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The effect of this rule is that you don't violate rules to begin with. There is no distinct prohibition on attaching a Part 95 approved amplifier to Part 95 exciter/transmitter. § 95.339 Operation of transmitter with external device causing rule violation prohibited.No person shall operate any Personal Radio Service transmitter to which an external device or accessory has been added such that operation of the combination results in a violation of the rules. The reality is that a lot of Part 90 equipment is routinely used on Part 95 and the FCC is fully aware of this. It is inevitable that high performance Part 95 equipment will cease to be manufactured. I say inevitable but reality is that the crap being sold as Part 95 by the manufacturers is narrow band and that in itself renders GMRS impotent. Licensees need to choose equipment carefully and petition the FCC to permit certain Part 90 equipment (that meets Part 95 specs) be permissible. At same time, reject manufacturers who see GMRS as FRS on 15 watt steroids.

5 AM Central Time, Saturday, January 26 - 14 degrees below zero with wind chill at 27 below zero. Colder at my Midwest location than in Fort Yukon, Alaska. Several years ago, the morning air temperature was 27 degrees below - a lady went out to her car to go to work, saw that one tire looked a little soft - kicked it and it 'broke'. It is so cold here that Scotsmen in the area are starting to wear pants. I tried to take the garbage out, but it didn't want to go. Pet stores here are starting to sell Penguins. Police told a robber to freeze - and he did. Mail delivery persons are watching out for dogs AND Polar Bears. It is so cold here that hitchhikers are holding up pictures of thumbs... Now, where did I put my golf clubs?

I don't mind the cold too much but even just a little wind makes it brutal. Haven't gone negative by me but reached upper single digits.

I understand HAM isn't an ancronym. HAM was a pejorative term originally until over time, amateur radio operators managed to adopt the word HAM as some kind of badge of honor. At least that's what the ARRL tech manual says about HAMS.

Is this proceeding still open? Any resolution. It worries me when Motorola asks for something. There is usually some over reach. Having 30 of those GPS gadgets on a channel at a national park will be a mess. And yes, at bubble pack prices, folks will be attaching them to their cars and motorcycles as a poor mans lojack.

I don't think you have to go to fancy extremes to be compliant. Just don't operate with a balloon tailing behind you on the 417!. "perceived toxicity in the culture surrounding amateur radio" I am a ham and have seen this time and again. Folks ask on the board how they can get reliable two way communications for family and the answer right away is to get a ham license for every member of the family. I know of a few families where that is the case, but they are unicorns. Then there are the FCC "Nazi's" who look for an infraction in every sort of activity not positively supported by the rules, or twist wording to favor their prohibition de jour. Fact is If it is not specifically prohibited it is probably OK, The FCC's GMRS infraction filing cabinet buried deep in warehouse 13 in Gettysburg is mostly an empty drawer. The few NAL's they write are commercial users on GMRS channels. Or GMRS operators that are jamming part 90, well one guy from California basically. The filing cabinet for Ham radio infractions takes up three floors.

Oh god, I will have to put my flame suit on. Here it is. I am a licensed ham, have been for years and have pushed the state of the art in many venues. Built an amateur radio satellite station, worked the world, constructed a 98 foot tower etc. Spent a lot of money at AES. However every so often I get the bug to build a repeater. I am building a repeater for GMRS and not for ham as my immediate family will not benefit. This is something my neighbors might benefit from as we are in a hurricane area and power and communications are out at least a few days every year. So I am building a 50 watt (wide band ) GMRS repeater with quadruple receiver diversity. Yes folks I intend to push the state of the art forward. All parts will be Part 95 certified. The four receivers will each have a separate diversity antenna mounted with separation to exploit the uncorrelated multipath signals. One of the four receive antennas will be a horizontally polarized loop to exploit angle diversity. Why am I doing this? To improve the reception form a 5 watt handheld so that talk back reliability approaches talk in. The heart of this is the repeater shelf I am assembling and the brains are a surplus JPS SNV-4 voter which has DSP S/N voting and DSP noise reduction. Will it work well? I think so, that is part of the fun. Once the fun is over I will have a powerful GMRS repeater in my town.

If I read correctly what Ian is describing, it is a repeater to be used at a fixed location on a temporary basis. And using a balloon hoisted antenna. There is no prohibition in the rules for such a station.The fact that it is installed in a vehicle does not preclude lawful operation of the station when deployed at temporary locations. A fixed location is not a specific location. It is simply a stationary one. Further the FCC no longer licenses fixed GMRS stations by site so there is no expectation of a protected service area other than using care to operate without interference. § 95.303 Definitions. Repeater station. A station in a fixed location used to extend the communications range of mobile stations, hand-held portable units and control stations by receiving their signals on one channel (the input channel) and simultaneously retransmitting these signals on another channel (the output channel), typically with higher transmitting power from a favorable antenna location (typically high above the surrounding terrain).

That is certainly good to hear. I am building a new repeater and trying to comply with Part 95 . Finding a PA has been a worry. Aftermarket PA's are commonly used with Part 90 equipment and as such, I have not seen any concern as to specific certifications. It is the exciter that does the heavy lifting as to modulation emissions. The PA if well designed and terminated into a proper load should do fine.

I use an old radioshack scanner that has a hit counter on it. I put all pairs in and leave it for at least 30 days. When I return, its a matter of looking at the hits not just on the RX but the TX side as well. Doing this lets me choose the best pair for the area.

That's a stretch. Part of your claim might be valid if the transmitter has front-panel selectable power output and the combination of amplifier and the highest front panel selectable power setting results in output power that is over the legal limit. But, here's the thing: the amp the OP is asking about is only rated to 40 watts max, which is within the legal limit. Also my TK-805D is internally adjustable (as are many radios) to 5 watts output. Let's take that in another direction, though. Using the TK-805D as an example again, the factory output setting is 25 watts. It is no problem at all to program the 462 MHz and 467 MHz interstitial frequencies into it. The 462 interstitial freqs have a 5 watt limit. The 467 interstitial freqs have a 0.5 watt limit. So how is this radio Part 95 type classified, since it is easy to break the law with it? The answer is, it is legal as long as it is set up so inadvertent violations cannot occur via pressing the wrong buttons during operation. Now, that does mean the GMRS-V1 specifically might not be legal with the amp, since it has the interstitial freqs programmed into it. That would be exactly the same as programming those frequencies into a mobile radio, even without the addition of an amplifier. But to say that it is a violation to use an amplifier on GMRS is a gross and incorrect oversimplification.

Well, I can help answer some of your questions.... The 452 MHz band is fully used by broadcasting, public safety, and general business radio service. (as is the entire 450-470 MHz band, except for our very generous slice) The 472 MHz band is right in the middle of over-the-air television channel 14, which uses up everything between 470-476 MHz. 476-482 is channel 15, and it goes up every 6 MHz from there until you hit cellular telephone, which is currently 614-890 MHz, and expanding. There is no such thing as an "underutilized slice of spectrum" in the UHF band, or anywhere else for that matter. There is no problem with our current 5 MHz split. It has been working just fine for decades. There is already a filtering solution for this. It is known as cavity filtering. A set of UHF cavities made to handle 50 watts is about the same size as that little toy shoe-box repeater you linked to in your post, and the tuning on most are loose enough to be used on any 2 adjacent channels. You seem to want an 8 channel repeater - I still don't know why you need this. This thing you linked to is only 10 Watts anyway. Just use Simplex. Interesting note: That Retivis repeater seems to be built into a re-purposed cable TV line amp box. Lastly, please refrain from using non-appropriate language on this site.