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I'm sure they don't. They're non technical people and the radios are just another tool they use to do their job cleaning up the place. They were likely told you need to contact somebody use this.

Recently we have begun holding the National GMRS Net once per month on the last Sunday of each month. This is due to reduced interest in holding a weekly net, and due to quickly running out of fresh topics to discuss. We will still link each regional hub together nationally each week during the same time period, but won't hold the net on the other weeks. Feel free to chat on Sunday evenings and make distant contacts during this time, but also please be mindful to not hog the repeater system so others can jump in there and participate as well.

Many, but certainly not all, antennas are tunable. If you can find a 70cm antenna that is tunable, you can trim a little off the length to retune it for GMRS. As you mentioned, the wavelength for GMRS is shorter than it is for the 70cm ham band, so this is a relatively easy thing to do. Using a 70cm antenna without retuning will cause some of your power to be reflected back to the radio due to an SWR mismatch. How much so will very much depend on the specific antenna. This also may or may not be problematic depending on the specific situation. With that said, when I'm shopping for GMRS antennas, I try to find either GMRS specific or UHF business band antennas that are designed for the 450 to 470 MHz spectrum. They are out there and not too hard to find, but because they are less common, you may have to look in other places than where you'd look for a ham radio antenna. Buytwowayradios.com is one place I've found them, and theantennafarm.com is another.

This topic brings back a memory from the very early 1980's when I was young. My dad was a semi driver all his life and back then we lived in a trailer. He had a CB base station with a tower and a fiberglass CB antenna. Which the antenna came in two sections with a metal couple in the middle and had a metal tip. One night there was a nasty lightning storm. That night lightning hit the CB antenna blowing it up in little tooth pick pieces. Few days later we found the metal couple fused together and found the metal tip in the cornfield like 200 yards away.

So, you messed up (potentially, maybe not) the repeater for everyone else. Congrats, take a cookie from the jar. I think that was answered before. Ham is self-policing, GMRS is regulated. GMRS is structured, cut and chiseled very much like land-mobile business service. Totally not like Amateur Radio.

You could use some heavier, lower loss coax for the middle section of the run where flexibility is not an issue. Keep the thinner more flexible coax for a few feet at the ends where you need it more flexible. This will keep your overall loss lower without make it unwieldy. I would try to limit coax loss to around 3db if you can. Lower is of course better. Vince

That's true. In my case I had to monitor for some weeks to catch them when they use their repeater. It wasn't until I heard the same voice on the licensed mall security frequency on the GMRS repeater frequency several seconds later mentioning the same issue to the mall's house keeping staff I figured out who it was. The next step was looking up the mall's security FCC license info, I had their FCC assigned call sign. Then I used the FCC's "FRN" number for the mall to do a search by FRN for ALL licenses held by the mall in the FCC database. That's when when I saw the expired GMRS license. The detailed info showed the exact frequency they were originally licensed to use, which was the one I heard the activity on. That nailed it. The FCC database is a gold mine of info. But you have to know how to use it.

I just wanted to add to the conversation a little nugget. We talk about the need for type certified radios and what that means for manufacturers. Some figure that if a manufacturer allows, through official software or other means, a radio to do something outside its certification then that’s ok. What is not talked about is one’s obligation, per the rules, as a GMRS licensee. This obligation is to operate fully within the rules. Much like an amateur license where the burden is placed on the amateur to make user they operate with power and frequency limits, so too does the GMRS licensee assume a similar burden. If the FCC were to get pissy, and decided to make an example of someone, they could not only go after a manufacturer for some form of non-compliance, but also licensee for knowingly using hardware in a manner inconsistent with the rules. Even something as simple as operating at more then 1/2w ERP on the 467 interstitials, operating simplex on 467 main channels, or using a non-certified radio in GMRS. While some might argue “the manufacturer’s product allowed me to do it” so it must be ok. But ultimately responsibility exists on both sides. The licensee agreed to the rules when then they applied for and where granted their license. Just like the FCC appears to be unwilling and powerless to go after the manufacturers for skirting the rules, so too are they not likely to come down on the user. My point being, licensee responsibility is equally as important as manufacturer responsibility. Worth mentioning. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM