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30 foot tower & this is my main gate. Good luck getting in....

Yup,, much different breaking a law, vs. a 'rule'

Nope!

The butt-prints smell fresh so your story checks out.

It's okay, man. I already know where you live. I sat on you front porch naked for two hours this morning before sunrise. If you don't believe me, check out the crusty butt prints near the top step.

And for follow up. I created two .csv files for anyone who wants to do the radio check I laid out. I have both the UV 5G plus and a TD-H3 so I built a test code plug that you can load into chirp to use. Obviously as they are the CSV files, you can use them for any radio as I note you have the TDH8. Set the UV5G to have channel 1 on the top line and channel 2 on the bottom line. Transmit on the TD and you should see the top line receive work. A/B the UV5G to the bottom line and transmit. The TD should then light up. If this works...the radio is fine. As noted elsewhere. You do not need the tone squelch on receive for a repeater, you just need it's input or TONE frequency. I did this test with the Tone Squelch enabled. repeater check td.csv repeater check uv.csv

Actually, no, the rule is that GMRS communications may not be placed onto a network. That extrapolated into not linking repeaters.

As @Jaay already mentioned above... a topo map can give you the elevation if you know the location or general location. If you know something about the locaiton and the repeater is on a mountain top or something (as apposed to a building or tower) you can use this line of sight tool to see where you would get good line on a repeater. https://www.scadacore.com/tools/rf-path/rf-line-of-sight/ But yeah, like some have already said, if they don't tell you the elevation or don't want to... there is no reason they have to.

I know that FCC clarified that you can't link repeaters. But what about a simplex node with AllStar? Is that ambiguous?

I posted on another thread about how to test your radio for this exact scenario. link below. As you have two radio's you can do a very simple test to make sure that you are able to transmit/receive correctly. This is a good way to get to know the radios and the software and have a controlled test bed to work from. In effect, you are independently checking the two halves of the repeater equation. Now, if this test passes, then you can bet your bottom dollar that the tone for the repeater is wrong, or, you are just not reaching it. Although the latter, in your case is not the issue if your sitting so close you can feel the radio waves (joking of course) Radio Check for Repeaters

Maybe try to set a password via the radio setup menu, then hook it up to the programming software. Then use the password you created on the radio. 7.3.7 Power-on Password Allows the radio to set a power-on password to protect device security and settings. Press >> Radio Settings >> Password. Prompts “Input password”. Enter 1-8 digits (0-9), ******** will be displayed. Press the # key to display your entry. Press the key to save and return to the previous menu. To cancel the power-on password Press the key >> Radio Settings >> Password. Prompts “Input password ********”. Press the key to delete until all are deleted. Press to save and return to the previous menu. When the power-on password feature is enabled, the radio will prompt “Input Password” when turning on the radio, and only after entering the correct password will the radio turn on properly. The power-on password can be read and modified by CPS software.

I dont publish the actual/*exact* elevation of my repeater antenna because its connected to my house and knowing its exact elevation would make it easier for all the mentally-ill people that send me threats to locate it.

Interfering with police/emergency communications violates criminal law and is a police matter, very unlike violating FCC Rules.

Last week I bought a Baofeng AR-152 Pro GPS. I wasn't surprised that it isn't supported by CHIRP, but I was surprised that there's no factory CPS either. Maybe that's because it's allegedly programmable via Bluetooth, but I haven't experimented with that yet. i have input a few channels manually, and overall, I like the features, so I won't be sending it back, but it's probably going on a shelf until there's a more efficient way to program it available. I'd be interested to know if other people are having your problem because I was considering the 5RH Pro GPS. I downloaded the 5RHPG program and tried it with the 152PG because the features are similar, but it wouldn't read my radio. Now I wonder if it's an issue of quirky software instead of radio incompatibility.

Except that they dont.

I'm pretty sure most states have laws pertaining to interference with emergency services operations. The local police can slap that stuff down pretty quickly. A hefty fine and a realistic threat of jail time can serve to modify one's behavior.

It's not "advice" -- it's just a statement of fact. I care if people are exceeding the bandwidth and power restrictions because that has the potential to interfere with other users' enjoyment of the airwaves, but I don't care at all what type of radio someone is using. The evidence suggests the FCC doesn't care either.

I sign on and off with my callsign and use it frequently throughout the conversation. I don't know why people refuse to believe my callsign is BR549.

That sounds really nice! Mine sounds more like I made it! lol

Did you not include the call sign?

It work great on my system. They are super friendly guys at Repeater ID. This is what they made for me. ident.mp3

Three years ago some clown in our city programed an HT to local Police frequency and started to clown around on their frequency. It got a lot of local attention by our HAM groups and on day three of this nonsense the HAM group isolated the location and along with the police were knocking on the clowns door. Never heard what happend to the guy, but problem went away..

Exactly. The only time a person might be cited is if they do something really egregious (like monkeying around with public safety communications) and these violations are tacked on.

I picked up the RepeaterID Universal mainly out of curiosity. You can create the outgoing message using a couple of easy techniques to insure it is in the correct format; Have them create it for you Create your own and use an online system to convert it for you. I opted for this one. I assembled a temporary indoor test setup using a few CCRs as shown below. The YiniTone RC-108 I got from AliExpress provided the "repeater" functionality. I have type-accepted radios, but am considering setting up a real full-duty repeater with duplexer external antenna... this was just for a test. The apparently 3d printed case is nice, but a little surprised it is not metal to protect the board inside from RF overload which they note as possible in the instructions. Although they mention using the TOT in case it gets stuck in transmit mode, I found that using an external antenna a short distance away from the RepeaterID resolved the problem. As seen in the picture, using a dummy load does as well! The included transmit and receive patch cords are quite short. They are separate so connector spacing should not be an issue. Overall, I found the RepeaterID Universal simple to set up and deploy.

I will guarantee the FCC knows about all the issues with ham/GMRS radios on the GMRS/FRS channels. Are they going to do anything about it? It's extremely unlikely because the issues are 1) low power, 2) local to a small area, and 3) it's not worth the effort to enforce the rules for something this trivial to the majority of the users.