Leaderboard

Alright, I think this topic has run its course...

Oh this one is easy, there are 24 repeaters part of the "North Georgia GMRS" network covering every repeater channel twice, some four times over, covering literally the entire northern half of Georgia and part of Eastern Tennessee I get that it's fun to do this and have a network you can get your voice over 700 square miles without having to learn radio theory or whatever is on the technician class exam, but the network is mostly 10 guys who live within 15 miles of each other ragchewing all day. Except this weekend, they're going to do radio relay for the cops at a Jeep event and that will be linked into the entire network, so that's a really good efficient use of all those channels There should be a middle ground between no linked repeaters and what some of these guys are doing. It would absolutely make sense to be able to link two repeaters on two sides of a mountain for example. But, do we really need the ability to order a radio off Amazon, key up, and tie up 8 channels between Knoxville and Orlando? But, my favorite part of that network is how it's essentially just a slush fund for the clique at the top. It's a non-profit that has no reports to the IRS, charges hundreds of dollars a year, and doesn't own any of the equipment. When the FCC rules say you can only use funds for paid repeaters for the repeaters themselves, they have a suspiciously well produced YouTube channel and well funded video studios

That's really the responsibility of the repeater owners as part of the rules do state "not cause interference and accept all interference." As the service does not require coordination, it is the responsibility of the repeater owners to do the oft times laborious task of checking for other stations that may be affected or they may affect with their installation. (It's also the main reason I always tell new licensees 'No, you don't need a repeater.'

Im tired of arguing with strangers on the internet. Im not going to get any further into it. If you're genuinely interested and in my area, join ARES, show up in person for some training events and actually show up to support an agency activation, and you can see how everything works.

Let me make this simple enough, that even you will understand it: YES - There are those that regular people refer to as "sad hams" .. this is fact, it cannot be disputed. If this fact makes you sad, and/or if you do not understand the difference between a 'sad ham', and a regular, helpful, normal-ham, then YOU ARE A SAD HAM, and YOU are who all of us normal people make fun of. and if that makes you even more sad, then, good, you deserve it. (and yes, even if you dont have a H.A.M. radio license, you can still have all the personality defects making you a latent sad-H.A.M.) As for these facts spreading out in other venues: thank you for noticing! Please continue to spread the word! If you are referring to something else, then please clarify, because as everyone knows, I love to answer stupid questions.

Agreed. It has never been in the spirit of GMRS or any of its rules for any sort of repeater linking, via RF or otherwise. The community took what they thought was a loophole, exploited it, and are now big-mad when the FCC (very politely) tells them they're wrong. What makes it more absurd is seeing the comments on a Change.org petition (which is not the mechanism for pushing change with the FCC) acting like GMRS is amateur radio and all the comments about "making new connections" and such... sheesh. I am all for wide area coverage, but with a much more intentional way of doing it, and as others have said on here there's a way to accomplish it but GMRS community will have to suck up some things as well (like narrowbanding the service).

So what's the correct way to address a repeater conflict? Where I'm at seems to have 2 active repeaters on 550 141.3 and any transmits are coming back heavily stepped on in the region between. Is there an official way to contact both owners that isn't going to offend them? WRJZ925 and WRFL895 EDIT: WRFL seems to have noticed my comment and deconflicted. PS: It seems like this would be a great chance for MyGMRS to do something really cool and check their database automatically for conflicts when new repeaters are listed. Don't know how complicated checking estimated range overlap would be, though.

That's just because you want me to respond to all the DMs that you keep sending me there, but I already told you, i'm not interested.

What about when I said your beard was sexy?!

When the FCC has a congressionally approved method to petition for change for YOUR benefit directly - use it. This "free men don't ask" trope is worn out and many have warned since the 2017 update how apathy like this will lead to further issues down the line especially with the rapid increase in GMRS use that was to be predicted (and happened). This Fudd Talk needs to stop. If companies/carriers can petition the FCC for beneficial use of a service/band, so can private citizens who are licensed for a family band. Speak up and do your part or quit gnashing your teeth to internet strangers when something changes that isn't to your benefit.

This is going to happen since there are only a handful of repeater channels available for GMRS. And you can't always go by the mygmrs repeater map or repeaterbook.com either. Not everyone lists on either website or they don't keep things updated. We looked here and on repeaterbook.com when our club first looked into setting up a GMRS repeater. Repeaterbook.com was outdated and the two closest repeaters to us were not listed on mygmrs.com. Several of us listened to all the repeater channels for a while before deciding what channel to use for our repeater. We did talk to the owner of the two closest GMRS repeaters to let him know that we were setting up a GMRS repeater. He then updated the map here to show his to repeaters. Missouri is pretty rural outside of the 5-6 big metro areas so we don't have too much conflict with GMRS repeaters. I know that the Kansas City area has more repeaters than the St Louis area and there aren't any problems. And it doesn't help that people don't bother to check either website before setting up their own repeaters. There is the repeater counsel for amateur radio repeaters that takes care of keeping repeaters from operating on the same frequencies if they are too close and/or in the same state. This doesn't always help though. There is a 2m repeater right across the river from St Louis in Illinois that uses the same frequency tones as our 2m repeater. Normally there isn't any issues but sometimes we do have issues when propagation is just right.

That doesn’t have enough resolution. Try typing the following three key combination: Shift + s + Window key. That will turn on the screen capture utility, allowing you to capture the active window and paste it into your post. Basically you want to make sure that nothing is filtering the results:

On page 16 of the FM (Fine Manual) is a section called “Automatic Offset” where the steps to enable or disable the automatic 5.000 MHz offset that is applied when the radio detects that you are trying to tune to a repeater. Here’s a screenshot of the page:

We have multiple repeaters in this area that are on different tones. The repeater owners do a good job self coordinating, there are problems sometimes. For the local area users, this sounds great. Till they learn they have to change their behaviors. You can either run no pl on receive, you get to hear all the landscapers and kids on simplex. Me I just run "monitor" for a more than a few moments before transmit. To make sure the carrier signal is not occupied by the other repeater. Why? Doesn't matter what the pl is if the carrier is taken. You will get collisions If both repeaters transmit at the same time. There is a benefit now though. Cross repeater talk. Both parties on both repeaters use no pl or monitor. One party transmits, second party waits till both repeater tails drop then they the second person transmits. Woot, you effectively have linked repeaters legally, and now have one huge repeater where the coverage effectively overlaps. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

A little something from this weekend...

Good times. I have an old 40ch radio shack set up on my workbench in the garage, and continually debate picking up a better one for the truck.

Sounds good - I don’t come though often but always have some new toys to show off and some swag to go with it. I don’t mean any harm/hostility when discussing things on here in case that’s what you thought. I am only on here because I still use GMRS for family even though I have private coordinated repeaters to leverage instead - I do this for the spirit of the service more than my own personal use.

I recently picked up a Baofeng AR-5RM. The kit included the radio with battery, a standard "701 clone" antenna tuned to FM (broadcast radio) / 136-174MHz / 400-520MHz, an Abbree AR-771 VHF/UHF antenna, a desktop charger, wrist strap, belt clip, and a manual which turned out to be better written than the manual for my old UV-5R radios. For those who are unfamiliar with this radio, it is pretty much identical to the UV-5G Plus, the UV-5RM Plus, and possibly other Baofeng radios. It's marketed as pushing up to 10w transmit power. The radio is quite a bit larger than the older UV-5G (UV-5R sibling). The screen is much nicer, though I've seen complaints that it's hard to read in bright sunlight. I suspect that's true, though it's still legible to me. The menus seem better laid out, but maybe that's because the display has more characters, so it's easier to understand what the menu is saying. Compared to the UV-5R's 128 memory locations, this radio has 999. Just about the first thing I did was use my old Baofeng UV-5R USB cable to program it with Chirp. This process went smoothly, and the data upload/download is about twice the speed of data transfers with the older UV-5G. Chirp is going to be Chirp -- if you know how to use it with one radio, it works just about the same for any compatible radio, with the addition or subtraction of a few field columns depending on the radio you're programming. I noticed that this radio allows up to 12 characters in the channel name field. And it offers three power levels, low, medium, and high. Through some testing I determined that these equate to about 2.5w, 5w, and 10w. Spurious emissions.... When transmitting with my older UV-5G and looking at the spectrum waterfall on my RTL-SDRv4 I would see a sharp peak at the frequency center, with two short peaks a few kilohertz away in either direction. This isn't terribly surprising, as my SDR's antenna is only six feet away when I test. But when I transmit with the AR-5RM and observe the waterfall, I don't see those secondary peaks on either side of the frequency center. I also used some software to do a wider scan with the SDR to see if there were other significant emissions across a broader portion of the UHF spectrum, and really didn't see much, in my unscientific test. Next I hooked up the Surecom SW-102 along with a dummy load, and tested power output at 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS frequencies. At low power, the output was usually in the 2.3-2.7w range, with a bit of a dip, closer to 1.9w in the 1.25m band. At medium power, there was another dip down to just over four watts at 1.25m, but in other VHF and UHF portions of the RF spectrum power was very close on either side of 5w -- sometimes a little over, other times a little under, but just barely. At full power it came in around 8.2w in the 1.25m band, but everywhere else was between 9.4w and 10.2w. It's worth noting that as a GMRS radio (for which it isn't type approved), it would be inappropriate to set it up to transmit on GMRS channels 8-14, since they're supposed to be 0.5w channels, and this radio really doesn't go below about 2.5w. For MURS (for which it is also not type approved) you're also pushing it a little, since MURS is supposed to be <2w. But 2.5w is only 25% too powerful, versus 5x more power than it should be putting out, which is the situation for GMRS 8-14. The antennas: I did sweeps with a NanoVNA within each of the ranges mentioned above; 2m, MURS, Marine VHF, 1.25m, 70cm, and GMRS. The included antennas perform fairly well. The shorter one had an SWR of <2.5:1 throughout all the ranges except 1.25m, where it was something like 3.5:1 -- not appropriate for use in that band. The longer antenna scored consistently better in all of the ranges I tested. Still not really appropriate for 1.25m. With both antennas, they tended to see a bit too much rise near the top of the Marine VHF spectrum. If this spectrum is important you would probably want an antenna better tuned to that set of frequencies. But they both did pretty good at 2m, MURS, 70cm, and GMRS. I compared a Nagoya NA-771G, and it did even better at GMRS frequencies, at the expense of slightly higher SWR in the lower parts of the 70cm band. The 771G did okay in the upper portions of the 2m band, and MURS as well, though it's not designed to be a dual band antenna. Testing with the long antenna (the Abbree 771) at 5w (medium power) I hit the Ogden repeater (43 miles away) and the Promontory repeater (64 miles away). It helps that I have line of sight to those repeaters. Over Simplex I tested at about 3 miles and 5 miles from my home at each power level using both the shorter and longer antenna. The 5-mile test was more interesting, so I'll rank the results of that test from best configuration to worst. First, though; I did manage to get through to my home, with where I had a VOX recorder set up, using each of the configurations. I'm going to mix my RA-87 (40w radio) with MXTA-26 for comparison: Best to Worst: Retevis at 40w: Full quieting, no static at all. Crisp sound. Retevis at 25w (M): Nearly full quieting, no static. Crisp sound. The noise floor was just very slightly higher. AR-5RM at High with long antenna: Obviously it's going to sound a little noisier at 10w with a 771 clone antenna than the Retevis, but still very good. Retevis at 5w (L): slightly higher noise floor than AR-5RM at 10w. AR-5RM at Medium power, long antenna: noise floor was just a little higher than before. AR-5RM at High power, short antenna: I had to listen several times to hear the difference between high/short and medium/long. But medium/long won by a hair. AR-5RM at Medium power, short antenna: Still pretty good, but high/short was a little less hiss. AR-5RM at low power, long antenna: Noise floor was quite a bit higher, and some static coming through. AR-5RM at low power, short antenna: Considerable hiss and static, but my voice was still very clear, easy to make out. I should have tested against my older UV-5G but I ran out of time. At higher powers, the difference between the long and short antenna wasn't as important. At lower powers, the antenna length mattered a lot more. Overall, though, antenna length seemed to make more difference than power level. Configuration: I don't see much point in draining the battery and singing my eyeballs by transmitting at 10w all the time. The sound quality at 5w from 5-miles away was pretty good, particularly with the longer antenna. And I was able to hit those distant repeaters at 5w. Therefore, as I configured the radio with Chirp, I set channels 1-7, 15-22, and repeater inputs to medium - 5w. I set MURS to Low, 2+w. Marine VHF/16 and the 68,71, etc working channels are set to Low (2+w). I haven't tested it with an antenna -- only with dummy load -- at 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm, and currently have it configured to not be able to transmit on any frequencies. And I've set GMRS channels 8-14 to not transmit, since its minimum power level is way too high compared to the requirement of staying below 0.5w on those channels. To configure it to not be able to transmit on a frequency that you have programmed into its memory slots, you set the "offset" to "off." At that point, when you hit PTT, nothing happens. In Chirp there are four possible offset modes: (blank) which is no offset/simplex; off which is no transmitting possible, + (positive) offset, and - (negative) offset. Air band: I've listened to air band with this radio. When you set it into the airband (108.0000 - 135.99875MHz) it automatically switches to AM, and will not transmit (tested with a dummy load). It does pick up ATC just fine. Battery life: I've never run it all the way down, so I don't know. But I do like that you can charge it either from the desktop base, OR with a USB-C plug. In the spirit of avoiding surprises: This radio, at least in the package I bought, doesn't come with a USB data cable. But it works with the same data cable used with the UV-5R or UV-5G. And within Chirp you chose the Baofeng 5RM profile (my UV-5G uses the Radiodity UV-5R profile). The green button (search): Hold the green button for a few seconds. The phone will say "Search." Now hold the PTT on another radio. In a few seconds this radio will show the frequency, and a second or so later, will show the DCS or CTCSS tone. Then it will let you save it into a memory bank. I can't remember for the life of me how to delete it (other than with Chirp) but that's in the manual, for sure. The point is that you can pair it up to another radio that is already set to a frequency and tone quickly and easily. I tend to be the one setting up my radios and handing them out to family members when we go skiing or hiking, so it's probably not a feature I'll need much. But if you find yourself bringing a radio to an event where you know others will be using GMRS or FRS to keep in touch, you can get paired up to their radios easily. I'm well aware this isn't a $50, $80, $100, or $150 two-way radio; it's a $35 (with extra antenna) multi-band two way radio; it should, by all rights, be a much worse radio. But its power levels are quite close to what's advertised, within about 5-6% of advertised across most of the bands I tested. 1.25cm is kind of the exception, being more like 10% off. But still, this radio is better than it should be. It feels pretty solid. Its sound quality is quite good. Listening to my recordings, it sounds like it transmits clearly. Scanning is pretty slow -- scanning is always slow on 2-way radios I've used. Squelch isn't perfect -- scanning 2m repeaters I keep getting hung up on one that must have another more distant one on the same frequency, too far to hear, but powerful enough to break squelch even when I have it set high. When people review equipment there's often some level of confirmation bias. I'm probably looking for reasons to like the radio, and to defend my purchasing decision. If I were looking for negatives, things not to like, I would come up with a few: It's quite a lot bigger than the UV-5G / UV-5R. It doesnt' fit into a pocket as easily. The included ABBREE 771 knockoff antenna feels cheaper than my Nagoya 771G, and the 701 knockoff is even cheaper than that. The scan button requires a long press, and an accidental short press puts you into a DTMF transmit mode that you can't seem to get out of except by hitting the "monitor" button once, which is an undocumented path. The antenna jack is SMA-M, whereas the UV-5G was SMA-F, so I had to order different adapters to be able to use an external antenna. The dust cover over the mic/speaker/data ports feels like it could wear out if you're opening and closing it a lot. Unlike the UV-5R/G you can't alter the levels associated with the squelch settings. That was a common customization people made with the UV-5R series. The USB-C charging light on the back of the battery shows a dim green when fully charged -- too dim to see in outdoor daylight. You can't set the power level low enough to meet power requirements for GMRS 8-14, but I don't really care about using those channels anyway; my mobile radios can't use 8-14 either. In the overall picture, those are minor things, for a $30-35 radio.

So, I've been thinking about joining the dark side and get the Ham Technician license. I've also been thinking about having a cb radio when we travel. I joined a cb forum trying to get some ideas. I thought I would go AM/FM and it would fulfill my needs. But I've also been googling ssb and whether I should consider that too. I was thinking about getting a Radioddity qt60 and actually had one in my cart. I've seen and read some stuff on a new qt80, and thought, let's see if there's one on Amazon. Well, when I searched on Friday, Amazon said there was only one left in they're system. So buy once cry once, right? So now I have a Radioddity qt80 coming with a Tram 3500 magnetic mount coming. Now I'll just have to see if it will fit where I want it to in my truck.

In order to get FCC Part 95 type acceptance, all GMRS radios do that. It's not 'weird', it's how it is supposed to be.

Rumor has it he likes your feet. Not judging.

@SteveShannon hit submit quicker than I did. I would love to have the IC-7100 if I can just figure out a good solution for an antenna that I won't tear up by forgetting to fold down or remove.

You guys need to stay off the grindr app

@marcspaz You guys are nuts! I might hike through there but I would never try to drive through there.

This is a good moment to discuss a sad reality about GMRS: This is why linking has been an issue. Too many people think about their repeater footprint and that's it - but forget that RF still travels outside the circle on their map just not in a way that would be considered reliable or even usable. Because of that, Part 90 services not only look at the height/power of the transmitter but plots it for a known service area and then adds a "protection zone" further around the coverage footprint to avoid interference when a frequency is reused too close to another transmitter location. VHF is terrible for this because of atmospheric phenomena, but UHF is not exempt from it either. This is why sites like this are critical for the GMRS community, because frequencies/locations should be listed somewhere unified BUT there is no current rule/procedure to prevent adjacent reuse of channels outside of "don't be a bad neighbor". Add linking and super-wide-area systems that are motivated to build out to recoup capital expense, and this turns into a cesspool quickly. GMRS never had these issues until the last several years because there was a higher barrier to entry that gets removed with each generation of rule change to the point that we are trying to talk about coordinating a community/family service in a way that won't devolve into CB radio. Hopefully this provides some insight because there's "some influencers" in this forum that do nothing to discuss these issues civilly, offer input, or do anything except widen the divide between people that just want to talk and the ones that want to protect their investment in the service for their use. Time for everyone to swallow some ego and talk like adults.

That is a logical fallacy that I see used constantly in GMRS. This service is literally one of the last wideband outside of T-Band UHF in places like NYC/Boston/Chicago/LA, and Low-Band VHF. T-Band equipment is typically used in GMRS as well as most 450-512 equipment is relevant, but not ALL equipment will operate in GMRS (Quantars having multiple band splits for example). That leaves a LOT of equipment like MSF5000s, MSR2000s, and similar antiques that are still being used for GMRS, not to mention that a lot of the equipment I mention is Part 90 certified and this community has spun its wheels on agreeing that Part 90 equipment should exist in GMRS and push for THAT rule change among others. Point being: GMRS capable repeater equipment is not "expensive" by any stretch, just more expensive than the race-to-the-bottom radios everyone is buying to use on them. This is a snowball effect of GMRS users starting at the 2017 rule change acting like this is the modern CB and now everyone is feeling the effects. Part 90 equipment is not permitted explicitly and limits equipment options, the 2017 rule change deregulated bubble pack radios which with FRS channels being narrowband interstitials in-between GMRS channels means GMRS narrowbanding would be a monumental effort that assumes all those bubble pack radios would not be around to cause interference, THEN we can talk about linking and other resources. This should be a cautionary tale about how apathy and lack of engagement to keep a service beneficial to the public comes back to bite everyone. Now with all that said - its not hard to imagine why the FCC had to turn GMRS to a 10 year license and drop the fee to $35 - who wants to pay good money for this mess?

And as the enforcement Atty from the FCC explained on the "Chinese Buffet" (sounds like a Guns n Roses album) video, the complaints they receive are not part of the public record unless they are included in an NAL or other action actually posted to the Enforcement Database. So anyone can claim a specious (sorry Randy, not "spurious") amount of complaints have been filed w/o having to back up the claims!

Ah, great example. I don't have a dog in this fight (couldn't link two repeaters if my life depended on it), but it seems like the FCC could score a lot of points finding a sweet spot.

OK, I got it. Thank you very much. I tried to turn those filters off several times but they would not go away. THANK YOU VEERY MUCH!!!!!!

Well, here is the argument against that. While users can go buy dirt cheap (less than 100 bucks) radios for talking on a repeater. Repeaters are NOT cheap and are out of reach for many. So the repeater owners are the ones that fill the need for repeaters in the GMRS service. It's not the lack of channels in most area's. It's a lack of repeaters at all in those area's.

There are 4102 rows in the database now, including stale, etc. There’s something about your search that’s preventing them from appearing. That’s why I suggest taking a screenshot for us to see.

No worries. I appreciate that. I love the service too. I'm just a little tired. Just got home from a huge offroad trip to to Uwharrie and need a nap. LoL Im definitely looking forward to meeting you. It's always great to meet someone passionate about the hobby and making new friends.

Locally, I find more of that from GMRS only licensees that are wannabe hams vs the actual dual licensees

Im not sure about citation, but I am an Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) assistant emergency coordinator in one county, an ARES operator another county, support the state and DHS regionally and we use both amateur radio and FRS/GMRS to assist the government in their operations as SOP. Not everyday or every event, but when we have unlicensed volunteers or government employees that need to speak directly to operators, we usually stuff an FRS radio in their hand, as an example.

I kind of like the idea of my wife and son being able to raise me on the radio from home to car or vise versa and not have colostomy bag larry "jumping on" to ask my wife about what radio or antenna she's using . GMRS isn't a hobby band. Some of us actually just want to use GMRS for a utilitarian purpose (the correct usage). The repeater slots were getting jammed up with all of these linked systems. I had identical traffic on 2 of the 8 channels where I am. I'm more in favor of more localized standalone repeaters, and frankly maybe not so many of them. Leave some room for some of us who might want to put up a private Retevis thing for our own purposes some day. I frankly don't understand why so many hams got drawn over to GMRS to begin with, but they sure did because you'll learn of them being a ham within the first 2 minutes of talking.. Novelty I guess? Because they have the 440.. Just go do all of this stuff over there. Leave GMRS/FRS for the family/group coms stuff. It got so pervasive with the "WHISKEY SIERRA BRAVO FOXTROT" and "what's your callsign!" stuff that it made things unwelcoming for the casual "family licensees" to just get on and use the radio service that was FOR THEM.

ok thank you for the replies. I will work stick to the standard repeater freqs.

With a few exceptions, ham does not have assigned channels.

That 'rubicon' doesn't know what he's talking about --- you have dumb down pretty far to interpret his logic I can't ---- thank you 'ignore' feature

I'm down in the Mojave Desert and have noticed 11 meters 'up kicking' more often during the peak afternoons to early evening. Not every day but a good number of them. Seems the hotter the days are the better the conditions.. I've talked from Alaska to Connecticut and lots into Mexico (they like the Export Frees).. LSB mostly. CB is not close to the early 70's but there are days this summer that certainly can put up a good match... I was gonna sell my 11 meter stuff but think i'll hold on for now.

Yah, it's an elite group...

I thought to be a real ham, you had to be on 80m complaining about medical ailments, and the invasive procedure of the week.... Guess I'm not quite there yet

Hopefully people will see this as yet another reason to vote correctly, with liberty as the first priority.

I submitted comments because I don't want to loose 902 for amateur radio.

I plastered my dashboard with "NO DRIVE THRU's" and "CLEARANCE 10 FEET" with my label maker because knowing me I WILL FORGET. I actually have forgotten TWICE...with the labels everywhere. Maybe I need more labels.

I sit between two repeaters on the same tone and frequency. 35 miles from repeater A, 25 miles from repeater B and the repeaters are around 60 miles from each other. Repeater A is up 400ft and hits me full scale. Repeater B is up around 50ft and is fully readable but just above the noise floor and is networked with far more (but very little local) traffic. They are far enough from each other that most of the time there is no issue except when you get folks trying to use one or the other when operating between them (like myself) or there is even a slight band opening. I do get a bit of heterodyning most of the time on repeater A on receive if repeater B is transmitting but not to bad. I have to bring up the system status page of repeater B on the web and drop my power to 5 watts to verify that I'm not keying it at the same time, 50 watts and I will. If there is a REALLY strong band opening I have talked on up 4 repeaters on the same frequency and tone with one being 160 miles away as long as nobody is using the other 3. Gotta love 141.3 and 4 squelch tails! There is somebody local out here that is running a encrypted DMR repeater on 462.700. It's driven at least 3 GMRS repeaters off that frequency because of interference. Its been reported by quite a few folks to the FCC but nothing has been done in the 1.5+ years its been on the air. Oh well, just subtract one frequency from being used, not much you can do about it. The City of Tampa also has a grandfathered GMRS repeater on 462.625 that ID's every 10 minutes but in two years I've yet to hear anybody actually use it. Its CTCSS decoder has been screwed up for years, it will repeat on the wrong tone (or any tone) one or two times (mostly at the beginning of a transmission) and then behave by not repeating on the wrong tone. It's also driven a few local repeaters from using that frequency. Subtract another frequency from being used.