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I see no reason to link GMRS repeaters. Let the ham team enjoy that. (Which makes me sound like I have dual personality disorder, since I have both licenses )

Most of the time each repeater that is on the same channel will use different tones. It would be a real mess if all repeaters on the same channel used the same tones or no tones at all.

Of course, and the people that do them deserve credit, but those are not technical challenges that I have overcome, so making a QSO using a linked repeater is very little more challenging than dialing the phone. I celebrate other’s accomplishments, but with ham radio I derive satisfaction from my own accomplishments in overcoming technical challenges.

The tones don’t prevent interference. They just prevent audio reproduction. The signal must be received before the tone has an effect. So, two transmitters on the same frequency can interfere with each other, even if they have different tones, as long as a receiver receives them.

I think you articulated the problem. By having several repeaters in an area linked each one requires it's own pair of frequencies. Sticking to the usual standard of a 5MHz offset that leaves just 8 pairs. So, by linking several repeaters together when any one of them goes active all are now on the air. This effectively ties up several valuable repeater pair frequencies whereas one might have been sufficient. The argument for this practice is now a much wider area is covered. However one forgets that another user may wish to setup their own repeater, and has NO desire to share it with anyone outside their family or group. The multiple linked repeaters now consumes the limited repeater frequency pairs, and possibility leaving none available for somebody to use on a limited basis. For example here in the metro Detroit area we have, I think, three linked repeaters, and one wide area standalone repeater. Since we are past the FCC's "Line A" two of the official repeater frequency pairs are not available. With four of the remaining pairs consumed by the linked system that leaves just 2 frequency pairs open for somebody else to use.

I resemble that

Definition of a fixed station. Fixed station. A station at a fixed location that directly communicates with other fixed stations only A base station is not a fixed station, neither is your HT. Fixed stations only communicate with other fixed stations. Like a point to point communication. Maybe a com from a gate or something like that.

You bet. It's on the Operations tab. https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/general-mobile-radio-service-gmrs

While I'm not interested in debating the legality of linked GMRS repeaters, or even expressing my opinion or interpretation of the following excerpt from the FCC website concerning the interconnecting of GMRS stations through various networks, I present it here to further muddy this thread. "You can expect a communications range of one to twenty-five miles depending on station class, terrain and repeater use. You cannot directly interconnect a GMRS station with the telephone network or any other network for the purpose of carrying GMRS communications".

We just used ours. My wife had one in the house and I took one with me when I went to the barn to get the snow plow hooked up to our SxS. She kept tabs on me while I was plowing our driveway, a neighbors driveway and part of the road leading to our drive. We also listened to the county sheriff's talking about road closures and all the cars stuck in the area.

I think networked repeaters have their place, but I agree with you for the most part. I want at least a few unlinked repeaters so I can contact people who use the same repeater. I don’t understand hams making QSOs on networked repeaters. I do understand enjoying the challenge of “conquering the airwaves” to make distant contacts, not for the joy of talking to strangers (nothing wrong with that, just not my thing), but for the technical challenge it represents.

When: 2/24/24 @4:30 PM Where: Five Guys, 7321 Atlas Walk Way, Gainesville, VA Who: Anyone interested in radio https://fb.me/e/6le81jZPo

Those arguments don't include me. If I'm asked, I would direct those folks to the website below, then go have a beer or something. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95?toc=1 Also, I added control station to my post. Thanks for pointing it out.

Here are the definitions of Base, Fixed, Hand-held Portable Unit, Mobile, Repeater and Control stations, copied directly from the FCC Part 95 rules. Using these definitions, you can answer your question as though you are asking it of an FCC representative. Don't overthink it, and don't rewrite the FCC definitions. They are quite concise and leave little or no room for interpretation. BASE STATION: A station at a fixed location that communicates directly with mobile stations and other base stations. FIXED STATION: A station at a fixed location that communicates directly with other fixed stations only. HAND-HELD PORTABLE UNIT: A physically small mobile station that can be operated while being held in the operator's hand. MOBILE STATION: A station, intended to be used while in motion or during halts at unspecified locations, that communicates directly with base stations and other mobile stations, and with control stations and other mobile stations through repeater stations. REPEATER STATION: A station in a fixed location used to extend the communications range of mobile stations, hand-held portable units and control stations by receiving their signals on one channel (the input channel) and simultaneously retransmitting these signals on another channel (the output channel), typically with higher transmitting power from a favorable antenna location (typically high above the surrounding terrain). CONTROL STATION: A station at a fixed location that communicates with mobile stations and other stations through repeater stations and may also be used to control the operation of repeater stations.

Alinco has a number of radios with that form-factor and some are direct conversion and some super-het. It will be interesting to see which this one is. With that said, I have a couple of their direct conversion radios and they perform well. It's more about decent filtering than what kind of receiver. On the other hand, I have a GMRS radio that is super-het and I'm not at all impressed with its performance.

Update: My final solution was to throw a 30ah eco-worthy lifepo4 battery under the seat and now I have excellent quieting on transmit. Complete power isolation from the vehicle is the ticket. After extensive A/B testing with the various common easy solutions for filtering the DC power nothing ever stopped it and I had a lot of false positive placebo effects going on with various attempts. One thing that did seem to knock down the harshness of the buzz was putting x2 2200 micro farad capacitors in parallel after an mfj1142 filter (only used the filter to provide some resistance for testing, it didn't work by itself) The capacitors smoothed out the tone some. I could potentially continue to experiment with capacitors and target specific frequencies if I were to figure out the specific frequencies of the noise using an oscilloscope. But I'm so happy with the lifepo4 performance I may not pursue it further unless I get bored. Stuff I thought about trying but didn't: - Making my own power leads with heavier gauge wire as the theory is that voltage drop can increase conducted noise. Just didn't feel like re-running wire. - Further troubleshooting and cleanup of the various DC grounding points on the engine and frame (I did try HF style RF bonding of the hood and exhaust, which doesn't seem to matter for conducted DC noise for UHF, wasted effort) - The extreme of replacing injectors and injector harness. Nah, they work.

Just got my first set of GMRS radios (KG-935G Plus) and have a question about repeaters. There are eight GMRS repeater channels, but what happens if you have more than eight GMRS repeaters in your locality? How does that work? Do they share frequencies? Thanks

The repeaters should have different tones set for access if they are near each other. You can program more repeaters in your radio. Repeater channels typically are from 23 to 30, Program the next eight frequencies the same but with different tones as needed and the next eight and so on if you need more.

Good advice. I just checked the two different Alinco power supplies I use. The DM-330MVT is rated 32A peak ... and 30A continous. The DM-30 is rated 30A peak but only 20A continous. Big difference.

More like the "Super Bowl" on channel 6.

New guy saying hi. My co-worker got me back into it and it's been a blast the last week programing our radios and catching up on new tech.

Mixed thoughts. I used linked repeaters around me for a bit and it wasn't for me, just too much out of state traffic. If it gets a new user on GMRS excited about the radio hobby I guess that's a good thing. The biggest issue I hear around here anyway if there is a bad user, repeater, kerchucker, radio, or whatever instead of affecting one repeater you are affecting many repeaters. The sad part is I was one of those bad users - I sit right between 2 repeaters on the same freq and tone, each around 35 miles from me and 70 miles from each other. One repeater is up 400ft and hits me full scale, the other is somewhat new that is networked at around 50ft hits me around S-2 on the meter. I can hear them if the 1st isn't in use but cant use it because the 1st repeater will bury it. I had no idea that I was hitting the 2nd repeater and causing a bit of chaos on the network. I have to drop my power down to 5 watts to avoid keying the 2nd repeater and have to monitor the 2nd repeaters network status page on the web to confirm I'm not keying it. It still happens even at 5 watts every now and then. Oh well, live and learn.

@Sshannon & @Lscott thanks for the info.

Sounds like what I read in the manuals of CCRs.

Thanks! I see it there under the operations tab.

I’ve seen that before also but when challenged I was unable to find it again. Would you post the link?

Not really on a linked system using separate repeater frequency pairs. Since several repeaters are "linked" when a station accesses one you hear the audio broadcast on the other linked repeaters. So instead of hearing the audio on the output of the one repeater its now on the output frequency side of the repeater pair frequency of the linked repeaters, effectively using those channels, even though the station is not directly accessing them. Remember the linked repeaters will ALL be transmitting at the same time the exact same audio stream. If they were all on the same repeater pair frequency the linked repeaters would be transmitting at the same time on the same frequency effectively jamming each other if they were too close to the receiving station. Using a separate PL tone on the output for each repeater would be useless.

Way back when our county linked the RACES ham repeater to the StasteWide system (all RF days no internet) one had to use a different PL to activate the link. After x amount of time with no traffic local the link would drop. think it was 15 minutes back then. Maybe 30. The goal of the link was to give us outside area help on an event when needed but not to have daily qso on the channel. It worked great for years. Then they linked via internet and since its been non stop chatter from the other end of the state. So basically no one uses the repeater. Thats been my issue with the GMRS repeaters I have come across that are linked. I have no cares in the world about stuff 300 miles from where I am. In a disaster its different. But not for every day life. If you need long distance traffic use zello or something else to talk on. WE do the samei n the SAR world. We have multiple repeaters across an area but none are linked full time. If there is a need for an incident then they can be patched. If you want to listen to one or the other you go to your zello app and listen in. As said earlier resource allocation is more of the issue. On top of that is the limited amoutn of repeaters. I have been in areas where I can hear 3 repeaters and its all the same traffic as they are all linked. There is no reason for that. Pick one channel and link it. If you need more coverage build out that repeater site.

Some historical perspective for the young folk: The "model" for the major American car manufactures was: Small car, small features; Large car, large features. Japan brought to American - Small car, BIG features and never looked back, especially after the oil embargo crises of the 70s had even luxury car drivers looking for better gas mileage.

@WSAQ843 Welcome to myGMRS.com. As you can see, discussions can get heated at time but you'll find that it is mostly peaceful and a great community. I'm also in Texas and hope to hear you on the air either on GMRS or ham.

I’m not on a crusade to garner support for a stance. I only asked who already shared the same point of view, and I’m not sure if you’re keeping score but so far it’s looking like I’m not in a small boat all by myself over here. Thanks for clarifying the whole “which things I own and which things I don’t” thing. That really needed to be laid out plainly.. But thanks for sharing. I’ve got you down for 1 “I disagree”.

Linking may have its place but I dont believe GMRS is it. I'm in the same boat of listening to long drawn out ragchewing from guys states away. Ive heard the same on ham. Heck there are times I hear thesame conversation 2 hour apart on ahn or GMRS. I never got into GMRS for contacts or to make a statewide system. I prefer my small repeaters, and use them for a purpose. With a good repeater setup there is no reason a town, county can't have good coverage. As of late I use my Part 90 stuff more and more. GMRS was once a great family/friend service. Linking, nets and all the ham radio stuff is not what GMRS started as. I know things change but you asked for opinions.

Hello to all - First post/reply on myGMRS. Thank you, thanks, please be seated. I personally like using a well constructed link system. Our local ham radio club has done an excellent job of connecting small areas around us to make a small club much bigger, with bigger reach that wouldn't normally be there for folks out of the vast regions of Texas. The same goes with GMRS and one reason I got my license recently after finding there was a local repeater close by that had traffic on it, I was stunned. Being in a small town I was expecting nothing at all in the way of making contacts. Quite the opposite, it's been a great deal of fun - especially in my current health condition/situation - and i've already had qso's with several great people via my HT. 843 Chris Texas

You might as well have.

All of this is just my opinion, but since you asked... I don't like or use linked repeaters. Not on GMRS, not on amateur radio. I have three stand-alone repeaters on a 6,000 foot peak and one out in the desert near Barstow. None of them are linked to anything and never will be. There is an amateur radio system called the Winsystem with linked repeaters all over the U.S. as well as nodes linked in internationally. Not only do you have to hear conversations possibly taking place in other states or countries taking up valuable local repeater bandwidth, the entire system is a target for jammers. Many of the nodes sound like crap. I find little value in linked repeaters.

Maybe not but at least Alinco is testing the waters. If it sells well they will likely add more models as time goes on. Wouxun needs some competition in the GMRS market.

This is a commonly talked about topic here and on other radio related forums. Do a search on this forum. The majority are against any type of digital mode on GMRS.

There is nothing stopping, for example Walmart, from using GMRS EXCEPT users must each have their own license. The FCC will not issue GMRS licenses to business, only individual users. If a business was licensed before the rule changes in 2017, and maintained it active, they are grandfathered in and can continue to use GMRS for business operations. If they let it expire they're screwed. The FCC will NOT issue a GMRS license in the name of the business in that case. As an example the local mall by me was licensed to use GMRS for their house keeping staff. However they let the license expire, A LONG TIME AGO. They never renewed it. They continue to use their radios and the limited range repeater. So far it seems the FCC isn't interested in taking any action. I'm absolutely sure what is going on since I've been to the mall many times with my HT to walk around for exorcise. They are using channel 16. They are setup for a repeater because I have my radio programed that way, which means they must be operating under GMRS rules to access the repeater input frequencies. If people choose to hijack the repeater they have realistically no choice except to ignore it rather than complain, otherwise the FCC might be way more interested in their long unlicensed operation history. ULS_License_-_General_Mobile_Radio__GMRS__License_-_KAB1523_-_LA-job_178.pdf