Ian

All good points. Leaning towards MotoTalk as my cross-band solution, 'cause it's as license-free as FRS and so much less congested. However, I'm backing off on the mobile repeater for the time being, and I'll figure something else out. Probably going to double down on the garage repeater; with a little luck I'll find a used Kenwood TKR840 or Ritron Responder in acceptable condition to tide me over until I can get to the advanced stuff.

Both truly excellent ideas! I'll be hitting them up on Twitter and mentioning it in any relevant Facebook groups I can find… Signal amplification for the win!

Thank you, padre!

My condolences.

http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/facepalm.jpg Edit: Holy crap, the Midland is TWICE THE PRICE!!! D: Edit: I'm morbidly curious to see if the LT-590 programming software would work on the Midland…

Hey, we can see individual repeaters' coverage circles on the map. Is it possible, or at least reasonably feasible, to map all the repeaters' coverage circles simultaneously? Especially if some can be disabled (as a couple repeaters in the database seem to be down for the count, and a few others seem to be down for repair or upgrades, according to email exchanges I've had). Penny for your thoughts?

Hans, I'm going to slyly take what you're doing here and run with it. Let's rationalize the entire Personal Radio Service. MURS becomes part of FRS. They're both allowed two watts, business use, and no repeaters, yes? GMRS gains the ability to listen to repeater inputs (a blindingly obvious solution, in hindsight, from my ham radio study guide) and … let's call it eight 50 watt VHF channels. Half will be repeater inputs, half will be repeater outputs. Preferentially taken from the color-dot pool, since the market has matured, and business radios aren't sold with all of the available channels programmed in any more. Yeah, actually, that'd be perfect. In the mean time, Uniden (may) have me covered. Quarterwave: The hardware's the problem. What do you think about starting up group-buys on Massdrop for legal-but-unprofitable custom kit like better wireless mics? If anything I said here would be done, merging FRS and MURS would be the golden ticket. It'd reduce the number of boxes I carry every day.

I'm rocking the midland micromobile mxt105 - simplex only, but I'm quite fond of it. I was thinking about rolling an all-Midland repeater, but then I remembered that they don't have anything cheap (actually, they don't have anything AT ALL) that can listen on the repeater inputs. Tangent: why does the mxt400 have a data terminal on the front panel, which the manual says isn't used?

I did hundreds of hours of reading before asking for help. The most important result of that reading was finding out what was possible, and how out of my depth I was. The second most important result was to become angry and confused, as I realized that it's basically not possible to use new-production radios on GMRS beyond two watts, or with repeaters, with a few important (but non-overlapping) exceptions. I explored going business band, but I'm not entitled to buy a business license without using the radios to earn a profit, or at least performing activities tangential to or in support of it. I started off with cell phones, but holes in their coverage usually lead to me being screamed at. A social solution is impossible, so a technical solution, no matter how difficult or expensive, must be pursued. I explored ISM radios, but the TriSquare eXRS - my first choice - is long discontinued and absent from the secondary market. I tried MotoTALK, but it doesn't have the range to cover my entire block, and is therefore not fit for purpose. I saw Motorola's DLR series, but they're a NXDN derived system, and are technically only incompatible with MotoTALK due to deliberate changes to the FHSS hopping order, in order to impose market segmentation; like MotoTALK, they're limited to one watt, and by the propagation characteristics of 900 MHz. Even before the cell phones, I bought some early FRS radios, nice single-channel Radio Shack units, but the audio quality was unacceptable. Allegedly. (I blame reluctance from the neophobe who yells at me.) I bought some more FRS radios, and they failed within a week. (Motorola Talkabout T4300, to name-n-shame) I bought those last ones for some volunteer work, and the returns process took the entire period they would have been useful. Bought a bunch of Motorola Spirit MURS radios, which were the first really useful things I laid hands on, and I love them. But good luck finding a mobile MURS radio…. There was one certified under 95J for rally-car communication, but it was $600 new and it's been discontinued in favor of an intra-car intercom without a transceiver. I went back to the ISM band with the EnGenius cordless SN-920 cordless phone system from the pawn shop, which does one watt of 900 MHz, full duplex, with some attempt at encryption and FHSS. The system had been out of production for a decade, new batteries are not a thing, and their customer service told me to buy a new system. The Durafon 1x goes for about $550 on Amazon with one handset, but the base that supports their good handsets is $1200, and each handset is $500-550. Not happening soon. I'm running out of subparts now, and I've failed miserably at getting anyone else I know to get a ham license, citing either not-giving-a-shit, or in one case, the toxic community of fudds, and in another case "that's great I'll do it" turned into "I never said that. What's ham radio, anyway?" I have given myself panic attacks trying to read and understand case law and parse the federal register. I am now confident that the real motivation is to destroy the personal radio services so that the frequency can be leased to the highest bidder (but let's be honest, probably Verizon). Meanwhile, in Australia, home of the UHF-CB, repeater capable hardware is more-or-less Walmart grade and fairly cheap. Wireless microphones and headsets are not exotic. UHF use (for "UHF" is all you have to say to express that you're talking about unlicensed personal radios) is relatively mainstream, and they have 80 channels to our 22 (though a few are blocked off for future inventions). I find it profoundly frustrating and unfair - though I recognize nothing about the universe is intrinsically fair - that there is nothing really fitting into the niche of "prosumer" gear in the United States other than used gear of questionable reliability. (Which is to say I've had poor experiences with used radios' reliability, and new radios as well! Until my recent GMRS buying spree, I was at like one-for-seventeen UHF radios still working. I've joked that "this is where UHF gear comes to die" with serious justification.) TL;DR: I'm tired, frustrated, and anxious about this. I've done my homework, and I'm sick of owning inevitable failures. I want some successes to be proud of, dammit! I'm also aware that I wrote four pages of refutation to the accusation of "instant gratification" and that's not normal, but you discovered one of the psychological land mines I wasn't aware I had. I'm sorry this came out pointed in your general direction, but I simply can't bring myself to delete it now. May it instead illustrate some of the things I've tried that brought me to this place in my attempt to create elegant technical solutions to problems.

Breaking this out for tl;dr -

Oh, crap. I'll be doing this the manual way for the foreseeable future, then. Thank you! That's definitely the solution I'm leaning towards, if the $100 crystal-controlled Ebay special (it includes a tuned duplexer, sometimes!) doesn't happen to me soon. I'll probably use Midland -- wait. They can't listen to repeater inputs. I'll probably find the cheapest receiver I can, since unless contradicted, the best information I've found yet says that only the exciter has to be 95 certified. (Read as a component of the transmitter, when used with an amplifier, or the whole transmitter, when used without.) And no, it doesn't have to be pre-made. I'm sorry if I gave that impression, as I'm well aware that borders on impossibility. I just really want all the components to be replaceable on short notice if something goes belly-up on me. It should only take a few mW from inside the car. If this was Australia, I'd just get a Uniden UHF-CB, and the first party wireless mics, but they aren't even trying to make that available in the US, even though it's explicitly legal. Wait, that's not true - they're only making them available with connectors for three high-dollar CB radios. Cross-band repeat would be simplest, but we __do__ have the option in GMRS, as I realized last night just before bed. MotoTALK does about 0.7 watts of 900 MHz FHSS in the ISM band there, so with a custom cable and turning on vox on both the GMRS transmitter and the cellphone I'm using as a base for the "wireless mic", I really could have a cop-a-like system. Having said that, and with requests for more clarity in my needs, my "minimum viable product" is: I want a garage repeater that'll cover the neighborhood and those stores I use the most 'cause they're closest. I'm leaning towards using an Ed Fong J-pole attached to the chimney as a my antenna, and a cheap Chinese duplexer tuned so I can change channels on the repeater without visiting a radio dealer. The first enhancement to this minimum viable product shall be a battery backup, for I live in Florida. Understood and I apologize - I really muddied the waters by not clearly breaking this up into more sane chunks. IE, garage repeater, car repeater, fun projects to add later. Only thing I'm worried about is the ready availability of repair parts, thus the requirement that all components are still in production, though I suppose a sufficiently large supply of old stock might soothe my nerves.

And the wind is taken out of my sails. :| In the mean time, anyone got any ideas about how to get a radio to use a callsign as a Roger beep, using either fast Morse or ASCII? Neither sounds particularly rough to listen to...

Corey, I want a beginner's repeater that can grow with me as I go from trying to manage in big box marts with no cell coverage, to dealing with those shit weeks when hurricanes take down the everything. Mostly the goal of mobile repeaters is going to be a repeater pretending to be a mobile, with a few mW of input -- if I can find gear like that. If not, I'm looking at other options, but they price is just unbelievably unaffordable. Hans, wireless mics are better for really short ranges between the user and the radio, but you can't be arsed to find a wired mic. Repeaters are better for when you're at least a block away or more from the repeater and you still want to use your big 'ol transmitter.

For a couple hundred bucks, I can get a crystal-controlled repeater and an amplifier to bring it up to fifty-ish watts. Yes I do want champagne on a beer budget. But I think you miss my point. Mobile repeaters won't be talking to another fixed repeater. They'll be more or less pretending to be powerful simplex radios with wireless microphones. I'm still trying to figure out how to make the linked repeater thing work, legally, so I need to ignore the whole thing and figure out how to make it work without networking. However, if I can figure out how to make repeater networking work, then the cost of the X10 gear will justify itself, as I'll be able to bill myself as a consultant and build other people's radio networks as my day job.

Price leaks suggest that X10 is $688 a piece. Four base stations is a minimum, five or six preferred. Ideally 1-2 handsets per minimum. This is so far outside the realm of affordable I shouldn't have to tell you…

Because I want a mobile radio, with remote speaker-mics. Australia's UHF-CB market has easy access to them, but only a couple Uniden HF CBs in America can use them. There are options, but they all suck. Wireless Microphones Lupax HM-888 Rebadged Zoxn ZX-777 Illegal AF Technically sweet ZOXN ZX-777 Illegal AF Technically sweet X10DR Spendy as fuck Technically sweet Probably the best option UNIDEN MK800W For UHF-CB+ DECT + Uses 8p8c connector, easily interfaced Uniden Bearcat BC906W Like the MK800W, uses DECT. Proprietary 6-pin connectorOnly compatible with four Uniden Bearcat radios Motorola RLN6551 & RLN6544 Barely worth mentioning Super speedyProprietary AFNot compatible with any civilian radiosBluetooth Hytera SM27W1 https://www.hytera-mobilfunk.com/en/product/details/sm27w1-wireless-remote-speaker-microphone/ Uses ADA-01 adapter for compatibility with old radios

As for mobile repeaters, here's something pretty spot on for what I want in each of my family's cars. Problem is, it's only ten watts, and the split on the repeater is a minimum of 10 MHz.

Oh, sweet! Can you link to that? Boy, if you think this is bad, you should see my selection of legal, repeater-capable handhelds… Ah, the doctrine of "forensically identical". XD I really want a radio that lets you record your callsign in fast Morse mode as your Roger beep…

http://www.nsea.com/Linking.pdf Per the guy holding the oldest active GMRS callsign, an analysis of the rules of repeater linking. WRAF213, I was about to tell you that you were probably wrong, but per the definitions provided by Cornell, I'm now inclined to think that "causing a station to begin transmitting" is specifically permitted by definitions, but they also say that you're not allowed to link in §95.127. This is definitely a hot mess, and trying to figure out what's legal gives me anxiety attacks.

Aha, someone from Reddit had my same question. I know of only three repeater capable handhelds ever made (that weren't software-locked BaoFengs). One was offered in yellow and Realtree™. The other was offered in black and Realtree™. (™ used in the most sarcastic fashion possible, because I'm annoyed) Motorola MS350R (yellow) Motorola MS355R (RealTree™) Olympia R500 Motorola MR356R (black) Motorola MR566R (RealTree™) Is this possibly correct? Are the most legally-uptight, totally-sure-to-be-legal-after-the-crackdown options all discontinued?

Hey there. Been a little while! I'll try to address everything in chronological order, if I can't do logical order, so here goes nothing! Can filters vs. ladder filters: I believe both are both physically possible and are used. DIY ladder filters may be a thing in the HF region, WRAK968, but ladder filters -- wait. First "ladder line" is a kind of twinax feedline used in hf. Ladder filters are a completely different thing, see here. It's basically a way to replace a bunch of hand-tuned cans with a box of capacitors and inductors, which lets you tune them at the factory and never again. This way, you can trivially include in a repeater with our eight pairs, eight separate duplexers because they fit on tiny little circuit boards. They, and surface accoustic wave filters, are used heavily in cell phones and LTE tech. Why? Compared to can filters, they're tiny. You can have a duplexer for each channel, instead of one with wide notches. It makes it feasible to build one repeater that independently repeats all eight channels with one antenna. They're super cool tech, but they haven't filtered out of mind-bendingly expensive cell-sites, and even if the FCC let you repurpose commercial gear any more, they're not even close to the right bands now. Patched repeaters can use Teamspeak? Ooooooo... Per the new reform, that's illegal now, and I'll come back to that, possibly edit this section if I don't forget. A repeater for my car? Basically, I realized that a repeater isn't much more than a mobile radio with wireless speaker-mics. (Which, per the FCC, are now allowed! That's great! We'll revisit that.) Wireless speaker mics are legal now, but they're not available from vendors, and the core paradox of GMRS is that "it may be legal, but you can't have it if someone doesn't make it for you, and they don't have to, and you're not allowed to make it for yourself. And you're especially not allowed to sell it to someone else without FCC approval." Re: the two way controller: Pretty sure parrots are explicitly illegal on GMRS. Re: CWID - is there ANYTHING that's 100% legal? Not sarcastic, just frustrated. :| Re: Aussie CBs - Australia has HF CB, and UHF CB. They're technically close to US GMRS radios sold by Uniden, but they leave out the best parts, IMHO. Two mic ports, controls on the speaker-mic, and wireless speaker-mics with a hundred meters' range, so long as you accept that you're not adjusting shit outside of the car. (fine by me!) @NavyBOFH, I'm looking at your post now. Overanalasys is just one of the services I provide! Yeah, I'm trying to work around a painfully personal use-case, which includes people who can barely be trusted with FRS radios, but who get to scream at me when phones don't go into big box marts and won't tolerate the audio quality of even expensive, old FRS radios. It's a shit show, and I apologise, but I've done a little testing with cheap chinese crap lately, and freebanding on GMRS and FRS bands under the "forensically identical to a hypothetical type-approved transceiver" doctrine has finally found that the Retevis RT20 has voice quality that even expensive old Radio Shack FRS radios can't muster. I feel bad for those experiments, and would like to dump it, but the cheapest "modern" GMRS radio with repeater support is a couple'a Motorolas which cost $400+ a pair on Amazon, because they're discontinued. And people seem to lie about repeater capability on new motorolas on Amazon, which drives me up a tree. 1) Home and Mobile repeaters? Are you talking about having a repeater stationary and one to take "on the go"? Putting it in a vehicle? In a kit? Or simply stating you want a 50w repeater and a 50w mobile radio? Those all matter to answer because a "mobile repeater" is a different animal from a "mobile radio", and you'll need a good plan to use one. Home and mobile repeaters. I want a repeater for the houses - mine and a couple other family members' - and one for the car. I want a 50w mobile radio that can be controlled from, say, inside Home Depot. Of course, without a shitload of engineering, I can't have either. Best I can get for new production is a 40 watt radio from Midland. 2) Without diving into the Type Acceptance Rabbit Hole, anything that is Part 90 or Part 95 is generally acceptable as long as you're operating legally. From talks with the FCC - the part of "operating legally" is where they'll discover what equipment you're using. Don't cause a mess, don't get caught. I will be writing a draft proposal to the FCC to implicitly allow Part 90 equipment on GMRS and hope to engage this forum when its time to lobby it. Please and thank you. I'd also like to be able to use the rather impressive array of ham radios that are capable of producing photons that are forensically identical to the Motorola MS350R, but that'd be a nice start. Except that new Motorola UHF gear can't be programmed to GMRS or MURS, for love nor money nor soldering irons. :| 3) Yup. I've come to accept the necessity of the cans, and simply decided to have them tuned for the whole repeater-input and repeater-output section with fat notches, rather than compromise performance on one or the other end of the band, or have to spend hundreds of dollars getting the bastards retuned every time I change channels. That made sense when your GMRS license only got you one repeater pair, but not any more. --- lost my post here, lost my links. I'll be recapitulating this from my last backup, but this may suck in new and unexpected ways. --- 4) www.wrch569.com meets both requirements, and future proofs me against any clever crap I come up with. Which I probably will. Soon. 5) That's GMRS legal!? What's the range like? 6) It's the principle of it, in some stupid way. Also, I'm planning on running a covert antenna, which doesn't require drilling holes in the bodywork or damaging the paint, since I think they make an AM-FM-VHF-UHF radio that's a drop-in replacement for the stock one on my Tacoma. 7) It's just as hard finding a brand-new repeater-capable radio. There's a few Midland MicroMobiles, and two or three discontinued Motorola handies. Other than that, there's the BaoFeng which I believe was just banned per the last PRS reform. D: 8) I resent that. I accept it, but it makes me angry and resentful that I must break the law to exercise the rights and privileges that I am nonetheless entitled to. Part of me is afraid the rampant rulebreaking here is going to get our spectrum sold to Ma Bell or something like that. I live in fear (but only a little) of this happening sooner or later, possibly justified based on the unavoidability of freebanding. 9) The recent PRS reform bans any messages traveling over GMRS and any wireline at all. That means the Internet, too. #FML 10) I can't get my mom to stop IDing with made-up callsigns, and I'm pretty sure I'm financially liable for that if someone takes the piss. WQVA593, I'm looking at your post now. Yeah, I agree with you, but I don't have to like it. #LawfulGood WRAF213, I'm looking at your post now. I'm pretty sure you're wrong about patching... I'll cite my sources when I unfuck this post. WQYR510, I apologise for intermittant availability, but I really AM keeping up with this when I can. I'm going to save this one before I lose it again, and then edit my links back in later.

This is already permitted; see the Garmin Ring for more details. This is only an expansion to GMRS channels. Speaking of the Garmin Rino, enough people are willing to shell out $650 for an FRS radio that it's still in production a decade later, and with ever more smartphone-like hardware. Hams use APRS, which has grown from a simple "amateur position reporting system" into a full-fledged tactical network (their words, not mine) which allow passing of email, instant message, position and status information… I don't have any use for it, as nobody I communicate with has a ham ticket. However, an in-dash GPS navigator / GMRS radio (god willing, GMRS repeater, too) would be amazing, especially if it was aware of repeater coverage circles and could seamlessly and automagically switch to simplex (one less thing to worry about). A momentary tangent into commercial land-mobile radio and fleet management - they pay thousands of dollars to use satellite to pass quick voice messages and location and status of their vehicles in real time. Clearly there's a use case, but mere mortals can't afford to find out if it suits them. I'd like to be able to have a combination of turn-by-turn directions, and semi real-time GPS coordinate updates when I'm driving with someone else. And geolocation bursts over GMRS are a perfect opportunity to unseat Garmin's Rino protocol in favor of APRS; this will allow other vendors to compete in that market and help drive prices down. Furthermore, (knock on wood…) calling for help will include machine-readable GPS coordinates, which will direct help quickly and efficiently to the location of someone in jeopardy instead of requiring the organization of a search party or a helicopter with a thermal camera. I'm even open to data bursts on repeater inputs, though with more trepidation - perhaps limiting them to manual triggering would be a good first step. Or another option would be to offer cheap repeater controllers with multiple tones; data would be transmitted with one PL code embedded in a sub-audible signal -- Dakota Alert embeds triggering data for their MURS driveway alarms by modulating the CTCSS tone -- and a different PL code for analog voice, allowing a repeater to silently pass data without interrupting users of legacy hardware with the modem howl of modulated data. Another possibility is silent slow data, and the use of the whole audio spectrum for loud fast data, embedding a callsign into an opening tone and a GPS coordinate into the roger beep? I've done similar things with an Anytone I bought before their certification was pulled. The preamble and Roger beep would embed the name of the user in such a fashion that compatible receivers would display their name or callsign on their display while they were talking. It sounded like a cross between birdsong and modem sounds, and was perhaps an unpleasant roger beep to listen to, but it took no longer to transmit and was no more intrusive than one.

I need at least two each of two kinds of repeater: Home, and mobile. Both should operate as close to fifty watts as is legal. Both shall use type-accepted transmitters, but as far as I know, if you can receive 462 MHz intelligibly with a chicken McNugget, more power to you. Duplexers are a necessary evil? Solid-state ladder filters are preferred to can-filters. Home repeaters shall have some kind of identifier; mobile repeaters should have some kind of identifier. I'm not afraid to use a goo.gl link to a long-ass page of "this is my repeater, play nice, and you, my guests, have my welcome and permission to use it when I'm not". Car repeaters are to be… basically GMRS radios with wireless speaker-mics. I'd go with GMRS radios with mobile speaker-mics, but only Australian UHF-CBs mix UHF radios with handheld control heads, and DECT-based wireless speaker-mics. And American units, type-accepted, don't take wireless speaker-mics, no matter how legal they are now. And American units with handheld control-heads don't do anywhere near the legal 50 watts. Hell, current production radios top out at 40, I think? Next I need to find repeater capable handhelds… like at all. (I know the Baofeng GMRS radio exists… but it doesn't count, I really hope…) Everything I want is legal, but some of it just isn't available without ignoring type acceptance, and I'm not willing to do that. Lastly, I'd like to link the two home repeaters over ~50 miles as a tech demo for a family operated network of repeaters… but I'm almost 80% sure that the new rule clarifications have eliminated any gray area for linked repeaters (whereas before, you could link them if you had cable internet, but not if you had DSL…). Can I get those assumptions sanity-checked, please? I've been part of ham chats, and they just said "get all your people to get their tickets" and it just makes me want to cry, because my grandfather's pushing 100, my mother's a technophobe, and it's all downhill from there… I'm hoping desperately that encoding the callsign in a PTT-ID is legally compliant, and that I can find a handheld that can be programmed with a PTT-ID, especially one in fast Morse or something similarly trivial to interpret. :facepalm: Sorry for being the FNG with a crazy request, but I'm not swimming in great options, and cell phone coverage is frequently inadequate over here.