Logan5

A fixed station would be an RF link from one repeater to another.

Not this Corey!
 
Now that you have my attention you will get my Opinion.
 
WX over GMRS, annoying to say the least. We have a garage repeater in my area that tells as the time, date, humidity, temp, ID and website every 30 min. As soon as a SAME WX alert comes thru it breaks in with the NWS for 2 full rotations of the message. To make matters worse it adds it to the end of the gibberish info it sends out every 30 min. Under a SAME alert this thing will spit out 5 min of worthless channel blocking information to nobody every 30 min. During this time the repeater is rendered useless and could hinder real emergency communications.
 
In my opinion this is not what GMRS is intended for, if you have a need to monitor a WX radio buy a weather radio and leave GMRS out of it. Last thing we need on our very limited amount of spectrum is GMRS repeaters broadcasting something that is already broadcast to most of our population.

Welcome from Sunny south Florida.

New to the forum and GMRS in general, 
 
I'm located in the Potomac/Rockville MD area. Just wanted to say hi.

and glad to see every one, been over seas for awhile and got back to the states 

These are the radios that I have in use for GMRS, from left to right:

From left to right:
BTECH GMRS-V1 (just got it today)

Kenwood TK-372G (Bought this at a flash sale)

Motorola XTS3000 (bought this a week before Christmas; has a tuned GMRS antenna which is shorter than the stock antenna; I do realize that this is a Part 90 radio)

Would it be possible to use the VOX part of a GMRS radio to broadcast weather warnings from a NOAA weather radio? 
If so how could you do this? or Could it be connected to my Icom Fr-4000 repeater some how?
This would give another layer of communications to get the warnings out there.
Me and my guys are out and this would be good for my crew.
Thanks
WRCW870

Ok, to clarify my original request. A GMRS radio, with channels 15 - 22 simplex and duplex (repeater capable). Wide band, above 25 watt on tx.
With the ability to set any tone or no tone on tx and rx.
Still at $ 150 .

It would be great asset for people traveling through the area.

Is there room on the tire carrier to mount a pipe flange for 1/2 inch water pipe?  Once mounted, an appropriate length of 1/2 inch galvanized water pipe then becomes a mini-mast.  At the top of the mast, you can adapt to just about any type of antenna and mount.

Stand-offs are easy. Go get a stick or two of unistrut from the local hardware store, some conduit (whatever you may need for antennas to clamp to) and the appropriate unistrut clamps (for clamping to the tower face). And if you need to side mount a DB antenna then you just use the appropriate strut clamp to clamp the antenna directly to the unistrut (both top and bottom if necessary) Works like a charm.

Nothing is ever easy when it comes to actually doing it. Maybe the concept would lend itself to a low powered solar application. I've talked 17 miles from a mountain top with only 4 watts.

BridgeCom Systems BC-40DU

Note: More power out the antenna equals more drain on the battery. So, even though a radio like the GMRS-V1 might only output 3 watts, if that is all you need for your uses then it is fine. Bigger is not necessarily better. In particular, if you are using a local repeater, less power is often a plus.

What does “duty cycle” mean?
 
I bring up duty cycle every time I hear somebody talking about making a repeater out of cheap Chinese mobiles and worse any type of handhelds. Duty cycle is the maximum time an amplifier may transmit within a five minute interval, expressed as a percentage, to avoid overheating. Suppose a mobile amplifier is rated at 30% duty cycle. This means that it may transmit for no longer than 1.5 minutes and must remain off for not less than 3.5 minutes. Some people forget that a repeater is transmitting for 2 or more people, duty cycle will be reached quickly if you get into conversation. More people in the conversation just amplifies the issue.
 
Once a radio reaches it's thermal design limits it will no longer be able to adequately cool the output transistors. Even if a radio is not hot to the touch the transistors are, in part because of the inefficient transfer of heat to the units housing or internal heat sink. The longer you exceed the duty cycle the more heat builds on the transistors, surrounding electronics and heat sink effecting it's ability to remain on frequency without spurious emissions. Exceed duty cycle long enough and you will need a new transmitter or radio.
 
I have tested a few Baofang and TYT radios on my service monitor without great results. All of the radios started deviating outside of the allotted channel bandwidth after simulated conversation at 50% duty cycle, the longer I allowed this the worse if got. Testing was done using an Aeroflex 2975 IFR recently back from the calibration lab. 
 
GMRS is a tiny sliver of spectrum surrounded by the commercial land mobile part 90 service. It is important that any repeaters that are built or re-purposed are held to the highest standards and operated as to not cause any interference inside or outside of our allocated spectrum. I wont get into the part 90/95 debate but i do stand firm that non certified import equipment has no place on GMRS. 

Merry Christmas, Festivus or whatever holiday you celebrate, along with my best wishes for a terrific New Year!

No. These frequencies are not legal for simplex comms.
 
AntiSquid Disclaimer: All comments are personal opinion only and may not indicate a claim of actual fact.

Well, I can help answer some of your questions....
 
The 452 MHz band is fully used by broadcasting, public safety, and general business radio service. (as is the entire 450-470 MHz band, except for our very generous slice)
The 472 MHz band is right in the middle of over-the-air television channel 14, which uses up everything between 470-476 MHz. 476-482 is channel 15, and it goes up every 6 MHz from there until you hit cellular telephone, which is currently 614-890 MHz, and expanding.
 
There is no such thing as an "underutilized slice of spectrum" in the UHF band, or anywhere else for that matter.
 
There is no problem with our current 5 MHz split.  It has been working just fine for decades.  There is already a filtering solution for this.  It is known as cavity filtering.  A set of UHF cavities made to handle 50 watts is about the same size as that little toy shoe-box repeater you linked to in your post, and the tuning on most are loose enough to be used on any 2 adjacent channels.  You seem to want an 8 channel repeater - I still don't know why you need this.  This thing you linked to is only 10 Watts anyway.  Just use Simplex.
 
Interesting note: That Retivis repeater seems to be built into a re-purposed cable TV line amp box.
 
Lastly, please refrain from using non-appropriate language on this site.

They're marketed as "interference eliminator codes" in honest marketing.  They offer no privacy, only solitude.
 
If you want privacy, you want encryption and or FHSS… both are illegal in GMRS, but available in 900 MHz unlicensed radios that can do up to 1 watt.  Motorola markets them heavily for business use, as the licensing requirement is … well, "no requirement" is very easy to comply with.  
 
They don't encrypt, but they do do FHSS, which makes them pretty low-probability-of-intercept.

Question do you need special permission to set up a GMRS repeater from the FCC or do you just look for a repeater output thats not used in my local area? 

There is a few repeater stations around have always been into radio was a cb radio guy for many years but been off for many years now also and was looking to find something a little interesting  to get back into ...So starting back into it again i figure i would go gmrs for a bit till i get time to study for ham also .....So with that note looking forward to talk listen and learn more ...There is some action around me not as much as i would think but been traveling with the handheld in the commercial vech during the day and pick up lots on the way 

Typical? No. Common? Yes. Morse code is permitted and used to meet FCC ID requirements.

Thanks JohnE
I set my radio to the tone and offset I was supplied by a repeater owner, and when I first tried to transmit a test, it replied with Morse code.
Is that typical?
 
Cheers

I'm pretty new to GMRS and I've been dabbling with it on and off. Many of the repeaters near me or what I can here are "private" . I'm curious as to why? Which leads me to my 2nd question. Do I have to be a member to all these repeaters to be able to transmit? 

Thank you all for clarifying this for me! I'll leave those frequencies out of my radio since the lowest it can transmit is 1 W. You all are appreciated!