LeoG

No one can control another at a distance. If all of a sudden one of your users goes crazy and starts rants of a raving lunatic there is little you can do about it immediately. Eventually you can take the radio away.

That scenario Raybestos described is just about any situation a family might use GMRS for. Going to the beach, a campsite are all going to be a hour or so away from the "home base" where you have control. What if the home base is the mobile in the car? Now you are in full control because you brought it with you. I had HTs when I signed up for my license. Is that my "control" unit? My next was the mobile unit in my truck. My base station was last. So if I bring that 1st HT with my I have all the control I need over it and my license.

Maybe Mom doesn't want to go through the daunting exercise of bouncing from govt website to website in order to manage the jungle to obtain said license. It's only $35 in monies but it's 3 years off your lifespan because of what you need to go through to get it.

I would think atmospheric scatter would be a normal propagation factor as the signal dissipates power into the atmosphere.

The group of "Some People"

Pretty sure I mentioned it was my same antenna system I've been using with the RT97S, just not the same repeater. My farz O meter says 40 watts out the back, 1.4dB loss in cable 7.2dBi gain antenna 40' off the ground 92 watts ERP

On occasion I can talk with LI NY which the signal has to go through a 750 ft mountain. But it's tropospheric ducting so an entirely different phenomenon.

Not many hills on either side of me to bounce off of. Mostly just hills in the way. I do live in the valley, but I doubt they are bouncing anything beneficial to me in those cases. I just think it's propagation from above and leaking down. But at my house I think there's signal bouncing off a large building and then back to me. The signal at my house varies a lot during the day. Sometimes it at 1/2 scale and other times barely gets over a 2 squelch. Now with more power my lows are what my highs used to be for the most part and I can get 3/4 scale on the meter.

What if that activity is talking

You always here that UHF is line of sight. If you can't see it, you can't talk to it. My experience has been otherwise. Granted if you have a 1000' mountain between you and the person you want to talk to it ain't happening simplex. I just upgraded my repeaters power. Same antenna at about 40' off the ground and surrounded by trees 270º around me. Today I took a ride with my 20 watt Wouxun KG-XS20G+ with an MXTA26 Midland magnetically mounted, basically straight north. I had my phone at my repeater as I called out to it recording with a voice activated app. My truck was moving on all of these, probably around 40mph +/- 3.85 miles out with Line Of Site Full Quieting Area.wav Going farther out, on a hill but behind one also 6.54 mi Top of hill past Randal Dr.wav And then down that hill 75 feet below the other peak and still in the shadow of the hill 7.0 mi Hickory St.wav Getting worse but still very readable 7.2 mi Entering Agawam.wav Unreadable at Shoemaker Ln 7.9 mi Shoemaker Ln.wav Sounded much worse on my end and I figured I was done but really it wasn't that bad 9.25 mi McDonalds.wav Cute little experiment. Shows line of sight doesn't mean you can't be heard. Obviously you lose quieting and sometime you lose readability. It was nice to find out I could insert audio.

I'm just shocked at how every single time I get into their area I hear them. Doesn't matter what day or time. Sounds like they are running VOX and just talk to each other like they were in the same room. No idea if that's true but you'd figure they'd eventually run out of things to say. Always with the cheap toy Roger beep.

Over hear in the NE the GMRS traffic is very low. Across the river from me their are 2 Spanish speaking guys who seem to never shutup. But I think they are on low power stuff, always on x.600MHz

So you're one of those huh. Thinking the govt is trying to restrict the people from communicating with each other in less than safe conditions. Welcome to the club!

I don't think so only because cell phones take care of most communication and 90% of the people don't think 2 days ahead to set up a backup plan when that system goes down.

Well if you don't license then the eff sea seas has to search you out with a signal finder before they can fine you. That makes them very angry. Especially if you license and all they have to do is send you a letter that says go to jail (from post above )

No thank you. Sending it to them is sending it to me.

But the rest of my family fits into that category, minus my BIL because he uses radio in his trade for pulling wires. I don't think any of them know how to set up the radio. I handed them preprogrammed radios and told them what stations to use and a basic use of the talkie. Not going to be my fault if they end up stranded because I tried to get them involved. I wanted to have a small monthly time to chat on them just so they'd be familiar. No one is interested because the world is a bowl of cherries and nothing will ever go wrong.

Ya, I can't even touch the repeater from inside my house (aluminum siding doesn't help) but step outside and it's a pretty good connection. No problem with the 20 watt base and antenna.

I have a plan with the family. We have the repeater that we would go through picked out and a simplex channel that we would use when closer. Plus when I get my repeater up to snuff the plan will change to that. I'm not worried about me or the wife at all. The rest of the family doesn't practice at all. My son and DIL told me to go to Lowes because I have the truck in the family. I brought a talkie and my mobile. I went into the store looking for them and no luck. I texted and got nothing. I called and it went to VM, meaning no signal for them. Mine was pretty poor. If they had the talkie it would have been simple. On the way back to their house I gave them the talkie so they could keep in contact and keep an eye out on the load in the truck as we went back to their place. She seemed to enjoy it. But she was the one who put them away immediately because they had no room to keep the 2 talkies out. Like anything, training is key.

I have two repeaters, 17 miles and 21 miles that I talk on. Usually the 21 mile repeater. We just had our net and I confirmed the base and it was R9 and then I confirmed the talkie and it was an R7 into the repeater. Both are up about 750' on mountains. Or big hills if you live in real mountain areas.

Praise Oh Xenu, for thou have thwarted thy torture of driver hell.... Amen.

You know. If I'm in a situation and the only thing around is a HAM station and I don't have a license for it guess what? I'm going to be calling out on that radio because at that point it was my only communication available. That's just real life.

I have 10. 1 was bad. It was the first batch I bought. Lowest output is 4.5 watts and highest is 4.7 Didn't have problems programming any of them using ODMaster or by keyboard. I like the radio. It's very compact and still has nice features. Battery life is 2 days for the most part. The bad one was replaced without a fight and instead of just giving a new radio they gave me the kit of 1. So extra battery, charger, cords and two more antennas. I say they compensated me for the bad talkie. And they didn't ask for the old one to be returned. I'm pretty happy with all of them.

It's what happens when you put yourself up on a pedestal to look down over the little people.

I'm betting they plan on doing that anyway.