
We do not use our GMRS repeater for Sky Warn Nets but most of us do monitor it just incase during severe storms. We were asked about running a Sky Warn Net on GMRS but that would take away from our 2m Sky Warn Net as we are only allowed so many people that can actually report directly to the NWS. We don't have enough people that can report to the NWS to run two nets at the same time.

The logical assumption is that there’s are CTCSS tones or DTCSS codes somewhere that you don’t realize are there, either on the FRS radio or on your other friends radios, or the radio is transmitting on frequencies the other radios are not receiving. We can’t really know for sure without more information, such as you posting a screenshot, a chirp file, maybe a device like the SW102 showing the output power and actual frequencies of the transmissions that others are not receiving. But we can speculate a bunch:
Bad programming.
Bad firmware.
Both.
But here’s something to try.  When it’s transmitting and other people’s radios don’t seem to receive it, put your UV5R into “scan for tones” mode to see if it’s actually sending with a tone that the other radios filter out. 

Manufacturers could design mobile radios to put out half a watt, but because FRS regulations require handheld radios and because GMRS regulations limit 8-14 to handheld radios, mobile radios could not be certified, even if they complied with the output power requirements.

His request doesn’t make sense. Any GMRS mobile radio will talk to FRS radios except for channels 8-14 which may only be handheld portable units by regulation. GMRS handheld radios can talk on 8-14. 

@WRUE951  that sounds good.  I'm glad you've had good luck with them.  My experience isn't terrible, just not ideal results.  Since most of mine are EmComm related, I never really ran one for more than a few days at a time, and mostly left them off until I/we need to use them. 
 
I know what you mean about learning the hard way.  I struggled so much to avoid spending the money on a proper repeater that I probably spent 3 or 4 times more than if I just went for a regular repeater to start.  I finally built a full-blown potable repeater system... it can do 2m, 70cm, crossband or act as a base station.  It has a built-in 50 amp hr battery system and can run on solar or AC.  Retail, it is about $17k to build, but thankfully some stuff was donated and I was able to get great deals on a used repeater and commercial VHF duplexer, which cut the cost down to about 10% of new/retail.

I started out with a KG1000 repeater and never had issues other than desense  early on.   A couple times a year the repeater got pretty heavy use during nearby off roading events.    Yea, they do get hot, but they keep on ticking.  I use two Maxons for a portable repeater,  they never break a sweat and they are housed in a ventilated ammo can. Now my current Hytera Repeater can run 24/7 with no worries.  Amazingly, I paid not to much more for the Hytera radio then the two KG1000’s.  I think we all do this, we learn the hard way. 

I think it's great that they came up a solution, and as much as I love the KG-UV980P hardware platform, I would never use a KG-1000 nor a KG-UV980P as a full-time unattended repeater.  
1.) As good as they are, they are not designed for continuous duty cycles or 24/7 operation. 
2.) They may overheat or flat out fail with prolonged use. 
3.) The transmit/receive isolation is not as good as a proper repeater, leading to desense issues.  
4.) Audio quality and levels can be inconsistent.
5.) VOX or Carrier Operated Switching methods can introduce delays, distortions, and clipping.
6.) There is zero remote monitoring, diagnostics, or telemetry unless you engineer something yourself. 
7.) Paired mobiles are extremely inefficient with regard to power consumption.
 
The only time I ever have or ever would use paired radios as a repeater would be for temporary field use and as an emergency backup (maybe).  In an emergency, the FCC isn't going to ding anyone for not having the repeater ID on it's own, and for temporary field use the control operator is IDing the repeater every time they ID themselves... so an add-on device is really not needed.

I received the same email. I want to do some more research to see if they will ID every 15 minutes 24/7 or if it can be set so that it only IDs every 15 minutes when there is actual traffic on the repeater,

The bandwidth setting has nothing to do with your issue.
Either there are tones on the radio that cannot 'hear', or the two radios are too close to each other when transmitting.

I like either the AR-5RM or the XTS5000, depending on how many monies you want to blow and how strongly your radio-dork gene is presenting.

This!  Absolutely nothing unusual about the results. 

His request doesn’t make sense. Any GMRS mobile radio will talk to FRS radios except for channels 8-14 which may only be handheld portable units by regulation. GMRS handheld radios can talk on 8-14. 

His request doesn’t make sense. Any GMRS mobile radio will talk to FRS radios except for channels 8-14 which may only be handheld portable units by regulation. GMRS handheld radios can talk on 8-14. 

His request doesn’t make sense. Any GMRS mobile radio will talk to FRS radios except for channels 8-14 which may only be handheld portable units by regulation. GMRS handheld radios can talk on 8-14. 

The simple explanation is one is used to isolate the transmitter from the receiver. Since the repeater is a full duplex operation, transmit and receives at the same time, any RF energy from the transmitter will get into the receiver. When this happens the receiver will trigger the transmitter. Now you have a feedback loop where the system will stay locked up on transmit until the power is yanked, destruction of the receiver's input at worse, or simply kills the sensitivity of the receiver then it becomes deaf to weak signals. 
The typical notch/bandpass duplexer filter is setup such that the receive half of the filter is tuned to notch out the transmitter's frequency as much as possible. The bandpass filter on the transmitter side is tuned to eliminate as much of a spurious signals that are not on the exact transmitter's frequency, thus preventing them from entering the receiver's circuits.
For the above to work a certain frequency minimum difference between the transmit and receive frequencies are required. This minimum depends on the quality (design) of the duplexer. 
https://horwin.info/en/pro-dupleksery/
https://www.repeater-builder.com/antenna/pdf/w6nbc-duplexer-book.pdf