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It would make much more sense if folks would say "allegedly" from the FCC Enforcement Bureau, because simply saying it was from the FCC gives it credibility that it neither has nor deserves.

I also don't understand why they shut them down. Just shut the linking system down and keep the repeaters working in the local area. You fix the violation, not burn down the house.

Where would the additional pairs come from? Any petition would have to solve that.

I think the FCC should just leave GMRS as is and if you want other frequencies, use other radio services. Simple as that. If you are wanting to experiment with radio, get into amateur radio. If you need frequencies for business, use LMR. I doubt there is very much room in the UHF band there for more pairs as there are commercial freqs peppered throughout (at least here in the midwest).

You probably mean MXTA26, which is still my primary antenna on the vehicle. I'm using the Comet in a different application where I wanted dual-band without compromising tooooo much in GMRS. It's the first one that gets my antenna count in this application down to one. If I had to rank the antennas I've tried on GMRS performance I would go with Midland MXTA26 (6dbi) > Laird TE B4505CN (5dbi, NGP) > Comet CA-2X4SR-NMO (6.2dbi) > HYS SDN1-T (3dbi) > Midland MXTA25 (3dbi) > Midland MXTA13 (2.1dbi). But that's just ranking how I sound from 3-miles away on simplex as well as some signal reports from distant repeater users. Each of these have their own strengths. The MXTA26 is just a good solid antenna, 32 inches tall. The B4505CN is a pretty solid "no ground plane" antena. Good signal reports, good SWR without a ground plane. The 2X4SR is not bad at GMRS, and also good in MURS and Marine VHF ranges. The SDN1-T is only 17.7 inches long, and works pretty good for closer-in repeaters, not great over longer distances across the city. The MXTA25 is so compact and doesn't draw much attention, still working alright given its form factor, and the MXTA13 is perfect to keep in the glovebox or put on the packing list in case of an NMO mount failure. Lightweight, it travels easy.

I would do as @LeoG said, turn off the linking and keep the repeaters up unlinked. Then, with no possible violations present, have a lawyer contact the fcc enforcement department to find out if they sent an email.

I have been keeping up with this thread and also just watched the video. I don't know what to make of that email. I personally would want to see the entire email to include the address that it came from. As stated, the federal govt. will give a "verbal" warning in person and not through an email. And All of the written warning that I have ever seen have been via regular mail using an official letter head. I willl wait for more information before passing judgement one way or another.

I'm not going to straight-up say the letter to that club is fake because I have not seen the letter, and whoever supplied the letter failed to identify either who sent it or the email address from where it was sent. All we have seen are portions the "offending" radio club's communication describing the letter. But there more red flags than a Cuban May Day parade. A "verbal warning" is when one person speaks using a human voice to another human. An email is not a verbal warning. The FCC would probably not suggest that anything be done "by the end of the day". I cannot imagine the FCC expecting a repeater operator to rat out all the users by supplying call signs. As a repeater trustee myself, if there was anything amiss with our repeaters, such as spurious emissions, or any of a litany of problems emitting from our equipment, they would contact me, not the members of my club or users of our repeaters. By snail mail, not email. That's why the FCC requires your physical address (or PO box). If a licensed operator is violating rules, the FCC would go directly to them without the need for a radio narc. Apparently, according to the letter, the FCC has the roster of all the offending club's members, including email addresses. Another red flag. To me, the letter sounds like an angry GMRS user who is trying to bully a club by generating a letter that sounds just legitimate enough to scare them out of linking repeaters.

Which closely resembles 1.5^2.

Indeed, the math does not add up.. Follow-up with the club-president coming soon.

I was looking for a low priced radio option to take to the beach and came across the MP31 radios. For ~$10 ea they have an IP54 rating and can be programmed using a Baofeng specific software. They are only narrow band but we’re pushing right at 2w. I programmed them to my local repeaters and everything seems good to go. If they make it back from the beach they will become my “hand out” radios next hurricane/cell phone outage. I’ll give a better AAR after we use them more.

Yes, they will notify you via email, but many people (such as myself) never see the email. it usually takes 2-5 business days and you can check the status by logging into the system with your FRN and stumbling your way to the "my licenses" (i don't recall the exact wording, but you'll see it) link.

And still many people seem to forget that GMRS/FRS including the repeater option and usage is meant for personal family usage. i just LMAO over the number of people that treat GMRS like its meant as a tool for business purposes or similar to communications in the HAM radio world... And i get a bigger chuckle over the good handful of folks out there that have 10,15 and even 20 repeaters in operation then get mad because someone is on 'their' frequency.. BTW,, FCC petitions is a standard way to blow you off. Have fun.. Some of us get a good laugh out of this.

Our ham radio club will be providing communications for a bike race called Race Around The Pintler in One Day, RATPOD for short, which raises money for Camp Make A Dream. We’ll travel along the course with mobile and handheld radios making sure the racers are safe. By afternoon most of the racers are exhausted. https://www.campdream.org/events/ratpod/

It’s Hispanic. For what you may ask? I don’t know.

@marcspaz you did get good results with your Comet SBB1. I have a SBB1 NMO and the SWR on 462 and 467 are over 2.0 while 2m and 70cm are under 1.5

Some folks are gullible enough to fall for crap like this. Scammers love them.

Edited my comment after your reply it seems. I did add drop the links. Hope the Notarubicon Center keeps us updated out there on YootOob

I have a couple of MP31s and I love them. They were my first GMRS radios. Sound quality is better than I expected. Easy to use and quite durable. These are my go-to radios for anything short and simple like going up in the attic to work. Used them on the beach once and talked for exactly 1 mile clear as a bell. Up in the mountains in New Mexico they did fine. Every time my son disappeared around a finger out of sight, we still had coms. Down at White Sands, the dunes were no problem. Nice little gems these radios.

How long do you wait for something that might never come.

I approve this message.

@HeinousAnos Welcome to GMRS. Love that name "HeinousAnos"

The main idea of the ground is to help the surge to ground. I'd up your wire from 10 to at minimum 6 guage. Lightening arrestor should be as the coax enters the building.

Update 1/23/22: We are up to 5 linked repeaters with 6th being planned in San Marcos. If you are in the area, throw out a call sign and see who’s monitoring! http://www.alamocitygmrs.com/supermon/index.php

i agree 100%

I plan on being at Bayland Park. Hope the mosquitos aren't as bad as they were last time I was there.

I just tested the 2x4SR versus the SBB1 on the Melowave magnet mount. Granted the SWR will be a little higher since I tested with the SxS parked inside the garage. The 2X4SR was 1.8 at 467.600 and below 1.5 on 462.600. It was 1.6 or below on 2m and 70cm. The SBB1 was at 1.8 at 467.600 and at 2.5 at 462.600. I then put the SBB1 back on my Ford Escape. Inside the garage, SWR was 1.7 or lower on 2m and 70cm. On 467.600 it was 2.2 and on 462.600 it was 2.8. Again the low ceiling along with the metal garage door tracks and garage door opener being close to both antennas will affect the SWR readings and make them higher. I then pulled the Escape out of the garage so that there was nothing close to the antenna. This was using the Midland MXTA12 magnet mount. SWR was 1.6 or below on 2m and 70cm. SWR at 467.600 was at 1.6 and at 462.600 it was 2.2 I can say with my non scientific experiment that the Melowave magnet mount works better than the Midland magnet mount. Both mounts are 3.5 inches in diameter but the Melowave is not as tall. I used my Rig Expert Stick Pro analyzer for testing. For the OP, the 2x4SR antenna will work fine for 2m, 70cm, and GMRS. PS: I tested both antennas with the Melowave mount on the expanded metal rack and also on top of the aluminum tool box (with steel plate attached). The SWR did improve with both antennas on top of the tool box. There was not a big improvement with the 2x4SR. The SBB1 had more improvement on top of the tool box. With the SBB1 mounted lower on the rack, the SWR at 462.600 was at 2.8 and at 467.600 it was 2.3.

Quick note... with the exception of the Midland, my antennas are UHF mounts, not NMO. So, you all should find some entertainment in this. I just finished sweeping my Comet CA-2X4SR and on the the hood lip mount, the antenna does not work as well as on the thru-hole mount on the bed rail. On the thru-hole mount on the pick-up bed, these are the current values. 140 - 1.5 142 - 1.2 146.520 - 1.3 148 - 1.3 154 - 1.5 440 - 1.6 444 - 1.7 448 - 1.5 462 - 2.1 467 - 1.9 The biggest deviations on the hood lip mount are seen in the MURS frequencies and in the GMRS frequencies. The curve is much steeper and the center tuning moves down in frequency. 154 - 2.0 462 - 1.9 (improvement) 467 - 3.1 (worse by more than 1 unit) So, it looks like the SWR is better on the VHF frequencies while using the Comet and better on the UHF frequencies using the Diamond. I am fine with this since the NR-770 is being used on my Moto exclusively for GMRS.

I just wanted to come back and follow up. Based on @Radioguy7268's comment, I went ahead and gave it a try. Honestly, aside from CPS 2.0 being S L O W, the user interface is pretty similar to CHIRP (or is CHIRP similar to Moto CPS? I don't know). I saved the original codeplug, made the changes I wanted, wrote to the radio, saved the new codeplug as a separate file, and got out. I do think shortening the hangtime to 1 second (from 5) was a bit too much. I may go back in tonight and bump it to 2 seconds. Thanks, guys. I'm trying to learn.

I'm less "base station GMRS" and more "in the backpack and car GMRS" haha I don't really have any kind of antenna except for a nagoya mag mount on the top of a cabinet in my office. That said, I've had an HT with me all morning, and I'm up on the hill overlooking the valley so usually if it's out there and has decent punch, I can hear it, and so far I've got nothin.

Got it. Larry H Miller Ford dealership / service department in Draper. Some of the names he called out are people who are listed on the dealership's website. That puts him almost centrally located at 5 miles from my home, and 7 miles from Herriman. To be getting out with that amount of power he can't be using FRS. The call-outs are probably coming from that booth in front.

I can pretty much guarantee that if you went to the store, found the owner / manager who set all this up, and said "hey could you not be on a repeater frequency" they'd say "...what's a repeater frequency?" They buy a cheap radio, set it on a random number that's quiet when they set it up, and never touch it again. Which, in fairness, is pretty much how GMRS / FRS is set up to work lol

Earlier I attributed this to a school's drop-off line, but I just hadn't listened carefully enough. It's a mechanic: mechanic.mp3 This goes on all day, from a few minutes before 8am, until around 4pm. Channel 18. It's probably a PepBoys (3.1 miles). I hear them from my kids' school, too. That's over 3 miles in a different direction. I suppose it's possible that it's not even handheld, in which case it could be any one of hundreds of mechanics across the valley. Too bad they're using channel 18. My guess is they could do this all over 500mw on channel 8, and not muddy up a repeater output frequency with this. On the other hand, I wish everyone were so enthusiastic about their work!

So if and when this is found to be fraudulent they'll need an investigation to find the guy who put this fake letter out and took the system down.

FYI - Found this posted in another forum:

Scammers count on that level of fear to avoid getting caught.

I rather wonder about this as well. I don't know of any Government agency that would send an e-mail notice of this nature. In a similar way that the IRS must notify a taxpayer in writing, via US Mail (registered/Cerified if it get to that stage) for it to be considered an "Official Notice". They do not call or e-mail people, people call them. Unless the repeater owner was listening 24/7 and logging, there's not much chance they would know every callsign using the repeater, unless it was a closed system with limited, i.e. family & friends, usage. I think my first step would be to call the FCC and make a determination to the validity of the sender. If someone is spoofing the FCC, or using this as a scam bait, I would think they'd like to know about it.

One thought on where additional pairs can be reallocated, is mandate Narrowband emissions (2.5 KHz/12.5 KHz) on all GMRS/FRS channels. Regulate all FRS to only .5 watt ERP and allow the existing Interstitial channels be additional main GMRS channels with 50 watts of output power to the antenna. That would provide a total of 15 main GMRS channels without any refarming of spectrum from other radio services.

I think several of us are waiting to see exactly what really happened. I haven’t heard of the FCC emailing someone telling them to shut down a repeater before. This sounds more like someone running a scam. You did nothing wrong.

https://youtu.be/HYiDSZxZa68? My money's on either they got trolled, or whoever runs the network needed an excuse to shut it down. That story is fishy as hell.

Well, for that to go anywhere it would be a year or so of petitions, a couple years of hearings, and a couple years before manufacturers start making radios with the new pairs (of course those with chirp or proprietary software for programming will not need to wait). But even with new pairs, and software, a lot of radios aren't going to transmit outside of today's GMRS frequencies. They're not supposed to be easily modifiable, right?

Greetings everyone! From Missouri here and just got my license after soaking up hours of YouTube and Reddit content. I have a couple hand helds for the wife and I and intend to expand over time with a car unit and a station at home. I notice there’s no repeaters around my area which is typical it looks like. Rural Missouri.

1.0 on 146.520, 1.25 on 446.000, 1.83 on 151.940, 1.86 on 462.562, 462.550 and 462.725, and 2.38 on 467.625 Here is what I am using for a mount. It bolts on with the hood hinge bolts. It isn’t mounted as high as you have but it works and I have no complaints.

This is why i come on here daily, so many questions i have get answered. Thank you all

Laird also offers the C27 series of antennas. C27: 49" NMO, chrome/silver C27S: 49" NMO, w/ spring, chrome/silver CB27: 49" NMO, black CB27S: 49" NMO, w/ spring, black

I have already activated the EID in the software. That was my primary concern, and I couldn't get it figured out until last night. Turns out there is a difference between a Device License and a Software/Program License. Now that I've figured it out, it makes perfect sense. Someone on YouTube has shared 15 of the CPS 2.0 training module videos, so I watched all of those last night. They don't cover everything, but I suspect the video series was intended by Motorola to bring a tech up to speed on the differences between CPS 2.0 and the previous software, so that makes sense.

If it was already written with CPS 2.0 - then there's no going back. (Well, there are ways, but nobody wants to send a rookie down that path!) Good news is, if they already did the updates & got it to 2.0, then there's little harm in using CPS 2.0 to make the changes you desire. You will need to activate that EID for the software in order to write a wideband frequency back into the codeplug. Hopefully someone already walked you through that part. You have a much better repeater than a Bridgecomm in my opinion, and I wouldn't get too worried about writing to it with CPS 2.0 The troubles come if you take something with really old original firmware & try to write it with the latest/greatest. Sounds like Used-Radios already did the work to get you up to date.

The NotARubicon Institute Research Staff is digging deeper and there IS something to this story - and the results may shock you... Stay tooned for the upcoming video.

The only time I've ever legitimately used a call button was when I was trying to get my kids' attention via their handhelds. They were at home, watching TV, and were ignoring the radio sitting right next to them. So I hit the call button on my MXT575, called for them again, and got a response. Every other time that button has been pressed has been by accident.

Got a different mobile antenna. I was running the Nagoya UT-72G and I picked up the Midland MXTA26 to see what that might do for the repeater. With the Nagoya I was able to get 0.9 miles with the OEM antennas on the TD-H3s. I brought two of them with me and had to get about 50-100 feet away from each other to talk to myself. Did I mention it's no fun playing walkie talkie by myself? LOL Then I picked up a pair of the Nagoya 771G antennas and did the same test a few days later and was able to get 1.3 miles out. I also have a pair of Smiley rubber duck antennas that I didn't test with the Nagoya UT-72G on the repeater. When I was using the Nagoya with the repeater I was able to push 6.4 watts into the antenna with an SWR of about 1.24 I put the Midland MXTA26 on the truck and did the SWR test and got a 1.01. The repeater was pushing 7.8 watts into the antenna. I took my walk using the Nagoya 771G antennas on both radios and passed the first hurdle at 0.9 miles and it was still clear sounding, quieting about 75-80%. With the OEM antenna it was scratchy and crackly. I went out to 1.3 miles and quieting was about 70% and voice was still clear. I tried the Smiley antenna on the transmitting radio and it seemed to work about the same. So I kept walking and got about 1.5 miles out and the Smiley antenna wouldn't connect with the repeater anymore. Changed over to the 771G again and back in business. I made it out to 1.8 miles which is nearly to my woodworking shop and I had to place the radios about 100 feet apart from each other before I could get the receiving radio to hear the repeater. Desense is hitting hard now with the 5 watt radio being so close to each other and the repeater being nearly 2 miles away. Scratchy sound 50% quieting or less, breaking up a bit but that could have been the desense. Was far enough from the receiving radio it was difficult to hear it easily. I was going to walk until it failed which I'm sure would have been pretty soon when one of the renters in my building just happened to be driving by and pulled up and asked if I needed a ride. Hell ya, so I was able to get a ride back instead of needing to walk back. Made my night. So the Midland MXTA26 was a good improvement over the Nagoya UT-72G. Same with the 771G vs the Smiley rubber duck over the OEM. Both giving improvements over the previous. It's a pretty clear path. Still lots of houses and trees in the way. The repeater antenna was about 85 ft above sea level. The 0.9 mile reference is at 128 ft above sea level. 1.3 mile reference is at 150 ft above sea level. 1.5 mile reference is at 157 ft above sea level and 1.78 mile reference where I ended the test is at 161 ft above sea level. So all in all a 76 foot rise in elevation from the repeater start point.