Ian

"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.) Mobile Repeaters can be done!

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?

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. :|

Today, Beekeeper's question E. Per HamStudy, I've reached 66% proficiency. In another week, I should be able to sit for my licensing exam.

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.

Is the Rino repeater capable? All signs (and the manual) point to yes! This may be the most powerful fully-capable handheld GMRS radio on the market. I never realized people (who weren't birdwatching) might be put off by Roger beeps &c. I don't mean to be deliberately obtuse, but may I ask why you'd be upset by those? Also, what's MDC?

Actually, that's … a really interesting idea. A repeater controller that accepts input on the output frequency… but only when a particular tone code is used does it activate parrot mode. Very clever, but probably best prototyped with ham radio equipment and frequencies. Bet you could trivially achieve it with a Raspberry Pi as the repeater controller… My MicroMobile XMT275 doesn't do this. Unless they made changes since the New Years' sale, it hasn't been fixed.

Corey, an excellent point! In my wishlist going forward for HTs, I want them to transmit their callsign in a burst of fast Morse when you key up… but also include morse-decoding hardware and a minimal "who's talking now" screen. It should be trivial to integrate with hardware incorporating Roger beeps, but provide a lot more information. (It's part of my concept for a new car satnav; the Roger beep at the end of the transmission includes GPS coordinates in some other easily-decoded fashion. PSK or ASCII might be more efficient, but Morse has such a good heritage…) Why do they strip PL during IDing? That seems seriously counterproductive… As for most people not understanding Morse, anyone keying up frequently, like one might do while jamming a repeater, would tend these days to get recorded, and said recordings fed into one of the many cheap / free smartphone Morse decoders.

Fridge logic has struck me. In how much of the country is channel 14 being used? Microsoft is pursuing whitespace broadband designed to use under-utilized TV channels. I can't help but wonder if that will herald a loosening up of these allocations -- or a clamping down on our guard bands.

if there are no other repeaters sharing the channel, and especially if it's a new repeater, I can see the appeal of having the thing ID every fifteen minutes just to announce "Hey, there's an open repeater here!" Given that you seem to operate in a dense environment, that seems unnecessary - you can presume that there's a repeater available. On the other hand, I live in a coverage gap between three repeaters, and frankly I'm not even sure any of them are still on the air at all.

Ultimately, my goal with a garage repeater is essentially a chunky base station radio with a pocket-sized "terminal". But I live in a coverage gap between all the repeaters in the area. When conditions are good, I can occasionally hear one ID. 95% of the time, I hear nothing from them; 100% of the time, I can't open them up. I think there's a role for the garage repeater, but that role goes away if there's preexisting good coverage.

Per the comparison chart here, the UV-50X3 is indeed a part 90 radio.

How do you get in on this network? And are these point-to-point links, or some kind of national or regional network?

FCC regs specifically prohibit linking GMRS with POTS. Recent FCC opinions, since superseded by the PRS reforms, have said "Yes, but only if you don't get your internet from DSL". The PRS reforms have eliminated the exemptions - GMRS may not be interconnected with POTS. Here's where it gets hilarious. POTS is defined nowhere in the Federal Register (any more). Last time it had a published definition, though, the current global IP telephony system bore absolutely zero resemblance to the POTS network in question. Per basic Constitutional principles, what isn't prohibited is permitted, so…

First: Welcome to the hobby, welcome to the forum, and welcome to the community! Second: The Midland MicroMobile have some issues you should be aware of. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/1352-midland-mxt400/?p=10934 In short, they're narrower than narrowband, and are operating on a wideband radio service. Those running 25 kHz deviation will hear you very quietly, and those deviating near their limits on wideband transmitters will clip on yours.

I'll also +1 this - thank you guys, I never knew how the ± notation worked.

If you want privacy, I'd recommend the Motorola 900 MHz FHSS gear. It's obscure enough that nobody really uses it, proprietary enough that there's not any scanning hardware for it (to my knowledge), and if you feel clever you can get the old gear and run a mag-mount antenna. What do you need privacy for, anyway? Just don't want incessant, irrelevant chatter, or something?

https://amzn.to/2Hlpmpg Doesn't stop people from selling FRS radios as "license free" "business radios".

Samcom is offering some nice looking radios on Amazon that claim to be GMRS certified, and their featureset is rather compelling. Well, no it's not. It's the user interface that's compelling. It's got a large, clear, and backlit LCD. It can simultaneously watch two channels, or transmit on one or another using a face-mounted or side-mounted dual PTT system. Allegedly, the front PTT transmits on all the programmed channels simultaneously. Grabbing one of those simply so I only have to say "WRCH569, Monitoring" once is tempting, honestly. It's a mid-tier 20-channel radio with unclear FCC licensing data, but claims to radiate 4.95 watts with them, 3 watts on their website, and a whole bunch'o other useless information, but the half-inch high channel numbers, physical channel-change knob, and lockable all-of-the-buttons is kind of compelling for when you want to hand a radio to someone who struggles with anything as complicated as a Radius SP21.

Welcome to the community, WQYW694.

I just spent half an hour on the phone with Ritron's engineering department. Found out a few interesting things! Possibly the only hardware they got certified for GMRS was in Canada - the customer callbox, and the Jobcom base station. They don't know if those certifications are valid in the US, but I'm going to encourage them to get some handhelds certified. Their Liberty Repeater IS certified, and the guy who "owns" that project clocks out at 3:30. Four minutes before, and I'd have gotten to talk to him today, but as it stands I'll talk to him tomorrow. I'm interested in how the heck one hooks up a linear amp to one to bring it back up to 50 watts from two to five. Depending on what they can do with the duplexer, it may be my turnkey option of choice. The DTX telemetry radios and the base station do not, contrary to popular belief, share any hardware. … But they don't make any GMRS certified mobiles or handhelds.

Bluetooth speaker-mics are legal on the personal radio services, now, so it sounds like I'm good. Are you suggesting that the older DTR and DLR radios had SMA antenna connectors? Now I'm back to wanting a VHF/UHF/900 antenna for the truck, the house, &c. I can see some concern with unlicensed operators, but I really don't think it's a huge concern -- only place I've seen the DTRs is at the local YMCA, and I can pretty easily program a user and group ID that they don't use, on the off chance that I'm driving by there and am briefly in range while they're transmitting. I think this solves my "cheapish tiny portable repeater" problem pretty elegantly, though!

Also using a mag-mount on a cookie sheet right now to scan the simplex channels.

https://www.motorolasolutions.com/content/dam/msi/docs/products/two-way-radios/on-site-business-radios/dlr-application-briefs/dlr_spec_sheet.pdf Would it be legal to use a $10 cross-band-repeater cable with these ISM radios and GMRS? I can't see anything saying it's forbidden…

I own four of the Dakota Alert HTs, three or four of the base stations (three, I think), and a Radio Shack mobile MURS radio (that I haven't installed in the truck yet). They're not what I would call small -- though they mercifully use AA NiMH batteries, so you don't have to dismantle and repack the battery pack when they go bad. There's a VHF version of those tiny little things? That's perfect! I was looking at the Alinco DJ-C1 and its immediate successors, but they appear to be very scarce and expensive, and while they only do about 300 mW, that's fine across the house.