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well sounds like some of them Hilly Billy's dropped the ball. Wanna have some fun, give their public safety communications director a call and ask why they are breaking the law.

I'm really hoping that's a joke.

I hear this near my work. Local metal processing Co. uses a lot of FRS radios, and in the morning, the lead foreman calls out channel assignments quite often; "Main Office is on 14 today, Receiving on 12, Production is on 5, QA on 3." But if you're talking using 2 simplex channels to work "split", also legal AFAIK. But you will need a dual watch radio or two radios to accomplish that!

Using the ODmaster app like I’ve always done on my TidRadio H3 I have programmed in two repeaters and when I hit the PTT button, I get the error tone like I’m trying to key up on a ham band. I’ve got it saved on channel 75. Same thing for a different repeater on channel 76. Channel 75 is program for Rx/TX on 462.650 and 467.650 and 76 is 462.725 and 467.725. Any idea as of why?

About the only time I use MURS is when I want to be ornery and mess with the Walmart workers by sending them on wild goose chases for spills in different isles.

Thanks

No

And Walmarts on the air!

Well I can tell you that not all have switched over to digital modes. The Montgomery County Missouri Sheriff department and Mexico, Missouri Public Safety (fire and police) most definitely are still using analog. And again a lot of the rural/small town volunteer fire departments around me are still using analog. Now the MCSD is currently in the process of switching over the state wide trunked P25 system. But they are still currently using analog at this time. And even the Mo Highway Patrol still have analog radios in their vehicles so that they can still communicate with agencies such as the MCSD that are still using analog. We were listening to a car chase on Interstate 70 in Montgomery County just yesterday afternoon. MCSD and MoHP were using analog radios the entire time. MCSD is on 158.730 analog and Mexico Mo PS is on 155.925 analog.

I'm pretty sure all public safety communications in the United States is now Digital as required by the Digital Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005. When i left Sacramento in 2020 one of my friends who works in communications was scrambling to finish off some transitions that had to be done by 2021. A lot of cities added state and county measures to pay for it and some cities got federal grants. Even the school districts were involved. Pretty much why Ebay was flooded with good commericial radios and repeaters for good deals the last two years.

On a related thought, is there any prohibition on tx/rx on different frequencies on simplex? Business users don't necessarily need 3-way communication. Most of it is between the dispatcher and the field units. If you put up a tall antenna and a base unit, you could communicate with your units even if they were out of simplex range of one another. As I read it, the 467 frequencies are specifically designated as repeater inputs. However, is there any prohibition on for example rx on 462.55000 and tx on 462.60000? Yes, it would create a lot of confusion on the airwaves, and I have no intention (or need) to do it, but I'm often curious about irrelevant technical matters. In practice, it would be simpler to put up a base unit and if the field units were out of range of one another, base could relay a message or they could just call each other on the phone. Also, this is one of the cases where those radios that operate over cell towers would be a good option. That's probably the one I would go with if I owned a business -- pay $50 a year per radio and let someone else worry about the infrastructure.

Here is the main website for Parks On The Air: https://parksontheair.com POTA can be fun and it's good practice for just in case situations where you might have to go mobile/portable in real life emergencies. Some guys will use 100 watt HF radios for POTA while others will use 20 watt radios and some will only use QRP radios (10 watts or less). I use a Xiegu G90 20 watt radio and do have the Xiegu 100 watt amp that I can use if I want or need to. My brother likes hauling his Icom IC-7300 with him. Other guys in our club use QRP radios only. And I have also seen guys use 400 + watt amps for POTA. But the bigger the amp the bigger the batteries are that you need to run everything. Portable quart wave antennas with telescoping whips and wire end fed half wave antennas are probably the most popular antennas for POTA. You will see some use a telescoping mast for their EFHW antennas while others just throw one end up into a tree. Different parks have different rules on that. Then there is also SOTA - Summits On The Air and IOTA - Islands On The Air. The SOTA guys pretty much all use QRP radios.

I'm of the opinion that if you feel the need to use a repeater for your business, you should install and maintain it yourself. My reasoning is that business use could create so much traffic that other people couldn't get use out of the repeater. Conversely, casual users could create enough traffic to make it difficult to conduct business. Of course, if the repeater owner is okay with business use, it's none of my business. I think of much of this stuff as being a matter of good manners. I would consider it rude to jam up a repeater with my business making it difficult for other people to use it. Not that it would necessarily happen. There's a GMRS repeater in Oklahoma City that someone obviously uses for business purposes during the weekdays, but it's still idle more than it's active. I don't know if the business owns the repeater, but obviously the owner doesn't mind. Nevertheless, if I were going to use a repeater for my business, I'd prefer to put up my own. Of course, that requires that you have access to a tower or something similar, so it's not exactly as easy as buying one and firing it up.

Yes most are using P25 and trunked systems. But some are still using analog and have not made the switch to P25. I know of at least 2 law enforcement agencies in my local area that are still using analog. And some of the small town volunteer fire departments are still using analog also. Missouri is a very rural state once you get outside of the 4 big metro areas of Columbia, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield. Even the state capital is not that big.

My limited understanding is when “activating” a park it’s just letting people know that you are in so and so park and you have so many contacts 10? I think then your station is active. It may go like this. “this is www123 has 10? Contacts activating Yellowstone national park.” but it’s been a while so I may be wrong.

They are activating a park. If they receive a certain number of contacts (10) while operating from that park they have activated it. It’s all spelled out on POTA.app. https://docs.pota.app A successful activation requires a minimum of 10 QSOs from a park in the designated list within a single UTC day (Zulu day). Courteous activators will still submit logs for unsuccessful activations to ensure their hunters get credit for the QSOs. Multiple activities at the same park in the same state/province/entity and the same UTC day count as a single activation, provided that the ten or more QSOs combined were made.

Aren't most law enforcement and emergency agencies running P25 now? I don't know if they are susceptible to our walkie talkies...

If they happen at night, would they be considered "nocturnal" ? Asking for a friend...

So this weekend was the first time I had really interacted with folks doing POTA. Generally speaking, they were coming in here to Delaware at 5-7 on the S-meter, with periods of QSB. Which is understandable as they were probably operating at around 10-20 watts, I would guess. I had about 20 QSOs with them. BTW, my rig is 20 watts. My question pertains to "Activating". What does that even mean? What are they "activating"? Thanks in advance.

The 1.25m/220 MHz band might be dead in some areas but it is alive and well in other areas. No one uses the band around me and there is only one 220 repeater in the entire state (that's listed) and it is linked full time to a 2m repeater. And yes UPS did get a small portion of the band that they have never used. There is a company trying to get a portion of the 900 MHz band for GPS right now which will be on the same frequencies that the LORA/Meshtastic devices use. I don't want to see any loss of frequencies on any of the amateur and GMRS bands. And I don't see GMRS being expanded since there are a lot of business and government use frequencies near the GMRS frequencies. And I sure don't want to have family businesses using open GMRS repeaters based on prior experiences with commercial farms in my area.

As always.... Thank you for the info. I keep learning more from you guys every week!!!

Cheap Amazon touch lamps are some of the worse when it comes to being interfered with from radios. And cheap LED light bulbs are noisy and will cause interference. I have seen where public safety frequencies have had issues with spurious emissions from cheap amateur band radios. But that too is pretty rare. And the amateur radio would have to have SE's that are almost as strong as their primary frequency.

Just about every electronic device that is not specifically covered by some other part of the FCC rules is licensed under Part 15, which has extensive requirements for interference levels etc. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A/part-15 Here is an interesting thread on the issue of interference to Part 15 devices. Just about every consumer is ignorant of this particular part. It's hard to convince somebody where their expensive flat screen TV malfunctioning, when you key up your radio, isn't your fault. The notice of Part 15 is either on the device some place and or mentioned in the included documentation, of course nobody reads that fine print. https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/35189/fcc-part-15-must-accept-interference-from-other-sources-what-does-this-mean

I can activate my stove if I put my 5 watt GMRS near it. Only on 467MHz though. And my neighbors motion activated light is activated by my 20 watt mobile, again on the 467MHz frequency. Not sure but my base station doesn't seem to turn on the light and it's the same radio I have in my truck. And I have headlamps that will turn on or change over to flashing if already on and my Fein vacuum sometimes gets activated. I don't think it's from SE's, I think it's from the direct output of the radios.

I definitely can't use all leather inside the waste band holsters during the summer. They will soak up my sweat and cause any pistol that is not stainless steel to rust. So yes I can see how bridging the contacts on a hand held radio can shock some people. I have small skinny hands so I have not had that problem. I've never been shocked by my KG-935G, KG-Q10H or any other hand held radio.