UncleYoda

You have no chance of taking 2m frequencies away from HAM (it's already too crowded). There are 150 MHz freqs that aren't used much since the emergency responders moved to 800MHz etc. - try to get those and leave 2m HAM alone.

Select the Settings tab. Then it may be under Service Settings in the left side panel. Not all models have that though.

But the rules need to be clearly understandable by the majority of the users, not just some experts. It is obvious that everyone does not read all the regs to mean the same thing you do. Yea, some of the provisions are clear enough; some won't even getting a passing grade from someone skilled in interpreting regulations. We can submit suggestions (and I just did last week). On the FCC complaints page, there is link call "Your Story" where you can send them comments. This is not for specific complaints against one station breaking the rules; that is for the complaint form. As in talking only to a station of the same type? Or are you referring to people using non-certified radios?

You seem to have not noticed or understood this phraseology. It says family members can operate your station(s), So, to me that means if they have their own station(s). they need their own license.

Necessary or not, phonetics are helpful on any radio service (not as much though on ones that don't have callsigns). I even sometimes use phonetics on the phone but some of the dippity-doos have trouble understanding them.

I definitely have the feeling that I shouldn't post anything here, as in being serious, but... Myth (GMRS): Fixed stations are based stations when using repeater. Truth: those two are separate things and you can't just claim to be whatever you want at different times. Myth (HAM): Can't discuss religion and politics on air. Myth (HAM): You aren't violating the regs by using a UV-5R or other HAM radio for GMRS. Myth (HAM): HAMs are nice, helpful people and will even give a newbie all the gear you need to get started. Myth (HAM): Nets are useful. Myth (any handheld radio): you can talk for 50 miles from your La-Z-Boy chair. I may think of more later; they're probably lots more for HAM than GMRS.

YOU'LL HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.

We need to be using our radios, both HAM and GMRS, for serious discussions. I'm not going to explain because it should be obvious to anyone with two brain cells. I'd even like to extend the concept to the forum but I don't expect much from the jokers here. Get serious or don't press the PTT button!

@RayP I'm with you on the problems. And since I'm within range of most of the same ones, I know you aren't even telling them all of it. I don't know if that short range repeater you refer to is in range for me. But the short range one that is close to me is on a frequency that will have another separate repeater about 20 miles away this time next year. I'm letting my membership in the linked system expire and will focus on open ones. I won't bother trying to convince the detractors here and you should probably ignore them as well. This site is dominated by smartelecks (never can figure out the right spelling of that word).

With only a couple of dozen feet separation, how do you know the ribbit devices (phones?) did not communicate directly without going through the radios?

OK, thanks. But transmitting an inaudible tone is still using the transmit frequency the radio is set to. I wonder if that would be considered a form of encryption. And what about the ID requirement? I don't think an inaudible ID would suffice. It seems to me to be an inappropriate use of the normal voice bands, but maybe it would be OK on a designated frequency like they do with 144.390 in HAM. I don't think there is anywhere in the limited GMRS frequencies where that would be appropriate. Even audible scrambling would be better and that is mostly not allowed either.

Huh? 20.1 KHz on a Baofeng - what model RX's that? (I have no idea what a Talkpod is, and probably don't care.) In any case, frequency of a radio transmission does not equate to sound wave frequency (as I said in my comment above). An RF signal has to be converted to sound by a radio for us to hear it; otherwise, we'd hear constant noise or static coming through the air, like a radio with open squelch. I'm not sure that I, or you for that matter, know what you are trying to do. Are you producing a tone on the Talkpod and having a Baofeng "hear it" with the PTT pressed down? If nothing else, that would at least result in an open carrier even if the tone isn't audible.

Maybe I'm not thinking clearly (not enough coffee yet perhaps), but aren't y'all mixing up 2 different things? We don't hear radio waves. We hear the sound waves that the receiver converts the radio waves into. When we say we hear digital noise we are hearing the sound the radio puts out not the radio waves themselves. So all that matters for what we hear is can the radio receive it and convert it to audio. For example, AM broadcasts don't cause any recognizable signal on my 2m radios. (Out of band signals like that may contribute to the background static/white noise but not in a distinguishable way.)

As far as I know there were no GMRS UV-5Rs on the market when I got my UV-5Gs, which were sold in pairs. Anybody know what the differences are between those types?

I remember someone suggesting to call it an over beep. Or we could call it an Elmer beep just to annoy them more. But that begs another question: why is Roger the term for understood? And why is it Elmer (who was he)? Elder would make a little more sense. But then HAM is not a good term either, unless it's short for High frequency AM. (I've heard the ham-fisted story.)

It's different programming from the radio. There is no offset or TX frequency setting available (menu options related to repeaters are disabled/missing). So from the radio I could only do simplex for ch 39. And from the software it's only with the repeater offset when entered from scratch. I actually like having that one simplex channel with tones for my base station. When I was dealing with Radioddity support, that was my suggestion, that they add more channels or preferably limit by frequency and not by channel number. Most of these vendors seem to think they have to limit us to a few channels to get GMRS certification. But there's nothing in the regs that say we can't have a bunch of channels using the same frequency. I may not be able to transmit to many from home but having them programmed in is good for travel.

Yes, I saw that. But I have v2.02. It may just be a quirk with mine that was preventing entry. I had previously programmed that channel manually with a simplex channel with tones. So now I just deleted that channel entry and added a new one. This time it gives me the repeater offset for transmit and TX off is check-able again. But now I can't enter simplex there in the software like I did from the radio. A bit quirky but not a big deal.

Yea, we already solved this over in the Anytone thread even though mine is the DB20-G.

@Sshannon The driver worked. It was a long trip to get here but I have arrived. Thanks for helping, because I gave up more than once before trying again.

Yea, I found the manufacturers site yesterday from the info in the image you posted of the driver properties. But I didn't want to download from a Chinese site (they're known to be high risk for viruses). Anyway, this morning I decided to go for it. Driver installed OK. I'll try it later when I find my cable. @WRUE962 I downloaded the zip file instead of the exe but either would probably work. There's a setup.exe you need to run after extracting the zip.

What radioddity model worked?

@JohnnyQ1964 It's not clear to me what you're saying. 2 meter and 70cm HAM are good for local area but need to go through repeater to get more distance. You don't have to do shortwave (HF) just because you get a HAM license. Mostly, the difference is HAM is only for talking to other HAMs. GMRS does have a license too but no test and it can be used to talk to unlicensed FRS users as well. You could do what a lot of us do and use/have all of them including CB.

Windows 10 is not all the same. Mine is from September 2017, the Home version. All/most updates have been blocked. No thanks on the loan of your cable. I would only want to use the software if I have the ability to update channels when needed. All this could be avoided if there was a way to identify both the chip and the available installed drivers BEFORE you buy something. There is no logic to the process as it exists.

yes - never found compatible cable, and no idea where to find that driver you mention (but I would not want to install a driver that messes up the prolific driver I use with the others)

I'm on Windows 10, an older version, and the Radioddity DB20-G cable is not recognized. I've never seen that driver you show. (And the cables I use with the UV-5R models do work, so pretty sure the chip is not the same.) I suspect that Anytone is distributing these counterfeit chip cables because this problem has been reported for both models.