dosw

This is exactly why I prefer not to use direct chat. The other (less common) reason is sometimes there's no end to it.

I wouldn't do direct chat. But why don't you post a few questions and we can see about knocking out answers for them? At its most basic: Get a license (which you have). Get two radios. Set the two radios to the same channel. Set no squelch tones (aka, privacy tones, ctcss tones, privacy codes, subchannels, dcs tones). None. You and your communications partner go a few hundred feet away from each other with the volume where it is comfortable. One of you pushes the button on the side states his call sign, and asks if the other can hear him. The other pushes the button on the side of his radio, states his call sign, and says yeah I hear you. You're good to go. Next step, if you start hearing lots of construction crews and kids playing walkie talkie, you both select a squelch tone and set the radios to that tone. Now you will only hear each other (everyone can still hear you though). Then you come to the realization that you can only hear each other a half-mile to a handful of miles away, and not reliably. So you come to mygmrs.com and find repeaters in your area. You submit a request to the repeater's owner to use the repeater. He or she grants the request. Then you set one of the repeater channels in your radio correctly. You'll have questions on how to do that. Ask when you're ready.

Laird divested of its consumer antenna business, which is now TE Connectivity. At least that's what I found out dealing with their support.

dB difference = 10*log(p2/p1) 10*log(50/7.8) = 8.07dB 10*log(50/5) = 10dB At least that's how I understand it. And every 3dBi is a doubling.

The Comet GP3 is also well reviewed for use with GMRS: https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/comet-gp-3-analysis.430168/

I see no problem with these, though I would prefer an NMO-mount solution for ease of swapping antennas. Today you might want a 6dBi gain 34" whip. Tomorrow you might want a Ghost antenna so it's not as much of a big deal when you drive around town. And next week you might just want a weatherproof NMO cap so you can go through the car wash. The adapter you want, for your Baofeng UV5G Plus is SO-239 to SMA-Female. The set you linked to is a two-pack, one of them being SO-239 to SMA-Female, and the other being SO-239 to SMA-Male. You don't currently need the latter, though one can never have too many adapter options.

That sounds very sad ham-ish, indeed. And at this point, it's been 19 years. I imagine that a substantial portion of the Extra class operators who looked with fondness upon the CW requirement as a rite of passage, have already found safe passage into the pearly gates.

It's possible they misdirected my inquiry. As I dig a little deeper, the Laird TE B4505CN is now made by TE Connectivity, so it sounds like their mobile antennas spun out to TE, while their internal equipment spun out to Enzurio, which I guess is a division of Dupont now. Trying again...

https://www.ezurio.com/?utm_term=laird connectivity antennas&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ezurio-rebrand-search&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwiuC2BhDSARIsALOVfBKIBJ0dKgXXkEyA2TgibvUWVWMHXHgOHsxggDU1lyE4CXW-g2FjPFMaAkqAEALw_wcB It looks, from the Enzurio site that Laird mobile antennas aren't even offered anymore. I found out when I emailed Laird support with a question and they responded with the following: You're looking for information on a Laird Connectivity part. LPM has since divested from Laird Connectivity. They now go by Ezurio, as a matter of fact. See link below. Good luck! Ezurio | Formerly Laird Connectivity Chuck REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION: The Laird.com and Lairdtech.com email addresses will be retired on June 8th, 2024. This includes any direct emails to a person as well as our "DL" email format. Please note that the new dupont.com email addresses are not the exact replicas of the previous Laird.com or Lairdtech.com email addresses. Please use the email below if you are not sure of the new "DL" or direct persons email address. laird.sales-inside@dupont.com Regards, Charles Aussem Technical Service Engineer

I made the assumption that this question: "is there a gmrs mobile radio that has air frequencies to listen to" is asking for a 2-way GMRS radio, that can also listen to air frequencies. The AR-5RM is not a GMRS radio. And though it can be configured to transmit on the GMRS frequencies, it exceeds the GMRS power limit by 5x on channels 8-14. So if he's asking for a GMRS radio, that one should be out of the running unless he is ok with not using it for transmitting on those frequencies. It will, however, listen to air band, GMRS, and so on just fine. I still like the radio. But someone who wants to buy a GMRS radio that also listens to airband should know that they're getting a radio that doesn't provide a way to stay within the power requirements of GMRS.

The AR-5RM is not capable of transmitting at 0.5w, and as such, isn't appropriate for channels 8-14. Its low power is closer to 2.5w +/- 0.3w. It's also not type approved, of course. I like my two way radios, but when I need a scanner I use a scanner. Even a 25 year old Pro-92 scans faster than a modern Baofeng, at around 20-25 channels per second. I think a UV5G Plus scans around five channels per second. It takes a Baofeng just over four seconds to get through all 22 GMRS channels. It takes a 25 year old dedicated scanner a second. Let's say that at 25kHz spacing in the air band a Baofeng is 2x faster than scanning set channels, at 10 steps per second. Even a 25 year old dedicated scanner searches through frequency bands at around 50 steps per second. There are 1160 25kHz steps in the VHF air band. You get through 1160 steps in 116 seconds with the Baofeng. You get through 1160 steps in 24 seconds with an old dedicated scanner. Scanning isn't what two-way radios are optimized for.

This ^ My AR-5RM (max 10w) is set to 5w so that I don't drain the battery. If I need extra power, I know where the menu option is for that. My Retevis RA-87 (max 40w) is set to its Mid mode, which is about 25w because it sounds fine that way when I hit repeaters. And again, if I find that I need more power, I know where the menu option is. The frequency that we use for family simplex while skiing/camping/etc. I have programmed into my radios at a low, mid, and high setting so that I can just switch the channel quickly to step up the power if needed.

As you saw in my writeup on the radio, I did test it at its various power levels, and at various regions within the RF spectrum. It's not exactly 10w; usually a few percent low, occasionally a percent or two high. But it is so close it doesn't matter. I can hit a repeater 64 miles away with the 771 and this radio. I think I've hit that same repeater with the UV-5G (old <5w model), with a 771 antenna. Your amazement should really be about the repeater you're hitting's quality setup. I don't know what hardware they're using for some of the repeaters in my area, but if I'm hitting one 64 miles away, and coming through legibly, it's because the repeater is amazing, and the radio is good enough. Not hitting the broadside of a barn, so to speak, is all about line of sight, and path loss (through trees in your case).

I recently picked up a Baofeng AR-5RM. The kit included the radio with battery, a standard "701 clone" antenna tuned to FM (broadcast radio) / 136-174MHz / 400-520MHz, an Abbree AR-771 VHF/UHF antenna, a desktop charger, wrist strap, belt clip, and a manual which turned out to be better written than the manual for my old UV-5R radios. For those who are unfamiliar with this radio, it is pretty much identical to the UV-5G Plus, the UV-5RM Plus, and possibly other Baofeng radios. It's marketed as pushing up to 10w transmit power. The radio is quite a bit larger than the older UV-5G (UV-5R sibling). The screen is much nicer, though I've seen complaints that it's hard to read in bright sunlight. I suspect that's true, though it's still legible to me. The menus seem better laid out, but maybe that's because the display has more characters, so it's easier to understand what the menu is saying. Compared to the UV-5R's 128 memory locations, this radio has 999. Just about the first thing I did was use my old Baofeng UV-5R USB cable to program it with Chirp. This process went smoothly, and the data upload/download is about twice the speed of data transfers with the older UV-5G. Chirp is going to be Chirp -- if you know how to use it with one radio, it works just about the same for any compatible radio, with the addition or subtraction of a few field columns depending on the radio you're programming. I noticed that this radio allows up to 12 characters in the channel name field. And it offers three power levels, low, medium, and high. Through some testing I determined that these equate to about 2.5w, 5w, and 10w. Spurious emissions.... When transmitting with my older UV-5G and looking at the spectrum waterfall on my RTL-SDRv4 I would see a sharp peak at the frequency center, with two short peaks a few kilohertz away in either direction. This isn't terribly surprising, as my SDR's antenna is only six feet away when I test. But when I transmit with the AR-5RM and observe the waterfall, I don't see those secondary peaks on either side of the frequency center. I also used some software to do a wider scan with the SDR to see if there were other significant emissions across a broader portion of the UHF spectrum, and really didn't see much, in my unscientific test. Next I hooked up the Surecom SW-102 along with a dummy load, and tested power output at 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS frequencies. At low power, the output was usually in the 2.3-2.7w range, with a bit of a dip, closer to 1.9w in the 1.25m band. At medium power, there was another dip down to just over four watts at 1.25m, but in other VHF and UHF portions of the RF spectrum power was very close on either side of 5w -- sometimes a little over, other times a little under, but just barely. At full power it came in around 8.2w in the 1.25m band, but everywhere else was between 9.4w and 10.2w. It's worth noting that as a GMRS radio (for which it isn't type approved), it would be inappropriate to set it up to transmit on GMRS channels 8-14, since they're supposed to be 0.5w channels, and this radio really doesn't go below about 2.5w. For MURS (for which it is also not type approved) you're also pushing it a little, since MURS is supposed to be <2w. But 2.5w is only 25% too powerful, versus 5x more power than it should be putting out, which is the situation for GMRS 8-14. The antennas: I did sweeps with a NanoVNA within each of the ranges mentioned above; 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS. The included antennas perform fairly well. The shorter one had an SWR of <2.5:1 throughout all the ranges except 1.25m, where it was something like 3.5:1 -- not appropriate for use in that band. The longer antenna scored consistently better in all of the ranges I tested. Still not really appropriate for 1.25m. With both antennas, they tended to see a bit too much rise near the top of the Marine VHF spectrum. If this spectrum is important you would probably want an antenna better tuned to that set of frequencies. But they both did pretty good at 2m, MURS, 70cm, and GMRS. I compared a Nagoya NA-771G, and it did even better at GMRS frequencies, at the expense of slightly higher SWR in the lower parts of the 70cm band. The 771G did okay in the upper portions of the 2m band, and MURS as well, though it's not designed to be a dual band antenna. Testing with the long antenna (the Abbree 771) at 5w (medium power) I hit the Ogden repeater (43 miles away) and the Promontory repeater (64 miles away). It helps that I have line of sight to those repeaters. Over Simplex I tested at about 3 miles and 5 miles from my home at each power level using both the shorter and longer antenna. The 5-mile test was more interesting, so I'll rank the results of that test from best configuration to worst. First, though; I did manage to get through to my home, with where I had a VOX recorder set up, using each of the configurations. I'm going to mix my RA-87 (40w radio) with MXTA-26 for comparison: Best to Worst: Retevis at 40w: Full quieting, no static at all. Crisp sound. Retevis at 25w (M): Nearly full quieting, no static. Crisp sound. The noise floor was just very slightly higher. AR-5RM at High with long antenna: Obviously it's going to sound a little noisier at 10w with a 771 clone antenna than the Retevis, but still very good. Retevis at 5w (L): slightly higher noise floor than AR-5RM at 10w. AR-5RM at Medium power, long antenna: noise floor was just a little higher than before. AR-5RM at High power, short antenna: I had to listen several times to hear the difference between high/short and medium/long. But medium/long won by a hair. AR-5RM at Medium power, short antenna: Still pretty good, but high/short was a little less hiss. AR-5RM at low power, long antenna: Noise floor was quite a bit higher, and some static coming through. AR-5RM at low power, short antenna: Considerable hiss and static, but my voice was still very clear, easy to make out. I should have tested against my older UV-5G but I ran out of time. At higher powers, the difference between the long and short antenna wasn't as important. At lower powers, the antenna length mattered a lot more. Overall, though, antenna length seemed to make more difference than power level. Configuration: I don't see much point in draining the battery and singing my eyeballs by transmitting at 10w all the time. The sound quality at 5w from 5-miles away was pretty good, particularly with the longer antenna. And I was able to hit those distant repeaters at 5w. Therefore, as I configured the radio with Chirp, I set channels 1-7, 15-22, and repeater inputs to medium - 5w. I set MURS to Low, 2+w. Marine VHF/16 and the 68,71, etc working channels are set to Low (2+w). I haven't tested it with an antenna -- only with dummy load -- at 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm, and currently have it configured to not be able to transmit on any frequencies. And I've set GMRS channels 8-14 to not transmit, since its minimum power level is way too high compared to the requirement of staying below 0.5w on those channels. To configure it to not be able to transmit on a frequency that you have programmed into its memory slots, you set the "offset" to "off." At that point, when you hit PTT, nothing happens. In Chirp there are four possible offset modes: (blank) which is no offset/simplex; off which is no transmitting possible, + (positive) offset, and - (negative) offset. Air band: I've listened to air band with this radio. When you set it into the airband (108.0000 - 135.99875MHz) it automatically switches to AM, and will not transmit (tested with a dummy load). It does pick up ATC just fine. Battery life: I've never run it all the way down, so I don't know. But I do like that you can charge it either from the desktop base, OR with a USB-C plug. In the spirit of avoiding surprises: This radio, at least in the package I bought, doesn't come with a USB data cable. But it works with the same data cable used with the UV-5R or UV-5G. And within Chirp you chose the Baofeng 5RM profile (my UV-5G uses the Radiodity UV-5R profile). The green button (search): Hold the green button for a few seconds. The phone will say "Search." Now hold the PTT on another radio. In a few seconds this radio will show the frequency, and a second or so later, will show the DCS or CTCSS tone. Then it will let you save it into a memory bank. I can't remember for the life of me how to delete it (other than with Chirp) but that's in the manual, for sure. The point is that you can pair it up to another radio that is already set to a frequency and tone quickly and easily. I tend to be the one setting up my radios and handing them out to family members when we go skiing or hiking, so it's probably not a feature I'll need much. But if you find yourself bringing a radio to an event where you know others will be using GMRS or FRS to keep in touch, you can get paired up to their radios easily. I'm well aware this isn't a $50, $80, $100, or $150 two-way radio; it's a $35 (with extra antenna) multi-band two way radio; it should, by all rights, be a much worse radio. But its power levels are quite close to what's advertised, within about 5-6% of advertised across most of the bands I tested. 1.25cm is kind of the exception, being more like 10% off. But still, this radio is better than it should be. It feels pretty solid. Its sound quality is quite good. Listening to my recordings, it sounds like it transmits clearly. Scanning is pretty slow -- scanning is always slow on 2-way radios I've used. Squelch isn't perfect -- scanning 2m repeaters I keep getting hung up on one that must have another more distant one on the same frequency, too far to hear, but powerful enough to break squelch even when I have it set high. When people review equipment there's often some level of confirmation bias. I'm probably looking for reasons to like the radio, and to defend my purchasing decision. If I were looking for negatives, things not to like, I would come up with a few: It's quite a lot bigger than the UV-5G / UV-5R. It doesnt' fit into a pocket as easily. The included ABBREE 771 knockoff antenna feels cheaper than my Nagoya 771G, and the 701 knockoff is even cheaper than that. The scan button requires a long press, and an accidental short press puts you into a DTMF transmit mode that you can't seem to get out of except by hitting the "monitor" button once, which is an undocumented path. The antenna jack is SMA-M, whereas the UV-5G was SMA-F, so I had to order different adapters to be able to use an external antenna. The dust cover over the mic/speaker/data ports feels like it could wear out if you're opening and closing it a lot. Unlike the UV-5R/G you can't alter the levels associated with the squelch settings. That was a common customization people made with the UV-5R series. The USB-C charging light on the back of the battery shows a dim green when fully charged -- too dim to see in outdoor daylight. You can't set the power level low enough to meet power requirements for GMRS 8-14, but I don't really care about using those channels anyway; my mobile radios can't use 8-14 either. In the overall picture, those are minor things, for a $30-35 radio.

The technical aspects are worth considering. For the main channels (15-22, and repeater inputs) in the 462 and 467MHz range, you may configure your radio for wideband or narrowband. The channel spacing is 25kHz. Wideband is 16kHz with a transmitter deviation of +/- 5kHz. You may optionally configure narrowband. Same channel spacing. Bandwidth is 11kHz with transmitter deviation of +/- 2.5kHz. On the mains, you may use power levels up to 50w, though handhelds are rarely more than 5-10w, usually less. For the 462MHz interstitials (1-7), the same rules as above apply, though you are limited to output of 5w. For the 467MHz interstitials (8-14) you should be using narrowband (11kHz with deviation of +/- 2.5kHz), and no more than 0.5w. This additional power and bandwidth limitation is designed to prevent the interstitials from interfering with the repeater inputs. The 467MHz interstitials also are handheld only. The reason I mention all this is because some handheld radios won't transmit as low as 0.5w. My AR-5RM, on low, transmits at 2.5w, which would be 5x the limit for the 467MHz interstitials. If I were to use that radio for GMRS I would not set up those channels (8-14) for transmit at all, so that I'm not risking causing interference with repeater inputs. Keep in mind that in the actual frequency chronology GMRS is laid out like this: 462.xxxx MHz: 15 01 16 02 17 03 18 04 19 05 20 06 21 07 22 Max Power(w): 50 5 50 5 50 5 50 5 50 5 50 5 50 5 50 Bandwidth: W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W 467.xxxx MHz: R1in 08 R2in 09 R3in 10 R4in 11 R5in 12 R6in 13 R7in 14 R8in Max Power(w): 50 0.5 50 0.5 50 0.5 50 0.5 50 0.5 50 0.5 50 0.5 50 Bandwidth: W N W N W N W N W N W N W N W You can see that the channels are interleaved. 15-22 and R1-R8 inputs are considered the "main" channels, and 1-7 / 8-14 are the interstitials -- the ones that are scaled back a bit in power to reduce interference with the mains. If the radio can be set up like this, then it would be working identically to how a type approved GMRS radio would transmit, though it would still be non-compliant in terms of type approval itself. If it can't be set up for <=0.5w on channel 8, for example, it probably shouldn't be transmitting on 8-14 at all. I like the old USPS mail commercial slogan, "If it fits, it ships." I can make channels 1-7, 15-22, and the repeater inputs fit within the permissible limits for power output and bandwidth. With one of my handheld radios, I can't make the radio scale back on power enough to fit in the 8-14 channels. So it gets used on 1-7, 15-22, and repeaters, but does not get used to transmit on 8-14. And I really don't miss being able to transmit on those frequencies, with their 0.5w max.