Leaderboard

LIke CB GMRS starts out having to submit to the FCC because they want to ID/control the users per say by keeping the airways limited to proper people that submitted to their standards. I believe it is in the hopes it continues that way as we look back into what CB has become. I believe people that inadvertently purchase these radios (GMRS) will do as likewise, and just talk friends in the beginnings' w/o the licenses, and the whole system will revert to what the CB airways have become. Websites like we have here can only manage so much behavior of the general citizenship.

I remember parking my van at a 7/11 to go inside for some stuff right after the attack on the World Trade Center. I had a bunch of rather weird looking antennas on the top. I had a lot of people staring at me and the van. Maybe if I had been wearing a black suit and sun glasses it would have been even better.

I’ll start by saying that I do not know of a 95E certified radio with voice prompts. My ham Baofeng UV5R has voice prompts for the menu and a 95E lookalike exists, but I have no idea if it includes voice prompts. I suspect it does. I do have two 95E certified radios, a Wouxun kg805 and a Garmin Rhino. I’ll check to see if either can have voice prompts turned on, but as much as I love the Garmin, it uses a context sensitive touch screen and for that reason I could not recommend it. Maybe I’ll be surprised by the Wouxun. Edited to add: the manual says the KG-805G, which is a pretty good 95E certified radio, has voice prompts which are enabled in menu #7. I’ll try it sometime today and let you know how it works. I have a friend who’s a blind-deaf ham. He holds a General license. His name is Maurice and he’s also the president of the blind-deaf division of the National Federation of the Blind. His deafness is aided by hearing aids. He has several handheld ham radios. If it would be helpful I would be happy to see if Maurice would be interested in talking to your enthusiast. Maurice is a true advocate for ham radio for the blind. He’ll be coming to Washington DC next week for NFB activities there. The hq for NFB is in Baltimore I believe.

Most GMRS users use them in pursuit of other activities rather than listening and hoping to talk to other, unknown, GMRS users. They usually just use their call sign occasionally to comply with the regulations and their first name or position in a family “This is grandpa. There’s a huge grizzly in the area. I want you to come back to the cabin. I’m sorry I let you play with the salmon guts before going into the woods. Make a lot of noise while you’re walking. Scream if you need me. WROM258.” But some GMRS users do listen for others on local repeaters, hoping to strike up a conversation. That’s much more of a ham thing, but it definitely does happen in GMRS as well. I have never heard someone use a handle on GMRS. Even calling them “walkie talkies” rather than “handhelds” could be fodder for some good natured ribbing. Get your license and jump right in.

They both say “scanning begin” and “scanning stop” when the appropriate button is pressed again. edit- no indication of where it stops though, you have to change a channel manually to hear what channel you are on.

I’ll check and see as soon as I can. Thank you for helping your friend.

Excellent, THANK YOU! That's probably good enough to get him by. I'll let him know this. He is also going to contact Maurice at the NFB and get his opinions.

Thank you for checking that, I very much appreciate it! I could set him up initially, with our local repeater tones, etc.. I 'need' a dedicated GMRS HT myself and might get one like his and add the RTSystems software/cable to my end of it and program it for him. Does either radio (Wouxon or Baofeng) voice acknowledge 'scan'? That's the only other function I can think of that he would want constant access to. Thank you guys again!! It would be great to be able to help this guy get going.

Thank you VERY MUCH for checking that. I've passed that info along. Maybe that much is enough, he may have someone who can set the menu items for him and all he'll need is channels, volume and power.

I tried my Wouxun and Baofeng radios and I'm sorry to report they all behave the same. The channels only give you a number, when you press on menu it says menu but there are no prompts once in menu. Halfway just doesn't seem like enough, I'm not sure what it's good for if it isn't complete. I doubt this is any different but I'd be happy to find that it was. You need the promts to work for everything not just channel numbers. Imagine trying to set up a repeater with no audio and no sight. I imagine computer programming might be helpful. It would be nice if the channel names were spoken. At least with GMRS you have potentially less to memorize.

The only voice prompts on the 805 are the channels and pressing the menu button. For instance channel 10 is spoken “one, zero”. Pressing the menu button results in “function select”, but going to a specific menu isn’t reflected in any voice prompt.

Thank you for your help with this Steve, it is very much appreciated! I'll look into the KG-805G.

Bear encounters: Black, Attack! Brown, Lie Down! Polar, you're lunch!

About the only way is to reference both: “I programmed GMRS channel 16 into slot 100 on my radio, but it won’t work without setting a CTCSS tone.”

The Baofeng MP31 has audio prompts but it is only 2 watts. If you can find a similar 5 watt radio it might suit your needs. Radios like the MP31 that don't have a display are more likely to have the voice prompts you are looking for.

I'm a budget minded radio hobbyist, which means that I'm an avid consumer of the "cheap Chinese junk". I've possessed all variety of Baofeng, Quansheng, QYT, Talkpod, Radioddity, Retivis, etc. My experiences have been mostly positive. Some QC issues occur at a higher rate than higher priced "known quality brands", but they all DO essentially work. When factoring in the price/value ratio, there's simply no debating whether or not they're worthwhile purchases. Furthermore, when you move away from the $30 category into the $50-80 tier of such radios, It's been my experience that they're mostly excellent, especially when accounting for the value relative to the $200+ options. (Secret time,.. Those radios are made in China too). And say what you want about the Chinese makers of radio equipment, they seem to be very active in being a driving force in innovation and care about what people in the space ask for, and then they do their best to bring it to market. Quickly. If you choose to not be a consumer of such products, that's ok, but you should at least appreciate that they're there applying pressure in the market. Anyone who follows the radio YouTube space is familiar with how often these guys are being sent radios for testing, get pretty honest feedback about the shortcomings, and then revisions are made to solve the problems. That's a pretty remarkable thing for a market sector in the US that if left to the mainline brands, we'd be pretty niche and neglected. A prime case example is the TidRadio brand and the TD-H8 model. A relatively new entrant in the market. The early versions of the H8 had problems, honest feedback was given, and revisions were made. I've waited until I've reached a bit over 30 days of ownership to write this review. Initial impression: Very good build quality. feels "weighty" and stout in the hand. Powers on to a standard logo screen and defaults to a dual VFO display screen. One pet-peeve I have with some of these Chinese made radios is the font choice of the characters. Please stop using seriffed fonts. It's an odd look for a display that should only emphasize utility and readability. Another thing that I found to be a bit of a detraction was the mushy feel of the PTT button. This is less of an issue for my use case because I have my example of the radio mounted down statically and operate it with an external speaker mic. But if I used this radio daily in HT only form, I'd probably really have an issue with this. On day one, when trying to use the bluetooth programming function, I found it to be broken because it wasn't properly saving my repeater shift information. I later found that it was my mistake because I wasn't doing so with the "repeater designated channel" but the simplex one. I now know that the bluetooth programing of this radio does work perfectly fine, but I'll stick to the Chirp method just because of the ergonomics and familiarity that I have with the format. After prolonged use: The handful of cons listed above seem to be the extent of anything wrong with this radio. It probably should be mentioned HOW I deploy this radio. I've made it my primary home "base" radio. It's mounted statically on my desk, with a hand speaker/mic, and via LMR-400 coax to a 9db gain GMRS yagi outdoors about 17ft high and rotatable. I have my reasons for wanting to operate this way. A low power draw radio that operates from a self contained battery. I don't require a high amp power supply that requires mains power to operate. I could even get it charged with solar if need be. Maybe you're getting the idea of why that might matter to me and why I'm of the mind of wanting that. So with that being said, I've been in search of an HT style radio, but, one that has a bit more balls than the standard 3-4 watt options. Anyone whose done the same thing might be familiar with how frustrating that search is, with all of the gaudy and fake Aliexpress (false) advertisements of 8-10 watt HTs. The TidRadio TD-H8 is genuinely a 10 watt radio (picture below). Which means that it straddles the line perfectly between a more powerful mobile and a less powerful handheld. With a 9db gain antenna and 1.4db loss across a 50ft run, it provides for an ERP of 57.8 watts. Which has been good enough to simplex my mobiles solidly in a 12 mile radius, and reach repeaters full quieting at least 50 miles away. The way that I have things configured, for my needs, I give this radio two very big thumbs up and recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone trying to accomplish a similar thing. ::Edit:: I neglected to mention one important thing. There are two variants for sale of the H8. The GMRS and Ham versions. The GMRS version of this radio will be software locked to transmit at 5 watts. Fortunately it doesn't matter which model that you buy, because there is an unlock method that simply involves a button press combination at startup to toggle the radio into operating unlocked. You'll need to do this with either model to get it to both operate on GMRS frequencies, and also at the higher power. Ham mode will be the higher power but wont allow operation on GMRS, GMRS version grants the GMRS frequencies but at low power. Unlocked mode is the third mode that allows both and both variants of the radio can be toggled into it..

Three degrees of Maurice Mines!

On my 805, the radio announced the channel number when first powered up. When you press and hold the A/B button it says “Scan beginning.” When you hit it again it says “Scan stop, channel 3,2.” There is no number pad on the 805. You can rotate through the channels using the rotary knob on top or the up and down buttons on the front center. This also has an FM broadcast tuner. Weirdly it begins several MHz below the FM broadcast band in the U.S. and it takes a while to tune through the dial but it sounds good once it’s tuned. I can’t answer whether it’s worth the extra $50. It will transmit and receive the same distance but it probably has a more selective tuner because it’s a superheterodyne receiver rather than SOC. Whether that’s noticeable I can’t really say. I’m glad to have it.

Thank you Steve. I'm apparently out of 'likes' for the day or you'd have one. My buddy actually knew exactly who I was talking about when I gave him Maurice's name and has already emailed him. We're more or less in the area - my buddy lives up near Baltimore and I'm a little further south.

I have owned the 935G and now have the 935G Plus and both like it and recommend it. It is my goto GMRS handheld and I have had many GMRS handhelds. I use the wide RX capabilities a lot. In my area the local Sheriff's department is still using VHF so I have my 935G+ programmed to be able to listen local law enforcement and fire departments. When I travel I program any repeaters I might be in range of along my planned route. I have also programmed in 186 railroad frequencies to scan on long trips to keep me entertained. I have all the HAM repeaters in my area programmed in so I can listen to those if I want. I have tested the 935G+ side by side with several different superheterodyne radios and RX/TX is just as good. The IP66 rating is good and I have used the radio in the rain and snow. It has also been dropped a couple of times with no damage. At first I didn't think I would care about the Channel Wizard but have come to appreciate it when programming the 935G+ by hand.

The 935G Plus is a nice radio. I have one and enjoy using it.

This makes a lot of sense. good call.

About Yagis or Omnis?

That's pretty succinct, @SteveShannon. thanks

The good old Baofeng is here introduce you to the GM5RH. https://www.amazon.com/BAOFENG-Handheld-GM-5RH-Emergency-Frequency/dp/B0CP3PH6V6

I took the neighbor lady to the eye doctor so I haven’t tried it yet but once I get home and have lunch with my wife I’ll check it out.

That sounds like a good time listening to that compared to “let me swing my yagi, and the velocity factor of this coax is the reason you can’t hear me, or my omni antenna isn’t Omni enough”

And it definitely does not help that GMRS shares all of the simplex channels with FRS. I don't dare scan simplex channels during the fall deer firearms season. Billy Bob and Uncle Buck will get drunk and start cussing and everything else while at their deer camp.

Chicken Band?!

Chicken Band? Sign me up.

Think its because the average person sees extra antennas, it's got to be the police/military. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

If you don't have your callsign set as your username and on your car's personalized license plate, and if you do not also have ALL of your call signs listed in all your online-forum signatures, in your Facebook/X header image, and hanging on the walls of your house, then you are just an appliance operator and should stick to Chicken Band. SOURCE: "Some people", right here in this forum

In the end you use the service in a way that best fits your needs.

In the past I've referred to it as 'ham lite' or 'frs plus', depending how it's treated in a given area...not intended as a dig, just GMRS can be a bit less complicated way to play radio, and some areas have just as much enthusiast involvement as ham, while others it's really a "stick to your group" crowd .

You're not a dummy! Users of GMRS should never feel that they are somehow inferior to hams. I've seen some really stupid hams and I know some really smart GMRS people. There's shouldn't be a comparison. The two services were created for different reasons. GMRS is for facilitating activities. Amateur Radio is for learning about and extending the use of radio. Both are valuable for emergencies. The stated purpose for GMRS is as follows: § 95.1703 Definitions, GMRS. General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS). A mobile two-way voice communication service, with limited data applications, for facilitating activities of individual licensees and their family members, including, but not limited to, voluntary provision of assistance to the public during emergencies and natural disasters. The stated purpose for the Amateur Radio Service is as follows: 97.1 Basis and purpose. (Of Amateur Radio) The rules and regulations in this part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles: (a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications. (b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art. (c) Encouragement and improvement of the amateur service through rules which provide for advancing skills in both the communication and technical phases of the art. (d) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts. (e) Continuation and extension of the amateur's unique ability to enhance international goodwill.

As mentioned, GMRS requires one to have a license and also to use their FCC issued call sign. No one will really care if it is just a few of you and you are out in the middle of nowhere talking on simplex. But it's a different story when you use most repeaters, The Repeater owners will expect you to follow FCC guidelines as far as using your call sign. If you don't have your license, then I suggest getting it. It's only $35 and good for 10 years. One license will cover the entire immediate family.

About as close as we get on the group of us that hang out on Ch 19 hereabouts is using our Firstname and then the numbers on our call signs, as in, "hey Joe 690 are you out there?" "Yo Dave 283, yeah, what's up?" After that we converse and then ID at the 15 and EOT as required by the regs. That way if there's more than one Joe or Dave out there (and there usually is) we can differentiate who we're looking for.

UPDATE - Tidradio replaced the non-tranmitting one, no questions. So

Who cares? I don't.

I have the same issue on one of two TD-H3 I bought as a pack and I did the exact same troubleshooting (except updating the firmware which seems to be the latest version). I sent an email to Tidradio yesterday -> waiting for response. I next reached out to Amazon and they sent an email to Tidradio, then they walked me through how to make a complaint, and then they said that if I dont receive a response from Tidradio, to reach back to amazon for replacement or return. Looks like a quality control issue. I wonder if Tidradio has more than one assembly line. I do have two Baofengs that hit the repeaters. The set up for all four are the same.

You seem to be pretty obsessed with regulations and what other people do. I’m gonna find an old “Junior Trooper” sticker badge and send it to you. Be sure you wear it whenever you wear your Radio Shack helmet, the one with the flashing red light on top. …..but only when you’re taking enforcement action! Edit: below from your Sept post. You called the FCC?! Man, life is too short to be wound this tightly.

“Only?” That’s one of the best and most rugged handheld radios around. Nice choice! I’m sorry you have encountered some hams who are poor ambassadors of amateur radio. I hope you run into some others who are encouraging and welcoming.

Oh.. yea I agree. Listen to aprs frequency in a dense area. What I was referring to was the amount of data that can be sent. Especially, something like FT. Damn symbols rate caps, lol Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Until you have a dozen or so stations doing it on your channel. Then even a short data burst at frequent intervals is going to be irritating.

Go pop some popcorn and kick back.... This WILL be a long read. So you have you license. Now you want to put up a repeater. Great,,,, maybe,, usually. But have you thought it through or do you just really want to hear your call sign coming across the airways if CW? This is going to explain how to do it right to NOT cause interference with other repeater owners and be mindful of the limited resource (8 repeater pairs) we have been designated by the FCC. This will cover planning, equipment, antenna's and everything in between. Please ask questions about the topics as they are posted, and if you see something missing you would like covered, message me and I will do my level best to cover that topic. I have been a commercial two-way radio tech for 13 years a ham for almost 30 and have been working on electronics and radios for 40 years. First thing is to listen. Listen to the repeater pair OUTPUTS. These are the 462 frequencies in the 462/467 pairs. They are what the repeaters will be transmitting on. The reason you want to listen is you want the quietest one for your area. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the one with the least traffic. So if you have several repeaters around you that are not all that busy, but the signal from them is always very strong and clear and maybe a busier frequency talks alot, but is far off in the distance 4 towns over, any your plans are for a small footprint, with a 30 or 40 foot tower, that may well be the better frequency to choose. You need to consider a couple things here. Number one is the total number of pairs available. We only have 8 for EVERYWHERE. Why is that important? Because the guys with the monsters, like me how just talked to a guy 40 miles away from his repeater, can cover huge area's with their repeaters. And some of them see the value in what they have and allow others to use it openly. That's my stance on it. I say the same thing to everyone that asks. Make sure to ID your station and have fun. But if you are sitting on an otherwise open frequency, he may not use it for a wide area coverage machine. I am thinking on writing a thread on frequency management at a state level for GMRS, but that comes later. So back to the footprint you are looking to achieve, and you need to be reasonable here. Don't decide to build a monster, tie up a pair and make the repeater closed to all but you and your wife and kids. That's not proper use of the airways. And in my opinion is a bit of a dick move. SO lets say we are going to use that pair that you can hear a repeater on but it's very weak signal and can't always be heard. You NEED to locate the owner of that repeater and verify where he is located. If he's a weak station but he's right up the road, then don't use that frequency. If he's 2 counties away, you are golden. You need to find out what PL or DPL he is using on his repeater and NOT use anything close to that. If he's running between 67 and 103 you want to be at a minimum at 141.3. This will minimize the potential of interference. You also need to verify that you are either very noisy into his repeater or you can't hit it at all from most of the footprint area you are wanting to cover. Now a quick side note. Repeater talkout (how far it talks) is controlled by two things.. first is antenna height. Height is FAR more important than power level. But power level does play a role. And you ONLY want to run enough power to provide signal levels in your desired coverage area to capture the receiver of a mobile or portable radio. Meaning, if you are wanting to cover X number of square miles and that can be done with an antenna at 40 feet of height and 10 watts, Don't set the repeater up to 50 watts. It's not necessary and again, it's not good frequency management. So you now have a pair picked out. What about a repeater? A repeater is required to ID unless YOU and those under YOUR license are the only ones using the repeater. The minute that other license holders are allowed to use the repeater, it needs to ID itself. Now this can be done with a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino or some specific module for CW ID. You have options. You can use two mobile radios as a repeater with a cable between them and an ID board. You are not required to have voice announcements, roger beeps or any of that. So it can be a simple set of radios. (Motorola CDM series work great and the 16 pin interface makes connecting them very easy). Or you can buy a repeater that is a purpose built device. There are a number of options. More to come.... stay tuned.

I want to thank JeepCrawler98 for pointing out the ID requirements for a repeater. If you are the ONLY licensed user and the repeater is closed to all others, and everyone uses YOUR call sign legally under the rules then it doesn't have to ID. If anyone else uses it, it needs to ID. And in truth, it's just easier to have it ID. Now for those that don't want it to sit there banging away every 10 minutes with an ID, use a commercial repeater and allow the repeater to ID through the programming. This will be at a set interval as long as the repeater is active. Meaning that if no one is talking on it, it's doesn't ID. That is within the regulations. I have heard HAM repeaters that bang away every 9 minutes. In fact I have one local to me that has two ID mechanisms in it. Both are voice. They are set at 9 minutes and 8 minutes. The 9 minute one is EVERY 9 minutes without fail. The other one is active only. But you can all but have a conversation with the dumb thing because it talks so much. DON"T BE THE GUY WITH THE HAMMIE NONSENSE TALKING REPEATER on GMRS. That is unless you really don't want other people to use the repeater. ANTENNA LOCATION So you have gathered a bunch of parts together and now you want to put your repeater on the air. Question is where are you going to put it. We discussed that antenna height is KEY to how far will it talk and hear. If you put it on your garage roof, it's gonna talk a few miles but nothing crazy. If you want to have the big dog, you have to have have a big tower. Now there is software that is online called RADIOMOBILE that will plot coverage maps out for you based on the info you put in and maps that it pulls from the Internet that I have found to be reasonably accurate. You key in all the info and it pops out a map. And because it's computer based, and you are controlling it you can create maps with different antenna heights and locations that you can reference. I will tell you this now and save you the headache. For the most part, if a tower is owned by one of the major tower companies, they are going to want at a minimum 1000 bucks a month for access to hang an antenna. Will require you to hire an approved tower company to install the antenna. You will probably be required to get your own electrical service and carry insurance as well. Now there are exceptions to this as well. I currently have the ability to put up all 8 repeater pairs via the antenna system I have. I run a receive multi-coupler and a transmit combiner. I am currently only hosting two of the 8 pairs on repeaters. I can't say that I am the only person in the entire USA that would do this, but IF you need hosting in central Ohio, have a name brand repeater that is RACK MOUNT, and are willing to cover the bit of additional electric, I will host it on my tower. That being said. AGAIN, if YOU have this sort of setup, you should be willing to do the same in my opinion.

See: I interpret "it retransmits only communications from GMRS stations operating under authority of the individual licensed under which it operates" as individuals authorized to use the repeater owner's license only (ie. authorized family members). Then for bullet number two, you can't guarantee that everyone using your repeater will identify properly especially if you turn it open to the licensed public, so it's best practice to have the machine ID on that merit alone. The only time you're in the clear if the repeater doesn't identify is if it's a private, family-use-only repeater and everyone ID's. Sauce: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95#95.1751 There was a comment a ways up about intentionally not having repeaters ID to keep them unknown - while I understand the sentiment, it's a bad idea in the sense that GMRS doesn't have a frequency coordination body. Since we're all supposed to play nice and not cause interference, self-coordination becomes more difficult if your machine is undetectable; I can't avoid a repeater if I have no way of knowing it's there. List it on myGMRS and have it beacon if you want to discourage other users from parking others on the same frequency, then use split tones or other mechanisms to lock it down to your use only, otherwise don't be surprised if someone shows up with their own repeater on the same frequency one day. The beacon can be less frequent than the 'active traffic' identifying requirement; even if you do it on the hour or every few hours it's enough to be noticed by someone monitoring for a free frequency pair.

The next bit is the duplexer. And there are a number of options here as well. The point of install is going to set the requirement for what gets used. The little flat pack UHF duplexers are very usable on GMRS in certain instances. Those are going to be the smaller installations on a relatively short town (under 100 feet) in an rural setting or maybe a suburban setting where there are not a lot of other repeaters near you. These duplexers work on a frequency reject configuration where the input side rejects the output and vice versa. There isn't a pass component to this style duplexer, which means that the specific frequency and a few kilohertz above and below it are blocked but EVERYTHING else is passed through. This becomes a problem for installs where the antenna is receiving a number of other things, both UHF and elsewhere on the band and allowing that RF to get into the receiver of the repeater. The reason this is a problem is the first amplifier in the radio receiver string can only handle so much signal before it gets swamped. For a quiet area, it's not a big concern. If you are at a tower site with many other transmitters then you will need a pass/ reject type of duplexer where the frequencies of interest (TX and RX) are the only frequencies that are passed through the duplexer and everything else gets rejected. ANTENNAS and HEIGHT Here's where the distance that the repeater is going to cover really gets set. There are some folks that will tell you power level is everything. I am here to say that's false. I have a repeater system that I maintain for my employer that can be heard 60 miles from the transmitter site. And it's turned down to 20 watts coming out of the repeaters. The antenna height is over 500 feet however. And it still talks farther than it can effectively hear. Add to the 20 watts the fact it goes through an 8 port combiner and looses another 6 dB of signal level and is feeding 650 feet of cable (more loss) and it's only getting about 6 watts to the antenna connector. Point is that if you really want to cover a LOT of area, height is key to doing so. But know that you are NOT gonna be able to run LMR 400 or 600 up a tower like that and have good results. Cable loss is figured in dB per 100 feet or 100 meter lengths. If you look up what cable you are using, it will have the numbers for the frequency range that you are operating on. This is important on long runs. Anything longer than 100 feet for UHF really should have 7/8 cable at a minimum in use. Getting to the antenna. I have spoke to people that were looking at using some mail order antenna thing that you went to a hardware store and bought PVC pipe to build the antenna. This might be ok for your home base station or repeater. But I have built these types of antenna's and they doing hold up for very long. Find an Andrew / CommScope or other commercial antenna and use that for a repeater. You will have much better luck and will be happier when you are not needing to replace the antenna every 6 months because the wind broke it.