marcspaz
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Posts posted by marcspaz
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2 hours ago, SeaScholar said:
But, my guess that doesn't mean much to a simple "Guy doesn’t even have a repeater, only had his license for a month" consideration.
Again, just my personal opinion, what you used to do for a living has nothing to do with membership value. With the exception of the privilege of saying they are a member, what does the organization bring to the table, that we cannot otherwise get for free somewhere else?
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3 hours ago, SeaScholar said:
Is this a "pay-to-play" scheme? The discussion of a modest membership fee is about sustainability for a non-profit organization. Any funds collected would go directly toward operational costs like hosting a website, developing training materials, and covering insurance for events. The goal is to provide tangible value to members, not to create a barrier. We are still working on the details, but the focus is on keeping it accessible for everyone.
Eh... I do all of this for free for 3 different groups... we have people who volunteer time and I pay for all of our digital footprint. Unlimited storage, unlimited throughput, unlimited email accounts and email storage for $150 per year. Few bucks per registered URL / Domain. I spend more for dinner for my family one night out at a restaurant than for our internet footprint for a year. Having donation options would be one thing, but there is zero chance you're convincing me that you need to collect a membership fee to cover costs, imho
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13 minutes ago, WRQI583 said:
That is straight off of my license. I have ability to use all 8 channels because I live below line A, however, I don't have to drive too far north or east of me and I am north of line A. When I go shopping in Bangor, I am well over the north of line A.
What I do find interesting that may put some truth to this is that if I download my GMRS license now, the Waiver says NONE.
I've mentioned it repeatedly, and in great detail, that the treaty has been amended / replaced with a new treaty that removes the restrictions for our frequencies. Regardless of what is on your previous copies of your license, it is no longer in affect.
- SteveShannon and WRQI583
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Are you talking about the VHF stuff?
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We should schedule a 0700 breakfast meet up at the County Hospital cafeteria! We need to wear hats with our call signs and or favorite PT t-shirt. LoL
- SteveShannon, WRXB215, Lscott and 4 others
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I have two radios that have remote Bluetooth headphone with built-in microphone. As long as I'm inside of a 35 ft bubble, both radios work really well and there's no wiring to do. I can literally just be walking around the house
- SteveShannon, WRUU653 and amaff
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18 hours ago, SteveShannon said:
Just pull it out to the length needed for 6 m. Use an analyzer to tune it, mark it, and return to that length when you want.
Same concept as a screwdriver antenna.
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14 hours ago, nokones said:
I believe Telewave still has Lowband VHF duplexers with a minimum spacing of 600 KHz.
That cool! I'll have to take a look later and see what they have.
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12 hours ago, OffRoaderX said:
I used to have the same misguided feelings.. But I learned from my best friend Josh that licensing is the only way the FCCs has to know how many people are using the service.. So before they start giving away frequencies they will have an idea of how many people they are going to piss-off.
Im kind of hurt. In one of your videos you said that a forum member mentioned it to you, and I was all excited because I thought you remembered our conversation, but nope! You love Josh more than me. I don't think I can go on.
You're not getting your hoodie back...
- amaff, WRUU653 and SteveShannon
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2 hours ago, WRTC928 said:
Repeaters are cool, but you don't need a repeater to get more farz from lowband than you currently can with GMRS UHF. For some settings like ranching/farming operations, you might be able to replace a repeater with a single base unit. The antennas might be too long to be practical for handhelds, but they'll be shorter than CB antennas, so mounting them on vehicles and equipment should be simple. It's possible the radios would sell well even if repeaters were slow to come online.
We can definitely talk farther on low-band due to being able to take advantage of ground wave, sky wave and ducting, but repeaters could be very helpful because those propagation methods are all inconsistent. I tried to use SSB voice on 6m for more than 20 years with terrible luck. When the conditions are right (which isn't often), we are able to talk 20-30 miles... but most of the time, it's RF LOS. The really long distance stuff seems to be happening on FT8 and other weak-signal protocols most of the time, but still dependent on the solar cycle and ducting.
To get over the whole handheld issue, I personally would have a crossband repeater in my vehicle, use UHF handheld to my VHF vehicle for full power and range. I do that with Ham radio all the time.
I think the biggest challenge to bringing repeaters online will be duplexers. I don't know of any that currently exist. So, until commercial units become available, we are going to have to make them ourselves. Thankfully, the longer the wavelength, the less sensitive the size/length of components would be. Novice builders will have better luck as they start making their own.
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1 hour ago, WRKC935 said:
I don't know that the GMRS community is going to take to repeaters costing 10 grand or more with a duplexer and antenna, and 500 dollar mobiles.
This is almost all there is in the amateur community. If people want it, they will spend the money and find a way.
Also, I doubt any companies will tool a new radio for low-band GMRS, because most HF amateur radios already transmit on all of these frequencies. I guarantee you, if the market opens, damn near every HF amateur radio manufacturer will spend the very few dollars needed to have their engineers write new code to limit existing radios to the low-band GMRS specs.
The duplexers are pretty big... about 86" tall. However, the bigger they get, the easier it is for a DIYer to make one.
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2 hours ago, WSJP534 said:
Thanks so much for the replies. Please feel free to point me to any stickies or threads that might teach me more about how this network might degrade my GMRS experience on the higher power channels when transmitting simplex. I am worried now that my investment was bad.
Now back to your regularly scheduled FCC Rule discussion...
I would say it was a good investment if you need or want inexpensive and reliable short range comms. You can 100% use your radio as you would like, but may need to do things like use Tone squelch to stop hearing unwanted traffic and/or timing use between active conversations or the higher frequencies, which is common/best practice anyway. The congregation will make it a bit more cumbersome to accomplish, but still usable. Adding a repeater that would be usable would be way more complex to accomplish.
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54 minutes ago, nokones said:
Where will the Lowband VHF freqs come from?
Mike already identified many frequencies that are in unused sections of spectrum with zero active licenses nor tech that would use the space. So, there is no one nor any company with valid grounds (standing) to contest the reallocation of the frequencies.
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6 minutes ago, WSJP534 said:
Hello all,
I am brand new to GMRS and got one to install in my off roader (along with a license to operate it).
I am in the middle of Atlanta GA and have a question about the NGGMRS group that has been referenced in this thread.
How do they keep folks from using their repeaters? I ask because it looks like they have a list of all the repeaters, channels on which they TX/RX and the list includes RX and TX tones. Isn't that all you would need?
Sorry for the off topic newb question, just trying to understand how this is going to limit my GMRS use.
Someone can't force you to stop transmitting on a specific frequency and using a specific tone. You have every right to use the frequencies as the repeater owners do. The only thing they can do is either change tones, move to a different frequency, or turn the repeater off when they aren't using it.
I have been down that path with the FCC and civilly with an attorney. So, I leave my repeaters off when I am not using them due to an unwelcome user.
- AdmiralCochrane and WSJP534
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12 hours ago, WRYZ926 said:
There is a 16 page thread on this subject over on the Radio Reference forum that got shut down today when someone involved with the proposal got snotty with everyone that pointed out the negatives about the proposal.
That was probably Jack. He has that effect on people. LoL I was with him in the beginning of the project. It was his idea. Mike is the one with the experience. So Mike is driving the proposal. Jack is a nice kid and has good intentions, but he is very abrasive (can't accept being wrong) so it makes it hard to get along with him. Sadly, while I like him, he is the #1 reason I dropped out of the project.
12 hours ago, WRYZ926 said:I'm not saying that unused portions of the VHF low band do not have their uses. But it is not the beat all fix all solution to add it to GMRS as some think.
All of us that have our amateur licenses know how fickle the 6m band can be even for local communications let alone long distance coms.
Agreed. There is no one solution. Personally, I like the idea because it has potential to do some good for Joe Q. Homeowner who doesn't need an experimental or business class radio license. However, Amateur Radio 80m through 70cm, combined with Satellite and Cellular is the closest thing we can get to having a complete tool kit.
1 hour ago, Davichko5650 said:Back in my ASA/INSCOM days we used to mess with the poor hams on 6m when we were practicing ECM. Most were pretty cool once we explained that A, we weren't governed by any FCC regulations and B, we were the primary users of the band. Some got a bit "Sad Hammy" on us, but 1500 watts does wonders on VHF.
I'm pretty sure that is not correct. Everything I can find says that Amateur Radio is the primary assigned service, and the military and other federal agencies are authorized to utilize the 50-54 MHz band in the United States as a secondary or non-interference basis to amateur operations. If there is something different, I would love to see if you can share it with us... I can't find anything.
https://www.ntia.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/4_2021_edition_rev_2023.pdf
- RoadApple and SteveShannon
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38 minutes ago, nokones said:
The AM signal may propagate further, but it will be noisier and not usable whereas, the FM audio will not be affected by the noise factor as AM thus you will more farz with intelligible audio.
In my entire life, on any frequency, that has absolutely never been the case. From a scientific standpoint, it also doesn't make sense. The signal can travel the same distance, but you need more receive sensitivity (less noise) in order for the demodulator to extract the audio from the signal, compared to AM only needing peak amplitude above the noise floor.
- Davichko5650 and WRUE951
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The point is to expand beyond short-range local comms, particularly for emergencies. 300w repeater systems would definitely help a lot in areas like what we are in here in the DC Metro area, the northern Mid-Atlantic and northeastern US. There was one 10m repeater that was at 100w that covered a huge amount of the area, but it's been off the air for years and GMRS isn't getting the job done for many families and EMCOMM volunteers.
I support it and comfortably put it in the category of you don't have to use it if you don't want to. It certainly doesn't hurt anyone or the service to provide extra frequencies. Shoot... the biggest complaint I see/hear is that there are so few channels and the space is crowded in metro areas. Why not support it if it will reallocate unused frequencies and give users more options? (That was rhetorical, of course)
- PRadio, SteveShannon and WRXB215
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As some of you know, my friend Mike submitted a petition for rule making to the FCC to expand GMRS into some low-band frequencies. Ham Radio 2.0 covered an article about it and does a good job explaining the basics...
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14 hours ago, WRUU653 said:
Do you have an AM/FM CB and if so did you notice anyone using FM?
I have an AM/FM CB. Had one for years. I've never heard a single random station on FM. I have two friends who also have one. They are the only reason I know the FM part of the radio works. Most of the time, we end up on SSB so we can use the 12w output, but AM is pretty much king.
And that is only when we are in metro areas during the work day. The rest of the time, CB is dead.
- Northcutt114 and WRUU653
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21 minutes ago, WRUE951 said:
.... Personaly, because of this, i think the FCC needs to redo their deffination of Plain Old Telephone Companies..
I 100% agree. The rules are no where near in line with the times and tech of today. If I am paying for a data connection, the ISP really doesn't care what I put over the connection. Otherwise millions of people would be getting fined and sued for using apps like Skype, WebEx, Teams and free internet phone apps from companies like Google.
Think about when the internet was young and we had dial-up. We had SpeakFreely in '91, and VocalTec. No one was accused of theft of service then, either.
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33 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:
OK, but then why is it legal to do so with HAM? They are still sending voice traffic over broadband, no? To be clear; I'm not disagreeing. Just looking for clarity.
The FCC has a ruling specifically exempting amateur radio. It's been 20 years since I read the most recent ruling, but the FCC published a docket in 2005/2006 time frame say something along the lines of 'amateur radio operators who volunteer to provide essential communications and warning links to supplement State and local government assets during emergencies, currently is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency'. Due to Amateur Radio Services being used by the government for auxiliary communications services, they had been deemed exempt.
Some people have debated if amateur repeater linking is a violation of 47 CFR § 97.113(a)(5), but there are zero examples of anyone actually being fine for it. Likely because of the aforementioned docket, which eventually lead to permanent changes in the rules in 2010, specifically 47 CFR § 97.219 and 47 CFR § 97.3.
- WRUU653 and Northcutt114
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38 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:
The rules don’t actually say that repeaters can’t be linked but the say that GMRS communications can’t be conveyed by any kind of network. The FCC has issued an interpretation that says that means no linking. It has yet to be tested and this is why lawyers have flashy cars.
This weekend I sat down and talked to an engineer who has been working with the FCC to shape rules for GMRS since before it was called GMRS. I got some pretty eye-opening information from him on the whole POTS v Broadband thing. He explained that linking a GMRS system to the POTS lines (no longer exists) and Broadband connections are legal (not a rule violation) for remote control... but not for voice traffic, because all POTS providers and now Broadband providers provide voice service for a fee. So, sending voice over POTS / Broadband is considered theft of services.
That explains why remote operation of a PRS station from any location on the same premises where the transmitter is located, is not considered to be remote operation/remote control and why RF (non-network) linking for voice operation is not prohibited. No theft of services is occurring.
- Northcutt114, SteveShannon, WRUU653 and 1 other
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Has GMRS Lost Its Welcoming Vibe?
in General Discussion
Posted
I feel the community at large is welcoming. There are a lot of people i have met that love to share knowledge and experiences. Especially to help new people.
I will say that there are several things that happen that can make some individuals seem abrasive. One is a combination of two things, being some folks just don't do well expressing opinions in writing, and others read things that have been written and attribute malice when there was no intent. Both of these cases can lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings.
Another issue is that some people (including myself on occasion) have decades of experience, correct someone who is simply mistaken, and then the thread turns into a shit-show because ego starts to kick in.
That said, i feel like those instances are far and few between. I also know for a fact that several members here argue like they hate each other, but are literally friends and spend social time together in person. (This applies to me and a small group here, too) So, not everything here is as it seems.
So, generally speaking, I think GMRS operators and the community at large are welcoming and friendly.
I would hope money isn't the only reason. I have seen Rich be very forgiving to people on all sides, paid members and free members. That said, if there truly is a problem with someone, paid member or not, I think there should be some grace... but if it's not resolved, definitely let them go after a few attempts.