berkinet

Nice humor padre. But, I’d say that was more of a Hanukkah joke than a Passover joke

I had assumed the first couple of responses had adequately addressed the original post. But, that seems to not be the case. So, I will give it a try... #1) GMRS and Amateur radio are two completely separate services with different applications, users and purposes. In particular, the US Amateur Radio service is based on International agreements: #2) As the FCC made clear in its response to the 2014 petition, allowing non-certified radios to be used in the GMRS "would allow for the proliferation of home-built, non-standardized transmitters in the GMRS, with no practicable way for the Commission to monitor and enforce regulatory compliance for these devices." Further, allowing licensed amateurs to operate non-certified equipment in the GMRS would provide special privileges for users of one service operating in another, completely unrelated, service. This would be an extremely slippery slope, one any regulatory agency would want to avoid. #3) Amateur Radio and GMRS each have their place in the world. I believe the FCC made the right decision. Blurring the boundary between the two would not result in any real benefit for anyone and might cause a lot of problems for both services. #4) If you really want/must use ham gear on GMRS, go ahead, nobody is really going to stop you. Take responsibility for your action and operate accordingly. Just do not expect the FCC to officially condone your actions.

Do not overlook licensing issues. Since most people on site will not be from the same family, you are going to need a lot of licenses. $70 isn’t much to someone who is interested in GMRS as a long term service. But, some may consider that excessive for a week’s use. Amateur licensing is an issue as well. But, the cost (for testing) is much lower and each participant will also be taking a radio class, worth something on its own.

Hi back at ya, and welcome.

Well, that is not at all what I understood. I think he wanted to set his NOAA radio in front of a GMRS radio so that whenever the weather radio was on, it would operate the GMRS radio by VOX. He rationalized that any weather announcement was of “life or death” significance. That is not true. Also, note the NOAA service broadcasts weather announcements as well as warnings, there is no selectivity. This plan is a clear violation of the no broadcasting provision in Part 95E.

Note the original post was about retransmitting NOAA weather broadcasts. Unless there was a means to determine which broadcasts fell into the "serious life and property threatening" category, blanket repeats of such broadcasts would not be legal. If you limit the retransmissions to only EAS (Emergency Alert System) and then only retransmitted messages that pertained to the coverage area of the repeater, you might have a case. Honestly however, there are already plenty of systems for relaying and receiving EAS messages and I am not sure what the benefit would be for adding a GMRS relay channel. Yes, it might be useful for those who monitor a given GMRS frequency (simplex or repeater) 24 hours a day. If I lived in an area that is likely to have messages meeting the criteria of immediacy, I would probably sign up for a public alert service like NIXLE.

#1. You cannot retransmit or relay signals from another service, except in case of an actual current emergency. #2. The emergency must pose immediate severe threat to life or property.. Very few weather warnings would meet the standard. And, for those, there are other, better, alert systems already in place.

I have no idea.

Some repeaters, like the Motorola GR1225, have separate options to pass PL from the rcvr to xmtr or filter the incoming PL and then regenerate it on the output.

In addition to @Jones comments. If the channel 14 frequency spectrum was used in even just one area of the country, the FCC would, with good reason, never allow the spectrum to be used for another service that did not have geographic restrictions in its licensing. Eg. GMRS.

From the Rino 700 User Manual... Repeater Channels This device can use GMRS repeater channels in the US, and CBRS/PRS repeater channels in Australia and New Zealand. GMRS repeater channels are not available in Canada. Repeater channels use repeaters, when available, to enable communication around obstacles or increase transmission distance. Position reporting is not allowed by the FCC on GMRS repeater channels. The 600 series manual also says it supports repeaters

Perhaps I was being too subtle. Let me be a little more direct. It seems to me you spend a lot of time asking others for support in your quest for solutions for problems that do not exist. As to the specific suggestion about a Dual-Mode repeater, exactly what problem are you trying to address? If you are just dreaming of what could be, then as I have tried to tell you at least twice previously, there is already an excellent service for that, amateur radio. Instead of floating ideas you want other's opinions on, take the time to get a study book and take the ham radio technician test. Honestly, it is easy. If you can't grasp the (fairly basic) technological side at first, just study the questions and memorize the answers - believe me, you would not be the first person do do that. The test consists of 35 questions drawn from a pool of 426 questions... and all 426 of them are available online or in print. With a ham ticket (and a little money) in hand, you would be free to start experimenting with some of your ideas.

Leaving aside the questionable legality of "simplex repeaters" on GMRS, just think a moment about this idea... How can a repeater listen on its own output? Presumable there would need to be two receivers listening to both input and output frequencies and then deciding how to respond based on which receiver picked up the signal. So, how could you ever switch back and forth between the two modes? What if there was one user on "simplex" and another in "repeater" mode, they could never communicate. All of this because someone can't program their radio, or bought the wrong radio. My suggestion is, get a HAM license if you want to experiment. That is exactly what the amateur radio service is for. In the meantime, GMRS was designed for a specific set of use cases, and it seems to do those pretty well. I am not in favor of creating a second "amateur" radio service out of GMRS.

You don’t need a duplexer to repeat VHF on UFH or visa-versa. And anyway, VHF duplexers are large and I have never seen a dual-band duplexer in a single mobile unit. Finally, I would not think a single dual band antenna would work very well for simultaneous VHF/UHF use. Not to mention cross-banding onto or from GMRS is strictly prohibited.

Many of the UHF and UHF/VHF mobile radios sold today will meet your requirements 1-4. Look at Amazon. If you would accept lower power, the list gets even longer.

Ok, I'll bite. Why in the world would you want a duplexer built into a mobile radio? And, how would you expect someone to be able to sell that for under under $150? If what you want is a radio that is also capable off being a repeater, note that it would need to be capable of simultaneous reception and transmission with a duty cycle high-enough that wouldn't melt the finals after 5 minutes.

There are plenty of radios made that meet your requirements. The issue is, only a few of them are Part-90 certified and almost none are Part-95 certified. As to why, my guess is the cost of FCC certification (it is not cheap) would not be justified by an increase in sales. In other words, people that care are buying radios from quality companies and are willing to pay the price. The rest want cheap and that is what they get.

This radio is NOT Part-90 certified as applies to GMRS. For UHF 406.1-480.0 the radio is approved for 5K21F3E (5.21kHz) and, as Axorlov noted, 10K4F3E (10.4 kHz). These correspond to Narrow (6.25kHz) and Wide (12.5) band FM. So, it would, at first, seem this radio might be ok on GMRS. However, In their cover letter BTECH states The Mobile Radio with FCC ID: 2AGNDUV50X3 was designed to operate in the frequency bands 400-480MHz&136-174MHz. To aid equipment authorization in other countries which accept the United States FCC Grant for certification, BTECH (BaoFeng Tech) is requesting that the FCC lists the frequencies 400-480MHz136-174MHz, under FCC Rules Parts 90 on the FCC Grant. BTECH (BaoFeng Tech) attests that the repeater will not be marketed to USA users with the frequency band which is not allowed by the rule part 90. Per the FCC’s KDB634817 guidance, as an alternative to listing the exact frequencies, we acknowledge that it’s a violation of the FCC Rules if this device operates on unauthorized frequencies. Then, in the frequency table attached to that letter UHF: 400-480MHz Frequency Range(MHz) FCC Rule Part 400-406 MHz For Federal 406.1-450 MHz FCC Part 90 450-454 MHz FCC Part 90 456-460MHz FCC Part 90 460-462.5375MHz FCC Part 90 462.7375-467.5375MHz FCC Part 90 467.7357-470MHz FCC Part 90 470-480MHz FCC Part 90 Note, they explicitly exclude GMRS: 462.5500 - 462.7250 & 467.5500 - 467.7250 So, while the UV-50X3 may be freely used on the Ham bands and in Part-90 service on the stated bands, it cannot be used as either a Part-95 radio or a Part-90 radio on GMRS. So, Corey's postulate on Part-90 radios on GMRS would not apply.

I think it is well accepted that POTS is equivalent to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). The clear intent of the FCC regulation is to prohibit phone patches. This was probably to avoid competition with the Phone companies and RCCs. DSL is a transport layer service. It is not per-se a service. DSL is generally used to transport Internet (*IP) services. However, it can also carry PSTN directly and/or you can also carry PSTN over IP (VoIP). Bottom line, connecting GMRS stations over the Internet is not prohibited. Connecting GMRS stations over the PSTN (regardless of how it is delivered) is prohibited. Also, I’d note, there is no such Constitutional principle. There is a common saying that there are two systems of law: those where anything not prohibited is allowed, and those where anything not allowed is prohibited. But, that is no more than an adage and has no real basis in fact.

Did you also set your FRS/GMRS radio to PL on receive to be sure you are sending the right PL? And, did you listen to the repeater's input frequency (467.550 - 467.725) to be sure you are actually transmitting on the repeater's input?

You probably are transmitting. When you unkey (stop transmitting) do you see any bars on the meter? Or, as @haneysa noted, do you hear a short squelch tail? Possibly like this? For more information on squelch noise take a look at this page. Another test you can try is to listen on another radio or scanner. Any of the cheap import radios sold on Amazon that receive UHF will do. However, I'd suggest you get one that allows keypad programming, like this one. With a second radio you can listen for your own output and also listen for the repeater's output (but, make sure you have some distance between the receiving radios and your transmitter). Note however that these cheap radios are of low quality and not legal on GMRS (though many people use them anyway). But, it is always good to have something like this around for testing - which is exactly what you want to do.

Yes, GMRS is not amateur radio. However, also note there are private ham repeaters as well. Given hams (generally) voluntarily coordinate* repeaters, a private repeater effectively means a private frequency. Yes, you can talk simplex on the input or output. But, you are very likely incur the wrath of the repeater's users. So, while both services have open and closed (really a much better word than private) repeaters, because there is no coordination required, the situation on GMRS is really quite different. * Coordination of repeaters is not specifically required in Part-97. However, it does state: c: Where the transmissions of a repeater cause harmful interference to another repeater, the two station licensees are equally and fully responsible for resolving the interference unless the operation of one station is recommended by a frequency coordinator and the operation of the other station is not. In that case, the licensee of the non-coordinated repeater has primary responsibility to resolve the interference.

If they are using Wi-Fi and not Cellular/PCS, then they will almost certainly be on either or both the 2.4gHz and 5gHz bands. If your repeater is of even only half-decent quality (I.e. not just two CCRs lashed together) the likelihood of interference is nil. But, as Radioguy7268 noted, you would probably still be held accountable if there was a problem. BTW, The antenna is just 1/2 the issue. You need rack space as well. Also, you might ask if remote access (Internet) is available. Virtually any radio that can be programmed via a computer can also be programmed remotely. All it takes is a single board computer (eg Raspberry-Pi), a little know-how, and an Internet connection.

Note the FCC registration cited in the Amazon listing is for Part-15C, not even Part-90, let alone Part-95x.

As I read the regulations, what you are proposing would not be allowed. That is because your fee is fixed, while your costs are not. If, on the other hand, you were to divide the annual costs of operation plus the remaining unrecovered capital costs across the number of private tone users, perhaps adding a $100 cap, my guess is that would be Ok. You could keep charging the $100 until the gross annual income exceeded the the remaining unrecovered capital costs + annual operating costs. At that point, you would need to reduce the fee. I believe you are misinterpreting the term non-profit as meaning a specific type of corporation or business. However, as I read the FCC regulations, they mean simply that income cannot exceed expenses (capital and operation). I suppose if it took someone's time to actually manage the station, and that person was paid for the work, you could also recover an amount equal to the actual labor costs. Same for management. If you could somehow demonstrate there were management costs specifically associated with operation of the station(s) then you could recover that as well. But, you'd better be prepared to back-up your accounting with good data. OTOH, just forming a non-profit corporation would not entitle you to charge all costs of the corporation to station users.