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Now all that being said. GMRS and Ham licenses are BOTH going to be 35 dollars and last 10 years at this point. So the SAR / CERT groups that are pushing folks to get ham licenses could just as easily push their members to get a GMRS license that requires no testing. Ham radio is great for what it is. It's a fun hobby. The problem with ham radio and CERT / SAR operations is they typically want to rely on other peoples infrastructure. ANd that can work if that infrastructure is installed and maintained at a high level. Problem is that it's not always that way and it can become a single point of failure for communications. And I am not saying that a GMRS repeater is somehow more technologically advanced than a ham repeater, but if you as a group have a GMRS repeater, YOU as a group are going to be the ones maintaining it. And while this may 'hurt' ham radio if CERT / SAR folks go the route of GMRS, if that was their only motivation to get a ham license, then what were they bringing to ham radio to begin with?

Same here, and why I never was able to work from home these past two years.....DHS CISA letter meant me and my crew came to the office and job sites. We do SCADA, microwave, satcom, and land mobile radio, along with telemetry for flight testing of experimental aircraft. As for radio, I find FRS/GMRS equipment all over the place that should not be in use, whether voiding company policy or FCC regulation, like that buffet example provided earlier in the thread. What I tend to find around my house and at work sites are the baby monitors (audio), some video capable units, and then lots of sites that are supposed to use corporate radios, using Midland GMRS handhelds bought at Cabela's (most are camouflage models). The local thrift stores have received many Midland sets, after providing the corporate users with UHF HT-750/1250, EX500, EX600XLS, PR400/CP200, up to XPR7550e replacements. At this point, I am no longer surprised what is being imported that operates in the GMRS frequency band, as so many consumer products come into the country with little to no scrutiny.

it was close enough that i thought it'd been reset. here's my quick attempt...i kind of cheated and looked at the page source to get a close font (Roboto), and grabbed a screenshot from another profile to match the background color, square size (200x200 px) and font sizing. feel free to use it if you'd like.

That's something we're trying to avoid. GMRS exploded in our area within the last year or so. So there's pretty much no options for moving as all of the pairs are occupied and, out of respect, we wouldn't want to intrude on other repeater owners. Thank you for making a complaint. Our hope is that if we bombard the FCC enough, we may stem the tide on these. Here's an example of the situation I found on youtube.

Yup. Someones always going to have one set to channel 1. And it's only a matter of time before someone accidentally hits the "MONITOR" button and starts throwing a carrier. I don't like thinking about how many are out there lying in wait for their moment to shine.

If that's RG58 that could be your culprit; suggest rolling up to at least good quality LMR400 to get it to work OK. By the book you should be running hardline, but that's overkill for this application IMO. Cheap coax makes noise under power of which a primary symptom is heavy receiver desense. Also if you purchased an RT97 for the wrong band the notches on the internal duplexer will be way out of wack; meaning your receive is basically not protected from the repeater's transmitter at all (again, you'd get some major desense here). You can 'kinda' tune them with a nanoVNA (not well I should add, but you can get in the ballpark), but if you're not familiar with the process I'd have either a local comms shop do it for you or exchange it with Retevis.

my 'base' isn't too far off of that....3db (5/8 wave) midland whip (what they sold before the current 'ghost'), mag mounted on a 8"x12" piece of sheet metal on top of a bookcase. can't say much for simplex, but makes repeaters just fine at 30 and 60 miles out. i believe laird makes a similar whip for 450-470mhz, and both that and mine are around 12" tall. for best results you may want to have it outdoors when in use, on a window ledge or balcony, as many high rises use low emmissivity glass (low-e), which in addition to blocking heat, also somewhat blocks radio signals.

I use the baking sheet and a 3 Browning 450MHz-470MHz UHF 3dBd Land Mobile NMO Antenna . I get good local coverage including two repeaters and one repeater I listen to that is 56 miles.

Hey 374! Man, that's the problem with asking these types of questions. You get all these awesome options to try and end up buying a lot more. I think I'll pick up a pair of 5Rs for the wife and myself to have. ?

Went to see about throwing something together for you to approximate the blank/callsign only user photo (since i'm home again with access to a computer), but it looks like either you beat me to it, or @rdunajewski got it handled (if so, thanks Rich!) Below is what I saw just now when viewing your profile in the main site:

This post deleted.

They don’t sum. The output of the radio is considered separately from the output of the repeater. But if you can contact the repeater with your 50 watt radio turned down to 5 watts, you should.

Jack in the Box intercoms was in my past as a youth experimenting with radios. So, we've silenced two more of them within one day today. I just came back from a really quick hunt where the homeowner thought it was pretty cool when our motley crew of radio operators came to his door and explained the situation. In this instance we didn't make him silence the intercom for good, but just change the channel. I'll explain why. Our first hunt this morning led to the homeowner simply surrendering his intercoms to us for experimentation, for which he was compensated for the intercoms and the time he spent patiently listening to our story. One of the members of our group spent the day going over the devices and learning how they function. He discovered that they are operating normally, however, the are defaulted to channel 1 (467.625) right out of the box. He found that people may try to change the channel, but unless they hold the channel button until it beeps, it will always revert to channel 1. So, we can allow the people to keep using them, but did counsel them about the harm it causes when it's on channel 1. It also really opens their eyes when you produce an HT to them that is clearly listening to the inside of their homes. I think this way compliance is better earned when we dont ask that they stop using their purchase altogether. The other cool discovery we made is that you can talk through the offending intercom while it is transmitting. We tested the group all call frequency (467.6125 726DPL) and we could be heard over the speaker while it's transmitting. For the next one I set my HT1250 up with the tx as the group channel and the rx as the channel 1 on the intercom. Just in case we encounter issues with users who are less than receptive to our requests. Here is a link the the FCC documents attached to the ID on the devices we recovered today https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Exhibits&RequestTimeout=500&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=nvB%2FzJMsBLczLOxMcRfJRg%3D%3D&fcc_id=2AJEM-777&fbclid=IwAR1w5_mEog4yWe_3nPtQfvPNnWqK8xVgG7ISNkwO89zD1LIS0sCwQmbKwvY

Can confirm this was jamming the input to our local 462.625 repeater. After a fox hunt led to an in-person visit and conversation, followed by multiple escalating phone calls, it finally ceased operation. It was being used as an intercom, to talk through a plexiglass window, at a popular local buffet restaurant for patrons to tell the chef how they would like their steaks prepared. Hosmart HY777