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It seems to me this has come up a few times over the last year . I always used the donation approach. I have alot of money invested in repeaters, antenna and cables. If folks want to donate great, if not its on me to cover the costs. I didn't put them on the air to make money, I put them there to use. If others can use it and can afford to help with electric or repairs great. If not its up to me. What your proposing is a LMR system. I for one dont believe in not letting folks use it if they can't afford it.

I just want to know where all these people willing to pay a 100 per year to use the repeaters are! Lets face it, my network covers 3 states and several 1000 sq miles and we have 51 users. Anytime I have needed help with climbers or manpower its always my same core group standing in the driveway. What you are talking about is basically a part 90 community repeater service not GMRS. Again as i stated selling tones is not legal...nor welcome. I would like to hear Pastor Gary's thoughts?

As I read the regulations, what you are proposing would not be allowed. That is because your fee is fixed, while your costs are not. If, on the other hand, you were to divide the annual costs of operation plus the remaining unrecovered capital costs across the number of private tone users, perhaps adding a $100 cap, my guess is that would be Ok. You could keep charging the $100 until the gross annual income exceeded the the remaining unrecovered capital costs + annual operating costs. At that point, you would need to reduce the fee. I believe you are misinterpreting the term non-profit as meaning a specific type of corporation or business. However, as I read the FCC regulations, they mean simply that income cannot exceed expenses (capital and operation). I suppose if it took someone's time to actually manage the station, and that person was paid for the work, you could also recover an amount equal to the actual labor costs. Same for management. If you could somehow demonstrate there were management costs specifically associated with operation of the station(s) then you could recover that as well. But, you'd better be prepared to back-up your accounting with good data. OTOH, just forming a non-profit corporation would not entitle you to charge all costs of the corporation to station users.

What is the emoji for Nauseated?

95.319 (b ) does not hold much water. It does not specify who those folks might be. However I like that the rule exists. More below. I am also a GROL. Years ago, the FCC under pressure of a certain Radio Vendor Evil Batwing Corp, removed the requirements for a GROL to perform tuning, repairs and service of LMR equipment. They did this no doubt, so they could pay technicians a smaller wage and to reduce liability. The FCC rewrote Part 90, putting the responsibility on the licensee to ensure the equipment worked as required. 95.337 as underlined, describes the condition under which a modification becomes a violation. You can modify if it still meets rules. So lets say you want to install a wire into the radio to tap the discriminator or grab COR logic. That's a modification, but it is benign. Or you are a bench tech and the radio comes in with a blown final and you determine that no OEM part exists, but you are aware that an MRF123X is same part, install it, test the radio for spurs and harmonics. That is technically a modification, but not a violation. Then comes Sparky McSpark with his golden screwdriver. He goes into the 40 watt Midland and twists some coils and turns a pot and now his bird wattmeter shows 60 magical watts! That is potentially a violation. As far as Part 90 and FPP. I am OK with running Part 90 radios within the rules. I think the FPP sort of pushes the envelope however. You can accomplish same thing with a small laptop computer and RIB. I was programming Saber Radios with an HP200LX palmtop and DOS RSS long before FPP became a thing. Back to 95.319 (b ) . If you read the new rules closely (I can't cite off my head) there is as mentioned above, a rule that hints at the use of non part 95 certified equipment and it refers to "reserved sections" within the RC and GMRS rules. I think that a reasonable rule change could acknowledge that certain Part 90 radios are technically compliant with Part 95 GMRS and that 95.319 (b ) could be the qualification required to use Part 90 radios within GMRS.

The Certification rules are written as much for the manufacturers of new radios as they are for the licensee. If you look at the history of FCC enforcement of equipment certification you will see little of it has been directed at the licensee. What does all this mean? If you have a radio that was certified in 1989 under much less stringent rules, it is still certified. I have some Motorola Systems Saber radios. They are dual certified Part 90 and Part 95. They also have some features that if activated clearly violate some rules, like encryption. But the radio is still certified and if programmed and operated correctly complies with present rules. If the FCC were to crack down on the use of part 90 equipment used in GMRS, they would be very busy. I think that even though you may be driving an automobile with a helicopter turbo jet engine, violating all EPA and NHTSA standards, as long as you stay between the lines and watch your speed, the police won't bother you. Now the problem is, that there are a lot of newbies buying some pretty dodgy and cheap Chinese radio gear and they may be inclined to install an equally cheap 50 watt Chinese power amplifier to this gear. If they do that, and a spurious signal bothers the local air traffic control tower, they will be in a heap of trouble.

Antenna gain is selected based on the site and required coverage area. It is a total misconception that more gain is better. Depending on the antenna height and terrain you can do more damage then good with higher gain. Site engineering is an important part of any system, science and methodology will always provide the best results over what one may think. Unless you are stacking UHF Yagis you will gain nothing by phasing omni's together, you would be better off setting them up diversity using power dividers but this involves its own engineering and the proper test equipment. Co phasing omni's was and still is popular for 10 and 11 meter but that is HF AM not UHF. I currently have several DB-420, DB-411, DB-408, DB-404 and a single Sinclair SC329-HF2LDF in use at different sites both part 90 Commercial and GMRS. Each one selected for the installation and desired coverage. The antenna is the biggest factor in any radio system with the coax the second, trust the science. I have and still do see allot of people wasting money and being unhappy with system performance over bad antenna selection. Just my $.02 Corey

Trouble is most people dont understand what S/N ratio, insertion loss, return loss, impedance, noise floor, velocity factor etc even are. The Yagi example has noting to go with gain at all. I have shown countless people using calibrated industry standard equipment RX gain is nothing more then S/N. If you take a 3dB Yagi and a 18dB yagi, mount them in a fixed position at a fixed signal the uV level received by the test equipment is going to be the same. This is why filtering, pre-amps and attenuator's have a place. Simple really, a filter to reduce the S/N ratio and provide adjacent channel rejection, pre-amp to boost the signal and proper attenuation to lower the noise floor.

I guess everything I have ever learned is wrong, guess I should sell my Areoflex and Sitemaster.