[chirp_users] A "Feature" When Programming Btech's GMRS-V2 Handheld

[Jim Unroe]

Hi Sam,

On Sun, Jul 31, 2022 at 2:30 PM Lisa & Sam Thurman
<sam.thurman at ca.rr.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Chirp Team:
>
>    I’m a newcomer to Chirp, having found it following an interest in getting a repeater-capable handheld, that led me to Btech’s GMRS-V2 as a starter radio. While Chrip presently has a beta-version interface to the GMRS-V2, I found it to work well and I’ve been able to program about 20 frequencies into the radio with regional repeater stations, and a mixture of VHF and UHF frequencies for local fire, police, businesses, etc. Chirp makes this relatively easy (provided you enter all of the data correctly, of course) and is more user-friendly than the CPS software from Baofeng, which is really meant for their UV-82 series on which the GMRS-V2 is based.
>
>    One thing I’ve noticed is that while Chirp uploads to the radio and gets CTCSS and DCS codes and other settings correct, after programming the radio is showing the “+-“ symbol for a frequency offset on all of the channels that I put in with no offset. I checked the image file I’d saved and see that the column labeled “Duplex” does show as “off” in all cases. The radio works OK, though, so I describe this as more of a feature and less of a bug...

This radio is an FCC Part 95 Subpart E certified radio for the GMRS
service. It will only transmit on the 30 authorized frequencies for
the GMRS. Any additional frequencies in the 136-179 MHz and 400-520
MHz are not authorized for transmitting so radio will only receive on
those frequencies. It is for this reason that CHIRP automatically
switches duplex to "off" so that CHIRP matches how the radio works.

The radio displays a "+-" symbol in the upper status display area to
indicate that the selected channel's RX frequency and TX frequency are
not the same (as would be the case for repeater or TX disabled
channels).

>    Does anyone have an idea of something I might be doing incorrectly in the use of Chirp? Or is this a feature of the current Chirp version when writing to firmware in the GMRS-V2?

You are doing nothing wrong. This is how the radio works. This is
covered in Appendix C. - Technical Specifications on page 69 of the
User Manual.

> Sincerely Yours,
>
> Sam Thurman
> Valencia, CA

Jim KC9HI