WRQI583

This radio is no good for traditional Ham operators. The traditional Ham operator needs beyond full keypad configuration capability in all radios they operate or they are no good to them. This radio is good for Hams who dont mind the commercial side of radio and just need some cheap comms for something, for businesses that just need communications, for schools, and for the general old person who just needs to communicate and are not needing the radio to be versatile to be able to communicate upside down and inside out transmitting inverted on a flux capacitor in an emergency situation. It's cheap, it communicates short range, and if it breaks..... oh well.... buy another one. These actually remind me of the BF888 radios if you added digital to them, and for just some cheap short range comms, the bf888 radios work fine. I know businesses that use them and I own a couple myself. So, for some cheap short range comms, these would do the trick. I know it comes up with just about every radio out there: the haters who are dead set against it bashing the product and the lovers praising the product. While there are some radios that I think both sides will admit are total garbage, Most radios are good for what you need them for. You have two groups out there and they are the Ham operators and the general public. Ham operators need to be able to just about reprogram every single electronic component inside the radio from the key pad while the general public just needs to talk and doesn't care what the radio looks like or how it works, as long as it sends their voice out and allows them to hear the voice they need to hear. So when it comes to what radio is good and what one is bad? Pay attention to when both sides say a radio is awesome or if it is garbage. Just a thought to keep in mind when it comes to reviews on products.

That's probably why it works for me.

If you are down in the valley, you want an antenna with a higher angle of radiation to get up to the hills. If you are in the right location, you may be able to take advantage of knife edge defraction. I am able to do that where I live with one hill and am able to get a signal from my place into a valley 20 miles away to a mobile. It is not perfect as far as 100% coverage but it does work. With UHF, whether mobile or base, you have to pay attention to your terrain and the angle of radiation on your antenna. High gain is not the end answer to everything. This isn't HF. I have encountered many Hams applying HF to UHF with many thing and it doesn't work the same way. I have spent quite a bit of money being misled, until I started doing my own investigation and learning how different signals are affected by terrain.

I've encountered a mix but the ones who seem to be attracted to me are hams who have an issue with GMRS. That's why I tend to stay away from the radio crowd in my own life. I only use GMRS when it comes to communications with family.

Maybe in CA. I know many Hams outside of CA who despise GMRS and when it comes to a Ham having their GMRS license in addition their Ham license, oh boy, what colorful words and attitudes I have observed, and yes, many have come my way just for possessing both, like I am not being 100% loyal to Ham Radio. I am not throwing Hams under the bus. The stuff I have heard come out of Hams is disgusting to say the least and I am not a person who will just sit here and turn a blind eye to it. I have been on the wrong end of digital kicking analog users out. It isn't nice, and the attitudes I have heard from some Hams when it concerns digital is real smug to say the least. There is no need for that behavior. My main issue is throwing something onto a service with extremely limited frequency space and no regulation that has already shown itself to be a recipe for disaster.

You may have good intentions but that is in a world where the FCC enforces the rules. The FCC doesn't enforce the rules on GMRS. You of all people should know what happens when you throw digital voice into the mix of analog. On Ham radio, if you dont like it, you have over 1 GHz worth of space to play with. If someone comes along and throws up a digital repeater or starts using digital, maybe in a malicious way on GMRS, where do you have to go? Not like you can go to the VHF GMRS band and use 50 watts. It doesn't exist. If the rules were enforced 100% and people were responsible and looked out for other people, then digital might be an option. For most people using GMRS, they are not Hams. They dont have technical knowledge. They just need a means of communication. Here's an idea - If all of you Hams want DMR on GMRS, how about giving up a portion of your 70 cm band that hardly gets used and creating a digital GMRS? I am very sure the FCC would have no issue with that. They would probably make more money seeing as how more people are getting their GMRS license every day than their Ham license. I have a Ham license and I am all for Hams giving up a portion of some of those higher bands for digital or even analog GMRS. Maybe a sharing agreement could be had. Hams and GMRS digital operators share a portion. Interoperability. That isn't a bad thing. It goes right along with Ham Radio "Emergency communications" plans. If Hams dont mind taking their digital standards and shoving them into GMRS, why cant it go the opposite way? Bring the GMRS operators who want to use digital onto a small portion of the 70 cm Ham band? There is already a portion of the 70 cm that is shared with other users and Hams are ok with it. Seeing as how GMRS is the last thing I have to play with where I can find like minded people like me, I dont want to see it go the way of the digital graveyard like so many Ham frequencies have gone, and that's coming from someone who likes DMR. I, unlike the majority of Hams, if not all of them, think about the little guy. The guy who cant afford expensive equipment. The guy who cant run a ton of power or is stuck with a portable in a world of mobiles. The guy who can only run analog and will get squashed by digital users who dont care and will break the rules if digital were allowed on GMRS. I dont want to see the common citizen run off of the band because a digital standard was created and unleashed by people who dont care who they hurt. Believe me, I would love to see DMR repeaters on GMRS, just not on any of the 6-8 repeater pairs that currently exist or for that matter even on simplex on any of the 22 channels. Not when there is zero regulation.

GMRS has no regulation at all. Do you really think that people would abide by keeping digital in one spot? I dont. People in my area currently use NXDN and P25 on MURS which is illegal. There are already people around this country setting up DMR repeaters on GMRS which is illegal. Once you let the cat out of the bag, you are not getting it back in. I'm telling you like I told the other guy - Ham Radio. You have not one, but many digital voice modes to use. Many areas of the country not only have a dead UHF band, they have dead VHF bands and on SHF Hams actually operating are almost non-existent. So much potential, and unlike the 360 KHz or less worth of frequency space you have on GMRS/FRS, you have over 1 GHz worth of space on Ham Radio to play with just on local bands and you have far less restrictions. Why introduce something into a radio service that will totally ruin the last good radio service for common citizens that doesn't have a bunch of southern rednecks screaming "AAAUUUUUDIO AAAAAAUUUUUDIO" like a broken record on a 1000 watt radio 24/7?

Then why try stuffing digital on a band with an extremely limited amount of space, and in some places, even less space? I'm tellin ya, Ham Radio. It is made for the digital voice user and it isn't limited to one digital standard.

For those of us who have been on the wrong side of digital fighting analog and those of us who know how radio works, WE dont want to see it. Its not as easy as just putting a PL tone decode on your radio. PL tones do NOT stop digital from interfering with your analog signal. I dont know why so many people think that it does. If a digital signal comes along and happens to be as strong if not stronger than the analog signal you are trying to listen to, the digital will either make it impossible to hear the analog signal or you just wont hear it at all. Meanwhile, the digital user will have no clue and quite honestly, probably wont care what he is doing to someone else. Plain and simple - Keep digital out of GMRS! You want digital? Please, go get a Ham license. The Ham bands are dead in many areas and have digital repeaters just spewing out RF identifying themselves with absolutely little to no activity. There are other areas of the bands that have absolutely nothing at all going on on them. People think I make this up. I am not kidding! Please leave GMRS alone. Mixing digital with analog is a good way to cause everyone to vacate a band and then no one is using it and what will you have accomplished in the end? Nothing other than you shot yourself in the foot and went 100 steps backwards.

I dont think you, or I, or anyone else will get that through to these guys that want DMR on GMRS. Unlike the guys who want DMR or some form of digital on GMRS (probably because it is the way of the future) I and possible you and others have been on the other side or seen the other side of the coin where the analog user gets bumped out of the way for the digital user, or where the two cannot communicate. People like this fail to recognize one thing - while they sit up on their high thrones on digital, all shielded from the analog user world, the analog users are sitting on the other side being forced to listen to digital motorboating and what is worse, they cannot even communicate amongst themselves on analog. They aren't able to join, especially when it is on a repeater. Its essentially no different than a bunch of rich folk sitting at a window seat at a fine restaurant eating nice food in a warm room while, right below them on the other side of the glass sit homeless people who cant afford to eat and be in the nice warm room, but these people are so absorbed in enjoying their food and warmth that they dont see these people and if they do, they just figure that these people can just take some money and join them. This same attitude is in Ham Radio which is why it really confuses me why these people who want to turn GMRS upside down dont just go get a Ham license where they will have a HUGE amount of space to play with all the DMR they want. They have the same smug attitude as many of them do. Most users of GMRS wouldn't know how to write a code plug. I know a LARGE majority of extra class Hams who couldn't write a code plug to save their lives. Seeing how many forums they are on touting this digital idea and not listening to anyone who brings up valid points, they clearly dont know how radio works and the mess digital has created on Ham, and if I didn't know better, I would say they are trolling. I have read a lot of the comments just on this site and every knowledgeable person has thrown every single scenario at these guys and they still come back with "Yeah but..................".

I wish I could say the same over here. These bands are really quiet to the point where I disconnected my 2 meter radio so I could use the antenna on my SDR's full time. I found that digital doesn't work well as far as distance unless you have an external antenna with a good amount of power. I love digital voice, however, I only have portable radios and I am over 20 miles from the nearest repeater.

Well in that case, either ya make it all ONE digital standard or keep it all analog. Dont give anyone the option to run both, otherwise it creates problems and shoves everyone away from the band. Remember, we are only playing with 8 and in some cases 6 repeater pairs. That isn't a lot of room. I am not against digital. I love running it. It makes better use of the band, but if it ends up like Ham Radio and you add the unregulated nature of GMRS to that equation, that will mean people will be able to just set up whatever they want wherever they want. Sadly, you wont be able to do it without disrupting the current users. I know on Ham Radio, Digital repeaters have really shoved a lot of Hams off of the bands in some places. It doesn't accomplish anything good. Straight up, there needs to be organization. It needs to be regulated. What I would love to see is to have more frequency pairs added to GMRS.

Well, I wouldn't go saying triggered, but the subject has been brought up many many times as many people have said and I have personally watched most Hams "empty out of the room" so to speak when it comes to using the VHF/UHF bands where these digital voice modes are used. Not only has that happened, but many Hams will straight up talk very badly about these bands right over the air and get other new Hams to trash talk these bands. What is really sad is that they have added many different digital voice modes, DMR being one of them, to these bands and not only does it cause Hams to trash talk the bands even more, some fly off into a rage about how digital voice is not real Ham radio and they will go as far as having certain feelings (not good) about those who use it. Like I said, there is literally over 1 GHz worth of space to play with on these bands where you can do digital voice. DMR only takes up 6.25 KHz per channel (utilizing time slots). There are some places where some of these bands are dead. There is literally no one on them at all. You could set up pirate radio stations (not condoning that) and no one would know, as in, that dead. So when people get on here with ideas about DMR on GMRS and someone like me has seriously watched Ham bands, where this is more than allowed, dry up in front of his face, yes, it can be pretty irritating to see the posts. So, Yes, Ham Radio all the way. Just dont get sucked down the HF rabbit hole when the Hams with higher class licenses come around coercing you to upgrade your license to join the HF crowd in contesting, otherwise, you will become like every other Ham abandoning the VHF and UHF bands to talk around the world doing contesting. GMRS is meant to be analog for people just simply trying to communicate between family and friends. Would I personally love to see DMR on GMRS. Absolutely. But not with the limited space and lack of control over the band the way it is now. Ham Radio is the place to be for digital because you have all sorts of freedom to experiment with it any way you want, minus encryption.

Have you ever listened to digital where analog is supposed to be? Have you ever tried to use analog when digital is taking up the space? Have you ever been booted right off of a frequency or repeater because of digital ? I have! It's called Ham Radio! Just because you are running digital, does not mean you wont interfere with someone using a CTCSS tone. Analog tones, digital tones, analog voice, digital voice, encrypted voice.................. It doesn't matter. It is all a raw radio signal in the end and if you mix them all, you will all interfere with each other. You can take a plain analog radio and key it up near a digital one that someone is actively listening to and totally blank out the radio to where they dont hear anything. I have found that some people who use digital, whether legally or illegally, are very smug about it, they dont care if they are interfering with another analog station because in their mind, digital is the way of the future and people need to get used to it and deal with it because, to them, analog is so last year. If the FCC wanted digital on GMRS they would have made a provision for it. Every person on this forum who wants digital voice on GMRS should go out and get your Ham Radio license and go play with digital voice over there. I am very irritated with Ham Radio because of everyone abandoning the VHF and UHF bands for HF and then I come over to GMRS just to hear a bunch of people wanting digital voice on GMRS? I don't think so! Ham bands have over 1 GHz worth of space to go play digital voice however you want and if you live in an area like I live where very few people use VHF and UHF, then you are in luck because you can play digital all you want without interfering with anyone. Its bad enough MURS is clogged with NXDN and P25 in my area, I sure dont want to hear digital on GMRS. Here is another thought I have had for awhile - Since most Hams in this country have a nice rotten attitude about the UHF band, how about a bunch of digital voice GMRS people go petition the FCC to take a portion of the 440 Ham band away from Hams and create a DMR GMRS band where you can all play? That should work well. The FCC wouldn't lose any money, Hams wouldn't lose any space, since none of them use it anyhow and those who want to fill a band with digital, can go play digital GMRS however you want. Win Win all the way around. Before anyone on here decides to post questions like this, I want you all to get together with the following or a combination of the following - Analog radios running no tones Analog radios running CTCSS tones, one with decode and one without Analog radios running DCS tones, one with decode and one without Digital radios running DMR, one with encryption and one without Digital radios running NXDN Digital radios running P25 Digital radios running Yaesu Fusion and I want you all to key up your radios randomly and see if you the others are able to communicate. Maybe the ones running analog can place the radio to their ear and crank up the volume real loud while a digital radio transmits. I guarantee, after that, you will see why putting digital voice on GMRS is a bad idea. I've been on the receiving end of listening to digital garbage come flowing through the speaker on my analog radio because of a smug digital radio operator who thought he could act arrogant and transmit with his much superior digital radio and not care what he did to someone else. The funny thing about all of this, is that I am not against digital. I personally own a DMR hotspot, I operate DMR (or I used to). I own two DMR radios. I just dont mix my DMR where analog is meant to be. So, if you want digital voice? HAM RADIO! HAM RADIO! HAM RADIO! You have the capability of 5+ different digital voice modes and that number is probably growing. Thanks to HF and all of its contesting garbage, Hams have abandoned the VHF and UHF bands to go have an ongoing competition for the most contacts. This is your opportunity to go get your Ham license and start flooding the VHF and UHF bands with activity!!! Trust me, you have PLENTY of space and the most that will happen is that Ham radio operators will try and try to coerce you into operating HF. Grow a strong backbone and ignore them! Please leave GMRS alone. GMRS is the last band that many of us have that isn't tainted.

I actually wrote a piece on my QRZ for Hams who visit my page and wonder why I have a GMRS license. I have encountered a few Hams who dont think one way or the other about having a Ham license and GMRS. A few I've encountered have both licenses. Then there are the Hams that treat Ham Radio like a "brotherhood" or an "exclusive club" and if they find out you also have a GMRS license, you are then automatically hated and put on an unofficial black list because you crossed over to the dark side, and according to them, you cant do that. Basically what I wrote was how Ham Radio is a hobby, GMRS is a means of communication. It is like people and cars. You have some who use cars as a means of getting places, like a person using GMRS just communicating. Then you have people who go to school for automotive, they work in a garage, they restore old cars and make a hobby or career out of doing things with cars, like a person using Ham Radio doing contesting and working on radios. Some people in this world just need a means of communication and dont care about working on radios and doing contesting. Before anyone gets into radio, they need to ask themselves what they want out of radio, not what someone tells them is best because the radio service needs new members.

Simply put - ABOLISH MODERN COMMUNICATION! Get rid of cellular and internet communication. I realized this on a trip I took with my wife camping. Our camp site had cell service. After leaving and taking the long way home going down the Golden Road from the Greenville Maine area to Millinocket Maine, our cell service died. No big deal. It didn't bother me because I have 3 radios that communicate locally sitting right in my console. Well, I have to say, GMRS was used heavily on that road. It really brought me back to the days when I first got into Ham Radio and it brought a smile to my face. It was a really good feeling I had not felt since the 1990's. It was a time when not everyone and their mother had cell phones. The internet? It was confined to a huge box on a big bubble screen monitor in your living room and your connection costed you dearly and was slow. Radio communication was faster and more reliable and attractive. Today, your cell phone is much more reliable and you have everything to communicate and research information with all in the palm of your hand. Until that crashes, you are never going to get "new blood" into any radio service. If you add some of the shenanigans that happen on Ham or any other service, it will turn kids or anyone else off to radio. Kids today grow up with technology that works solidly in the palm of their hand. Radio is something that you find in a museum. As much as many will give me grief over what I am saying, today's communication far surpasses radio, even if "one day" all communication will go down, except for radio, the fact is, our ways of communicating today are more solid and faster. I still have radio and on a rare occasion still operate radio, but Zello is my two way radio in many cases, except for when I go out with my wife shopping and doing other tasks together in which case the radios come out because cell signal is not always great inside of buildings. If you want to get kids into radio, keep todays technology out of their hands until they are old enough to drive a car. I see kids today that aren't old enough to use the toilet with cell phones and tablets in their hands. Even if I didn't see it, I hear about it when 911 misdials come into these dispatch centers and the parent apologizes because their kid was playing with their cell phone. If you want kids interested in something, buy a couple cheap bubble pack radios and let them play with them. Communicate over them with your kids. Stop placing the world in their hands. That cell phone is YOURS, not your kids. I was inadvertently exposed to radios (scanners and pagers) when I was younger, and as I became a teenager, CB radio walkie talkies and then my own scanner. I wasn't exposed to the internet until I was well into the Ham Radio hobby when I was 18 years old and that was slow speed dial up with a limited internet world. If you do this with kids, it's probably your only chance you have to get them involved with radio.

The maps on here are in general terms. Once you factor in terrain along with other factors such as antenna height, gain, power output, line loss at the repeater site, the whole map will look different. What you need to get a better look at what the coverage area is is to plug the info into a heat map. Even then, it wont be 100% accurate, but 95%+ accurate. If you had a repeater set up on an open flat plain with zero obstructions in site, then the maps they provide on here would be more accurate.

Height is might!

You must be on a hill. That Camden repeater doesnt work well to the north from what I have noticed. Either way, from your location, that is amazing. I know Camden does awesome for the Islands and coastline down there. I have used it portable in the car all along rt 17 from Union to Rockland on about 3 watts and a rubberduck

I had to laugh when I looked at this. I didn't realize it has been that long since I got my GMRS license. Back then, GMRS when it came to repeaters, was in its infancy. Many more have come online, many are linked, and from what I have heard, there are still more planned. The repeaters I can get into effectively are Unity (3,032 feet) and Woodstock (65 miles). Frankfort works 75% of the time. From what I have noticed, I can get into it fine but I cant hear it all the time. It depends on how the wind is blowing. I can attest to Frankfort not working at all for portable radios if you are in Belfast. I tested it this past Saturday and the best I got was scratchiness so bad, you couldn't make out words. I switched back to simplex and everything was fine. Outside of that, all the other repeaters are on the other side of many of the hills from me or just simply too far away. My location is in a hole in the northwest part of Waldo county with everything to my WSW to NW being wide open for radio signals.

Yeah, 52 is one place I have heard it. You are right, anyone can use the frequencies, the problem it creates is for the people who jump on Ham Radio who dont know what is going on, they will think 52 is not usable because of some digital noise, Or, if someone is hiking and has an emergency and decides to rely on 52 and instead of analog, they hear digital. Do they make an P25/DMR/NXDN/Fusion Radio? Nope, that person would have to make sure they now had 4 different radios on their belt for whatever digital mode someone might be running on a frequency that was known for analog. The issue is that for some reason, these digital modes, contesting modes, any type of modes or behaviors on Ham radio are not the behavior of one person or a couple people, they become fads. One person does it, so a bunch of other people do it and think it is ok without thinking about the fact that maybe not everyone has digital or not everyone is going to have the form of digital they have. They are sitting on a calling frequency or other frequency that is known to have analog use and here they are changing things up without anyone else knowing or being ok with it. While not illegal, its not courteous to others.

I have heard it used outside of the Ham Bands once or twice but mainly, its being used on simplex in areas where you "shouldn't" be using it because not everyone has fusion and if there was some sort of emergency, that frequency is being taken up by someone messing around on Fusion. Within the Ham bands I say misuse, not so much illegal, because I guess you can just start transmitting digital voice wherever and whenever you want, it is just frowned upon sort of like using APRS on anything other than 144.39.

Since this happens to be a common topic because people do illegally use digital voice on GMRS, here are some things that might help if anyone wants to really get into decoding digital voice - Nooelec SDR dongle $34 SDR console (free software) DSD plus ($25? for the software) Hook this into you computer, slap an antenna on your SDR (preferably an outdoor antenna) and start sweeping through the frequencies. When you come upon a digital signal, DSD plus will automatically start decoding what it is and will tell you exactly what they are running as far as time slots or if it is encrypted. The only thing it seems to have an issue with is Yaesu Fusion (something that seems to get used in areas where it isn't supposed to be used). After that, you should get a good idea who it is, especially if its a Ham. 9 times out of 10, Hams will do something dumb like this and not change their Ham Radio digital ID on the radio. DSD plus will pick it up.

Actually, and I may be the ONLY odd ball out there, I monitor all the channels (no tone/simplex mode) especially when I am on the road running errands. I mainly hear kids doing their usual swallowing the microphone and slamming the call button a hundred times, and I hear a lot of businesses, schools, and flaggers. Outside of that, probably because of the poison going around, people think that the only way you can communicate is on repeaters (I would really appreciate it if Hams would stop spreading that poison). I cant tell you how much of a load of it that is. I can get up to 20 miles base to mobile where I live and I live in a hole, granted the up to 20 miles is not in all directions. I live in the rurals and 20 miles gets me to at least 3 different towns where major stores are. I could only imagine how much my signal would improve if I was up higher in elevation like 90% of everyone else on the radio is. But, I do monitor all the channels. Not as much at home but when I am in the shack I do keep them on scan. Sadly, I dont hear anyone either. Just some distant repeaters that I cant hit.

Well that is where using this website comes into play. If you are on here looking up a repeater listing, you can request access to a repeater and then will be given the correct tones. The only way to access this stuff on here is to have a valid FCC license. It isn't fool proof but I would say it has a 99% chance of working. The only issue is if the people interfering are smart and have the time, they can take a radio and go through every single tone and figure out which one activates the repeater. I do agree, one bad apple shouldnt ruin it for everyone. But what do you do in this case just short of getting the equipment that locks out radios based on their RF print?