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Okay sounds like you may have put me on to something. I have not yet tried configuring the repeater channels to the repeaters I plan to use. It may be because these things are fresh out of the box and not configured properly. Thanks for the reply.

Don't have to join a forum. If they don't have a license and using GMRS equipment don't talk to them. Enough people do that they will either quit using the radios or get licensed when they run out of people to talk too. Either way it's a win.

I sent FranktheTank a PM, I think NB700 is now ready to join the alamo network. I did some exstensive testing this past week and I hit the repeater as far away as 50+ miles up north heading towards fredricksburg. It is of course hit mor mis as you move up and down the valleys and hilltops. To the east I can hit it out towards Katy and hit or mis in and around Universtity Texas State., Inside Seguin hit or miss, south of Seguin and good signal.. I have it estimated at 30miles but it is more likely 35-40 on average. That is running it at 28 watts. The repeater is a Vertex 7000U with an internal Duplexer. I have a spare and a 9000 Vertex, just awaiting a duplexer arrival to tune and put it on line for some testing. I didn't want to join until I had everything in place and a working system So I think we are good to go now. It is connected via LMR600 into a COMSPEC DB 408B. I have a few PI4s and just need some directions on connecting. Hopefully soon we will have this area on the network which should great increase our foot print. Cheers everyone.

Hallelujah! Obviously though "some people" get their GMRS/HAM license JUST so they can play radio police..

It is not clear if Baofeng follows APRS spec. They may very well do not. To determine, you probably need to set up a receiver with APRS decoder (APRSDrois will do) to see what exactly Btech Pro sends. It may not be compatible with bona fide APRS.

I got my GMRS license to be able to talk to friends and family with GMRS. I didn’t sign up to become the radio police. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

APRSDroid will gladly eat your GMRS callsign and will allow sending and receiving packets from air. Of course, no injection of data will be allowed into the APRS database over the internet. For this you must have ham callsign. I'm regular APRS user, but always on 144.390 and never on GMRS.

The GR1225 Repeater used at 45 watts will most likely last less than a year. Have repaired, installed and removed many over my years. The 45 watt rating is "pre" duplexer meaning from the transmitter port on the radio. Depending on the duplexer you could see almost 3db of loss (cheap china stuff) which would effectively leave 20 watts out. The GR1225 runs very good if you turn it down to 25 watts (with a 45 watt PA), and with a good quality duplexer you can expect 15-20 watts out to the antenna port. A quality duplexer such as the Sinclair is spec'd at 1.2db of loss. Add in a jumper cable and your at about 16-18 watts. The GR1225 is a great home repeater but was never intended for long conversations and continuous service like the MTR or Quantar. I run 4 different sites with the GR1225 cut back to 25 watts and have been on the air for years.

I sincerely apologize for drifting off topic in my original post. I wanted to say as far as ARES / RACES, for individuals who want to be useful during times of Emergencies or just working a normal PSEs. Indiviuals that aren' interested in Amateur Radio as a hobby. They could always obtain their GMRS license and get the necessary training for tasks not directly passing traffic, but a link in for other non HAM volunteers. If I have failed to be clear. Please Forgive Me!

Good question but for commercial/public safety grade repeaters the output level is at the antenna connection. These heavy duty units are also built to put out their rated power for hours at a time unlike the hobbyist grade units like the Retevis.

Well, I don't know what all the complaining was about. After installing ver 5.5 I was able to Read, Edit, Write and I am done in less than 5 minutes. Thanks for the suggestions.

Thanks for the chart!

Thank you!!

Go to the Repeaters page in this Forum and in Advanced, click on both Show Stale Repeaters and Show Offline Repeaters. Then Click Near Me; you may have to enter your City and State in Search before clicking Near Me.

It really depends on how those “channels“ are configured. A channel can refer to any combination of frequency and receive tone, so it’s possible to have numerous channels on the same frequency. Look and see what frequency GMRS-16 and RPT-1 receive on. I bet they’re the same and you have no tone set for one of them. If not, then maybe the problem MichaelLAX described is right.

Well, technically by NAME, APRS is Amateur (Packet/Position) Reporting System, so it is no surprise that most APRS software wants an Amateur call sign. That BTech is using the APRS protocol to send position just makes it another position reporting format -- like some Garmin GPS/FRS radios. The other matter is if they are using AX.25 data packets -- that's what Amateur TNCs are using for analog APRS (D-Star and DMR /digital/ modes send position reports in a different format -- D-Star embeds position data within the non-voice portion of each packet)

I have a number of commercial radios that are certified for both Part 90 and Part 95A, the later being the old part for GMRS. The radios haven't lost their certification. I have others as well like the NX-300(G), FM/NXDN, and the TK-5320, FM/P25, just have to restrict operation to FM until the FCC gets around to authorizing digital voice on GMRS. For example I routinely use my Kenwood TK-3170 for Ham and GMRS. It has both Part 90 and 95A certifications. While the programming software complains it will accept frequency entries down in to the ham band low enough to cover the repeater section just fine. So I have one radio where I can use it for either service without any hardware or software modifications. NX-200_300.pdf NX-300 FCC Grant - 1.pdf TK-2170_3170(K) Brochure.pdf TK-3170 Grant.pdf TK-5220_5320 Brochure - 2.pdf TK-5320 FCC Grant - 1.pdf

But you don't know if it was BS or not even though the OP clarified there was a newspaper report. There is a 50/50 chance reports of an FCC investigation being in progress are true as, like your local PD, they don't make public reports of every investigation they undertake.

Point well taken. Before going off the rails assuming illegal operation one might have stumbled on a perfectly legal grandfathered system. If it bothers somebody do some research before jumping to conclusions. Even in the Ham world we have to be careful since Hams only have secondary status on the 70cm band, we share it with the primary user, government. I remember doing a frequency search a while back and stumbled across some public safety frequencies between 420 MHz and 430 MHz. The US Ham band officially runs from 420 MHz to 450 MHz depending on how close you are to Canada, Line-A. The 70cm band is a mine field of various users, technical requirements and restrictions. https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/compendium/0420.00-0450.00_01MAR14.pdf https://www.chp.ca.gov/find-an-office/central-division/offices/(420)-bakersfield https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf00049.html

We’re everywhere!

There are many grandfathered repeaters from the days when business/government could obtain a GMRS license (and they are allowed to renew said licenses, but can not make changes -- in those days they probably only requested one frequency pair for the repeater, if they want to change to a different frequency pair they will have to move to land-mobile channels and get a suitable license for that). The Grand Rapids 575 is one such repeater. Back in my 1997 GMRS repeater directory the access tone was published with the caveat "for emergency and traveller assistance only". I'm quite certain anyone popping up on it today, asking for assistance, is going to get a lot of yelling from the dispatcher about "use your cell phone to call 911" or some such. The channel seems to be used by downtown parking lot control -- most traffic concerns gate stuck up, gate stuck down, machines not accepting credit/debit cards, machines not accepting cash, etc.

For the RT97, the INPUT/Rx frequencies will be 467.xxxMHz, the OUTPUT/Tx frequencies will be 462.xxxMHz (xxx being the same for input and output: 467.550->462.550). Tone codes, if not the same, are also reversed. 467.600 is a repeater input frequency -- do you have a repeater on that frequency? If not you want both input and output set to 462.600 (except for repeaters, none of those radios receive 467.xxx frequencies -- with one exception; the former FRS-only #8-14, which are limited to 0.5W ERP, and NFM). Note that for simplex (radio to radio -- no repeater involved) you will need to use the SAME tones on TX and RX if you want general inter-unit communication. For the most part, GMRS radios are simplex (radio to radio) or duplex (radio to repeater to radio). GMRS duplex is always a 5MHz offset (your receive 462.xxx + 5MHz => 467.xxx). When you exclude the 467MHz interstitials (I know of no mobile unit that includes them, as their low power is 5W) their are only 15 total simplex channels (and 1-7 are limited to 5W) and you are asking to tie up two of them at once. A radio with dual monitor might be used, receive on "B" transmit on "A". But you will run into the same problem as with mixed tones on simplex -- no general inter-unit communication. There is NO privacy on GMRS (nor Amateur) -- neither are permitted encryption. TONES only mean YOU do not hear others unless they send the tone. Any radio on the frequency with no tones set will hear ALL traffic. Another Shannon? ?

I don't know that a government entity could even get a GMRS license under the standing rules pertaining to the service. Now that doesn't stop them from 'hosting' a GMRS repeater up to and including purchasing of the equipment and the installation work and having a GMRS license holder as trustee of the repeater. This happens from time to time with various EMA's that again, cant get a ham license but can provide everything to facilitate a repeater installation and having the local ARES group / ham club put their call sign on it with an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) that the equipment can or can't be used for general ham operations until a time where the EMA activates the ARES group and at that point the repeater will be used for emergency communications. There is no reason that the same thing couldn't be done with GMRS, the only difference being there are no 'club calls' for GMRS and a specific individual would need to act as primary trustee of the repeater regarding the call sign on it.

As a new ham I find the ARRL useful. The amount of information available on multiple topics makes the dues worthwhile.

To my knowledge, they are the only group lobbying on behalf of amateur radio. Without amateur backing, we could loose the only voice we have Washington and could find ourselves without spectrum for our craft. They publish a couple of good magazines that are free to members and publish educational books that are useful to us all. In addition, they keep us informed of legislation that affects us. I have heard opinions that perhaps at times they have not lobbied hard enough and that we have lost spectrum as a result Perhaps that is because there was not enough funding to wage the necessary defense, I do not know. I find membership an appropriate support of their mission to serve and protect amateur radio. Such efforts are not free. Just one man’s opinion. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM