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By the grace of mine own self-worth and sarcasm and by the bounteous authority vested in me, THE QUEEN OF ALL THAT IS GMRS, I doth hereby decree, with much pomp and stupidity, that one @SteveShannon, a stout fellow of questionable repute but unquestionable GMRS knowledge, be forthwith and forevermore dubbed a member of the Most Esteemed Order of the HERD (which, perchance, standeth for “Higher End Radio Dork,) Let it be known across the static-ee airwaves of the peasantry to the lofty frequencies of the saddest of H.A.M.s that Sir StevenShannon, clad in naught but his wits and an FCCs permission slip, hath stumbled bravely and fortuitously into the fray of tomfoolery and emerged victorious—or at least not entirely trampled. With this proclamation, he is granted the sacred right to put the title "HERD" after his name, to wield a UV-5R on GMRS channels, and to confuse all who inquire as to what a “HERD” truly be. So sayeth I, THE QUEEN OF ALL THAT IS GMRS on this fifth day of March, in the year of our Lord XENU two thousand and five-and-twenty. Let the roger-beeps blare, and may the Sad H.A.M.s tremble in his presence ! So it is written, so shall it be done. Arise good Sir @SteveShannon, member of the HERD!

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

Welcome! We have all been new at things. It’s intimidating isn’t it. Sometimes you don’t really even know what to ask. So I hope that you’ll read this before posting your question. First, no matter what you post read it all the way through, maybe twice, maybe even more, before hitting “Submit”. Posting a question that isn’t easily understood will do nobody any good. Recently we have seen several questions that were totally incoherent. Second, tell us everything about how you have configured your radio: what frequency you’re transmitting on, the tone or DCS you’re transmitting. If you need help with the radio, tell us what the model is. All the numbers and letters are needed. Don't just say "It's a boofwang" and expect us to leap into action. Tell us the repeater name, the city, and the state the repeater is in. If possible, provide a link to information about the repeater. Be careful not to disclose tones for a private repeater though (assume most are). PL and CTCSS are just different names for tones. We know not all the manufacturers use the same numbers; use frequencies in Hertz instead. Yes, we all know the tones don't protect conversations from being overheard. They can help keep you from being interrupted though. DPL and DCS mean the same as DTCSS and an N after the code stands for Normal, I means inverted; use N unless it’s called out as inverted. No, that roll of RG6 that fell off the cable TV truck isn’t really useful for GMRS. Neither are long runs of RG58 or anything else that's tiny in diameter. Plan to learn about coax losses at GMRS frequencies. No, GMRS isn’t ham radio. Don’t say CQ CQ CQ unless you like being the temporary object of possibly negative attention. Psst: It really is temporary unless you double down; then you get down votes for months. Yes, Notarubicon videos do have useful information, even if you don’t understand the Queen’s humor. No, that’s not related to homophobia. If you just got your call sign from the FCC but you’re unable to sign up here yet, give it a few days. The call sign lookup uses a periodic database dump from the FCC rather than a realtime verification. As such it can take up to a week. And if you still can’t register, double check your call sign. On more than one occasion people have mistakenly entered 1 instead of capital I, or 0 instead of O. GMRS call signs are four letters followed by three numerals. The first letter is W and will be for some time. So WAAA001 through WZZZ999. Also, look over the many posts, use the search function, keep your search terms short and find one of the 5000 other threads where someone asked the same thing before posting the 5001st question about a topic. Really, if you’re a beginner and having a problem, chances are many of us had the same problem when we were beginners and we posted the 3001st or 4001st repeat question. Finally, if any of the above stumps you, don’t even start asking about setting up your own repeater, yet. But when you’ve gotten to the point where you might know enough to ask about setting up a repeater there’s lots of helpful information here. Again, welcome.

When I got my first pair of HTs they were the TDH3 but the HAM version. Shortly after I discovered they could be switched over to GMRS. I looked into it and discovered the licensing was just $35 and that covered the family. The process was a pain and by the time I had finished up I had 8 windows open that were required to obtain this license. Not really the surprise. After playing with these radios I was surprised to find out my wife didn't hate them. After a short while I ended up getting a mobile tranceiver that I put in the house as a base station. My wife didn't really care for talking on it but she did like to listen to the active repeater. Eventually I put up a good antenna and I got a mobile unit so I could keep in touch with my wife. She enjoyed being able to contact me. I put up a repeater at my shop and even though communication was difficult because of hills and trees she enjoyed contacting me by the radio over texting or phone unless she couldn't get me through the radio. Eventually I found out my antenna and/or coax was faulty and changed that out and now the connection is much better. My repeater is 50w and the mobile is 20w and the repeater can get to the house better than the house can get to the repeater. So I decided to get a 50w for the house. Ordered the power supply and the radio. The PS came today and my wife was excited. She knew nothing of what I had ordered. She thought I got a new radio. I was a bit shocked. The normal expectation when a husband spend money without the wife knowing about it on his hobby is to be frowned up or worse, being yelled at. She was disappointed that it was a power supply and not a radio. She still doesn't know I ordered the radio. I didn't want to take the surprise away from her when it does arrive. Can a guy be more lucky.

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.

Poppycock! I for one think that more threads with links to those videos are what society and the world needs! Think of the children!

Well, After studying my butt off for several weeks, I took the test Saturday for General class and passed (35 out of 35). I do have to say thanks to the guy who gave me the link to hamexam.org where you can do flash cards of the questions, it really helped!!! Now on to new bands... maybe I will try out 17 meters or 20 meters in the coming weeks.

Stop with the negativity. We all know that you are just a hateful rude person with no friends. You really need to pull your head out of your forth point of contact and then see a doctor so that your headspace and timing can be reset. And to answer why someone would want to listen to the NOAA channels, the internet might go out during a bad storm or the person might be somewhere that there is no internet or cell service.

That could be a really good thing or it can open up a can of worms that we don't want. I say that because we all know some people want to turn GMRS into HAM Lite. We don't have enough frequencies/channels available for linking repeaters or different digital modes, etc, etc. I would hate to see GMRS turn into what the Chicken Band (CB) has become.

If you are asking, its already too late.

Why would you care what they say? Just tell them that its an iCom and they'll say it sounds great.

I live in North GA as well. I've expressed my opinion on here before, probably on a different of the now 10,000 threads on this matter. I hear the same conversation on all but 1 repeater channel, and if I wasn't in the valley I live in, I would most likely hear it on that one, too. It's beyond annoying. I listen to their conversations from time to time and they're pretty friendly to folks that aren't members, but I've only heard a couple non-members pop in and I imagine they'd frown on continued use without a membership. Their network stretches from part of Tennessee all the way down into parts of Florida. I admire their desire to make such a large network and the sheer work it takes to build and maintain something like that is impressive, but to do that on a spectrum that has a grand total of 8 channels for repeaters is a little bit stupid in my book.

It has been universally agreed to by some, and decreed by the Queen of all that is GMRS that channel 19 shall be the unofficial Official Road Channel for GMRS. So it is written, so shall it be done... Bear in mind that "some people" will vehemently disagree and argue to the death against this, but just remember that they are wrong.

I guarantee that dude has never seen real boobies in his entire life...

Hello, I set up a quick and dirty base station antenna in my attic. It's a Midland MXTA26 antenna fed by a MXTA24 NMO cable. I put a 14" aluminum pizza pan under it as a ground plane. I have about $55 into this setup. The radio is a Wouxun KGSX20G+ fed by a Pyramid 12Amp power supply. So far I think it's working well. I guess I need some adapters to test this setup with my Surecom meter but no smoke yet. Any tips or critiques appreciated. I wanted to test the attic concept before committing to more expensive hardware.

Speaking of someone not having anything better to do…

I got sick of all my radios and batteries falling over every time someone sneezed nearby, so I did some light CAD work and 3D printing this afternoon. I think I might re-do this one to have antenna storage on board as well...

I thought that might happen so my sig only refers to the Medium End Radio Dork Experimeter (MERDE) level.

Well, I got up and running with my new antenna, a $40 “uayosek”(whopping 2.5db) off Amazon and 25 ft of DXEng RG8X connected the BF UV5G Plus. At 16’ in the air with my handheld, it got 4.84 watts on high @1.04 swr. Worked well enough I bumped it down to medium and got 3.42w, and 1.62w at low. I was able to hit the big repeater on Sunday full quiet at high, and a little scratchy on medium. Having listened to suggestions made, and the Euro being about even with the dollar, I ordered 25 feet of MP Ultraflex 7 Sahara, which arrived today. Preliminary test shows 7.94w, 4.95w, and 2.61w, a significant improvement. SWR appears a tiny bit higher, but it is coiled and only tested on the antenna down so that will probably change. Price wasn’t too crazy for the Ultraflex, about $65 assembled and shipped. It definitely fits the bill though, lighter than LMR400, only .28 thick, the BNC connectors they put on it look like they were straight up machined out of bar stock, and its db loss is only a touch higher(.1 or .2 db) than LMR400UF. I am gonna try to get it all put up tomorrow night for the local net, but so far it looks like it will work well.

Welcome @Maghunter Neither of you have to start with your call sign. You can just push the PTT and use each other’s names. “Hi Dennis, this is grandpa.” Every 15 minutes and when ending a transmission or series of transmissions you are also required to ID. You can include some other identifier, which could be a letter, number, name, or pretty much anything you want: “Wrom258 - grampa”, but you’re not required to. Exactly the same on a repeater.

However, (with great affection for my friend Marc) I also have experienced way too many people who don’t speak up when talking into the microphone. That’s equally problematic. So, speak up but don’t yell.

A lot of folks use Ham radios. A lot use commercial / LMR UHF radios. I often joke that "How do you know if someone's using a Motorola? Don't worry, they'll tell you."

People usually announce it on public forums.

Lets keep this thread going.

"all" the other GMRS repeater systems throughout the country are not shutting down.. Many are, but some will choose to wait until the FCC actually does/says something. This site is much more than just some linked GMRS repeaters, so, no, my guess is that there is zero reason for this site to shut down.

I disagree. Hams can already do much more in the amateur bands than they can do in the 22/30 GMRS channels. I think the people treating GMRS like ham radio are people who want to do ham radio things without having to pass a test. I understand wanting to maximize the usefulness of GMRS, but for hobbying around, I prefer the ham bands and ham equipment.

I've been listening to the old dudes on the local GMRS repeater talk about french onion soup and basketball (separate conversations) for too long and decided I need different soup conversations*, so I took my technician exam today. Got 33/35. Thanks, hamstudy.org! The proctoring team told me I should study for the general while this test still fresh, so that's the next goal. I have a certification exam I need to study for at work, but... that's not as much fun. *the french onion soup conversation was the first thing I heard on the local repeater but the actual catalyst for getting an amateur radio license was I managed to catch some transmissions from the ISS a couple of nights ago. I was reading about how you could contact the ISS on 2m/70cm bands and then discovered the ISS was directly overhead. Ran outside with a HT and managed to catch what I assume were packet transmissions. Now I want to talk to a space station. 8 year old me would think it's the coolest thing ever. 42 year old me still thinks it's pretty rad. Maybe someone up there prefers broccoli cheddar soup.

I have a wonderful wife and I honestly wouldn’t want to dwell on life without her beside me. When I went back to college at 32, she worked two jobs to take care of me and our kids without ever complaining. Now that she’s in a wheelchair with MS she still never complains. I know that not everyone is so fortunate but I’m delighted for @LeoG. It appears he has a good one.

I bought this radio in January and after 3 months, I still really like it. This radio gives you what you need. High power of 50 watts, mid power 20 watts and low power 5 watts. Using a dummy load, the outputs have been right on the button. It is super easy to operate and easily programmable from the front panel, I have no need for software The transmit and receive audio are very good and, YES, you can choose wide band or narrow band. It does, however, lack a cooling fan and can warm up pretty quickly in a longer conversation. I can only hope that Midland took this into account when working out heat dissipation in the design. It IS expensive, but having fond memories of using Midland gear back in the 70's, I chose to go with them again. Pete WSGL709

I live in a port town. For my entire life I have driven past a marine electronics store. Not needing "marine" electronics (radar, sonar, gps and its predecessor LORAN, and of course radios). I never had a need to visit. But as it turns out the store carries all sorts of GMTS, FRS and HAM equipment. And not just for boats. i called yesterday and found out that not only do they have probably everything you find all your needs met in one place. Plus and more importantly, they are more than to share decades of knowledge and experience. Heading down tomorrow with a list of needfuls and more importantly a list of questions.

Actually those are all just your feelings. The rules do not prohibit using GMRS to chat about weather or antennas or kids first report card, but if you’ve determined that you must have sole access to radio frequencies for the many emergencies that you purport to swoop in and handle you’ve made a terrible choice in GMRS. One would think that the first emergency might have taught you that.

You would need to reset it to GMRS mode before you can transmit on GMRS. (in HAM mode if you enter GMRS frequencies/channels it will not allow transmit on GMRS. To reset a TID Radio H3 to GMRS mode, 1. turn the radio off, then hold down both the Top PTT button and the star button while turning the radio on 2. this will bring up a menu where you can select "GMRS" mode 3. and confirm the change by pressing the blue "yes" button, causing the radio to reboot in GMRS mode The radio will reset to GMRS mode, and it should have all GMRS channels already programed in it ready to use. you don't need to update firmware... just follow above procedure. One other thing to figure out. if you bought the HAM version, thenn the antennas you got may not be ideal for GMRS. but that is ok, the stock antennas are not the best anyway. Order a GMRS specific antenna like a Nagoya 771G, or a 701G... or there are many other good GMRS specifically tuned antennas. Even the Tidradio 771G is very good. (but the 771s are longer than the stock anteannas.

Using GMRS is infinitely better than not. Nothing is gained by having silent channels. If you have long conversations, pause every so often to allow someone else to use the frequency or repeater. Help someone else get started with GMRS.

The regulations say nothing about being in the same household. They simply say: Any individual who holds an individual license may allow his or her immediate family members to operate his or her GMRS station or stations. Immediate family members are the licensee's spouse, children, grandchildren, stepchildren, parents, grandparents, stepparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and in-laws. But they do require that the licensed individual retain control of his/her stations while being used by someone they have authorized.

Honestly where do I begin with this thread? Do I delete it all? Censor the language? Remove the inflammatory posts? Or do I leave it up because @SteveShannon and others have a therapeutic way of handling this argument and we are so close to getting 2 people to apologize and let things cool naturally. In that case, the lesson in putting aside our differences, on the Internet of all places, would be so much better than leaving the profanity and the references to disabled people. Hopefully you guys can pause, come to a gentlemanly agreement to disagree at the very least, and apologize. Right now that kind of resolution would do the country, and the world, a bunch of good right now. We need more of that before we descend into another civil war some day.

No.

Oh thank goodness some pioneering spirit came along and thought of this topic. It's about time! I'm shocked. SHOCKED. that no one's ever discussed this before! Now, I have some new and unique thoughts on Linked Repeaters I'd like to share with the class

No, we are unlikely to settle this debate, regardless of how many times the question is asked. But there are lots of other posts about it. Line A is one reason. 12 million people live above Line A and thus are prohibited from using 19. Second, GMRS really isn’t used by most people to “call out on”. It’s primarily for use between people who know each other while pursuing other activities. It works very well for that. Don’t worry, you didn’t start the debate. It just has some dormant periods. Welcome to the forum!

I do not understand how anyone with an IQ higher than 75 believes anything the media says anymore.

Still pissed that these young whippersnappers don’t have to visit the local FCC field office and build a spark gap transmitter like you did?

What is it that you think people should be saying on the air? What is it that you say on the repeater? Maybe you could be the one to start the ball rolling. GMRS is not ham radio, where people actively seek out people to strike up conversations on the radio just because the radio is there. GMRS is more designed to be a utility for two people or an entire family who wish to communicate, generally while doing something else, possibly recreational like hiking, biking, etc., or possibly as a business, like farming or ranching.

What a terrible day to know how to read

Background: A friend has a 10,000 acre ranch in the middle of nowhere. Cell phone reception is spotty at best. We were looking for a reliable way to be able to communicate while at the ranch for quick status updates and for emergencies. About 2/3rds of the land is fairly flat with the other 1/3rd being draws and ridges that limit line of site. The challenge was threefold; 1) to find a location that allowed "line-of-sight" to as much of the ranch as possible, 2) to have a repeater located at said spot to "see" down the draws, and 3) to limit costs for an occasional use system. Equipment: Red's Engineering Simplex Repeater - $61.00 Boafeng UV-5R GMRS radios - $31.00 (2pk) A 15' pool cleaning pole - already had from previous project The Red's Engineering Simplex Repeater features from the website: Web based configuration via cell phone Works with the Baofeng UV-5R radio DTMF detection, enable disable repeater Fox Hunt Transmitter Mode Periodic Station ID 45 second message record time Station Identification (Morse Code generation) LED Indicators show current status Shield type enclosure design USB Power / Charging Open source software OTA Firmware Updates (WiFi) Long battery life, ~12 hours talk time, ~10 month active standby Set-up After charging the repeater and radio, the set-up was straight forward and is easily done through the app. You plug in the supplied cable to the repeater and radio. On the initial startup you must press the reset button. Turn on the radio and wait a few seconds, turn on the repeater, set the volume to about 50%, and you're ready. Within just a few minutes I had the repeater programmed, connected to the radio, and bench tested. In the app you can change the record time, toggle remote enable/disable function, program callsign and ID transmission, and a few other things. Since we are very remote and the likelihood that anyone else would ever find the repeater is slim to none, I didn't go through some of the whistles and bells. They may come into use later but I left most everything pretty basic. Real-world testing - Home After scouring Google Earth, Radio Mobile Online, and SCADACore line of sight generator I determined what I thought was going to be the optimum location for the "tower". The furthest we would need to transmit and receive would be about 5 miles. I unceremoniously duct taped the radio and repeater to a telescoping pool pole, ratchet-strapped it to the fence corner post at home and drove just over 7 miles LOS. I transmitted on channel 5 and heard the repeater, well, repeat back my message. Since 7 miles was well outside of the limits I needed I felt it was a good test and waited until the next trip to the ranch. The radio was wearing the Abree AR-771 antenna that came with the radios. Real-world testing - Ranch In a couple of weeks we went to the ranch. Still using the high-tech duct tape and pool pole, I found the location I had identified and set up the repeater. Over the course of two days, we tested the repeater at all the blinds we had around the ranch and routes along the way. We found that the repeater worked as expected and better, hitting one blind that we were skeptical of hitting. The repeater and radio were left up overnight and the batteries lasted both days. We were not carrying on conversations, mainly just checking the repeater function and checking in with each other occasionally. If we had 15 minutes of total talk time I would be surprised. I was very impressed by the simplistic, but reliable, function of the repeater. Take Aways This is a simplex repeater. You must accept that you will, at minimum hear your own message repeated back to you. In some cases, if you are in simplex range of the other radio, you may hear the original message and repeater message of both yourself and who you are talking to. While some find this cumbersome, it is just the fact of a simplex repeater and if you know it is going to happen you learn to deal with it. Personally, I didn't find it to be a problem for what we were trying to accomplish. For about $100 I don't think it can be beat for what we wanted to accomplish, basic communication for status checks and emergencies. We also accept that there may still be locations that simply cannot be reached due to terrain. That is why we stress that we let everyone know where we are going and when, within reason, to expect us back. No amount of technology should replace a simple "flight plan". Future plans I am now in the process of piecing together a weatherproof housing and solar backup. The internal batteries will last about three days (not using any of the power-saving functions) at our communication frequency, maybe more. In the event we are down there for more than a couple of days, solar will allow the batteries to remain topped off. Additionally, I am looking at "tower" options that allow us to put the repeater up and down when we come and go. I'm heavily leaning towards a 30' telescoping flag pole (staying with the limiting cost theme). That will allow us to have a permanent location that is easy to run up and down. All in I think I'm probably looking at about $300, radio, repeater, pole, solar, and bits and pieces. While I tinker with a lot of things, this is my first foray into repeaters, albeit very limited. The Red's Engineering gets my initial thumbs up. I hope to be back with updates soon.

The difference in range between the least expensive Baofeng handheld radio and the most expensive Wouxun is zero.

We need to get FRS off of 15-22 for starters. Then we need dedicated repeater frequency pairs that are not shared with simplex. Then we need the fcc to enforce the rules that are already in place.

I received the new KG-935H yesterday and ran test on high power this morning with a fresh battery using my Surecom SW-102 and a *dummy load, here is what I got. I posted my KG-Q10H at ultra high setting results for comparison. I have not had a chance to take it out in the world as of yet. * I mention this because obviously MURS and GMRS are not type approved and MURS output is way high at these settings. This is only a test, if this had been an actual emergency you would have heard screaming KG-935H 2m - 8.8 watts 1.25m - 4.6 watts 70cm - 8.4 watts GMRS - 6.8 watts rept, 7.4 watts smpx MURS - 9.7 watts KG-Q10H 2m - 4.5 watts 1.25m - 2.9 watts 70cm - 6.5 watts 6m - 1.1 watts GMRS - 5.5 watts MURS - 4.6 watts

Nobody in Arches National Park is listening for a call sign so they can call back to a criminal they have on speed-dial in Atlanta to burglarize your home so they can split the ill-gotten gains. Nobody hearing your call-sign in Atlanta is going to assume that your entire family is out of the home just because you use the radio to talk to someone five miles away while driving home from work. These licenses are family-oriented. If you're concerned about the address being public, switch your record over to a PO box. But again, this is not a very useful attack vector. On any given day the FCC website probably doesn't even load. Anyway, your choice. But call signs being linked to mailing addresses has been the standard since the early days of ham licensing.

I'm going to close my post out with something that will piss some people off, and others will say I don't know what I am talking about... so if you don't want to read all of the post, you may want to skip to the END. The reason CB went to the wayside isn't known for sure, but I have a few ideas. Modulation type isn't one of them. I think there is zero chance of CB replacing FRS. I don't think it could even take a significant part of the market, and I will explain why. First, people get extremely frustrated because their mobile CB radio performs so poorly, with regard to range. As mentioned above, that is almost always due to the antenna. The primary problem is, the average DIY person doesn't poses the tools or skills to properly install a CB and antenna, nor verify if it is working correctly. This wasn't always the case, but somewhere in time, this common knowledge kind of vanished, leading people to think they can just bolt on the antenna and life is good. Then, there is the size of the antenna. The shortest proper length for a CB antenna is 104 inches. That's not a type-o... that is over eight and a half feet. Not everyone is willing to put an antenna that big on their vehicle. So, you see everyone using a compromised antenna... like the 4' and even 3' firestik antennas. I own a 4 footer and a 1 footer, but I know they are only going to work for a mile or less. FRS is at a frequency that only requires a 6" antenna, and the installation is way, way more forgiving. Just by it's nature, its not common to incorrectly install an FRS antenna. And when manufacturers put even shorter antennas on them, say a 3", it's no where near the compromise made in CB with a 3' antenna. So, you take a radio and antenna that doesn't install correctly easily and complicate that install with an antenna that more resembles a dummy load than an antenna, and yeah, the performance is gonna suck. Creating an even smaller, overpriced version in a handheld doesn't sound like a good time, either. Now, there is also another issue to deal with. While there are FM CB radios available, FM quality on CB is no where near the audio quality of FRS. FRS radio uses a lot more bandwidth, which means the signal can carry more data, aka higher fidelity audio. Many people will prefer FRS just because it sounds better. END Now to upset some people... I believe that a properly installed mobile CB and antenna or a quality CB handheld will outperform an FRS radio 100% of the time. I also believe that a properly installed mobile CB and antenna AND a quality CB handheld will outperform their counterpart in GMRS radio a vast majority of the time, when it comes to P2P comms. The two top reasons why GMRS has made it to the top of the pile is due to repeaters and the frequency used is ideal for heavily wooded and dense urban areas. While generally, I believe CB is superior in many cases, it seems that US radio use in dense woods and cities are the most common use cases... hence GMRS (and FRS) win over mobile and handheld CB.

I think the fairly common rule prohibiting political speech on a privately owned repeater is a good one that makes repeater use more enjoyable for most users. That has nothing to do with being “big headed” or forgetting which country a person lives in. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution never has guaranteed that anybody can say anything anywhere at any time. When we use someone else’s repeater we need to be considerate of the rules.

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