73blazer

There is one eham.net article where one commenter mentions it functions well without a counterpoise/ground plane. DX is a very reputable place, mabey they got their info from somewhere, mabey it's just a plain 'ole mistake? Who knows, But it's working for your setup and that's great! I found this worked great on my RAM 2500 CC roof (with a tri-mag mount) and SWR's with same radio are 1.1-1.3:1 depending on freq in that setup. So it does seem to me it functions much better with a ground plane.

My parents still use a 49MHz cordless phone system in their house. I never looked at what type is was before until just a couple months ago when we switched them from AT&T's rape job $110/mo landline to a $6/mo VOIP service. My dad just got some new batteries for the handsets last year!

I have this antenna and found the NGP to be false advertising. Not sure why they're saying that. I have an all fiberglass body '73 K5 Blazer and mounted this behind the tailgate off the steel bumper, and SWR was 2.9:1 on HAM UHF, 3.1:1 on GMRS, 2.2 on VHF. Put a ground plane under it (cookie sheet) and SWR never got over 1.5 on any band. It's a great antenna,with a ground plane. I actually called Diamond on this very point because DX is the only place that says NGP, nobody else says that about this antenna, Diamond says it will work, but not recommended, your results may vary, check your SWR...all the expected responses. Basically, it wasn't designed by them as NGP. If your SWR is good, then that's awesome for you! You may be getting some GP still off your steel bed where you have it mounted though.

I was able to log to both. It's always in and out. You can login on minute and the next page times out , refresh and it comes up. Click something else and it times out.

Ouch, 359.65?!

It's really easy to unlock. Buy the KG-UV980P instead. Same basic radio, HAM version, Chirp unlocks it to transmit GMRS. Contrary to one persons opinion, these are solid radios (the 1000 or the 980P), they perform very well, sounds great on TX/RX. No you can't just put the 980P config on a 1000, that wont "unlock" the 1000 because as it's been said, the 1000 has additional firmware burned into the thing to prevent out of GMRS bands/power levels/offsets etc. As it should as a part 95 certified radio.

It's the same hand!

They look like some pretty meaty paws to me! And now the radio's backwards and it's not an H3 plus!

Apparently the AI likes to put man hands on woman holding radios.

Sideband even, nice!

The Wouxun KG-935G and 905G both have group scan capability. Or the 935H if you want the HAM version.

Radios are rather subjective but you won't go wrong with the Wouxun's. Very rugged, the put out what they say they do and the 905 is especially easy to use. I'll differ from the group a bit on the range thing. From my personal testing of many radios, the 5w radios (or in the 935G's case 5.7w) does help slightly in range and especially clarity on the edge of the range in very heavy woods/foliage , but in most use cases yes it won't add range. In my woods I can get about 1-1.25mi radio to radio with a 2-3w radio and a 771g antenna, but the 5w radios get 1.4-1.7mi with a 771g antenna. But out in the open, or talking to repeater towers, there won't be a difference. The 905 is a good solid radio, but there are many others that work too, all depends on what you want. I do not believe there is any true GMRS radio that is not made in China, they're all Chinese. There are some business radios from the US and Japanese companies that can transmit on GMRS and many people have these, but those radios are generally alot more expensive ($300-1500) and some can be problematic to program as they usually require licensed software to do it.

I spent some time looking through threads there back in the late 2010's, i'm convinced it's a place people go to practice their debating skills. Because they can't possibly believe half of what they say, the disc earth, the perimeter ice ridge protected by the worlds govt's ...and the list goes on. Hilarious reading if you get bored in a meeting.

You'd never reach Hawaii from the west coast because there is no line of sight, the ocean itself gets in the way due to curvature of the earth. Unless your a flat earther, then you'd have no problems! There really isn't a hard limit, it's all on what gets in your way, aka line of sight. With the earth aligned right, you could hit a repeater on Pluto as long as the sun or other planets don't get in your way. Radio to radio I can't get more than 2miles in the heavy woods, but from the same woods I can hit repeaters 30-40mi away. Once the signal gets out of the canopy, it will travel unimpeded to those towers. If you really want an answer, you can read this paper. But generally speaking curvature of the earth is going to wreck any UHF (what GMRS is) signal if nothing else gets in your way first. So mabey 70-ish mi on flat open ground...if one side is higher, like on a mountain, mabey more!

Yeah somethings up likely something is misprogrammed. . How did you program the radios with the native software? Chirp? On the radio itself? I would start with, as @OffRoaderX mentioned, removing all receive tones. It sounds almost like there is competing receive tones like there is a DCS and CTCSS receive tone both programmed and the radio doesn't know which one to use, I've seen this on a Retivus radio before, they came with pre-programmed DCS receive tones (no idea why) I didn't notice, and allowed you to add a CTCSS tone and then you hear nothing. But the radiooddity may be switching back and forth between them. @WRXC445 Please pay no attention to the town drunk @Socalgmrs. Consider it the random mumbling of a drunk while defecating in front of your building. It's just another example of negative Nancy dissing radios he knows nothing about, I think he's dissed every brand on the market. Because he never says which Chinese GMRS radio he does prefer so we can all run out and get it so we no longer have to subject ourselves to these what he says are these worthless Midland,Radioddity, Baofang,Tidradio,Wouxun,Retivus,Btech,Rocky radios he hates so much. Oh wait, that pretty much just leaves illegal to use on GMRS Motorola or Icom or Kenwood .