Hello, I've had my license for a few years without doing much, but I finally have the time and effort to try and dive into this. I put an MXT275 in my truck for now that I'm scanning on. Testing on Papagayo 3 results in the end of transmission static that the interwebs tell me means its working, and I can hear myself on the handhelds I Chirp programed, but negative contact with another person. I'll be getting a better antenna soon, which hopefully will help. If someone's willing to holler back, I'll provide coffee or beverage of choice!

We do, sorry been out of pocket a bit with surgery and yard projects/life. I will do a valley radio test friday and drive around and test with my KG-935G and see what pops up . I'm off Fairview loop so i'll try there first

Hello Everyone! I am very new to GMRS and am excited to dive in head first to this new hobby. I am a school teacher and at my school, I have the opportunity to teach GMRS and HAM radio operation so I am getting my practice in now! any tips and tricks would be helpful or some people to chat with so I can work on etiquette would be helpful!

After some delays and problems deploying Repeater #2 (Papagayo 2), the new unit is stable and operating well. I have 3rd repeater in hand and just scouting now for an optimal location to put it up. Repeater #3 (Papagayo 1) is on Channel 26 (aka 467.625). I have everything to complete the install except location, so as soon as I can get that, we will have three in the valley (plus the one in Willow). Things are looking up. We still need to have some sort of get-together. I have been hanging out with the GERRN group up till now, and it is past time to make additional contacts.

2nd repeater is up. Operating on 462.650 near Valley Hospital off Trunk Road. Coverage favors SW to ENE, but there is usable coverage in many points to the west and north. Unfortunately the crest at Lowes in Wasilla around to Bogard and along the northwest side of KGB does shadow the repeater some. The next repeater ought to cover that easy enough, but for now it is a little spotty.

Monday Im taking my hand set with me to downtown. Around 5 pm I'll be trying it all the way to ER to see if anyone else is on

Thanks for the reply. I look forward to chatting with you.

Awesome!!! Thanks for putting up a new repeater in the area, it is much appreciated. Next time I'm in Anchorage I will drop by and say hello over the repeater.

Just got a new Retevis RT97 up and running in East Anchorage. Location is near Boniface and Reflection Dr. Using 3 element Yagi pointed south from my Condo balcony. Transmissions to the west are mostly blocked. Hopefully, this will work most of East Anchorage and possibly toward Eagle River if mobile or base is used. Best reception should be good on the Hill Side. Will need testing to see what the actual coverage is? The initial tone setting is 141.3 for input/output. At some point I plan to change to a DCS Tone. Please be mindful of other users of the frequency. All GMRS frequencies are used on a shared basis. No one owns any particular frequency. So, before you transmit to access the repeater determine the frequency is not already in use. If you use Tone Squelch you may not hear other uses of the frequency. In order to determine if the frequency is clear you will need to open your squelch in some way. Use your Monitor feature if your radio has it or use another channel on your radio that has carrier squelch. If possible, just set your repeater channel to use carrier squelch instead of tone squelch. Also, remember you are required by FCC regulations to use your FCC issued GMRS call sign when you are finished with a conversation. There's no need to repeat your call sign after every transmission. If you are in a long conversation, you must repeat your call sign every 15 minutes. However, let's not tie up a repeater for that length of time. Others may be waiting to use the repeater. Try using a simplex channel, if you are close enough to the other station, to continue a conversation. If you have an urgent need or emergency you may break into a conversation by saying "break, break, break". Others on the channel should yield to you. If you would like to join a conversation just you drop you call sign during a break in the ongoing conversation. Let's keep all conversations family friendly. And above all be courteous. One last thing. If you are running a business don't use this repeater (to run your business). There are licensed frequencies available specifically for businesses. You can obtain a frequency that is not shared by others. There are other license free frequencies available on a shared basis in the MURS or Multi-Use Radio Service. These fall under Part 95 rules but are not likely to be used by the general public. If you are not familiar with the rules governing the GMRS please refer to FCC Part 95 subpart A. CFR-2009-title47-vol5-part95.pdf (govinfo.gov)

Generally, we'd want to stick to the "GMRS" frequencies from channel 15 to 22, since all GMRS radios can transmit on those channels regardless of power level. In Eagle River and the Valley, channel 16 probably gets the most use between the repeater here and the Golden Eagle folks in the Valley. Channel 20 gets more activity on weekends, particularly amongst offroaders out on the Moose Range trail system in Palmer.

Thanks for joining! If you do end up getting a mobile rig, feel free to give me a shout sometime when you pass through Eagle River. I'm usually monitoring the Eagle River 575 repeater and channel 20.

Glad to have you here. I am new to this as well, but there are some very knowledgeable people on here and that live in Alaska. I live out in Meadow Lakes so not too far from you. If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Hello everyone. I just joined and by the looks of it, I’m not the only one new to GMRS. My name is Keith and I live in North Wasilla, specifically off of Vine road. I was born in Anchorage and raised out here in the valley. I haven’t purchased my first radio yet but will shortly. I work in the I.T. field as a system administrator and do commute to Anchorage. Looking forward to getting into this exciting new hobby.

Yeah, I would still like to, but it seems like everyone here is too busy at this time. Maybe in the summer might be better, but I am up for meeting in Eagle River.

Really? I did not know that. I will look into it. If you find out anything more please let us know.

I saw today there is a new repeater in Willow area in the Nancy Lake region. It doesn't reach wasilla and I only saw it after I drove to Talkeetna today

Sorry I missed seeing this until now. Two popular spots here in Eagle River are Jitters and Odd Man Rush Brewing, if we want to meet somewhere in the middle.

Hello everyone, Hope you all are having a fun and safe winter. So, a couple of us had made mention of all of us getting together and finding ways that we can all work together and get as many repeaters up and running as possible and getting to know each other more and our areas of expertise and what equipment we are all running etc. If any of you would like to meet up next Friday which will be the 17th of February please let me know. Or what day would be good for you guys. I am not sure where everyone is located and I want to make this as inclusive as possible for everyone. I know some of you are in Anchorage and Eagle River and some of us are out here in the Valley, I would like to get a consensus from everyone as to who would like to meet up, what day works best, what time, and where. If anyone here in the Valley needs transportation or want to car pool I don't mind picking a few people up. If we can all work together we can get this done. I was thinking of maybe meeting up at a Starbucks or something similar so we can have a coffee and snack. I would say maybe 2 hour slot will be great, if we need to leave early that is fine or if we want to hang out longer then that would be great too, but again, I would really like some feed back from you guys to see what everyone thinks about this. So please leave you comments below on what you think about meeting up and the specifics of it.

Bill, Thanks for the reply. Will be glad help where ever I can. Would be great to get a wide area repeater up so can expand our presence in the greater ANC area.

Welcome! I'm glad you found our little group here. I am completely new to radio for the most part. I first received my GMRS license last year then I took the amateur radio test and passed the technician exam. So I do both now which I love doing. I am still trying to learn more about radios and how they operate as well as repeaters and antennas. I recently joined my local ham club here in the Valley called MARA, and I met some really nice people that have helped me out with understanding radio more. Recently went to club meeting a couple days ago and it went great and made some new friends. I really hope to maybe get all of us together here soon, we talked about maybe meeting up mid February, and we can all bring our radios and start getting something going with getting repeaters up and running to connect us all together. I will make some more post about it and start contacting everyone by the end of the first week of February. Hopefully there will be a day we can all meet up. Seems like you have a lot more experience in this then myself which I am open to any feed back you might have on how to accomplish a common goal here in Alaska. Any knowledge you have will be very valuable to us all so please feel free to post on here as much as you like. I stay up on the site and active a lot more now. Hope to hear from you more and any ideas you might have will be much appreciated. As myself being so new to radio there is a lot I am still learning and any knowledge you can pass on will be greatly appreciated and this goes for anyone else in our club. Sounds like everyone of you have more experience than me in this field so please feel free everyone to post ideas, thoughts, and comments on how we can get something going. Even though I started this club I don't take it as I am the owner of it, this is a group effort and see everyone of you as equal owners.

Hello All, Just joined the Club. Conner WRVL 467 let me know about the club. I didn't realize there was a place for GMRS clubs on the MyGMRS site. My not new to GMRS but always open to new information and ideas. There's always more to learn. I actually had a GMRS station in Kenai way back in the 1990's. It was pretty basic and there weren't any other users at that time. I then got into Amateur Radio. About 5 years ago I got back into GMRS while living in the Seattle area. There were quite a few repeaters in the area and were ECOM groups using those repeaters. The was a lot of activity on GMRS. One group was helping people study up (over the air) for the Amateur radio tests. I remember you could put out a call anytime of the day and you would likely receive a reply. I have some info on the repeater situation here in Anchorage. The repeater owned by WRCA670, to the best of my knowledge, is not on the air. However, there is a repeater on the same channel with a tone of 100. Since about Oct of 2021 I have been trying to find who owns the repeater. There is no IDer. It appears to work fairly well all over Anchorage. I have made my calls on the channel but have never received a reply. Well it's nice to know there is a group of GMRSers in the area. Hope to chat with all sometime on the air waves! Jim WQCG 563

Mid Feb works for me

I'm game. It will have to be in a couple weeks though. I have a A LOT of stuff going on right now, but maybe sometime mid February? That should be enough time for everybody to think about it and get it planned. What do you think?

I say we pick a day / time and try a valley GMRS meet up. I'm 3.4 miles up fairview loop in wasilla

Welcome sir! Thank you for all our time and expertise as well as putting the equipment up. We much appreciate it. I drove down to Palmer the other day and tried to access it, but i couldn't get through to it. Maybe I will give it a try tomorrow. If you would like I would love meeting up with you and talking more about this subject or maybe a phone call. I am still learning all about this and I would love to talk to someone who is further down the road than I am. If you need any help with anything give me a holler and Ill see what I can do to help out. There are others here that are trying to get things running out here in the Valley as well as Anchorage. If we all work together we can really get a good net going that can cover South Central. There are also some up in Fairbanks as well as the slope which I found interesting. Anyway, keep us updated and let us know what we can do to help!