shaine

I am fortunate that a local amateur radio operator has a repeater available. It is done properly on a 400 ft tower. The repeater covers the entire county and portions of adjacent counties.
 
My initial itch for my own repeater was because I live in a low lying area and needed help getting over a hump to reach my wife’s mobile when she is at work. Once I discovered the local amateur radio club, I joined and got access to the repeater. It eliminated all desire to set up my own repeater.
 
Like you mention, GMRS is not wildly popular. For the most part it is only we two who use it, with the occasional visit from one of the hams.
 
If the repeater owner ever decides to stop maintaining the repeater, I may very well become interested in building my own again. Fortunately, my coverage needs are modest, about 10 miles. We probably could blast through most of that distance on 40 Watt simplex, except for the hump right in the middle.

I am fortunate that a local amateur radio operator has a repeater available. It is done properly on a 400 ft tower. The repeater covers the entire county and portions of adjacent counties.
 
My initial itch for my own repeater was because I live in a low lying area and needed help getting over a hump to reach my wife’s mobile when she is at work. Once I discovered the local amateur radio club, I joined and got access to the repeater. It eliminated all desire to set up my own repeater.
 
Like you mention, GMRS is not wildly popular. For the most part it is only we two who use it, with the occasional visit from one of the hams.
 
If the repeater owner ever decides to stop maintaining the repeater, I may very well become interested in building my own again. Fortunately, my coverage needs are modest, about 10 miles. We probably could blast through most of that distance on 40 Watt simplex, except for the hump right in the middle.

I am fortunate that a local amateur radio operator has a repeater available. It is done properly on a 400 ft tower. The repeater covers the entire county and portions of adjacent counties.
 
My initial itch for my own repeater was because I live in a low lying area and needed help getting over a hump to reach my wife’s mobile when she is at work. Once I discovered the local amateur radio club, I joined and got access to the repeater. It eliminated all desire to set up my own repeater.
 
Like you mention, GMRS is not wildly popular. For the most part it is only we two who use it, with the occasional visit from one of the hams.
 
If the repeater owner ever decides to stop maintaining the repeater, I may very well become interested in building my own again. Fortunately, my coverage needs are modest, about 10 miles. We probably could blast through most of that distance on 40 Watt simplex, except for the hump right in the middle.

I would only opine that there is no magic that comes with a Technician license over GMRS. It's practically the same physics at play. I'm facing a different problem, but also physics related. I live in a dip that breaks LOS in the direction that I need coverage. GMRS focuses my solutions to the GMRS band, whereas the amateur solution spreads me over several bands, which equal more $
 
The only exception would be HF, which would do a better job at distance. 
 
Otherwise, I'm focused on doing GMRS really well as I can tune everything to be excellent at those frequencies. 

I am fortunate that a local amateur radio operator has a repeater available. It is done properly on a 400 ft tower. The repeater covers the entire county and portions of adjacent counties.
 
My initial itch for my own repeater was because I live in a low lying area and needed help getting over a hump to reach my wife’s mobile when she is at work. Once I discovered the local amateur radio club, I joined and got access to the repeater. It eliminated all desire to set up my own repeater.
 
Like you mention, GMRS is not wildly popular. For the most part it is only we two who use it, with the occasional visit from one of the hams.
 
If the repeater owner ever decides to stop maintaining the repeater, I may very well become interested in building my own again. Fortunately, my coverage needs are modest, about 10 miles. We probably could blast through most of that distance on 40 Watt simplex, except for the hump right in the middle.

I am fortunate that a local amateur radio operator has a repeater available. It is done properly on a 400 ft tower. The repeater covers the entire county and portions of adjacent counties.
 
My initial itch for my own repeater was because I live in a low lying area and needed help getting over a hump to reach my wife’s mobile when she is at work. Once I discovered the local amateur radio club, I joined and got access to the repeater. It eliminated all desire to set up my own repeater.
 
Like you mention, GMRS is not wildly popular. For the most part it is only we two who use it, with the occasional visit from one of the hams.
 
If the repeater owner ever decides to stop maintaining the repeater, I may very well become interested in building my own again. Fortunately, my coverage needs are modest, about 10 miles. We probably could blast through most of that distance on 40 Watt simplex, except for the hump right in the middle.

There is a nice GR1225 ready to go for $300 on this forum from a member...Id spend that before buy 2 baofengs, a vox repeater controller and a amplifier...
 
https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/2372-motorola-gr1225-for-sale/

I am fortunate that a local amateur radio operator has a repeater available. It is done properly on a 400 ft tower. The repeater covers the entire county and portions of adjacent counties.
 
My initial itch for my own repeater was because I live in a low lying area and needed help getting over a hump to reach my wife’s mobile when she is at work. Once I discovered the local amateur radio club, I joined and got access to the repeater. It eliminated all desire to set up my own repeater.
 
Like you mention, GMRS is not wildly popular. For the most part it is only we two who use it, with the occasional visit from one of the hams.
 
If the repeater owner ever decides to stop maintaining the repeater, I may very well become interested in building my own again. Fortunately, my coverage needs are modest, about 10 miles. We probably could blast through most of that distance on 40 Watt simplex, except for the hump right in the middle.

I went over to where my base station is set up. Turned on my radios and started scanning as I had a few minutes to burn.
Started hearing some unusual traffic on channel 6. The station was giving out what I thought was really personal information.
I was hearing: peoples names, dates of birth, health information, number of family members, car make and model with tag numbers.
I listened for a little bit. Scanned for the CTCSS or DCS tone. There was no tone found.
Contacted my local police department. Took my radio down to the PD and the Officer was also concerned about this type of
information being transmitted over an open channel. They began to investigate this.
I decided to key up with my call sign and try to contact the operators and get there purpose and company name.
It turned out to the the local food bank. They were IDing people to receive food. 
I advised the PD I was going down to talk to them about this. They said they were sending an officer as well.
I just told them that people as far away as 10 miles could here this information and that I was concerned about this type of 
information being sent over an open channel. They seemed a little confused on how I was listening to them.
They stopped using the radios and went to cell phones.
 
Just thought I would share this story. I guess that makes me the radio police or at least concerned enough to reach out.
 
Thanks for reading.
 
WRCW870

https://shop.mygmrs.com/collections/repeaters-and-accessories/products/repeater-linking-bundle

I came across a short (under 4 min) professionally made video showing how citizens in fire prone areas took action to have some kind of communication network. This came about because of the horrific fires in rural areas and loss of telephone and cellphones. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uhOwng_j38
 
The solution was to purchase GMRS radios and apparently quite a few where sold in just one rural area. They had some help from what looks like a ham or two (but did not identify them as such), and even set up a modest repeater to get across one ridge area. The equipment shown were Midland MXT series radios. And for this application, I think this is a good choice for plug and play. 
 
 

Hey folks,
 
In addition to my GMRS license (WRFC318), I passed my ham technician exam yesterday, so I'm now a ham (but waiting on my official call sign).
 
My journey is only at is very beginning, but I'm looking forward to it.
 
GMRS remains a higher priority for me for family comms, as I'm likely to be the only one willing to go ham, but for sure I'll use ham for hobby and emergency comms. There are many ham repeaters within range here, and where I vacation often (OBX and Kaua`i).
 
Oh, and I got my Ed Fong GMRS j-pole over the weekend, so I'm looking forward to some experiments with that in hopes I can get simplex mode between me and my wife at her office, 2.1 miles away.
 
Fun challenges to work on.
 
Just thought I'd share. I've really appreciated all the advice here from those of you with far (!) more experience than I.
 
Cheers,
 
Ken van Wyk
WRFC318
 
 

A local family here will give the call sign and then “green fox this is chicken fox. Come in green fox.”
 
The other daughters are little fox and baby fox.
 
I like the idea of using phonetic initials, although it would not work for my brother and me. We have the same initials. In that case we might be Sierra 1 and Sierra 2.
 
 
 
 
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We use common nickname initials given phonetically. For example, Alpha Bravo this is Echo Charlie. Of course, this is along with the required call sign information and timing. We do this for three reasons. 1) None of them could remember their unit number (even if on a radio label). 2) Since we are genetically related, sometimes the identities of the voices get confusing. 3) The casual FRS listener will not immediately know our names and are not likely to know how to look up the call sign. This is just a very small security measure.
 
Funny enough, locals that chat with us simplex now use their nickname initials phonetically along with their call sign. It has spread to sporadic use on local repeaters. Family and friends have been using this method nearly since our first FRS days on the farms and we refer to the phonetic nickname in chat, telephone, and in person very often now. It has become common place in our family and among friends in daily, non-radio life. Some family members have the same names so this has worked out very well for us. I think I heard some local little kids on bubble packs emulating this radio technique a few days ago. It was adorable!
 
These days, we all have our radios with us everyday. When one wakes up, the radio goes on. I guess that's why the phonetic nicknames have permeated our daily lives so easily.

Hey Ken, what berkinet posted is a great resource. Myself I usually will just give the callsign that way they don't have to worry about it. I'll simply call them by their name rather than a unit number. But either or is acceptable.

I would agree that they are not too worried about making them fully inter-compatible with legacy radios and setups in the wild now. I can see why, but there are some people who are about GMRS (die hard) that would like to try the products on their repeaters to attract more users who don't want to feel like they need a degree in radio to get in. 
 
I was told by a Midland rep, the wideband, and Split tone issue would be addressed this year in product updates. I'll be the blue boy in the corner now. 

Wouxoun makes good stuff. Ive got one of their KGUV8D HTs thats a nice radio. Dual band, dual reciever, cross band repeater, color screen ect. Rx and tx are clear. It cost quite a bit more than a Baofeng but its a more capable and nicer radio to boot.  
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I just discovered that Wouxon has GMRS radios that are repeater capable. I think they are on the higher end of Chinese radios.
 
 
https://www.buytwowayradios.com/wouxun-kg-805g.html?___SID=U

Two points that have been made, that I agree with, are that GMRS is "family" radio communications (definitely not a rag-chew community) and you can't judge its success or failure by repeater use.  I would like to add that, because this is a low power, line of sight service, you can't judge the popularity by who you hear... not at all.
 
With limited exception, UHF radio waves (where GMRS lives) either leave the atmosphere or get absorbed by the ground.  Where we live, the numerically subtle elevation changes are actually somewhat drastic.  There can be hills and low spots that only vary 100 feet, but that variation can occur over 200 yards of road/trail distance.  So we end up with a bunch of natural earth walls blocking UHF RF paths.
 
What all this comes down to is, depending on the noise floor and your location compared to the location of the other station, you may not hear anyone more than a mile or two from you.  I am just to the south of you, in Woodbridge.  When I am at my house, using 40 watts, my mobile will only get about 1 mile.  However, if I drive 6 houses up the street, I go up 100 feet in elevation and can talk 5 miles on simplex or 20+ miles to a repeater in Warrenton or the Alexandria repeater. 
 
All that said, I think the radio service is increasing in popularity.  Many people use FRS and GMRS for outdoor activities.  I spend a lot of time camping, 4-wheeling, and at car shows. 
 
Many people are moving away from CB for camping and 4-wheeling and going to GMRS.  Mostly because the GMRS radio performance is much more forgiving than CB and many people can't get their CB to work more than 100-200 yards.  With some of the OTC GMRS kits that come with mag mounts, its almost impossible to screw up the install and get a couple miles of range on average.
 
In the arena of outdoor stuff like car shows, food festivals, art festivals, etc., GMRS and FRS become a great tool for family to stay in touch.  My family has 3 HT's and while we are at these events, we use the radios when someone goes on a food/water run, to go look an an exhibit without the whole group, as well as commuting to the location, allowing us to find each other to all meet back up.
 
So, I think it is popular and gaining popularity.  Just remember, use the right service for the desired purpose.

I think one cannot base one’s opinion of GMRS on repeater use. I drive around with my mobile radio set to scan. After more than a year, I’ve discovered different areas where GMRS/FRS are used daily.
 
Bubble pack radios have low power, which allows more people to use the limited channels with limited interference, if they are separated by some distance. The more popular channels in my area are 1, 7, 15, 20, 22. I don’t understand why people prefer those channels. As I drive around, I’ll hear conversations on the same channels, separated only by distance.
 
Channel 18 is not used much around here because there is a GMRS repeater that covers the entire county. The repeater will routinely step on any conversations using channel 18. I do hear the occasional chat on 18 simplex when the repeater is silent.
 
In short, I think GMRS is popular. Much of it is unlicensed. Even among the licensed, I don’t think many are aware of or understand how to use repeaters. After all, you can’t find bubble pack radios that are repeater capable. Most of us licensed, regulars are buying ham equipment to access repeaters, with the exception of mobile radios that come repeater capable.
 
I believe without evidence that there are many more households with GMRS/FRS radios stashed away in drawers. Some are ready to use for the occasional outdoor or family activity. Others are only for emergencies. I think the vast majority are for simplex use.
 
AND
 
FRS is Family Radio Service, which is how most people use GMRS on bubble pack HTs.
 
GMRS is General Mobile Radio Service, emphasis on Mobile.
 
I don’t think most users are buying mobile radios. There is a world of difference between a 2 W HT and a 50 W mobile. In that aspect I would agree that GMRS is less popular. Fewer people are taking advantage of the higher power options and the availability of repeaters on GMRS.
 
 
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I think one cannot base one’s opinion of GMRS on repeater use. I drive around with my mobile radio set to scan. After more than a year, I’ve discovered different areas where GMRS/FRS are used daily.
 
Bubble pack radios have low power, which allows more people to use the limited channels with limited interference, if they are separated by some distance. The more popular channels in my area are 1, 7, 15, 20, 22. I don’t understand why people prefer those channels. As I drive around, I’ll hear conversations on the same channels, separated only by distance.
 
Channel 18 is not used much around here because there is a GMRS repeater that covers the entire county. The repeater will routinely step on any conversations using channel 18. I do hear the occasional chat on 18 simplex when the repeater is silent.
 
In short, I think GMRS is popular. Much of it is unlicensed. Even among the licensed, I don’t think many are aware of or understand how to use repeaters. After all, you can’t find bubble pack radios that are repeater capable. Most of us licensed, regulars are buying ham equipment to access repeaters, with the exception of mobile radios that come repeater capable.
 
I believe without evidence that there are many more households with GMRS/FRS radios stashed away in drawers. Some are ready to use for the occasional outdoor or family activity. Others are only for emergencies. I think the vast majority are for simplex use.
 
AND
 
FRS is Family Radio Service, which is how most people use GMRS on bubble pack HTs.
 
GMRS is General Mobile Radio Service, emphasis on Mobile.
 
I don’t think most users are buying mobile radios. There is a world of difference between a 2 W HT and a 50 W mobile. In that aspect I would agree that GMRS is less popular. Fewer people are taking advantage of the higher power options and the availability of repeaters on GMRS.
 
 
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Okay, I'm hooked.
 
I was walking out to our local crop share pickup today when a neighbor texted me and asked if I knew what the huge plume of smoke is rising from near Alexandria, Virginia. Nothing (yet) on the news.
 
I had my radio with me because I was doing a couple of antenna/signal tests anyway, so I hopped on the local repeater and asked for anyone nearby to provide a visual situation report. Within a minute, I had 3 separate responses.
 
Turned out to be a huge construction fire, now at 5 alarms.
 
The local news story hit their web site and alert system > 30 minutes later. (See https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2020/02/massive-fire-engulfs-fairfax-county-construction-site/)
 
No big deal, I suppose, but I will add that from my vantage point, the smoke was along the glide path into DCA (Reagan National) airport. I'm the son of a retired 747 pilot (and fighter/aerobatics RAF team), so big plumes of smoke near airports have always made me uneasy, since long before 9-11.
 
Anyway, LOVE my GMRS comms now that I've learned about the world of repeaters out there. I'll be taking my Ham technician class exam in a couple weeks as well.
 
I'm hooked.
 
Cheers,
 
Ken (WRFC318)
 

There is a reason we are suppose to clear the air for emergency traffic. Sometimes the phones go down, or the battery dies, or we leave them home. Such an incident happened to a family member on her way to work. A vehicle had taken out a pole, continued on into a fenced off area containing a cell tower destroyed a trailer that was in there. The cell tower went down and all cell coverage dropped. Having seen all this, and being an emt, she called by radio and gave me what info she had and her location, I then relayed the info through to the PD using a neighbors phone (We use cell phones so no landline in the house.) Officers were dispatched and driver was charged with DUI.
 
Turns out the trailer was running as a temporary controller until a part could be replaced in the little brick hut next to the tower. When the car struck the trailer it damaged the coax jumper going to the tower and the equipment inside. When it went down the next closest tower was about 5 miles out with heavy pine forests and hills in-between them.

I have no problem with NWI. I hop on from time to time. My only problem is having free time to devote to the hobby.
 
 
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Hello my name is Ben, introducing myself, im New. Just recently got my GMRS License the other day, seen this site, and wanted to sign up. Now that I got the license looking to get some equipment. I got alot of 11 meter cb radio stuff, thats where I cut my teeth on radios. Still use them and love them, men and alot of local guys use em. I wanted to get into GMRS, beyond the bubble packs, so applied for my license, and just got it. Eventually I'm looking to get my Ham, by the end of this year, or so. Anyway good to meet you all, and been reading the forums, and everyone here seems pretty cool.