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Hams have very few limitations compared to other services. They are hobbyists, who are allowed a to do things with radios that are strictly forbidden on other services. They may make their own radios; their radios are not required to be certified to a particular standard, they are allowed higher power and many, many frequencies. They earn that trust by demonstrating a knowledge of the rules and regulations as well as by demonstrating a level of technical knowledge necessary to participate in such experimental radio pursuits. All other licensed service regulations are designed around utility users of those radios and require the manufacturers to provide a radio that is not easily configured to violate regulations. TL;DR? Ham radio operators are licensed to engage in advanced experimental radio as hobbyists. As such the requirements are stricter and require more technical and regulatory compliance knowledge. Why would anyone want the guvmint to dumb it down by removing the test requirement?

This is one of those if/then statements where people link two unrelated concepts to try and make their point. In fact, the whole post is a veiled rant against hams. The reality is that GMRS requires a license so the FCC is reasonably assured that you may have at least heard of the rules. Amateur radio allows a person, even at the Technician level, to use all kinds of frequencies, and at power levels that can actually cause interference on other frequencies, and in some cases actual harm to living beings. Therefore, testing is required so the FCC is reasonably convinced that the licensee is aware of the many more rules, concepts and hazards that apply to ham radio.

Oops, in my posting I meant to convey channel spacing not channel bandwidth.

Really? . . .

The display looks like it’s getting just over 14 volts if I’m reading it correctly. I really like this set up. I really don’t have a use for this, yet I find myself wanting to build one. It’s an illness really… ??

I received this email. Good luck getting one! Hello! We have restocked a product you asked to be notified about. Please check it out before it goes out of stock again! Product Back In Stock: 808: Raspberry Pi Zero W Thank you! PiShop.us Support Team https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-zero-w/

I have had a lot of people ask me about affordable Watt/SWR meters and the SureCom SW-102 comes up a lot. It's not my first choice, but the SW-102 can be a good, inexpensive meter. It is not exactly calibrated from the factory. It is really close in most instances I have seen, and "close enough" for most uses in the GMRS community. In this video, I calibrated the SureCom SW-102 against my Daiwa CN-901. Out of the box, the SureCom was within a couple of watts (a little lower than) the Daiwa. Also, the SWR was only 2 points off. Even after calibration, there is only 1 point variation. I adjusted the UHF power, as shown in the menu at the end of the video, line 5. When you adjust the power reading, you are taking power away from the reverse power value and adding it to the forward power value. This is the way the SWR reading is calibrated as well. In my case, out of the box, the SW-102 showed 41w compared to the CN-901's 44w. The SW-102 showed an SWR of 1.4:1 compared to the CN-901's 1.2:1. Honest, anything under 3.0:1 is safe to use and anything under 2.0:1 is in the "good" category. An SWR of 1.5:1 or better is considered great. Based on the differences both before and after calibration, and price points of $50 vs. $300, I would be confident in recommending the SureCom SW-102 to use as a tool that is definitely "good enough". Don't let Perfect be the enemy of Good. If you have any questions, let me know.

Are you testing the power output going into an antenna or a 50Ω dummy load? If the former, your measurement might not be accurate. Use a dummy load with as short of a quality cable as possible. Best setup would be a PL259 barrel connector directly from the rig to the meter, and the dummy load directly connected to the other side of the meter. That would take any cable attenuation out of the readings.

Just dinner now, which is probably healthier for me anyway. Looks like Lugers has been there a good long time. Reached out to people I know in Long Island about them but haven’t heard back. I think it’s going to be a steak night. 73’s

The company my wife works for is Kenwood only. They sell, lease, and provide repeater access.

Well that explains that. I never knew what it meant. Thanks

"Oh and a question....what the heck is a interstitial?" It means in between two main allocated GMRS channel a.k.a. splitter channel. The two main GMRS channels 462.550 and 462.575 MHzs would have a splitter channel 12.5 KHz off the two aforementioned main channels thus, 462.5625 MHz. That is why the FRS channels are only 12.5 KHz wide.

Regulations prohibit certifying a radio for GMRS that’s capable of being easily programmed for ham frequencies.

As much as I have downplayed the Ed Fong antenna lately, this is the perfect application for his roll-up J-pole. Or, a friend of mine made a go-box in an ammo can. He simply sticks a mag-mount quarter wave antenna to the removable lid and places the lid a little ways away.

The V1 tends to be quite restricted. You'll probably need to carry a sheet of paper with repeater frequency/channel and tone configuration as you'll be front-panel editing the tones into the appropriate 23-30 slot. In contrast the V2 model can have GMRS repeaters added past slot 30, so one can do a one-time set up of all relevant repeaters, leaving 23-30 for ad hoc field usage.

Is that another way of saying sorry you were wrong? Whatever.

One more thing I would add. I like having the set of repeater programs for what I call travel repeaters. Having these eight repeater channels set with 141.3 on input and output I recently discovered a new repeater being set up locally that isn’t listed yet. The owner was doing signal strength testing with another and I jumped on and was able to talk with the owner, get permission as well as add some feedback from my location.

I don’t think there is any wrong way, it’s just what works for you. If you’re like me you may change things more than once as you decide what you like. At the moment I have 1-22 standard GMRS, then the next eight I have for local repeaters, the next eight I have marked as Travel Repeaters set with 141.3 inputs and finally I have two sets of repeater frequencies with no tones for DIY to add out of area repeaters. After this I added local ham and MURS so I can set scan areas with one for just GMRS only and a second that includes GMRS, ham and MURS a scan area for civilian traffic so to speak. That’s just what I came up with but like I say whatever works for you is all that matters.

You want 50 ohm. That’s basic.

Dont forget insurance. Many towers will require a basic liability insurance.

Putting together a "good" repeater using components built as a repeater will run over $1000.00 before adding an antenna, feedline and installation. It's easy to spend $5K to get a repeater like you want on the air.

Right Channel Radios .com has the 102" whips available for $59.95 for the whip only, (mount extra). Not cheap but what is these days? Good place for CB gear. Bought quite a bit of stuff from them recently.

Channel 11 started as the trucker frequency but they moved it as (given the equipment of the time) it could bleed over and interfere with the FCC designated emergency channel (9). Just /why/ they shifted to 19 rather than something else I can't say. Possible for mnemonic 9 vs 19. Once the 40 channel allocation was made, 19 makes more sense -- being nearly dead center in the frequency band allowed an antenna tuned for that point to still be usable at both channel 1 and 40. If they'd chosen channel 1, for example, tuning for best SWR on #1 would likely have left #40 unusable. That was also back in the days when a GMRS license would specify up to TWO frequency pairs chosen by the licensee requesting the license. Those two "main" frequencies (and the seven 5W interstitials) were the ONLY frequencies the licensee could use -- with the exception of 462.675/467.675 for an emergency. Since radios tended to be commercial business band stuff, the radios often only had "A" and "B" channels and required shop programming to match the license. The only way to gain access to 462.675 was to have that pair listed as one of the two frequency pairs on one's license (and if it was listed on the license, it was NOT restricted to emergency-only usage). The Maxon GMRS 210+3 HT supported a total of 10 "channels". 1-7 were hardwired to the interstitials (usable by any GMRS license without listing them on the license); channel 8 was hardwired to 462.675 pair (usable by any GMRS licensee for emergencies, whether or not listed on license); channel 9&10 were to be shop programmed with the two licensed main frequencies).

The problem is so many people come here trying to drum up support for their favorite channel/frequency. All that does is confuse the crap out of people new to GMRS.There are endless threads on this topic. Just some samples below. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/3516-officialunofficial-gmrs-roadtravel-channel/ https://www.notarubicon.com/gmrs-road-travel-channel/ https://www.fordtremor.com/threads/gmrs-travel-channel.13437/ There is just one major complication with some of the proposals. The below appears on your license. The listed frequency pairs are for channels 19 and 21. For some people, like me living in the Detroit Mi area, Line A reaches well past some major metro areas making any proposal to use channel 19 useless. FRS-GMRS combined channel chart.pdf

There is an unofficial, official national road channel - its Ch19.. Although "some people" will argue to the death that there isnt one, or that Ch19 is not to their liking (don't believe me? just watch this thread)

Thanks. The 2.06 version has the DIY columns with the correct frequencies.

Third-party traffic/relay with possible solution: If you're not using the latest programming software, version 2.06 you may download it from Radioddity. Hope that helps.

This ^^^ ?

Rfi, or installation issue from the electronics running on the car. Seems like the shielding is kinda crappy on alot of Chrysler products. Turn off the car and rfi is gone. Some times the delayed accesories can still introduce noise till about 5minutes after shut off. Your coax can act as a big antenna, routing can make a difference. Generally, a good practice in mobile installs is to keep the coax ad far away from power and canbus lines as possible. Cross those lines if possible at 90 degrees with the coax. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

The OLYCOMM repeaters have general use "open" tones and you can read about them here: https://www.radioofhope.org/oly-comm-volunteers I listen and sometimes participate on OLYCOMM3 and it's fairly active. There's a weekly social net on Wednesdays 8:30pm - 9:30pm, and a weekly tech net Wednesdays 6:30pm - 7:30pm.

The node 177 does link up with other area repeaters in the PacNW every other Tuesday. Today, 1-10-23, they will link up in the evening.

First, welcome in to the world of radio. It's a lot of fun, you can meet some very interesting people, and as you have already seen, the airwaves (especially repeaters), can be infested with troublemakers. The moderator on the roundtable you were on made the mistake of engaging the troublemaker by issuing "several warnings to stop acting up". This rarely works, the reason being that troublemakers are difficult to locate and they thrive on the attention. They love disrupting communications, and the more people complain, the more they do it. The only way to get them to stop is to ignore them completely, and not even mention the fact that they are making trouble. This comes hard to a lot of people. I've heard troublemakers on roundtables and nets for years on both amateur radio and GMRS, and as a moderator (net control) for some of them myself, it frustrates me to no end when people (especially moderators who should know better) engage them and try to talk them out of making trouble. Taking repeaters off the air when they are being jammed is a necessary evil with linked repeater systems to protect the rest of the users from jammers. Finding troublemakers is a very painstaking, time-consuming process, and it's only possible when the troublemaker is transmitting. And once they're located, there is not much, probably nothing, the FCC or anyone else will do unless it involves jamming of critical communications like law enforcement, emergency services, commercial users, etc. Don't give up though. Listen in, chime in when you can. It's always great when new people get involved. By the way, here's a fun fact, 62 years ago, I was born in the city you live in.

One of the busy repeaters is operated by the SeaTac Repeater Association, the repeater is located on East TIger Mountain - 462.625/141.3 I've heard checkins from Yelm, Orting, Puyallup, Port Townsend, Camano Island, Stanwood, Granite Falls, North Bend. Even from hikers camping up in those mountains using HTs.