RCM

So here is my take on this as this has come up in the past.
 
I run my repeaters with the travel tone and other tones. If a user wants a specific tone in the past and wanted to donate to the "repeater" fund I gave them another tone. More of the community tone aspect. Rarely did anyone ask or pay but I suggested when possible. 
 
My entire reasoning is the power bill. It was $35.00 a month and I had to pay it. I didn't care who used what but if i could recoup a little of that money to help offset the cost I tried. I went round and round with a ham club in the past about a similar item. They basically wanted to be in the shelter on the tower and not help out with anything yet they charged all there members dues yearly....
 
By no means did we kick anyone off or block users for not helping. I think anyone with that mentality should not own a repeater.
 
As others have said in the past a repeater on a good tower can be very costly for the party that owns it. 

I have to concur with WRCC719's comments. One thing that mystifies me is that there appears to be some GMRS users that to want to keep the use of GMRS to a minimum by others. It seems to me to be opposite the approach of most ham radio repeaters.
 
I live in a rural part of W. WI and other than our own family use of mostly simplex, there are few users of GMRS repeaters. Of course, compared to decades past, ham repeaters in our area are mostly silent as well due to most people using cell phone communication and from what I can tell, many new hams tend to become inactive. 
 
Are we seeing any increase in the number of GMRS licenses?
 
I wish there was a way to promote GMRS to the general public, but I am not sure how you could do this unless you had a critical mass that formed a club or similar organization. GMRS, with FRS interfacing for those who do not have a license, seems like a good solution for at least some folks. 

§95.333   Prohibited uses.
© To transmit messages for hire or provide a common carrier service
 
Source: FCC
 
Radio common carrier means any corporation, company, association, joint stock association, partnership and person, their lessees, trustees or receivers and any town making available facilities to provide radio communications service, radio paging or cellular communications service for hire.
 
Source: https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/radio-common-carrier
 
Also, 
§95.1705
 
(4) (f)
(3) A station may be shared only:
(i) Without charge;
(ii) On a non-profit basis, with contributions to capital and operating expenses including the cost of mobile stations and paging receivers prorated equitably among all participants; or
(iii) On a reciprocal basis, i.e., use of one licensee's stations for the use of another licensee's stations without charge for either capital or operating expenses.
 
Source: FCC

Just a couple thoughts - you may have already considered these, but I'm including this for persons with TK-880  (8 pin mic) radios that may not be aware of this:

Option 1:   TheTK880 series has the Operator Selectable Tone set up menu available through the software 'edit' tab.  Once you have the tones in place that you may need, then go to the "Key Assignments" drop down menu and assign the two arrow keys to the right of the "A" and "B" buttons to select the tones.
 
Option 2:  Go with an actual KMC 36  mic from Kenwood to solve the scan issue.
 
Good luck...

 

I can vouch for the quality of the Kenwood TK-880 radios. They are rugged, reliable and very professional radios! I have had two of them in constant use for the past three years.

Wow, are the thought police active here or what? I stopped addressing gun forums because people would get crazy. CHILL OUT!
 
I can start talking about radio controlled AR-15s if you really want excitement.

I've been running multiple 900mhz repeaters for years. It is a great band. Similar to 440mhz but with sharper nulls etc... The trick is finding clear input and output freqs...my machines are on odd splits because of that but since everyone is on commercial radios it doesnt matter.
 
Motorola GTX and MCS2000 are my preference.
KENWOOD TK-981 my other preference.
 
For at home base antennas comet makes a really well performing fiberglass vertical.
 
LMR-400 or better is damn near mandatory.
 
Thats my 2cents. FYI nyc based.

So I went and got the 33cm rig today. And here's a cool kicker: the guy I bought it from also has an unlisted GMRS repeater, and gave me permission to use it!

LoL, so the answer is yes.

I already have 222, and have had for years.
I've joined a 33cm discussion group, and buying a Kenwood TK-981 today. We'll see how it does.

Maybe it's intentional. If his business grows too much, he'll have to hire people. And that opens a whole new can of worms!

I'd be using it if the Part 15 stuff weren't.
 

So I finally got around to programming my controller today, and it went off without a hitch. I set it up for Morse ID and an EOT tone (Morse "K"). Most GMRS repeaters I've heard have nothing except a squelch tail, but that's not how I want to do mine.
The RF chores will be handled by a pair of Kenwood TK-805Ds.

Just wishing a merry Christmas to all my friends on the forum.

Just wishing a merry Christmas to all my friends on the forum.

The GMRS-V1 has both, so you will be good to go there.

Welcome!

I am new as well. I got my license for the same reason, it is easier to onboard my family. Personally, I enjoy scanning and listening. However, my family prefers to keep it on our shared DCS channel for chatting with each other.
 
 
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Merry Christmas

Just wishing a merry Christmas to all my friends on the forum.

Just wishing a merry Christmas to all my friends on the forum.

Happy Christmas.

For those MyGMRS members who celebrate Christmas, from the staff at MyGMRS - A Very Merry Christmas.

It is highly likely that those radios are actually 20KHz bandwidth, not 25. You'd have to be looking at radios well over 30 years old to see 25 KHz bandwidth. If the FCC Type Acceptance shows an emission code that is 16Kxxxxxx, it is 20KHz. Given the fuzzy response from the FCC, you may consider legacy 20KHz radios to be very usable in GMRS. I do.
 
The narrowbanding effort that culminated on the the deadline of 1/1/13 brought most of Part 90 down to 12.5KHz, forcing a lot of agencies to remove their older 20KHz only radios from service which is why you see so many of them for sale on auction sites.

Just wishing a merry Christmas to all my friends on the forum.