Ian
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Posts posted by Ian
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Enquiring minds want to know... Does this mean you now have your ham ticket???
Yes -- that is a goal.
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Nice! Now I have to bug my uncle to renew his amateur license since he's got a 2m rig gathering dust...
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Happy hunting, Thames -- I look forward to your inevitable success, new friends, and new skills.
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I disagree that GMRS is only for talking to family members on the same license. Here in NW Indiana most activity is licensed user to licensed user...
That isn't the stated purpose of the radio service, but I think it's a better use of the band too. I've reached out to random contacts, but usually they just stop transmitting. D:
My condolences on the loss of your grandfather. That is tough for many of us, for sure.
You put some pretty personal stuff out there... and I appreciate that. It helps me understand what you are going through. Knowing those things puts some light on what and why. Also, makes it so I wish you success and wanting to point you in a good direction even more.
Most of my time on CB is pretty evenly spent on 19 and 28, but 6, 11, 19, 22, and 28 are all usually pretty busy. However, night time it is almost completely dead. Recreational users are mostly day-time and the OTR truck drivers are usually just looking for some quite time at night.
I wish you the best of luck. If I can think of anything else positive to contribute, I'll let you know.
I wasn't doing anybody any favors dancing around the issues. I'm aware my desires are idiosyncratic, and I'm sometimes prickly. I look forward to devising clever solutions to my weird problems, sharing for the world to see, and making friends with the people who have similar problems.
I'm really tempted to put another Midland 275 in the family ragtop, after the 100 freaked out. I'm super not impressed with their mag-mounts, and I'm trying to get Sti-Co to talk to me after early negotiations; I want a fender-mounted antenna that doesn't require any new holes for each of our cars, but they went silent when I pointed out that the sales agent was looking at roof-mount "sharkfin" antennas and I wanted their higher-gain fender mount. Irritiating, but unsurprising. Given the family friction, reversible mods are definitely favored over drilling holes, which is me-having-a-long-sigh motivating, but it is what it is. Fortunately, Ozzie UHF-CB enthusiasts have embraced the handheld control head with 8p8c jacks -- ethernet. So I'm looking for a good way to hang a few handheld control heads in a Tacoma's cab, and moreso a late model Miata. Midland's mic hangers are too deep, and give the weight too much leverage to rip the sticky off; command strips with hooks and "buddy hooks" were quickly winning, but in flor-I-duh, the heat and humidity will melt command strips too! Not quite back to square 1, but it's frustrating. At least the buddy hook lets me stash the speaker-mic on the E-brake while driving, but you really can't see the display from above (stupid calculator display!)I'll probably try to get the rest of my "minimally-licensed" radios bought or installed, and I've got like three cubic meters of the lights and luminaries of genre fiction competing with the ham study, which is the real limiting factor once I get done with estate work. I'm leaning toward Uniden CMX-560 and 760 radios, but I really resent that you can't get a SSB CB in a handheld controlhead form factor. It's stupid, but it's a big reason I hesitate. Given the resemblance between the HHCH radios from Uniden on CB and Midland on GMRS, I really have to suspect a common cheap-chinese-radio source behind them, and wonder if I should go there.
Speaking of estate work? My grandfather had one heck of a run, a long and happy life, and a short illness at the end - just enough time to come to terms with it. Ideal, in most people's estimation, but I still miss the man. Can't say he didn't do it all right along the way, though.
Sorry if that sounded like it was directed specifically at you, it wasn't. I just meant other users might not be interested in talking outside their own user group. This is particularly true for family based groups where the communications tend to be limited to immediate practical matters (pick up some tomatoes while you are at the market...).
BTW, A quick look at the RepeaterBook page for Florida seems to show a lot of activity on 2M
Good luck with your ham ticket.
it stung at first, but the more I tried to reach out to contacts, the more I realized that most of them were FRS users who were freaked out by sharing a channel than GMRS users trying to make contact.
I've got a ... (goes out to garage) Midland 70-1336b 2m rig waiting for some love. (It'll need a lot of bias resistors replaced to access the A range; the B range is very much business only, if my memory is correct)
Thank you! Just need to find some me-time where my brain hasn't been reduced to runny jello first to polish off the studying and take the silly test already!
Anyway, I'm out of brutal honesty, and need some sleep.
Edit: Oh, Berkinet? GMRS isn't really dead in Florida, I just live in a big hole in repeater coverage, and those I can hear are boring to listen to. I gotta believe they're run by snowbirds, who only use them seasonally. Otherwise, it's hard to understand why tower leases are maintained while everything's abandoned. I look forward to our resident mad scientist and his Oviedo project.
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A buddy of mine flies drones. Be careful, left- and right-handed polarization are not the same!
Edit: Yes, he learned that the crash way.
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On the contrary, simplex has managed to turn screaming-at-each-other into smooth trips to the grocery store while caravanning, so I've gotten the utility out of GMRS I hoped for!
Diabetes leads to "hangry" turns quickly to domestic abuse. I've managed to defuse at least three screaming sessions because UHF, so I've gotten my money's worth. Still, I remember hurricane Charlie, and when Verizon was the only network with generators on their towers… since then they've given me two hurricanes worth of disappointment, and my family switched. T-Mo is still crap in a pinch, but at least they can be bothered to ring my phone when I'm home!
Okay, two big messages, I'll try to be thorough, but I appreciate the input!
I have to disagree with a good portion of this. Especially about the "purpose" of CB and GMRS. Depending on what service you are talking about, the purpose is non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, "radio sport", contesting, and emergency communication. Meaning, these services are provided for users to incorporate a common communications platform into your life and life activities, such as the aforementioned.
That's paraphrasing the FCC's justification for services. My justification is simple -- avoid getting screamed at. That's solved, but I could do better. (Though I've had to pull the Midlands out of service due to malfunction in at least one of them; one of the mag-mount antennas literally fell apart! I'm disappointed with customer service so far.)
If lack of radio contact is truly your experience, its not the bands or the service you are using. There is a very high likelihood that there are some significant flaws in your radio and/or antenna setup, and I will explain why.
Truly is. I have to scowl at your luck with CB on I-95 -- what channel are you on? I tend to prefer night driving to daytime, to dodge traffic, personally, but even day traffic is pretty silent. GMRS is silent, but the SARnet repeaters are lively, and are motivating me to get my ham ticket. (Close…) I'll try and join the UCF hamfest when feasible, but I just buried my grandfather and my time is an ugly mess lately, so club meetings are a distant fantasy for the next couple months.
Thing with ham is that the screaming diabetic family members are also dealing with "just buried my grandfather" and are short on "bandwidth" (and I quote). It'd be nice to be able to use the cheap radios, but I have some personal issues to deal with, and the rest of my family has more responsibility to the estate, so we'll see how it goes.
BTW, even if there were GMRS users in your area with the desire to talk to people on the same license, what makes you think they would or should want to talk to you?Ouch. That stings!
I'm working on my ham ticket, but it's not likely that I'm going to inherit my grandfather's Japanese-built WW2 VHF gear. Florida seems to be all in on UHF, though, so no large loss.
I should add the Technician test is pretty easy. I personally, think I could of taken the test with about 3 days of study. Unfortunately, couldn't match any test times. Which resulted in a 3 week study time.
Agreed on all points, alas.
Thoughtful edit: If we sprung, as a family, for newer iPhones which supported the 600 MHz band, maybe we wouldn't have comms blackouts and I wouldn't have been screamed at for long enough to buy a radio license and hundreds of dollars of mobile and handhelds (MURS and GMRS) but then I'd never have discovered the amateur satellite field, which I'd be poorer for.
Also I can't change other people, but I still need to communicate with them. That leaves not a lot of high-performing options, and I think I can't afford an itinerant license on, say, Red Dot.
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I have to know, why are you so set on a repeater like this? Unless a Manufacture knows its going to sell 100's of units its not going to put the time and money into this. Even construction sites that only need a repeater for a few blocks install full size repeaters simply for the duty cycle and reliability. Now in the part 90 world you can have your self a Motorola SLR1000 these do analog or DMR and are made to be tower mounted. This is all deal breakers for your wish list, its not part 95 and it will set you back $1900 but hey it is "new". I have state of the art SLR5700's in use on a business system and many 15 year old MTR 2000's in use on GMRS. For the record the SLR5700's I own (2 @ $2200 each) have given me more issues in 2 years than 10 USED MTR2000 have in 4 years. In fact one needs to go back to the depot for repair again! NEW is not always better, the list price on a NEW MTR2000 was upward of $8000 so I am more then happy to run a USED $8000 repeater I got for $800 bucks or less vs a NEW machine I paid $800 to $1000 for.
In your price point and requirement of off the shelf and legal I envision this big lunch box size FRS/GMRS radio with a 4' telescopic center loaded antenna and a rechargeable battery inside. I'm sure adding a solar panel and maybe a dynamo crank to charge the battery, a local mic, weather channels, maybe even a flashlight and an AM/FM radio will help sell more to the masses. This all sounds good (ha ha) but an off the shelf turn key repeater marketed as part 95 for GMRS is just a bad idea. Last thing we need is 100's of unlicensed repeaters all over the place with kids on them causing interference to real repeaters that people invested time and money into. If you need an example just look at all the FRS/GMRS combo radios that never got a licence and the FCC just made them licence by rule, again not good for GMRS. This unicorn you have been hunting will work about as good as simplex without an antenna at significant height above ground.
If this is a hobby, I can't afford it. If this is a utility, I can't justify those prices. Based on my personal cash flow, occasional capital expenses are more tolerable than subscriptions, but scraping up $400 to buy a Drobo was a feat.
I graduated into a ruined economy with a degree that isn't worth nearly so much as my college advice said it should be - would have been, if not for 2008 and the incredible vanishing prosperity.
Combine that with the utter lack of chatter on the radio in Florida, and lowering the barrier to entry starts to seem reasonable to me. There are no repeaters reliably in range of my home, though atmospherics can do interesting things -- last week I opened a Jacksonville repeater from Cape Canaveral pretty reliably. Still, I'm elated when I hear a 5 year old talking to her grandmother on channel 3, because it's the only traffic I've heard on the airwaves that I didn't put there in six months or more.
The purpose of GMRS is to talk to people on the same license. The purpose of CB is to talk to people on different licenses. They both stink, for one reason or another, at doing that down here. (Last thing I heard on CB was a year ago, a random contact imploring all listeners to "smoke weed every day". They didn't reply when I tried to respond.)
The service is dead down here, and frankly so are all the other ones. Puerto Rico may see the point of off-grid comms, and K4SAT may see the point, but central Florida is generally a wasteland, both on simplex channels and repeater, too.
Edit: Just in time to make me a liar, the CB finally lights up. Contact, but completely un-understandable.
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Dare I suggest some radio direction finding equipment, and a high gain steerable antenna?
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Garmin Rino radios have been doing so for more than 10 years. The rino's have a map on the screen. When you talk over a frs or gmrs channel your icon appears on the screen of others in your party as long as they are using the same channel. The Garmin Rino's allow you to download topographical maps and city maps. The units are expensive, with the newest models costing more than $ 600.00 each, they include realtime weather radar on screen. They allow apps to be downloaded. You can text to other users. With all of these capabilities the radios are not very good. I believe they are hindered by a poorly designed non-removable antenna. This should be fixed if the Rino moves to the licensed GMRS only and uses a better antenna. The GPS works fine and outdoes other types of portable gps units.
The emphasis was on mobile, rather than satnav. I'd particularly enjoy it if it was a double-DIN in-dash unit with CarPlay, but even a dash mounted display with a transceiver you could stash wherever under the dash (like a combination of a Garmin car GPS and a Midland with the handheld control head) would have me over the moon.
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Oh, I'm well aware it's a ham repeater at the moment. I'm just pleased that someone's working on something that could be adapted to legal, off-the-shelf GMRS use for under a grand, new.
Emphasis new.
Sooner or later, the surplus will either run out, or get priced out of affordability as it gets scarce.
Hopefully this sort of thing will be available before that happens.
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Okay, so it's time for some necromancy...
The boneheaded thing is that the split is backwards. This thing can only be programmed with the Tx above the Rx. So progress, perhaps, but the lunchbox repeater isn't ready for us yet. Personally, it looks kinda nice, given that Kenwood 820s on eBay lately have all been broken, were missing buttons, or have occasionally had their controller boards removed and replaced with plugs for an external controller. The GR1225s are routinely in better shape, but none of this has been in the budget for me lately, alas. (I keep hoping I'll get lucky at an estate sale or something.)
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This is how I have it set up right now in my truck. I was considering the MXT275 for my Wrangler since there is leas room.
You'll find a lot of Australian hardware based around that form factor; it's very popular with their UHF-CB stuff. Toyotas as well can be pretty trivially fitted with the RJ45 passthroughs to make a radio install look like a factory option.
I really like my MXT275, but the mic holders are garbage. I've gone through two, and they keep falling apart, and the adhesive fails repeatedly.
Not the adhesive's fault, swapping it out for Command strips (which normally last at least a year holding my phone to the dash) resulted in a two month failure. I've recently been advised to look for a "buddy hook" and frankly, anything would be better than those things.
Still, I love the form factor, and narrowband or not, I've had results hitting and hearing repeaters in the Space Coast.
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Thanks for all the info. Thinking maybe this repeater is no longer in service
It's not super-uncommon, unfortunately.
There's one that I'd love to use adjacent to the local university, but the owner's not logged in here in five years, and his license has lapsed. D:
It's still listed in the database here, though, but the comments make it abundantly clear that it's an ex-repeater.
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I would never buy solely into commercial networks. Don't get me wrong... I love my smartphone, but the regular failures and lack of coverage, even when everything on the commercial networks work correctly, are the very reasons "radio" comms are alive and well.
They're literally the reason I got into GMRS, too.
I just switched over to FirstNet on my smartphone yesterday. Not sure id want my radios on it
Any particular reason? From what I heard, they're building out a boatload of "excess" capacity for that network.
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Honestly, if they thought of GMRS as a subset of amateur, where someone else (a ham, or a company) had to set your stuff up for you, and you were limited to "novice" bands, that wouldn't be so bad.
If GMRS were bolted to business bands still, that wouldn't be so bad.
The problem is that fragmentation of the bandplan - and moreso the market - means network effects can't take off.
Even Motorola is pitching LTE as the new answer to trunked radio deployments. "Pay us a per-unit monthly fee, and we'll handle all the infrastructure for you". I can't help but wonder if this is aimed mostly at "FirstNet" users who don't need a smartphone, or who need something that can be operated without looking at it.
The problem with that is, ultimately, that it's rent-seeking. I want to pay $40 per radio, not $40 per month per radio.
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The following is just my opinion...
Call it what you want, GMRS licensing is intended for families to use to make their life easier and more entertaining. I am making this assumption because my license is valid for everyone in my immediate family. This is too much for a family to use as a tool and "know" they are in compliance.
The worst part is, I am sure that many of us are professional geeks in IT or RF... and we are struggling to come to a consensus.
The best part is, at least no one is arguing and we are working together to figure out the right answers. That says a lot about the group. You guys are awesome...
Emphasis mine. I'll second this sentiment.
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Marc, that's because there isn't anything that … well, wide-band and new are basically mutually exclusive. BaoFeng is launching a new GMRS mobile, but I'm concerned about that for reasons of quality.
It wouldn't be entirely wrong to describe legal and high-performance radios as lost artifacts from a bygone age. Unlike the fantasy version of that, you don't have to slay a dragon to get one, but you do have to know which compromises to make, which eldritch incantations (and what other "lostech") you need to program them to do your bidding, and if you don't, knowing someone who can is a good second-best.
Like I said in the beginning, there -- there are only three legal, available-new handhelds available. There may be no mobiles or base stations that meet those criteria.
If you can find legal-on-business-band gear, odds are it won't be both new and capable of working on GMRS - new and wideband is another nearly mutual exclusive set of qualifiers. It's still not something I'm happy about as another FNG, but I'm passing through the seven stages of irritation towards acceptance, and will likely be looking into used Motorola gear new enough to have wi-fi programming options going forward, as well as any other commercial gear that happens to catch my fancy. (So far I'm batting 0 for 2 -- one "cb" I bought is 900 MHz public safety gear, and the VHF I bought at another garage sale doesn't include the amateur __or__ MURS bands. Maybe 1 for 3, if you include the Radio Shack gear from eBay with big 'ol "blue dot" and "green dot" stickers on the box.)
BaoFeng has a new GMRS mobile the BT-GMRS-50X FCC ID: 2AGND50X1G. From what I can tell it has 40 watts and is 16K0F3E wide-band.
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Thanks guys I just ordered a TK-880
And the gentleman is gonna program my local repeater in for me , I probably payed a lil to much at 120 shipped . My I’m ok with my purchase . I will need help for future programming though
You didn't overpay. I paid more for less radio only a few months ago.
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Corey, that's incredibly awesome kit. That basically fills all of my weird-XXXuse-cases, and it's super elegant work. I'd love to read more about this setup!
Motorola gear is a pain to get programming software for but not impossible. I can take a week or longer to navigate Motorola's process but in the end you will have legal software and you can get the entitlement for wideband operation for free after some quick online training. I use Motorola for the options alone, in the truck I run handheld control heads and a long range Bluetooth speaker mic so I can use the trucks radio well in restaurants our friends houses. The same mic is also on my base paired with a desktop mic, its nice being able to go anywhere in the house and just carry a small mic that allows the use of the base. This gear is a little pricey but can be found used on ebay reasonable, its all comes down to personal preference.
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Corey is dead on. I spent many thousands of dollars on each repeater system i have online and have money sitting in new repeaters waiting for towers. It is not uncommon to spend upwards of $10,000 if buying all new gear. My last repeater that went online was a MTR3000 ($6500.00), Duplexer ($1800.00), 7/8" Hardline (175' @ 2.50'), DB408 - ($800.00), plus connectors, hangers, cable pulls, ground kits, ground wire. Yes we can all do this stuff for a lot less but it really depends on what you want out of the repeater.
If you start your post with "Currently running on two Baofeng 5R with limited range" then its not a repeater that we should be putting in a database nor one that will benefit you or others. The goal is to have a repeater that is beneficial to the end user.
Since I moved south I have 2 repeaters, antenna's and hard line. Neither are up yet as i want it to be worthwhile. One is waiting on a tower for my house and the other will be on a 400' tower if i can ever work out an agreement with the owners.
"A repeater that is beneficial to the end user" can be quite limited in reach, if it covers a small, user-dense, area with no cellphone coverage, though. Low-altitude, low-power, and transportable systems can be extremely valuable. You just can't pretend you're going to blanket a whole ZIP code with two potatofengs. Understanding and evaluating your requirements is the first step in speccing out any system, be it radio, computer, or chemical plant, for that matter. Frankly, festivals and such are probably 30% of my use case, all of which can be covered by a truck mounted repeater without much trouble. (It helps that the fairgrounds slope away from the parking area, in my case - but again, understanding and evaluating requirements.)
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So, in another thread, I've been told that high-performance part 95 gear has already all been discontinued.
I think the Garmin Rino is the last of the wideband GMRS handhelds available. There's the BaoFeng, at two watts. There's the TERA, with one bank of 16 channels, and no way to program CTCSS in the field. Then there's the Rino 700 series, which do five watts, 25 kHz, and repeaters and tones can be programmed from the front panel, per the manual.
Is this really the last high-performance handheld on the market?
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Yeah, in all fairness, you were answering the OP's direct questions.
Good luck on the test. If you ever get into DMR, maybe we'll make contact on the North America talkgroup.
I've got a GD-77s. At the moment, it's set up to scan the GMRS repeaters in the region, on the off chance - but it has happened - that conditions are ideal enough I can hear 'em. Even outdoors with fifteen watts, I can't get into 'em, though. :|
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As to the specific suggestion about a Dual-Mode repeater, exactly what problem are you trying to address?
Today, Beekeeper's question E.
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.Per HamStudy, I've reached 66% proficiency. In another week, I should be able to sit for my licensing exam.
- berkinet and Elkhunter521
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To the best of my understanding, simplex receivers are kosher on the 462 repeater outputs. This requires parsing Federal Registers, though, so your milage should be expected to vary, and neither of us, I suspect, are lawyers.
And this bizarre mixed-mode repeater is best developed on amateur channels, and only cautiously introduced to GMRS once the kinks are worked out.
Seeking feedback on GMRS plan
in Guest Forum
Posted
N4gix, do you have any supporting information on the RT-97 being GMRS capable? Because the way they sell it, you'd have to listen on 462 and transmit on 467.
I really hope that you're right about this thing...