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There's other rules they've broken. For example, the "owner" of the network maintains ownership of all the equipment. They charge for access to the network and have various tiers. FCC regs say you can only charge an equitable amount (ie: the same) for the shared costs of the repeater. They use these funds for all kinds of non-repeater stuff, which is fine if that's what you want to have a club for, to buy Gary a radio studio in a trailer, but that can't be tied to repeater access Also, the "owner" of the network has started a side business selling radios, and links to that business from the GMRS group's website. When he first started it a year or two ago, they were talking about it on their 'nets', but someone pointed out to them the regs on commercial use and advertising on GMRS they toned that down on the air, but seems to still be going hot and heavy on Facebook and their website Lastly, this group is a non-profit in the state of Georgia but does not appear to be a non-profit registered with the IRS, so god himself only knows the level of tax evasion that has gone on there

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

Only if your radio has gold fringe. Then it's an admiralty radio and you can do whatever you want

It has to do with the certification of the radio, and what type of radio the manufacturer had it certified as. If the radio was certified as a handheld by the FCC it's gonna be subject to those rules no matter what you affix it to