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SoCalGMRS should become an Amateur Radio Operator so he'll be a genuine "Sad HAM" and change his handle to SoCalHam and hang with his new hammers on the Radio Reference forum.

Several years ago, I sent Radio Shack a proposal for something that I think, if approved by the FCC, would have returned some of the yesteryear excitement to visiting their stores. Their response was something about legal "rights" to the idea and me generating tons of legalese paperwork for them, something I had neither time, money, or resources for. In that day, before the current flood of CCJ (Cheap Chinese Junk) GMRS radios, the average Joe or Jane had two options; CB or ham, for off-grid or grid-down comms. GMRS was an option if you were wealthy enough to afford Moto, GE, or other Land Mobile gear. As we all know, most wives, children, and other family or friends refuse to be bothered with studying for and taking a Technician test, no matter how simple it is. CB is on a long wavelength which makes portable comms unwieldy at best and nearly impossible from inside some buildings and automobiles without an external outside antenna. Mobile and base range is crippled by a 4 Watt power limit and short channel spacing, as well as frequent skip. At that time, Homeland Security had PSA's on radio and TV urging citizens to contemplate preparing for unexpected disasters with food, water, and communications gear beyond landlines and cell phones. My proposal involved petitioning the FCC to carve out a portion of the VHF Low Band somewhere above 42 MHz for a "Homeland Security" band. My proposal would allow for 50W mobile and base radios. Portables would be a maximum of 6W. A minimum of 45 channels should be provided at 15 to 20 KHz spacing with narrowband analog FM being the only accepted mode. 5 channels would be set aside as ht transmit, base and mobile receive-only. These would be the highest frequency channels of the band/service. Bases and mobiles would be receive only and transmit only on a corresponding fixed lower frequency in the band. A Dual Receive Capability capable radio would allow simultaneous receive on the ht channel corresponding with a fixed lower transmit frequency for that ht channel. One such DRC channel (the highest) would be for emergencies, like old CB 9. The next would be for taking the emergency to for detailed or prolonged comms if necessary. The other three DRC capable channels would allow any user to monitor the higher (6W ht only) frequency and their fixed corresponding lower frequency and use them for any purpose the service allowed. The purpose of this would be to allow persons with only a ht to have a clearer shot at making contact with an emergency monitoring station, or their own home base without having to compete with 50W bases and mobiles. All radios would be required to have CTCSS/DCS encode/decode capability and a fixed tone (say 100.0) would be used on the two emergency channels for all comms. Since Radio Shack was the creator of FRS, by petitioning the FCC for such, I figured such a project would re-vitalize the waning interest in their once-vibrant stores. While skip would still occur at the higher end of VHF Low Band, it would be less frequent than on CB. Unlike CB, ht signals at those frequencies CAN get into and out of a closed automobile and many buildings that CB could never touch. Alas, it was not to be.

If Guest PG3 lives within 200 miles to SoCalGMRS it very well could be him. Don't forget, SoCalGMRS can talk up to 200 miles.

Hmmmm... It would be a shame if everyone reported certain user's that do this every day.. multiple times...

... ... Respect other users. No flaming or abusing fellow forum members. Users who continue to post inflammatory, abusive comments will be banned from the forum after two warnings are issued by moderators. Harassment. No threats or harassment of other users will be tolerated. Any instance of threatening or harassing behavior is grounds for deletion from the forums.

Sort repeaters by tone, list is out of order. Same on both in and out. By the way, why dark gray background and black text? (maybe I missed a theme setting, but I can override if needed)

If he does, nobody will ever know!

When I was a boy, we wrote with our fingers. In the dirt. Then we hoped it wouldn't rain before we needed to remember what we wrote!

There. I fixed it for you.

yea,, me either...

I wouldn't know, anymore.

I recognize that my particular extreme use-case might stretch the limits, but that case also incudes often having the good/bad luck to have a number of mountains with above-treeline summits for nearly perfect line-of-sight. Thinking about it, Yagi antennae might make this totally doable...

Interesting how SOCAL didn't have any comments for this thread !

Indeed it is. and for the low low cost of nothing you can be just like this satisfied customer. So don't wait, act now, a better life awaits with Steve's ass be gone method!!! Use it today!!!

???

It might be helpful to suggest the *users* to select, so that.... Oh, I see what you did there!

and a fine job at that! Well written, nice illustrations.. i laughed.. i cried.. I learned... Anyone interested in seeing Sir Steven Shannon's excelled work can see it here: (clicky ^^ there)

Done

*Shakes fist in the air

As if Randy needs an evil alternate account. As much as I love Randy and sometimes making him reply on YT videos by making absolutely ridiculous statements (it's a hobby), he certainly doesn't need an evil alt. Randy is just evil enough to get by.

One of the best purchases I have made in the last few months was getting a digital microscope. Here is what I ordered: TOMLOV DM9 Max Digital Microscope: 20MP 10.1" 1500X HD IPS HDMI. And here is a photo of a digital command control board for n scale steam locomotives. Those are either 28 or 30 gauge wires that have to be soldered to the electric motor and lights. Here is a photo of the Arcom RC-210 board. \ I had to solder everything onto the board. At least there weren't any tiny toroids that I had to wrap like on my QRP EFHW antenna. As you can see, skills learned from other hobbies transfer over to amateur radio. There are many different facets to amateur radio that one can explore. Having your general license opens up so many doors compared to a technician license.

I confirmed, Steve's step-by-step instruction's work. I no longer see SoCal ... Thanks Steve..

You are very lucky.. this stuff really sucks!

I was always interested in electronics but before going back to college to become an engineer I spent eight years as a retail jeweler. Soldering small components while wearing my eye loupe was part of the job. That worked well for me in my early engineering career because the company I worked for needed surface mount prototypes and I could do them in-house.

I forgot to mention that I was voluntold to assemble the controller board once the club realized that working with small components doesn't bother me. I learned my lesson not to talk about soldering tiny digital control boards to N Scale locomotives or showing off any radio/antenna/CW practice oscillators to club members