I went back and forth on a midland mxt275 with the accessory mic, Mxt-395 or the Radioddity ub-15g for my Tacoma. I have a camping trim coming up soon so the 395 was ruled out. I decided that for the price the Ub-15g was worth a shot.

So far I’m impressed. The antenna it comes with is junk. I went with a midland nmo cable and ghost antenna mounted on a ditch light bracket. The unit itself is tiny and fit in empty space under my center console.

The only concern I have now is if I should have gone with the longer antenna, and if it’s ok to store the excess antenna coax near the unit itself.

The ub-15g seems to have a lot of features though I’m not sure how useful they will be for me. This will mostly be used for trail comms. New to gmrs, if anyone has any suggestions I would be happy to hear them.

I'm about to get a repeater for use in my volunteer work and for SHTF situations, should one ever arise. Would a telescoping flag pole be a viable means of gaining height with an antenna? Any suggestions as to a good portable one? Thanks.

One just has to wonder why anyone would pay $1800 for this now that the repeaters have been unlinked?

So I have been thinking about getting my license for gmrs and trying these radios out what are your guys thoughts

I have a pair, set to Normal, just flashed both radios to same settings with
CHIRP, Planned to use both GMRS and marine frequencies on a trip

Tested - Radio 1 transmits and receives. Radio 2 receives but does not transmits.

Unfortunately have left home and have no computer access, so any changes I will need to do manually.

Thoughts? These both worked before but I may have done something to restrict transmission at some point when I was tinkering.

First GMRS radio. Picking one up primarily for inter-vehicle communication on a big group and excursion. The group I'm joining is already equipped with a variety of mobile and handheld GMRS units. I'm sure I would borrow a handheld from someone on the trip, but prefer to have my own equipment. A mobile mounted in the vehicle will probably come in the future, but not in the vehicle I'm taking on this outing. I figure even when I have that, a decent handheld would be good to have as well.

From features, ratings, and reviews, I'm pretty sure I want to go with the radios in the title. Radioddity GM-30 Plus or Pro. I know that the functional difference is apparently one having GPS and the other having Bluetooth app interface for programming. Cosmetically one being black and the other having blue accents.

Which would be the better choice for a beginner? Bluetooth programming or GPS capability.

What is the GPS feature even used for? Anything that can't be done with phone or standalone GPS?

Also thinking about picking up an antenna upgrade since I read that those are the biggest downfall for these units (radioddity, baofeng, etc). Seems like I read somewhere that the NA-771G was recommended. Can't remember the details, but did put it in my cart so I'd remember it.

As the title says. What are the calculations one needs to do in order to select a battery? I would imagine I would also need some type of charger. Is there a charger that will provide multiple options (AC, Solar, etc)?

Adding GMRS to my UTV, what's the common practice for extra coax? I only need 6-8 feet of coax but the standard coax is 19 feet, do I coil it up or do the figure 8 similar to CB coax?

Picked up a Tidradio TD-H9 portable recently and was setting it up on some of the local area repeaters. Wasn't getting an repeater linkup. So, I checked with another radio and I've got some kind of weird sidetone broadcasting throughout my TX on all channels. So, I think that tone is causing it to be screened from the repeaters. I've gone through everything on this radio looking for what it could be. There's no APRS beacons turned on. I've got everything shut off. I even did a factory reset on the radio, and then went back and turned off all the VOX, roger beeps, tones, checked to see if there were any CTCSS or DCS tones active...everything. Still, when I TX on that radio I get a constant tone at about 1000 Hz +/- (or that's about what it sounds like) on any radio receiving the signal.

Any ideas what this might be?

I've switched antennas, checked power and SWR (1.1), and all looks good. Power checks at both high and low power. Radio is rated at 10w on high and measures at 9.8. Lower power at mid and low is dead on. I can't figure it out...and it's buggin' me.

So a better antenna is always, well, better. The ones that come with radios almost always suck and need replacing. The radio is a 25 watt one which is cool, but the antenna is thin and tiny. I have a Nagoya NA-771 antenna laying around which is much thicker and longer, but the package says it's for only 10 watts at most and receive only.

So knowing it's going to be outdoors, on a truck, and hooked to a 25 watt radio, what are my options for a cheap upgrade from the stock antenna?

Friend got out of ham radio and gave me his radios. I have 6 Baofeng UV5Rs and 2 UV5R Minis. Can i use these for gmrs? I have family that lives with me or is in the area that i would love to program and give them a radio so we can communicate. I would just put gmrs bands on it and nothing to do with ham, aviation, maritime or anything else

So i set up my radioddity gm30 pro to the repeaters ajd i may have screwed up something.

It was receiving on 462.550 and transmitting on 467.550 (i may have the tx and rx backwards, if i do, i apologize! ) is this correct? I changed it so it transmitted and received on 462.550....did i screw up something?

TLDR Summary - Issue appears resolved. Issue was between radio and operator seat! I'll leave the OP for others who may be interested. (Original OP) - Radio displaying frequencies which are different when downloaded. Radio is a Radioddity GM-30 (base model). Public Safety / Medical stuff.

Longer version - Sitting at my desk monitoring a scan running on the standard (30) channel FRS+GMRS channels when all of a sudden I hear what sounds like a medivac unit communicating with a hospital. I reached over and shut off the scan so it would pause the frequency. The radio was in channel mode when scanning, so I flipped over to VFO mode to see what the freq. was. Displayed frequency was/is 462.95250 MHz. Hmmm...that's strange. So I flipped back over to channel mode and it's displaying "Ch.-14". Typically, channel 14 is 467.7125. Decided to do a little more investigation, so I fired up the Radioddity software for the GM-30 and downloaded the contents. I had added 146.5200 (the national 2m Ham calling freq) up on channel 40 because it's good for general situational awareness, and I usually include that in my scans.

When I 'Read from' (i.e. downloaded) the radio it downloaded the channel line up and channel 40 showed up correctly as 146.5200, so I know it really did download the actual radio contents. BUT, when I look up channel 14 there, sure enough, it shows up as 467.1250 exactly as I would expect. Now, if I turn the radio on and switch to channel 14, then switch to VFO mode, the frequency shows as 462.9520. WTH?

Just out of curiosity I started listening to 462.9520 and there's all sorts of medical traffic on there, a lot of it critical care patients, some of which is even 'Delta' and 'Echo' level priorities (the highest of the high when it comes to medical/rescue codes! Life threatening stuff.). As a former EMT myself, I understand a lot of what they're talking about and it's serious stuff, like really, really, serious. FTR, 462.9520 MHz is also known as "Med-9" in most regions.

One last thing. Life Flight which has a flight corridor right over our house (and we're way out in the boonies) would be communicating on the air bands I would think, but some of this traffic is definitely airborne because I can hear the turbines and rotors. So, I can't figure out what's going on. (Emergency services using 'Med-9' in the GMRS band so they're not down in the 120 MHz air bands with non-aviation traffic maybe?). But I guess my big question is...why does my radio show and receive one thing, but download something completely different??

Sorry for the long post, but there's a lot of detail to cover.

Found on Facebook marketplace for only $5. IP67 rated. Will do a FARs test on my next camping trip.

So let me start off by saying I do have my call sign and I’m licensed in the GMRS. I just got into the hobby about three weeks ago. I have 3 handheld radios a baefong uv5r a uv-21r and just got a btech gmrs2. I’ve used my GMRS website to find repeaters in my area. I have the frequencies, the tone and the offset I even reached out to one of the owners of one of the repeaters to verify and still have no luck connecting I used chirp to program the repeaters when I try to transmit, I get no courtesy tone or anything back from the repeater. Not sure if my distance to the repeater and living in NYC with all the buildings is blocking my connectivity.

In all honesty I have no idea what I’m doing. Decided one day, a cool portable repeater would be dope for hunting with the boys. Been running some differing equipment but a portable repeater seemed to be the best option for us.

Looked online and said I could buy a Retevis, or I could let my ADHD run wild a make my own.

So anywho here I am starting this project.

Gear so far:
Jackboss waterproof box
Baofeng uv5g plus (5200ma battery)
Surecom 629 repeater controller
Celwave tdn7407a duplexer
Amazon 20000 ma battery pack (x2 (one for the RX radio and surecom 629, and one for the TX radio)

Figuring out internal layout and how I want to set it up.

Feel free to roast me, ask questions, or say it’s lame 😂

I’ll post more pictures if yall want it.

Update 1:
Holy smokes! Over 40k views in a day…. That is wild! I did not expect that.
Wanted to say thanks for everyone who popped in to give their thoughts, input, recommendations, and links. I greatly appreciate it. It’s definitely gave me food for thought and has been a huge bump of encouragement to take more photos, get the project finished, and do some real testing on it. I’ll post more photos when I can. Thanks all!

Update 2: 100k views 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Thanks all!!! Tis bananas
Thinking of adding a meshtastic node to the setup, but would like some feedback.

Buying a set of baofeng mini 5's as a gift. Not sure what color to get. Any thoughts of opinions? Choices are black, clear, green, gray.

Is there anybody in this subreddit in Winston Salem NC and connected to the Winston 700 repeater? I spend most of my time downtown and I've never been able to hit the repeater. Is it still operational? I hit the Mocksville 550 just fine from anywhere in Winston.

My buddies and I have picked up some GMRS 5 watt radios. We live in a rural portion of Montana and unfortunately, we don’t have any repeaters near by. We thought it would be a fun project to build one and on a near by mountain. We just want something that’s rugged and will be powered by solar as it will be in a remote location. Any suggestions or tips for installing and parts would be greatly appreciated. Want to prioritize solar and distance. I’m assuming will be limited by our 5watt radios.

My limited research has led me to the below

https://www.redsengineering.com/fieldlink-edge-srpt-03/

FIELDLINK EDGE SRPT-03

https://www.baofengradio.com/products/uv-5r?srsltid=AfmBOooSJE2Tnp6GRyCXE6gWbJ70ry84aaL6BNteGtacU0P0illRQU1w

https://voltaicsystems.com/5-watt-panel-etfe/?srsltid=AfmBOoq7YZvR0HIcIgsmdIybpfvJpvGgYurYdWpbTy5cQR95w3uneaPU

I don't even know why I'm following GME because I'm in Europe, so GME's products aren't relevant to me. But that's radio nerdery for you.

They just released their top of the range handheld for GMRS. It looks great. I wish I could have it. Or I wish that Europe even had something like GMRS

https://gmeus.com/gmrs-two-way-radios/xrs-660-u/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_JYJB6Hu4A