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I was driving from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin today, and I was monitoring channels 15-22. I originally was monitoring all channels, but I was getting super-local chatter, and I was mostly interested in high-power simplex and repeater traffic. When I heard something, it got me thinking. What repeater are they using? That gave me an idea for an app or a web page. I downloaded the GMRS repeater database, and made some *really* crude JavaScript. I whipped this thing up in an hour, and it's embarrassing, but it works! Showing is probably easier than telling... It's just a web page that gets your location from the browser, and then looks up the closest repeater on each channel. Right now I'm only showing the basics, but there's no reason I couldn't show the "tone in" and also have a link to the repeater details. Useful? Did I just reinvent something? I didn't make it public since I'm not sure what the licensing is for the GMRS database. If someone knows, let me know. Or, if the owner wants to reach out, lets chat.

Thanks for the all the feedback. This was mostly for listening while travelling, so I just added links to the Mygmrs site for the repeaters. That maintains the existing access controls. This also avoids some of the thorny issues a few of you brought up. All I really wanted to know was where the repeater was, and how far away. I would love to also add direction (will my signal improve/degrade/etc), but that will take a little bit of work to calculate heading. Addressing some of your comments: I'm aware of repeaterbook, but it shows by distance, not by channel. (in addition to be very out of date for GMRS listings) I love the idea of confirming hearing repeater activity. Perhaps a thumbs up/thumbs down. Thanks for the idea of adding open/private/permission info. Here it is with some CSS and links to the repeaters:

Thanks for sharing the idea. Yes, I think such an app would be useful for travelers. No, I am unaware of such a GMRS app existing. Searching by proximity to repeater is more useful than searching by city, state. There is an similar app for amateur radio repeaters. I have it and use it. It is the companion for the RepeaterBook website. IMO, any app like this needs to have ready access to contact information of the repeaters owner so one can get permission to use it if it is not designated as open. Probably good to color code the listings as well. Open, Private, Permission Only. Plus filters to limit displayed results. May even be food to have a button that one could press to designate if activity from the repeater has been confirmed. Such information could be uploaded to myGMRS as a means of getting feedback to the site when the last time the repeater was heard. Something along these lines could be helpful in determining when a listing might be outdated. Regards, Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Most of the cable TV stuff will be 75 Ohms - not the 50 Ohms that GMRS equipment would want to see. Would it work? yes, to a degree. You'll have higher losses and higher SWR than you would with "real" 50 Ohms coax. You will also find out that they don't really make LMR connectors that fit 75 Ohm cable (at least, not correctly.) You can buy some semi-expensive adapters or build your own toroid coils to deal with it. Putting a cheap radio together with cheap cable that's 75 Ohms will probably lead to a bunch of headaches, but if it ultimately means one more burned up CCR and a learning experience - then I'd probably be in favor of it. I would guess that in the long run, you'll end up buying more stuff in an effort to "save money" than you would have spent to do it right in the first place. If you want to get up higher so that you can get out further, using cheap CATV coax is NOT the way to go.

The FCC actually doesn't assign the fcc ID. The lab that tests for compliance to fcc standards does. The fcc never sees the product.. There have been cases where the fcc has been made aware of compliance issues and has later pulled a radio's certification. Sent from my SM-A125U using Tapatalk

We hear the same thing on the roads.. A lot of nothing and people that dont respond (probably using privacy codes).. When offroading, the official GMRS channel is 16.. This a scientific fact because is "offroading" = "4 X 4" and 4 x 4 = 16 .. so this is the scientific answer to the question - it is explained in more detail in this video made by some Youtube clown: