marcspaz

Sounds like a reasonable question. I just don't know that everyone that is licensed and has a repeater, knows that is the universal travel tone. Especially since the group who started OPI is long gone, there are no published stands and no knowledge base, beyond some operators keeping the tradition and knowledge alive.

I understand where you are coming from. Let me share one of my favorite sayings, believed to be coined by Albert Einstein... Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. While I don't know that he said it, the statement is still applicable to humans and our capacity to think. LoL It sounds like you're fortunate and have a knack for this stuff. Maybe the others that don't, Google gave them us.

You hit on a lot if good points... most of which are born from new people who have no idea what they are doing and decided they want a repeater. How can you expect a new operator to know not to use the travel tone when they never heard of ORI? Not to bash any new people... I'm glad they come here for help and I love helping, but I lost count of new operators that dont know how to program their own radio to use a repeater. Yet, some of these same people stand up a poor-man repeater 3 weeks later.

Exactly... all of the channels are limited resources with all of us sharing. That is why we use analog tone squelching and digital tone squelching. There are as many as 3 publicly shared repeaters per pair within communications distance of my house, all using different tone squelching. And who knows how many private systems. There are so many other answers beyond intruding on a private owner.

That's crap post. How would you like it if I just showed up at your house, decided to take your car to the grocery store and I didn't ask? Its my property. If you're not allowed to use my radio (repeater), too damn bad. While the frequency is not in use by someone else, talk simplex and don't be a jerk about it.

Split tone may be the way to go. Helps stop radios with tone scanning features from picking up the input tone, too. I have used reverse DCS on portable machines during emergencies, too.

I know this is going to sound strange, but I have had to deal with this several times in the past. Fixing it on their end, psychologically, usually works best. First, never do or say anything on the air that would give the troublemakers an indication that they are impacting you. That is what they want... to know they are trolling you. The next thing to do is to make them think they are having zero affect on you. On repeater systems, We have gotten 3 or 4 people together in a parking lot and all started talking to each other on the mobiles, via the repeater. Even though jammers were jamming the repeater, we can all hear each other directly and just keep talking on the radio, having a full convo. Whenever the jammer lets his/her mic up and hears everyone talking as if nothing is happening, they start to realize that they are not impacting you. Then, they give up and go away. We do that on HF all the time too. We get some knucklehead try to cause interference on frequency, but most of the guys in the club are friends, we we get on the phone and talk over the phone in a conf call and on the radio at the same time. Me and my buddy Danny only live 35 miles apart and both have 1,500 watt stations. When someone tries to interfere with us, we just talk right over them. Using the methods I mention... usually 2 or 3 minutes of not getting the attention they want, and get get bored and go away. Lot easier than calling the FCC, who rarely does anything.

Diamond and Comet are the two top brands I use for both base and mobile communications. You won't go wrong with the Comet 712EFC or the Diamond x300. They are both designed to perform well on the top end of the band. I have the x50 and the x200 and have posted real-world SWR and performance data from my system in the past. The GP-1 doesn't have the gain that the 712 and the x300 do. Its 6db compared to 9db. If you life in an area that doesn't have a lot of tall hills or mountains, I would go with the higher gain antennas.

On the Federal/DOD side, we see things a little differently. They are not always stationary points.

No. On land, they are typically geographical locations that don't change, but not exclusively. EmComm RF network links would be a good example of a land-based fix station that moves. At sea or land/sea/air combinations, the aeronautical or nautical vessels can also be a fixed station inside of a fixed service.

47 C.F.R. § 2.1 states that a fixed station is station in a fixed service. A Fixed Service is a radiocommunication service between specified fixed points, only. An example of a fixed station in a fixed service would be the 2 stations that RF Link 2 repeaters. They only talk to each other from point to point and their designed/intended purpose is to only talk to each other. A base station of which the operator chooses to only talk to another base station is not a fixed station, because by design, it can talk to all other stations and is not in a fixed service.

.

No extra charge!

Sorry to hear about the truck and trailer. Glad you pulled through. I got t-boned by a drunk who passed out behind the wheel. Hit me right in the driver's door at 55mph while I was stopped and waiting to turn. They had to cut me out of the car. My son had a broken arm and my daughter had a fractured vertebrate. I'm disabled for life with a chronic debilitating injury that is inoperable. Thankfully everyone lived. Of course, the drunk guy was 100% fine. Only spent 35 days in jail for his 3rd DUI... second resulting in an accident with injuries. In the mean time, I'm suffering for life. It never ceases to amaze me at how little thought people give to their actions. Seems like very few people even care that they could destroy lives... entire families... even their own. For what?

You said it's not a hobby, then listed a whole bunch of hobbies that it's used for, and then said those hobbies don't sound like hobbies. That's not an opinion... that is silliness.

LOL Nice try... but no. SMH

In the Amateur Radio world, all offsets that are commonly used and considered best practice, have come out of a developed band plan. The band plan dictates what the offsets (frequency pairs) are for coordination, to help prevent harmful interference with other repeaters and other services inside of those allocated spaces. The American Radio Relay League defines the band plan as "a voluntary division of a band to avoid interference between incompatible modes." Does anyone know if something similar exists for GMRS and its repeater offsets? Tradition seems like a good answer, but I have to think there is more to it than that. Also, using non-standard pairs would likely end up causing interference for others who are using the standard +5 in a GMRS dense area like where I am. There are repeaters around my house on every available (standard) pair, with some overlap with several machines, that only have PL tones separating which machine you bring up. You would also break the repeater capability for every repeater capable type approved radio on the market. The FCC issued a PDF as guidance to the makers to help ensure devices meet the type acceptance criteria, and that document shows the +5MHz offsets. While it may not be codified in the rules, based on the document, I am pretty sure that +5MHz is what's expected by the FCC, too.

...

Yea.... just not seeing it. For at least the last decade, an overwhelming number of people I know, for them, GMRS is a toy. I dont know anyone personally who uses it as anything more than a toy or a second layer of mobile comms, with less traffic, compared to Ham radio. And while there are some businesses around here that use FRS (which seems counterintuitive given the name) there are none using GMRS. Also, in the FCC rules, it even defines GMRS as a mobile two-way voice communication service to support the individual licensees and the families in there activities, with things like emergency services being secondary and business use is a grandfathered tertiary purpose. So, it would seem our interpretations and experiences are vastly different. But... that's okay. :-)

Man... it kills me to see people keep saying that GMRS is not a hobby but Amateur Radio is. It's like people forget the meaning of words and how subjective they can be. First, I have to say, GMRS and FRS use can be a hobby. That includes rag-chew and anything else you can legally do on GMRS. GMRS can also be utilitarian. What makes it a hobby or utility is how YOU use it. That's it. Nothing else. I would wager to state the opinion that Amateur Radio is far more utilitarian than GMRS would ever be. Just because you can legally conduct business on GMRS and FRS doesn't take away that fact that for many private owners, it's purely an entertainment device. It also doesn't take away the utility value of Amateur Radio. Amateur radio is called such because of non-commercial exchanges, and no other reason. The organization and practice of amateur radio has led the world for more than a century with new inventions of methods for moving data, messaging and voice comms. There is wireless experimentation, self-training in electronics engineering, private recreational use, and emergency communications. If that isn't less a hobby and more utilitarian, I don't know what is. Radiosport, contesting and rag-chewing is just a small part of Amateur Radio culture. And again, what makes it a hobby or a service is how YOU use it.

There is ZERO chance that it will work on simplex, ground level with GMRS. You have a huge ridge line that runs almost parallel, just a degree of two off, but one town is on one side of the ridge while the other is on the blind side of the ridge. You need HF NVIS for reliable comms (probable between 1.9MHz to 3.8MHz) or there needs to be a repeater on the high point of the ridge line about half way between the two towns or two, 200'+ towers on each side of the ridge, in each town.

Not in the gen 2... I'm not sure what is planned for the gen 3. I have heard rumor, but nothing confirmed. I just looked up their certs. The last one was issued in September of 2016. It is listed as 10K5F3E bandwidth on all frequencies, which is a max of 10.5 kHz. There is nothing newer that I have found. Someone else may have better luck.

I find it pretty entertaining how people's experiences vary. Even my own experiences vary inside the brands. My gen 1 MXT400's were trash. One caught on fire and the other would overheat after a few minutes. Midland replaced them with gen 2 units and I have had fantastic performance with my replacement MXT400's. Then, I had 3 BTech amateur radios suffer catastrophic failures inside of a 3 week time frame and the 4th, a GMRS radio, was super dirty and I sold it almost immediately. But my BTech amateur radio HT's are wonderful performers. Anyway, in the spirit of this revived thread, in my Jeep, I have an MXT400, an FT-891, and an FT-8900R. In one of my 1500's, I have an MXT400 and an FT-857D. In my other 1500, I have an MXT400 and a FT-8900R. in my Mustang... no GMRS, just a Kenwood TM-V71A.

Fantastic! Glad to hear it! I am going to see if I can get down there for a few months this fall. I need to check on the properties and visit some family. I am probably going to stay in Hollywood for at least half that time. The person I quoted above has a screen name of "redrockjk". There is a limited addition Jeep Wrangler (JK model) called a Red Rock Edition (aka Red Rock JK), to honor the Red Rock offroad club. The club has been the biggest advocate at the federal level, working to keep public lands open as multi-use land, including for recreational 4-wheeling with vehicles like Jeeps. Jeep only made 50 Red Rock JK's, one for each state in the US, and they sold for $100k plus due to being such a limited production vehicle. I almost bought one... but couldn't bring myself to part with that much cash. Figured it would be pretty cool if redrockjk actually owns one.

I have a house in St. Pete and in Hollywood. There are really no other GMRS repeaters around there. I haven't used his. Didn't know he put one up. I'll have to check it out the next time I am down there. Do you have a Red Rock JK?