MaxHeadroom

I see you don't watch many of his videos... but ok. There are no statements, just "possibilities" but as a PE yourself you should also understand patterns and statistics and make your own statement with an original thought.

And yet, you're not...

And a blanket statement like that is why every illiterate appliance operator is screaming about "muh rights". The FCC has been doing the "right thing" with oversight, citizen input, and everything else every sovereign citizen and smooth brain adjacent has been demanding... and they've been doing it for 90 years. If you have any doubts about that too - just remember 29 years ago Congress once more ratified and expanded that exact rule making authority. So which one is it - its not the "right thing" and there's just shy of 3 decades or a century of legislative abuse, or it IS the right thing and people need to stop making sensationalist remarks for YouTube revenue... I won't hold my breath for you to have anything productive to say about it considering 54% of this country is only literate to a 6th grade level and you seem to know your audience well considering that statistic...

Double-tap reply

Congress gave FCC the authority to regulate and make laws with Congressional oversight back in 1934. the CFR was created in 1958. The Telecommunications Act was in 1996 which provided a large overhaul of how 47 CFR is legislated/managed since 1934. And lastly, the FCC has an entire website as to how the rulemaking process works down to every key word and step in the process: https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/rulemaking-process So lets stop with these water cooler gossip takes that Chevron Deference is even remotely applicable in this situation - go truly read the Chevron decision and then find me any of the referenced cases/agencies and their applicable rulemaking/legislative framework within US law. I won't hold my breath that you can reach any conclusion because smarter lawyers would have done it by now if there were. The process is well laid out, 90 years old, time tested and proven. And if you truly don't like it - go petition Congress to overhaul the FCC like they last did in 1996 and get your change through both chambers and to the President's desk.

I completely understand the sentiment which is why I am looking myself to do something that is not linked to another club or entity. I called out last night on SCHEART between Florence and Columbia and never got a reply during rush hour no less - just tells me how the hams in the area respond to statewide linked repeater systems. The CSRA GMRS group seems to be the closest. I tried to link up with them back in 2019 timeframe when they were just starting up and tried to offer some assistance/equipment but never got a reply. Sadly I sold those MTR2000s since then but getting a capable UHF repeater isn't monumental - I have a "throw away" VXR-7000 coming to me as we speak. I can be available as well with a heads up - I work from home so I am usually close enough to a radio and repeater.

What I heard is ham clubs are still getting accommodated so I would think GMRS would as well under the same non-profit/"community benefit" vane. I have not tried to talk to ETV since I moved back but I can acquire an MTR2000 or Quantar easily enough to put up a repeater that would cover the entire Lexington County area easily. My personal battle around here is finding a tower for a private VHF repeater which I was hoping to coordinate for use for SCSG and CERT but that effort stalls every time I try.

I used to work for SC ETV and maintained that 147.000 repeater - the tower is empty minus the cell site on it now and the county's bus and bus maintenance repeaters. There's definitely room on the tower and in the building at the base, but ETV is getting picky about people putting things on the towers unless they're a ham club (GMRS might be doable if I talk to my old boss) but otherwise they want to charge rent for the site. I am down in the Gilbert/B-L area so I am hoping to get something to cover a little better. I did finally notice the .725 issue some time ago but I think its stopped since - unless my radio is just not unmuting for that mess anymore.

The Columbia 725 repeater is actually one of the best in the area and Patrick is awesome to get access from. Little Mountain 600 I am involved in but the repeater owner has closed all access for years now since its decently loaded when the occasion arises. I am hoping to put one more up in the area just to try and bridge the gap between the two on the south side of Lake Murray so if anyone has leads on sites I am definitely interested.

To your first 3 bullet points: ALL of that spectrum is already allocated to Part 90 (either as paging/radiotelephone or LMR) and will never be reallocated to a family service. Do a FCC ULS search for your proposed frequencies to see what I am talking about. Requiring Narrowband would be theoretical if there was new spectrum available, but narrowbanding the existing frequencies will be utterly useless when there's already interstitial channels (FRS) between existing GMRS channels which would cause a lot of co-channel interference issues. Digital Voice would not be within the rules either unless the point above with narrowbanding was able to be settled, and even then would only be one permitted modulation to prevent splintering of the service in a way that causes more issues than it solves. There's already super stringent regulation on data over the voice channels so I do not see a full digital modulation being easily accepted, never mind allowing multiple. With all that said, there would not be any grandfathering allowed since these would be sweeping changes to the service that would mean that some of the currently grandfathered users would become unintentional interference to the other user base. Moving the service definition will never happen either as all parts of 47 CFR have regulations which dictate frequencies and use cases for each service, none of which cross-over or are movable by current rule - FCC won't rewrite the book for GMRS especially with the current "attention" happening. Part 90 equipment on Part 95 - that is actually doable and I was working on in 2017 and 2019 but would need to be a separate effort from everything else considering what I mentioned above about all the other pieces. Add type acceptance onto frequency/spectrum management for a service and this would stall before it got any traction. I think you have a lot of spirit with this but sadly none of it is truly doable except the last part which should be tackled first to show that existing certified radios can be used in Part 95, which be default in 2024 opens up the "commonality of digital capable radios in a family service" and then work up from there. Sadly though there won't be any "free lunch" and GMRS will not see any change in frequency allocations unless something else is given up which this being my day job as well... I have yet to come to a workable conclusion that could be pitched to the FCC.

That is how I would do it - use the XPR as the transmitter and the SVR as the receiver - make sure both are programmed only to one channel so no one can veer them off-course and where a duplexer isn't tuned. Did the same with a Motorola XTL5000 and Futurecom DVRS as a "camping repeater" and works well for the most part - but definitely keep duty cycle low on the repeater or the transmit radio WILL get hot.

This right here. Hams are well-intentioned in almost every instance I have worked with them from an EM standpoint, but too many of them think they'll be doing swift water rescue in a mobility scooter or other wild self-proclaimed abilities. There's also something to be said about vetting hams that can do the tasks asked of them instead of finding the rag chewers that have nothing better to do because everything around them is closed down. These hams complaining that they need to take a course or anything else need to sit down - if you cannot "play well with others" enough to take a half-day class, practice your craft and be evaluated for your skill, or anything else... you're not helping out the effort.

Doesn’t matter. 25 repeaters in that part of the state is exactly why the FCC is deciding to “clarify” since 25 divided by 8 means even with properly spaced out repeaters there’s no free channels and reuse of each one 3 times… for money. Where does the family repeater owner go then that wants their GR1225 on their roof for the neighborhood?

All antennas have resonance - and that resonance is part of the entire transmitter design. In commercial LMR it’s why anyone says “stick with the stock antenna” as it’s been designed for that transmitter and for best performance. With these radios, there is no engineering going into the transceiver/antenna design and matching so I know some want to find something “better”. The Nagoya antennas are typically the “gold standard” but there’s A LOT of bad clones of them. The Abree “tape measure antenna” - skip it. Last few I got my hands on swept resonant in UHF around 420MHz - nowhere close to the 465ish range you need for GMRS/FRS.

Motorola, Harris, Kenwood/EFJ - almost all commercial/public safety radios will offer what you're looking for. GMRS doesn't have it in the radios you normally see because to be totally blunt, most of them are all rebranded from the same reference design and "radio on a chip", and most of those manufacturers won't bother putting anymore more than DTMF SelCall on the feature list. Motorola calls it MDC1200, Harris of yore called it GE-Star or similar, Kenwood called it FleetSync... its a small "data burst" you initiate and the receiving radio stays muted until it receives a burst with its ID contained within it. When the receiving radio does receive a call/page, it will either beep and then unmute, or beep incessantly until the user hits PTT to say something at which point you know they're "free". This was used primarily in situations like GMRS where there's one repeater, tons of users, and no one wants the radio going off 24/7 with irrelevant traffic - like cab companies. As for "legality" - GMRS allows it by rule. Repeater owners and other operators that barely grasp PLs will get mad about "that digital crap on the radio". We run it almost exclusively here to keep the channel muted.