amaff

I guess if the only thing you use GMRS for is the repeaters, sure. I'd been using GMRS for a while before I ever spoke through a repeater. And even now, for me it's mostly for emergencies (if I get hurt out hiking without cell service, etc). Almost everything I use my gear for more regularly is simplex.

I say "collapsed" because I'm honestly not convinced that's actually what happened. The hard "BY TONIGHT" deadline, and asking for call signs, smells of something else. Maybe one day the owner speaks up, or the 'FCC agent'. Maybe he was clever enough to spoof an e-mail from his 'FCC buddy' to get a bunch of people off of his gear for whatever reason. Who knows. Maybe I'm wrong and a whole bunch of GMRS repeater networks get shuttered in the coming weeks. But the whole thing just smells off.

What the world really needs right now is more threads about this

Supposedly this was a pre-warning warning, and, apparently, the owner collapsed like a house of cards. Under what seems to be, basically, zero pressure. So who knows what the story actually is there. The more stuff comes out about that, the more questions I have.

Short answer: yes, you're wrong. Longer, more nuanced answer: It depends on where you are and how comfortable you are being solely reliant on cell service if something goes wrong. I spent most of last week in areas with at best spotty (but usually no) cell coverage running GMRS radios for car-to-car and hiker-to-hiker comms. Worked great. FRS radios would work for most of that, but there are places without cell coverage where I can talk through some of our mountain-top repeaters that, were I or someone I was with to get hurt, we could call for help even without cell service. That's an edge case of an edge case, mind, but it's nice to have as a backup.

and a transmit offset (or using a Repeater channel on a GMRS radio, which will have the offset built in).

That still doesn't totally add up. If it was just a friendly head's up, what do they need a list of callsigns for? Or the hard "TODAY" deadline? That's less friendly and more potentially scare tactics. It's not like e-mail headers can't be spoofed. I'm still leaning towards 'ol boy wanted a convenient excuse to get the club off of his gear' but who knows. I mean, he knows, but he's not talking much, apparently.

That still doesn't add up. If it was just a friendly head's up, what do they need a list of callsigns for?

The 779UV is an amateur radio. You need to put it in the correct mode to allow it to work on GMRS. The GMRS frequencies are 'out of band' for an amateur radio. While holding down the V/M button, turn on the power. Use the Up and Down arrow keys to change to the GMRS setting on the display.

Yes. But you're responsible if they muck about too much and piss someone off.

I'm less "base station GMRS" and more "in the backpack and car GMRS" haha I don't really have any kind of antenna except for a nagoya mag mount on the top of a cabinet in my office. That said, I've had an HT with me all morning, and I'm up on the hill overlooking the valley so usually if it's out there and has decent punch, I can hear it, and so far I've got nothin.

Right, but breaking the links and running them as distinct repeaters seems like it's an option, ass-u-me-ing it's legit. ...................what?

Your Encode vs Decode is correct. You can leave Decode blank while you troubleshoot. Do you have the offset programmed in for the repeater? IE: Is it transmitting on the +5 MHz frequency?

I can pretty much guarantee that if you went to the store, found the owner / manager who set all this up, and said "hey could you not be on a repeater frequency" they'd say "...what's a repeater frequency?" They buy a cheap radio, set it on a random number that's quiet when they set it up, and never touch it again. Which, in fairness, is pretty much how GMRS / FRS is set up to work lol

https://youtu.be/HYiDSZxZa68? My money's on either they got trolled, or whoever runs the network needed an excuse to shut it down. That story is fishy as hell.