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In the old days (late 90s and earlier), .675 was an FCC designated Emergency/Traveller Assistance frequency; If your license did not explicitly select .675 as one of the TWO frequency (pairs) assigned, you could ONLY use it for Em/TA (if you had a radio that could be used on more than two channels -- many HTs of the age just had a toggle switch between A and B channels *, which would have been programmed for the two frequencies on one's license). And, as mentioned, organizations like REACT attempted to standardize upon a CTCSS tone for that purpose. * which made the Maxon GMRS 210+3 rather desirable -- it had the seven interstitials locked into channels 1-7, .675 locked into channel 8, and channels 9&10 programmable for the frequencies stated on one's license

I am on the fence for more or less GMRS repeaters being needed. There are only a few GMRS repeaters in my area, and more amateur repeaters still....but none of them get much use. I throw out a call sign and get a response back at times. When I hear people (rarely) I respond with a radio check. When speaking in person with the repeater owner or administrator, many just "monitor" and never respond back to anyone. Maybe it is a hobby in this area, and I own a Motorola Spectra based portable repeater, which I only put up for my own family use. But, for others there is the bragging rights of being a repeater owner, administrator, or adding another radio service notch to their resume. It varies for all involved on what motivates them. So, more or less, my own opinion is to work within the rules and have some fun. For some, it may be a hobby, for others it may help a business or organization. I tailor my own radio usage for what I am doing, VHF for short range (MURS), GMRS for family use when I am in areas known to not be saturated with UHF (which is hard as many public safety and interop systems are UHF based in my region), and 900 MHz FHSS Motorola DTR radios when I do not want to hear anybody else, but stay within about a mile of other users. Money is often an issue, but then I see many that spend a lot more money on consumer grade hardware, when used commercial gear would serve them better. Or, recommendations on higher end gear, but cost considerations leave out software, special programming cables, or computer operating system upgrades (which all add to overall cost). I may use some of my older Motorola GR300 repeaters, with hardware radio upgrades (replace the Radius based radios) XPR4550 mobiles, as future GMRs repeaters (I know the "radio police" will flame me for that part). It would be nice to see more repeaters in the Pacific Northwest, to include GMRS, but with what is available and under used, it just becomes an ego boost to add more in this area. Getting more people to communicate and respond on local repeaters would be even better. Throw out a call sign and respond to someone who is....that will get more people on the air in some way, shape, or fashion.

Are there plans or people interested in expanding the Net to the Pacific Northwest? -Josh WROJ763

Reception was fine. Continuity was fine within the antenna cable. So I went to look at the antenna specifically and under close examination the cylindrical "cover" had displaced from the base... it's a midland 3db short stubby antenna. I was able to remove the cover completely and see the wiring inside. I'm unsure if this is what caused the issued but I re-glued the cover down to the base and the radio is back to normal. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. Glad my radio wasn't toast.

Hello All Denis here just moved to the Paris area. Looking to get guidance to what channels are being used and if and meets are scheduled in the future. I have an interest in setting up a repeater if their would be a benefit to the local GMRS community.

What I would like to see is that everyone have the same pl tones in place on the same frequency. So no matter where anyone traveling could talk to anyone.

I have not programmed the 5400s but I have programmed the EVX-531 and 534. They appear to use the same software. If you want wideband software I would highly recommend that you download the international version. That is what I did. That software allows both wide and narrow without any funky date setting. If the radio was programmed in the US already it might be "locked" to narrow band. I have found two ways to get around this. First is the wide band recovery tool from vertex. The second is to just upload a factory profile that comes with the CPS International Software. Open up one of default code plugs for that radio, turn it on, hook it up and write to it. Don't read the radio first. I have also found the factory cable works 10 times better and allows you to upload current firmware where as the clone cables do not. I did this all on a Windows 10 and Windows 11 machine.

This is the tower I have access to that was bought and paid for by a ham. I am gonna say that jealousy doesn't really play into it. But I could be wrong. As far as the misappropriation of taxpayer assets. Gonna have to say that, yes, that tends to irritate me. Now i am not gonna say that every ham group is full of idiots that would pull crap like the OP was talking about. But those guys and groups are out there. And I have seen where hams had gotten into agreements that were out of bounds. If a ham repeater is in place for EMCOMM for a county or other served agency that is being hosted totally free of charge, no insurance, power bill or anything else, then that equipment, at least in the eyes of the state of Ohio is to be tested on a regular interval and NOT used for general communications. There were two ham repeaters that were installed for an ARES group locally that were actually pulled from service because they were specifically paid for with a federal grant and then were used for general communications. The tower access agreements were also written specifying emergency use only and were granted free tower access due to them being for that specific use. And like I said, we can't approach a street department and borrow their tractor, dump truck, put crap in their buildings for storage or any of that. It ain't allowed. Because they are government (taxpayer) assets. A tower really should be no different. Tower rental rates. Have multiple customers on ATC sites. Paying between 1000 and 1600 per site for two antenna's and a microwave dish. Antenna's are at 130 and 150 and the dish is up at 200. These prices are common in this area. They are also on private sites and are paying less than that. But if you are renting from any of the major players, then you are paying these sort of rates for relatively low mounting positions on the towers. The pricing structure in your area may not be the same. I can only speak to what I have first hand knowledge of. This also applies to the way hams and ham clubs conduct themselves. If what he's saying is 100% correct and you are REQUIRED to be a member of their club to access a tower that doesn't belong to them, they are not doing it right. I have been to sites that hams were allowed full access to and they are typically a total mess. Cable held to tower legs with electrical tape if at all, improper cables used in the radio hut to protect from interfering with other tenants at the site. Skipping on proper grounding (of course I am R56 certified so I am a grounding and install NAZI and immediately notice such things). And I directly deal with it as a ham and a tower site manager. I get requests, some that almost sound like a mandate, that some ARES group NEEDS access to a tower for EMCOMM for free. I know better, the problem is that elected officials typically don't. They hear it's for public safety and disaster preparedness and immediately agree without any actual research, or it was done years ago by some verbal agreement by a friend that was also an elected official that never really had the right to do it and now it's just in place. I am all for providing hams access within reason for both EMCOMM and hobby use. And I don't believe they need to be made to pay the standard going rates that a cell phone company is required to pay. But they need to install to the same standards, use good equipment and not mobiles screwed to a sheet of plywood and hung on a wall with wires going every which way. But then again I have seen commercial radio companies that had install quality that made most ham install look good. But that's another story. And as far as the government being aware. The guy that owns that tower shown above is an IT admin and a ham. Of course he also climbs towers, since he has that one, but is not a licensed bonded climber. I went at the request of a county EMA to oversee and test antenna's and lines once the climbing and work had been completed by the tower climber that the hams were bringing in. The county had been told the guy was a TOWER PROFESSIONAL by the local ham group the work was being done for on a county owned tower at a city owned site. The guy that showed up as the TOWER PROFESSIONAL was the guy that owned this tower. They had told him little about what he was going to be doing, and I questioned what was gonna happen so I brought MY rigging equipment and tower winch in case it was needed. We pulled 300 pounds of stuff off that day and replaced 4 antenna's and two feed lines. He was totally unprepared for the job, because HE wasn't told what it was. I had a feeling that something like that would happen and was prepared for it with equipment. And the whole situation stuck me between my buddy and my customer that I HAD to tell them he wasn't a tower pro. And I even had hams coming up to me trying to tell me how to rig the tower, tie proper knots, and all sorts of crap. I ahve spent to last four years working all over that tower, rigging it, installing and removing antenna's and I was the one with the gear that was even gonna make the job possible. And I am getting told I am using the wrong knots. BTW, I was using bow-lines and figure 8 knots. So yeah, my personal experience with hams has been questionable at times for the last 20 years I have been a ham.

Sounds like it’s pretty useful to road crews and construction people though. ?

Perhaps GMRS should be open to frequency hopping and voice scrambling if it is only intended for private communications. I'm getting my ham ticket -- but that is not a solution for everyone. CW, FT-8, and JS8call seem to hold a lot of promise for weak signal propagation. There seems to be a generational gap with the older ham crowd and younger people. They tend to have different communication styles and expectations. The recent court ruling, West Virginia vs. the EPA, seems to call into question administrative "law" and the Chevron deference. Rules and customs are necessary for good order. Slavish devotion to administrivia might not be necessary.

I absolutely think we need more repeaters. I'd have put my own up already, but for the fact that once I got out the topo maps and found the best place within thirty mile, I discovered that a) the whole hilltop is owned by the water company, b) it has a large water tower on it that's already covered with ham repeaters, c) a local ham group convinced the water company to let them manage all antenna placement, and d) the ham group won't even discuss details like access/rent/maintenance/etc. unless you're a licenced ham who's joined their group. Instead, I'm trying to convince my wife to let me cut a hole in the tower ceiling of our victorian and place one up there. It'll likely get a quarter the range, but no one gets to tell me how things are going to work! As for the "don't be stupid, that's what ham is for" brigade, I'm ignoring them. My group wants to build reliable emergency comms for our region that *doesn't* require gatekeeper hams to use it. You'll never get churches, schools, and community centers to fund/maintain personnel to get and stay trained so they've always got a ham on staff, but a $35 license and a $100 HT is completely feasible. And that's not to mention being able to interoperate with actual community members for the price of $15 walkies from Walmart! A school or community member can keep a whole box of those things in the basement and just hand them out with ten minutes' instruction in an emergency, and they can even just listen in to repeater outputs to keep track of what's going on locally.

While I agree we need more in some areas half the people on this forum complain about spending money on a decent handheld or mobile....

Forgot to mention..Thanks for reminding me... Always beware of the "some people" that try their best overcomplicate everything.

I agree.. I have put one up, and am [partially] responsible for getting a 2nd one up, covering most of Southern California.

Lscott and gortex2 are both correct. But there is a bit of explanation that needs to be done to have a better understanding of it. First is receiver technology. Back in the day, and in the present, a standard analog FM receiver has a number of stages that the RF goes through as its stripped of it's intelligence (the voice communication) and presented to the user via the speaker. First is an RF stage, this is connected to the antenna and amplifies the signal (and ALL other signals it can hear) to be shipped up the line. These are typically fairly wide band amplifiers that will amplify much more than just the frequency range of the radio. Here's the first part of receiver degradation. That first RF stage has a design gain of X number of dB gain for the stage. So, lets say that's 10dB. If you connect said radio to a signal generator and feed it a signal level of -110dBm the output of that state SHOULD be -100dBm. An increase of the 10dB of the stage. BUT, if you feed that antenna with 2 signals from a generator that are different frequencies and also are -110dBm and look at the output of that stage, the signal level of each frequency will be -105dBm which is half as much as the single signal gain because the state can only generate 10dB of TOTAL gain. We are talking GMRS, so 462Mhz. But that RF stage exhibits gain at 140 Mhz too. To deal with out of band frequencies a GOOD receiver will have a band pass filter that will only let in 460 to 470 blocking the out of band stuff. Cheap receivers don't have expensive filters. And receiver sensitivity is measured with a SINGLE frequency in a controlled environment at the BEST measured level. Meaning they will sweep around and find where the radio performs it's very best and that's the spec. Second is shielding. Keeping the signals that are floating around in the radio out of other circuits in the radio requires shielding and isolation. Go find an old Motorola Spectra and take it apart, look at the designed isolation. Then take a part a kenwood TK860 or other radio from another manufacture of the same era. Spectra's were a BEAST for performance. Other's not so much. But you could buy 4 TK-860's for the cost of ONE Motorola Spectra. So stage two is the IF stage, a second signal is created in the radio and mixed with the RF. This mixing creates two frequencies. The sum of the two frequencies and the difference between the two frequencies, which is the one that's important here. Of course, what ever else has leaked through beyond the primary frequency of concern (what the radios actually tuned to) is also present and ends up converted as well. This is where the 10.7 IF frequency is created and passed to the IF amplifier. Stuff is cleaner now and more filtering happens. Then it's stripped of the intelligence from the IF and sent to the amplifier for presentation by the speaker. Digital processed radios. These are analog radios that operate in the digital realm. An SDR receiver if you want to think of it that way. Some of these directly take the RF into the digital processing chip and some operate at the IF frequency mentioned before. Because the RF is directly converted to a data stream it's now easily processed and can be filtered much better than even the best designed analog receiver could hope for. If it's not specific to the frequency of concern, it's simply ignored. And 'amplification' is as simple as changing the bit stream. All amplifiers can mix frequencies. so RF. IF whatever, mixing can occur. If there isn't any amplifier in the sense of a stage with an analog transistor that exhibits gain in the stage, then no mixing happens. Remember that the RF is now a digital stream of date, even in an analog radio. The SDR chip take the RF in and outputs the intelligence directly to the audio amplifier. All the A to D and D to A (analog to digital and digital to analog) happens in that chip along with all other signal processing. This allows for greater First RF stage gain, better filtering and error correction (something that CAN"T happen in an analog receiver at all) and a whole host of filtering that's done in the digital domain. And that's how we are seeing a huge increase in receiver sensitivity in these newer radios that are Digital and analog like the XPR Motorola offerings. They are barely analog at all. Doing all RF and IF processing in the digital domain while being 'analog' radios.

Same tones as it was. I went up and "replaced" it in late May. I used a higher voltage panel and a better MPPT charge controller. The controller is rated for colder temperatures and I was able to program it to cut off the load at 12.0 volts instead of 11.2. It is also running a Laird 5/8 over 5/8 collinear antenna vs the roll up J-Pole. I saw no improvement in reception or transmission with the Laird but I have not done any extensive testing. When I removed the battery and power line from the "old" repeater a month or two later, when the ground was thawed. I found that the battery was at 12 volts still. I examined the power line and found it was broken internally. Corroded and failed. It is very likely the system failed in December due to that and not due to a frozen battery. Winter will be here in a few months and we shall see what happens this time. Feel free to use the repeater. It has seen very light use this summer.

We need to be supportive of them coming out. It takes a huge amount of courage to face yourself and openly admit to who you are. That courage needs to be admired. Oh, wait... you are talking about pulling your radio and getting a different one. Nevermind. I was picturing the Village people all dancing around with the KSG1000 radios with Diana Ross singing her coming out song. Sorry.

The actual, correct spelling is: Magiguhsquirtz.. But the SQ is silent.