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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.

Yeah, this. Since the FCC's enforcement operation responds to complaints, the effect is that it operates in a "No harm, no foul" mode. As a taxpayer, I'm fine with that. I would be nice if the rules were formulated to regulate the results, not the process, but that's not where we are.

You asked why they’re resistant to disclosing the height of their antenna? Good job! What did they say?

I have asked.

There's no good reason to not publish height. If the repeater is using a directional antenna, the primary direction should be reported too. But even worse to me is not giving a general location for the repeater. Like height, being able to determine distance and bearing is fundamental to radio comms. Towers can't be hidden anyway so there's little if any additional threat from vandals by letting the users know where it is.

I actually have been in that station a few times.

Ask when you request access. Also, when testing, plan to drive closer to the repeater until you definitely know you’re hitting it.

It's not advice. It's a statement of the current reality. So long as you're not egregiously breaking the rules and interfering with others (...and even then...), they don't seem to give a care. hey quick question: ..........what?

Topographical maps for your area are Very useful for this !

Just curious why some repeater operators are resistant to disclosing how high their antenna(s) are. I guess you can hit it or you can't, but it can be useful to know sometimes if you want to know what is or isn't in the way. Say you're testing and know you should be hitting a given repeater but can't and you're trying to figure out if terrain is a factor. Just wondering.

Just don't feel like messing with these radios. They're getting sent back. I guess that low price for a GPS enabled radio WAS just Too Good to be True.

True true I’m still looking to see if perhaps there lock under some kind of PL tone.

So, I got the two 5RH Pro GPS radios today. I have the Baofeng programming software downloaded and running. Now for the issue, it can't read the radio. I tried my normal cable that works for all of my other radios and I tried the one Baofeng provided. It simply fails to read. Crazy thing is I can download a power on picture to the radio so I know the cable is plugged in properly and the radio is getting signal, it's just a No Go for reading or writing anything else to the radio. I really don't want to program all the channels by hand using the front panel since when I did try and wanted to name the channel it was all Chinese letters. Anyone else have these radios and having issues like this? Also, CHIRP is no help since this radio it too new to be supported. Anyway, I'm going to do more research and watch some YouTube videos to see if I can figure this out and if any of ya'll come up with anything please let me know. Thanks.

You Lucky Dog It's Station 127 I wanted to go to LA for the 50th Anniversary in January, 2022, but they postponed it, when I found out the rescheduled date, it was already sold out :(

I drove by the Station in Carson everyday I was working that was used as Station 51 in both the pilot and the weekly episodes. I don't remember the actual Station Number.

I still remember the originals, right from the pilot movie :-)