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I Don't Need Permission to Use Your Repeater - Change My Mind This isn't an attack on anyone... just meant to stimulate conversation. I am 100% open to hearing dissenting opinions. Lets chat. So, this happened to a friend of mine recently. He used a repeater that the owner did not expressly say he was approved to use. The repeater owner/manager sought him out off the air, told him that he isn't authorized and to not use it again. Here is some facts, that are not open for debate... In some states, a person is not criminally trespassing on realty unless a person has been notified by the realty owner either verbally, with signs, etc., followed by a complaint filed with the courts, a judge agrees with the realty owner and issues a court order for that person to stay off the property, AND THEN that person returns to the property. There is no other private trespass beyond unauthorized access to private real property. Also, the FCC has already published an opinion that they will not modify the rules requiring operators to gain permission to use another licensee's repeater. Literally every license holder has equal right to use every frequency, every tone, every code, etc. If your repeater receives my signal and re-transmits my signal, that is not my problem. As the repeater owner and licensee, by FCC rule, YOU are responsible for what is transmitted by your radio. It is up to you to manage things accordingly, including intentional or unintentional transmitting of another radio's signal. Here is the opinion... if I need a judge to agree with me that someone shouldn't be on my property and issue a court order to keep them out of my house, and the FCC said they are requiring permission, why should I ask for permission to use a repeater? Maybe as a courtesy? Why else? I mean, as a repeater owner, part of me thinks it would be nice to be able to have some teeth behind efforts to stop a troublemaker from using my repeater. Another part of me thinks, I sure as heck don't want to try to track and manage potentially hundreds or even thousands of operators on my repeater. I am way too busy for that. Not to mention I am not spending thousands and thousands of dollars to have the systems sit there and not be used. That would be such as waste. If the FCC says I don't need permission and it's up to the owner to use technology to manage access, and state laws have set precedent on what trespass is through State Code and Tort Law (which limited to real property), then I don't need permission to use your repeater... change my mind!

If you do that there’s a very good chance that your radio chassis will be at a different potential than your power supply chassis. Code requires the two grounds to be bonded.

I can open the Blue Mountain repeater from my home in VA thats roughly 62 miles away using a 5 watt Baofeng UV-5RTP with the OEM rubber ducky antenna. This is from inside my home. The height/quality of the repeater seems more important than whatever hardware I'm running.

Dept. of Public Safety(aka Highway Patrol)still uses FM Narrow band. I have 4 channels locally I can listen to, East, West, South, and Central. EMS and Rural Metro Fire are also NFM. Not everyone has gone P25. I got my radio today so, let the fun begin.

DES256, AES256/128, RC4? Do you need to use a special “key loader” for the keys?

I haven’t noticed much of a change in Kenwood equipment availability. If nothing else I think used radio prices have dropped a bit. There a a lot of analog radios available. About Hytera radios, I’m on the lookout for a PT850 in the 405-475 band split. This is a digital radio for TETRA. https://hytera-europe.com/media/Hytera_PT580P_EN_004T_110117_v3-min.pdf Yeah, it sort of looks like an Anytone D878 with a hard-on. Oh well, many of their other HT’s have the same antenna placement. Designer I’ll bet got a bone-ous for the idea. I’ve seen a few for other band spilts. The radios are usually from the EU or China. TETRA is basically not used in North America. With the tariff on most imports it makes these expensive, or just unobtainable.

It is the responsibility of the repeater-owner to keep their repeater info up to date.. That said, many forget or die and their repeater entries never get updated again. When viewing the repeater list(s) you can omit "stale" entries so the old/never been touched ones dont show.

Does anyone check to see if the repeaters are actually operating? I've seen some listed yet they have never been online.

@jfelter welcome to GMRS. Lots of fun and good info here. A little drama once in a while but don't let that run you off. There's a lot of good people here.

Here is where I got mine (unfortunately not free) https://quality2wayradios.com/store/vertex-standard-ce59-software There are some listings floating around the web as well, some cost for access ("vertex radio group" is one), some not.

Yup, this ^.

I don't know whereabouts you are in Arizona, but the majority of major metropolitan police forces are encrypting their radio traffic. I'd check before I spent any money on a radio to scan.

I had the same issue. AFAIK the feature just does not function. Hopefully this and the squelch tail will be addressed in a firmware update.

You only add repeaters you own! Use Favorites for marking existing ones you're interested in. (This is a common newbie mistake, so putting it here for others that may see it.)

On grounding in general. When water pipes were either galvanized or copper, it wasn't uncommon to ground your houses electrical system to that. In a lot of cases here the meter is located in the parkway an the pipes ran underground for a fair distance. So grounding wasn't an issue. But, the use of plastic/non conductive materials has resulted in some older homes being repiped and loosing their earth ground. Regardless of what material you use for grounding it's simply wiser to use copper grounds rods driven to the depth required by local codes. Another thought, it's probably better to ground your radio equipment separately from your 120 VAC system.

I have to concur that line of sight makes a huge difference. I live on a peninsula that sticks out far enough into the pacific ocean that I can pick up a repeater in Chula Vista, Ca. That's pretty close to 200 miles. It isn't always happening, but some times. It actually took me a bit of detective work to figure out where it was. I was flat amazed. But, I sit on top of a hill and there are no obstructions between me and the repeater. I have that repeater programmed just the novelty of it.

I just acquired a VX-4207-7-45 from an old school bus my dad use to work on 20 years ago. He passed away a few years ago and I just recently had the opportunity to snag this radio from the bus. I'd like to reprogram it for GMRS or something. where can I find the programing software?

Click on “My Repeaters” in the menu, then click “Add Repeater.”

I think the title says it all.

I just thought I would stop by and post a quick hello since I am new to this. I got my radio all installed and got my license from the FCC. Now it time to play and have fun here in the wet western Washington (Puyallup).

And we are using encryption on some of the Talk Groups.

Pulled up the repeater page for 725SHAWBUTE, and there's a comment there from another user a month or so ago about the repeater being down. Looks like they've had interference issues with a business repeater in the past, and someone causing issues as well, between the comments and the thread below. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/7946-soooo-rip-shawbute-i-guess/ Edit: saw him weigh in on the other thread, so maybe @nokones has some more recent info on status of the local repeaters?

That would be fantastic, Steve. Generous as usual. Thank you. Let me get the software up and running and I'll check back.

Gregg, I would be happy to help put together a codeplug for you/with you. You can listen to DMR on amateur radio.

You're lucky because you can use encryption too. Keeps the scanner kiddies away.