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Call up your friends who use GMRS radios and say “Let’s start a club!” Then just get together every so often and talk about GMRS radios. If you want to have a repeater, chip in some money (quite a bit) and put one up. If you want to solicit donations you’ll want to incorporate as a tax exempt corporation. There’s a fee for that. Then file a 1023 form with the government to get off to become a 501(c)3. The short form costs $275.

Been testing it with some of the other ranchers so far in heavy woods we have gotten 14 miles south and 12 miles north of me so far.

I have been pretty good at leaving a paper trail (or Internet trail), so the correct people know what I am up to......it does "out" the boot lickers though, often. If you just pay out the rope far enough, most people will not only pull the rope, but hang themselves with it. The ones that don't, I assist as much as possible......keep good people around you, and let the rest fall by the wayside.

I think it would be fairly easy to show that a person is profiting, if it’s true. Because a GMRS repeater is not allowed to be operated commercially, placing your own repeater on your own land would not include an assumption that rent is entitled. The IRS would eagerly participate if a person were not declaring income and if the person were declaring income the FCC would have a case. The owner of the repeater would be expected to have records showing that every dollar of income went to a reasonable expense. But, it can cost a lot to own a repeater and folks who provide them for the rest of us should not have to bear the full burden; they just can’t profit.

Now, remember that this is coming from a guy that has an open repeater that covers 7 counties and REFUSES to take money because it's too much of a PITA to do so. YOU sir have NO idea what running a repeater actually costs. Outside of the 20 bucks a month your electric bill went up with your garage repeater that has a 5 mile range. Tower SITE.... 48K purchase price. Another 30K in electrical, roof, materials. 300 bucks a month in electric bill 200 a month in property taxes. A 300 dollar LIGHT BULB that has to be changed every 2 years. We change it ourselves or that would be a 3300 dollar light bulb. 300 for the bulb, 3000 to climb up and change it. Although at some point we will need to invest in a powered rope ascender that will 'pull' one of us up the tower when we are too old to physically climb the 230 foot ladder to access the light. Think battery drill powered winch. SO, paying 25 bucks a year, or even 10 bucks a month to access a repeater that has coverage in 7 counties is a STEAL as opposed to just the electric bill.

Kind of missing the point. Which is, I want to use GMRS. You have the equipment I "want to use." And I am willing to pay for access to it. So it's a win win if it solves the problem. And if I comfortable relying on older forms if communication I just won't pay to play. No Harm, no foul. Before GMRS I used lot of forms of communication. None of which I really want use as a reliable "secondary" form of communications. I mean, my primary and most reliable form of communication since the mid 2000s was and remains cell phone. Which as of today I still can find plenty of dead spots and experience occasional downtime. Especially in rural areas. Which coincidentally may not have many repeaters. So cell really really doesn't address people who really want to have GMRS radio as a secondary / back up comm. Otherwise, back in the day we used: FRS (Not even a close second to GMRS when it comes to range),CB (Still limited range). Land Line Phone (Fine if you are home. I find it a good form of communication if the person you are calling also has land line or has working cell service). I mean, I could really go far back to the old Navy day's, and relearn basic semaphore / flag signaling, LOL

Not sure how common this is, because lots of us are fortunate enough to have easy access to public and high quality repeaters. But what if you are in area with no public / open repeaters which work for you? And the repeater owner just happens to own the only repeater in the area you can reach? And without it you have no repeater to access. And your comm plan includes the use of a repeater. Meaning you have no other options than to pay to play, or build your own high quality repeater. Not looking for specific examples of this scenario. Just wanted to let any members in this situation know paying might indeed be your only option. And if paying is their only option, they really are not breaking any boundaries of human stupidity if paying is the only way to meet their needs. They are simply meeting market supply and demand expectations. Not apples to apples, but kind like the person living in a very rural area is not stupid for paying a lot for satellite internet if they want it.

The public frequencies are free. You can transmit on simplex without incurring a charge using the hardware you own. If you want to use a privately owned repeater then you either need to have permission from the owner or pay the membership fee / dues of the club. Complaining that a privately owned repeater should be free to use is just plain dumb. Would you let a stranger off the street drive your car on public streets because it free to drive on public streets. if you're upset about it, go set up your own repeater and open it to the public.

The public frequencies are free. You can transmit on simplex without incurring a charge using the hardware you own. If you want to use a privately owned repeater then you either need to have permission from the owner or pay the membership fee / dues of the club. Complaining that a privately owned repeater should be free to use is just plain dumb. Would you let a stranger off the street drive your car on public streets because it free to drive on public streets. Like what OffRoaderX said, if you're upset about it, go set up your own repeater and open it to the public.

I think the only profit to be had is going to be barely enough to recoup the investment, if even that.. A guy i recently met whom is also a HAM operator had over a dozen GMRS repeaters. And he wasn't using cheap equipment. He admits to charging membership fees to make money. His membership numbers aren't that great to make him a fortune. My math tells me he was barely scraping the barrel to pay for the operation. The guy is a 'radio nut' he enjoys radio and nothing else. He is obviously doing what he does to keep himself occupied and happy. He was linking all his repeaters and he believed he was operating his repeaters within the rules, but after the FCC clarified the rules on GMRS linking he is in process of decommissioning.. I bought one of his repeaters and it's a damn nice piece of equipment. Some of his sites, he does pay tower lease so even an added expense. I still scratch my head why someone will spend the amount of money they do. I finally concluded, it doesn't matter to me,, it's there 'business'

I once had a "channel saver" repeater set up to scan on 5 UHF trunked channels. The concept was that the system needed to be operational within one year on all 5 frequencies in order to file a Construction notice with the FCC. In order to do that, we built up a 5 channel scanning repeater (all the frequencies were fairly close together in the 451/452 range). A portable could key any of the 5 licensed channels, and carry a short conversation to prove operation - just not on all 5 channels at once. A split antenna system was already in place, and we just used a widely tuned bandpass cavity on the transmit side. We got the idea from Nextel, who was doing a similar thing on 800MHz analog channels they had acquired, but not yet transitioned into their iDEN system. Unusual, yes. But not bizarre But ultimately a waste of time and material.

I don’t know about the RT97L, but not all radios display changing channels when scanning. That was one of the original main complaints about the Yaesu FT5DR. It showed the new channel when it paused, but not until then. A firmware update has partially fixed the problem. But it could be that scanning only works when you’re in base station mode; a scanning repeater would be kind of unusual.

At a rocket launch on the Black Rock desert I picked up enough leaded solder to last my lifetime. Some very fine stuff and some that’s about two times as big that’s multicore with rosin flux. And it’s all smaller than the old “Radio TV” solder that I still have. The smallest stuff is perfect for fine pitch SMT.

They definitely are not legal for GMRS. Every time I try to use mine on GMRS frequencies the FCC helicopter lands nearby to write me a ticket.

If that makes you sad, you should set up your own repeater so everyone can use it for free and teach them all a lesson.

If you have one radio for 70cm, 2m, 6m, and 10m, another one for GMRS and MURS, two mikes hanging off the same mount, and dual antennas whipping in the wind (nod to Billy Ray Cyrus), are you overdoing it? I absolutely could not find a single antenna that covered all those bands. 2m/70cm antennas will often work great on GMRS/MURS, but when you add 6m or 10m, GMRS SWR goes stratospheric. It's just too much to ask one antenna to do. The driver side has a TYT TH-9800 under the seat mated to a Comet tri-band or Diamond quad-band as the fancy strikes me. Under the passenger seat is an Anysecu WP-9900 feeding a Nagoya 200C dual-band antenna tuned for GMRS and MURS (not useful on any ham bands). The TYT speaker is on a Lido headrest mount. I have an external speaker for the WP-9900, but I haven't figured out where I want it yet. The speaker for the 9900 has a volume control because it's a PITA to adjust volume on that unit. The NMO connectors on Breedlove mounts are each supplied with 10' of RG8x coax shielded with wire loom and the connections are sealed with waterproof heat-shrink tubing. The coax is fed up through the factory holes in the floor behind the seats. The radios are on quick-connectors, and I can swap one out for something else in a couple of minutes. Maybe overkill, but I figure at my age, I don't have many more years crawling under trucks and I want to install it once and call it complete.

There you go again, trying to talk as if you know,,, when clearly it seems you DON'T. We OWN THE SITE. The tower, property, building, all of it. So ALL costs are the responsibility of the owner / business. Yes, it's now an LLC. That I donate a LOT of time to which pays my way to have access. I wired it, installed the generators, battery plants, provided thousands of feet of cable. Every repeater at the site in use outside the two county owned repeaters. That I support via the business I work for. There are no 'free' tower sites any more. At least not around here. Everything and every place that at one time was accessible because the engineer for the station, or the owners of the site were friendly to ham radio have all sold off or have put their sites under commercial tower management and they all want over a 1000 a month in rent. A civil engineering study done before you can even get a contract written and require one of their 'approved' tower contractors to do the work or installing the antenna and line. And of course since the new TIA-222 standard just went to I from H, most towers don't pass and you are responsible to have the tower reinforced to meet the standard with your additional loading. Cell companies don't care, A tower serves hundreds or possibly thousands of users. They are making lots of money and they see it as a business expense. When it's hobby radio, ham, GMRS or whatever, the numbers keep them off the towers.

Not really. As mentioned, it's easy to show if you are putting any dues money in a specific account and only using that money for the repeater. But, for the sake of numbers. Lets say you have 50 users that all pay 20 bucks a month. That's $1000 a month. You are just dumping all that money in your personal bank account. You can show a 100 dollar a month electric bill at the site. You can show a 100 dollar a month site rent. And you can show two service calls from a radio shop at 500 dollars a trip for the last 12 months. So the 'dues' income is 12K. You have receipts for $3400 bucks for the last 12 months. If you don't have a minimum of $8600 in your bank account, you are profiting from the repeater. Because YOU spent the money for something outside of the repeater upkeep and maintenance. And again, I am speaking based on the RULEs / REGULATIONS as written, not what's being enforced. But, first thing is a file from the FCC, probably for MORE than what you are taking in per year in dues. Second is the FCC informing the IRS of the 12K per year, and operations of a for profit business. Now if you have all your ducks in a row and are claiming that as income, and depreciating the repeater, line, duplexer. Writing off the electric bill, maintenance costs and all the rest, then it's a business anyway. So no one is gonna do that. So the IRS smacks you. If you aren't doing all the business stuff, then the state will what their share too. And may come at you for operating a business without a license, insurance, or whatever other laws they have on the books. So we are back to, I put up a repeater. Everyone with a license is allowed to use the repeater WITHOUT paying a fee, dues or any of that. I put it up for my private use and ALLOW others to access it. Then when it's questioned, it's my repeater, for my needs and others are ALLOWED to use it. No business intent at all. Because the county is a tenant on our tower, we had to establish a business, move the ownership of the tower to the business, and all that stuff. It was a PITA. But the tower owner gained a tenant by doing all of it. Since he dislikes ham clubs as much as I do, so we don't even claim it's a club house.

Probably, but you'd be surprised the esoterica some law enforcement officers know. I once stopped an Army recruiter driving a GSA vehicle and he was dickish about it, so I demanded he cough up a Standard Form 46 (government driver license) before I'd give him the ticket and let him leave. This was a long time ago -- the government driver license hasn't been a thing for decades. A deputy sheriff in the county south of me owns the GMRS repeater in that area. If he was of a mind to be petty, he might demand some kind of documentation of your authorization to operate that radio. If you were operating it while driving, he'd be well with his authority to do so. I'm not saying we should all carry our license(s) on us -- I don't -- but there is a non-zero chance that someday you may wish you had.

No, not really. I have direct access to 12 radios from my desk sitting here. Mind you they are remote controlled via a dispatch console system and are at the tower. I am actually looking to add to the setup since I don't have 10 or 6 meters covered currently on individual radios. But the Yeasu 847 I can connect to via Remote Hams does offer me access to those bands. Not looking at 220 at this point, but I do have 900Mhz on analog, DMR and P25

NO, that just locks the keypad. Just quick-press the * key to toggle back and forth between High and Low power.

Apparently, you've never been to Denali National Park or Wrangell-St Elias Alaska State Park (you should, BTW). For that matter, Black Mesa Oklahoma State Park would benefit from some boost if you're camping and day hiking. If I only went to Death Valley, I suppose I wouldn't need a repeater.

To some people, common sense clearly tells them it makes more sense to spend $50-100 bucks a year to utilize a well maintained repeater system that can reach across multiple counties and even states. Think about that for a minute, a repeater system with a net worth close to $50K and they only have to spend $100 year in membership fees.. As JB would say,,,, Common Mannnnnn

Hmmm... Yeah, you may be right. But as you point out, it would be pretty difficult to make a profit at it.

Gee Admiral, thanks for making me feel like such a dork.

It's all about money and agenda. If it would play out the way you describe it's not an issue, but, as we've seen as of late, it's not that simple and straightforward. And yes, there has been a lot of racism towards the Chinese people and this can be construed as one of them. I am not saying it is, but if one looks hard enough they can perceive it as such.

you are funny,, inventing a problem that doesn't exist.

I’m not certain why the FCC would allow any outside labs to certify equipment without some kind of validation of the lab’s ability and trustworthiness. And if equipment that has been “certified” by that lab fails, both the equipment manufacturer and the certification lab should have to answer why. That has nothing to do with racism.

Exactly, If I were a repeater owner using "creative accounting" to avoid showing a profit, I would be much more worried about the IRS getting involved. If those folks think you aren't declaring income they can get pretty intense. In other words, Audit TIme.

I made the change to “unusual”.

AS others have stated, its about location, location, and location. Scadacore has tools that will allow you to see if there are obstacles, like hills, between your work and house. You can also use it to see which repeaters can be used (assuming you know where the repeater is physically located) between your house ad the repeater and your work and the same repeater. Of course, just listening for the same repeater at both locations also works. You'll need to test if you can reach the repeater using your handheld at your office and home as it may require either better antennas or more power at both locations. The key piece in any situation is the antenna used. My recommendation is for a small (20-25W mobile at the house with an external antenna and not a handheld. Two handhelds are great for unit to unit conversations when you are outside, but can be iffy in connecting to repeaters because of the lower power/

Don't forget the school class rooms that were built way before the 70s laden with lead paint and the asbestos in the acoustical tiles on the walls and ceilings. Also, I think the floor tiles had some toxic materials and elements. I could very well have some disformities, but I wouldn't know that since I am my normal self.

Even the FCC doesn't seem to care about type-approval, although technically it's required for a radio to be approved for the frequencies upon which you transmit. What people DO care about is being a good and considerate user of the airwaves. As mentioned, on the "interstitial" frequencies (channels 8-14) you're operating very close to the repeater inputs and could potentially cause interference. Besides, it's a jerk move to jack up the power and walk all over everyone else trying to use the frequency. I set my...err...I mean...if I were programming an AR-5RM to operate on GMRS/FRS frequencies, I'd set channels 8-14 to receive only. If there's a genuine emergency (defined by the FCC as an immediate threat to life or property and no other means of communication is available, it takes only a few seconds to turn on the transmit feature if you know what you're doing. If you don't bring attention to yourself by being a jackwagon, nobody will know and few will care which flavor of 5RM you're using. However, unless you plan to eventually get an amateur radio license, most of the features of the ham variants will mean nothing to you and you'll get no use out of them. The wacky part is that sometimes it's cheaper to buy the ham version than the GMRS version, which is probably why a lot of people do it. Others do it because with some radios, the ham version will store 999 channels and the GMRS version will only store 30, which means you can only have 8 repeaters in the radio at a time. Apparently, the manufacturers think GMRS users don't travel and won't need more than a few repeaters programmed in. However, the UV-5G Plus claims to have the capability for 999 channels just like the AR-5RM. I have a couple of AR-5RMs, and I like them a lot. I'd probably like the GMRS version too. I don't think you could go wrong with it.

Personal opinion only. But with the billions (possibly trillions) of gallons of leaded gasoline that was used you'd think we would all be dead. But strangely lead poisoning is quite rare. Yea, we wore protective gear in the tetraethyllead house, but the concentration was so far above what the average person would ever be exposed is enormous.

If you buy 2 handhelds, you'll need to utilize a repeater to communicate at the distance mentioned. That is the easiest, most economic way to start. I have a Baofeng 5RM that fits the bill for this kind of use. At that distance apart, a handheld won't make it that far (from your home to your work). Without having to setup an antenna on the roof, 2 handhelds using a repeater will get you the coverage that you need. I do have a magmount car antenna stuck on a pizza pan that gives me good coverage, but I hit the repeater without it using the 5RM. As long as you can hit the repeater, your TX goes as far as the repeater will take it. If you and your wife can hit the same repeater, the 2 HTs will be all that you need (as long as the repeater is working). I use that handheld in the car with a speaker/mic effectively, and I can hit a repeater that covers from Orange County to the San Fernando Valley successfully. I have not used the external mount up to this time. There may be a repeater in the SFV that covers the entire area that you can use. There are a couple of strong signals on .600, .700, and .725. .600 is primarily Spanish. .700 and .725 seem to be mixed.

You can petition your lawmakers / elected officials to change things..... but it's a long shot. petition the fcc with you concerns, yeah......right Get a PO Box or use a service to hide your data....gonna cost a little money. But as others said, you want the best results just go off grid and move back a century. I understand this guy is the guru to start with.....

Kind of comes down to personnel preference and how you plan on using things. Sounds like use of a repeater will be part of your plan. Option 3 is cool because it justifies spending more money and having more toys! LOL Seriously, option 3 seems like pretty good way to go if you want to meet your communications goals and have some flexibility on multiple radios to use without too much hassle. If you want to save some cash initially, and see if you actually like the handhelds you decide on, option two should meet your needs if you have close by and reliable repeaters available to you. Once you figure out what option you will choose consider implementing external / removable antennas. Of course this is not really needed if your handheld "rubber duck" antennas hit the repeater fine. Removable antennas include a vehicle mounted GMRS antenna (Midland, and other manufacturers make lots of them), check Amazon. You can connect a removable antenna to your mobile or handheld and it will almost certainly improve your radio experience in the car . If you want to use your mobile or handheld at home like a base radio. You can connect either radio to a larger external (outside the house on the roof, on a tower, or in the attic) omni-directional antenna. Again Amazon is your friend, and you can find plenty of recommendations here using the search function. You can get a decent entry level external antenna for around $80 to $150. And you would need to calculate cost of your cable run, depending on quality of cable and length of run. This will most certainly improve your simplex, radio to radio, experience and increase you coverage / range overall>

... Baofeng made in the United States

That’s how they are here as well, but there are only a handful of us who actually have licenses. The vast majority of GMRS just buy the radios and use them miles away from populated areas. Honestly, that doesn’t bother me a bit. Maybe there shouldn’t be GMRS licensing for handheld use or lower than some wattage level.

One advantage of amateur radio is that there are repeater counsels to help prevent that kind of mess. Though that is harder to do with GMRS repeaters since there are only 8 repeater channels available.

I know a guy here on this forum that regularly/ALWAYS gets 200+ miles on all of his radios.. He apparently does this by purchasing every radio ever made and if it does not get 200+ miles, he just throws it directly into the trash.. All of his "friends" also do the same thing, so this method obviously works.

Maybe. Some repeaters have been linked, so it’s possible that’s what you’re hearing, but it’s also possible that you’re receiving them directly via a phenomena called tropospheric ducting, which can cause UHF signals to travel farther than normal distances.

Haters gonna hate. The same guys hate other hams that use or don't use digital modes etc etc. As I've said before, the majority of active members in our local club are just into 2 way radios and don't care which license, band or transmission mode you are into.

I dont know man, I am not such a petty control freak that i would care about something like that.. jeezus.. go outside and touch some grass.

Just tell the HAMS this is your "First Step" in your radio journey and will be following up with a HAM license. Probably will get all the help you need, or is that false advertising. lol

Another good one is the Melowave Shadow. It works just as well as the Midland Ghost. And both work better than the Nagoya UT-72G that I have.

Maryland's cell phone law says "cell phone". Someone got a ticket using his ham radio, took it to court and won. Precedent set, in MD, using a 2 way radio while driving is OK.

I really like the Ghost. It performed much better than I expected it to. It does seem like a good choice for heavy equipment.

If you want the repeater to remain more stealthy, no kerchunk makes it sound like people chatting on simplex..

There is a setting for the kerchunk.. "STE" i think? I would double check for you but both of mine are boxed back up and ready to be given away to lucky viewers.