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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.

I'm reminded of this Reddit thread. Also, regarding balloons tailing behind me on the 417… Edited to add: Thank you for building a repeater that can be used by your neighbors in a pinch! Especially in a hurricane area, that's a potential lifeline.

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.

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.

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.