I just purchased a set of Motorola MT352TPR and have a few questions.
On the manual it says I am required to obtain an FCC license for the GMRS usage. However perhaps I am just not looking in the right places, but once you obtain the FCC license how do you use it with this radio? The range is very limited on the highway if I am lucky we are getting half a mile.
So my question is upon getting FCC license, is there something special
needed to be able to use a repeater? Programming on the radio? Or something I need to say verbally on the radio in order to use a repeater? Or am I just as confused with all of this, it seems like I am getting too many different answers from folks at local retail store.
The range is very limited because you are inside metal vehicles. With higher power you would probably gain very little. Maybe another 1/4 of a mile or so. Your radios will never be capable of using a repeater. As you suspected they are missing a setting that would need to be programmed in. They would need to be capable of ‘splits’ on channel 15 through 22. This means they transmit on a frequency that is slightly offset from the receive frequency. The repeater would receive your transmission and rebroadcast at the same time at a higher power. Nothing you say verbally will get your equipment to work that way.
I don’t think your radio is repeater-capable, so you’ll need to program in the separate transmit and receive frequencies (along with any special PL / DCS codes) with a radio that is capable of repeater use. In any case, when you do get your license you usually contact the owner of the repeater to get his permission to use it. Normally he’ll want to know your GMRS callsign. If you can’t reach him in person, you may be able to reach the owner on the repeater directly, and they can guide you from there.