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OK, central Florida checking in here, and I do mean central. We are post hurricane Irma, and all utility services are up and running. We do have a lot of debris piles on the road side. The eye of Irma essentially passed over Polk County. My friends at T-Mobile seriously disappointed us by what seemed to be a severe reduction in service quality in town prior to any winds near tropical strength starting early in the late afternoon. For several days after the storm, there was little to no signal, and 8 days later there was still poor coverage south of us. I understand antenna and tower damage... My Irma experience urged me toward handheld radio. I grabbed a license from the FCC and made a purchase. Now, I wasn't expecting miracles, and I certainly didn't expect the 50 miles advertised on the package. But, I am still disappointed. I finally caught time to test the radios this afternoon. We were on the radios' channel 20 which is 462.675 MHz (GMRS 13). We were on the highest power setting and used the boost feature. My goal was to reach a nature preserve at a distance of about 5.8 miles. The greatest distance that we could hear each other was about 1.8 miles. See the attached JPG. Again, I didn't expect 50 miles or even 10 miles. But, 1.8 miles seems extremely short to me. I seem to remember at least 10 miles on my dad's CB radio in his VW van sitting in our front yard back in the mid 70s. Am I being unrealistic to expect more from the Uniden 5095? What would be a realistic (Not Realistic - Get it? LOL) replacement that would give me 5 - 10 miles range. It would have to comply with my GMRS license, and I am willing to license up to amateur levels. Thanks in advance.

As a General class Ham and licensed GMRS radio operator, I had the choice to make when getting my first radio, I required GMRS repeater pair access so for budget concerns i chose the Baofeng UV5RE dual band so called "cheap Chinese radio" I have used this radio and a 2nd UV5RE with an elderly neighbor who has no phone and is in poor health. to maintain contact and offer assistance when needed. this person has fallen shearing the sma-f to BNC quick connector twice now, has slept on the radio and submerged it in water several times. and all around abused the radio beyond anything i could do to it in normal use. and I must say for less than $50 this instrument is built like a brick S#!t house. the soft rubber keys have faded on the 2nd unit. mine are still like new. I occasionally use a pair of needle nose pliers to tighten the antenna jack on both radios and I expect mine to last years, his not so much. but we will see.