marcspaz

Wow! That is terrible. Glad to hear h made it. The worst I came across was a Copperhead infested shack. Fortunately there was plenty of evidence outside, before we even opened the door, so we were able to get past control out before we did. I have been thinking about building a self-contained repeater system that you can connect to any two radio and turn them into a repeater. Its pretty easy to design. I did one back in the mid-80's. I'm just so busy, I dont have time for it.

Not disagreeing there, but there are serious limits to crossband repeaters. They do have their place though. I have a complete X-Band repeater system that will work with any two bands, covering 10m, 6m, 2m and 70cm. Including antennas, a battery, diplexer, solar charger and the radio... it was about $700 for support of 50% duty cycle, 24x7. It is almost exclusively used for me, personally... not others. The model you discussed is known as ITDR, or Indirect Transmit / Direct Receive. An example of some problems you will experience with these types of solutions are limiting the users to only people you make aware of it (compared to known offsets for same-band), many times the repeater antenna is too close to the ground and other obstructions for any significant increase in coverage, and your receive is significantly hampered by the fact that you are listing direct on an HT. My gear supports ITDR and ITIR (Indirect Transmit / Indirect Receive). ITIR helps with both the ability to transmit and receive, but now significantly restricts who can use the repeater, normally being used/usable by a single operator to extend their TX/RX range. In general, they can be a great individual solution for Hams and (if planned in advance) be a marginal solution for a group of Hams with the correct / compatible gear, but not ideal for a true repeater service and definitely not legal in GMRS.

Don't get me wrong... I was taught that the two main objectives of Amateur Radio was to promote international good will and to further the technology. The only limits on tech that I am aware of is that you are not allowed to run encryption or anything that is designed to hide the true meaning of the communications and your new protocol(s) need to be published publicly before they are used beyond development. Beyond that, the sky is the limit. The fact that you can do it is pretty cool. It took some sharp and creative people to come up with the idea and bring it to life. But as an RF communications person, I have been groomed (and been grooming others) to no be reliant on underlying sub-systems for communications, because those systems fail. For two-way peer to peer radio to fail, we would have to have a catastrophic atmospheric conditions that would kill all carbon based life on Earth, before radio completely stopped working.

For a small part of the path to the repeater... that's it. That's not real contact. I had someone bragging to me about a 2m C4FM contact to an operator in Japan over a digital group and he logged it as a JP contact in his log. I told him to give me a break. If using my radio to go 2.5 miles to an internet-linked repeater and digital chatroom counts as a JP contact, I may as well just call a random person in Japan on the phone and count that as a JP contact, too.

I'm not an old Ham... but if you're talking to someone over the internet, that isn't radio, in my opinion. The whole point is to use airways to talk. If you are using the internet, you may as well be on a computer or smartphone. I especially feel this way about people using their smart phone to get into a group and they aren't even on a radio. If 2 people are using their smartphone to talk to each other though a Fusion or WiresX web app, how the heck is that Ham radio? If that counts, anyone who talks on a cell phone may as well consider themselves a Ham. LOL

Had to edit...quoted the wrong person. LoL I thought the HTs would be good for me too, but my family has a tendency to be spread all over the county, during the day. Ended up with a Diamond x50a on the roof of the house and mobiles in every vehicle. We all got the bug pretty quick.

If McAfee was flagged... its may be the antivirus software preventing access to your local drive. Try temporarily disabling McAfee and see if it works.

Blister packs are gateway radios man... just say no. Just one outing and you will be jonesing for more power. Before you know it, you're going to have a Rohn 65 holding a rotating beam in the front yard fed with 100' of hard-line and you family and friends won't even be able to recognize you.

I own a server and just hot-pink. What issues are you having? Any errors? Where does the issue occur?

This year is going to be my first year activating with my son. He is 21 and just got his license in November 2019. We are going to have 3 stations and 3 operators. We got permission to activate in a national park, in a place surrounded by colonial period homes that are now preserved as part of the park. It's going to be a blast. I think on Saturday we are going to focus mainly on HF. Sunday I may stuff the repeater antenna in the air and see who is around. There are a lot of GMRS operators around here. I am a bit hesitant since many of them don't even know what the ARRL is, but some folks may be listening in for contact from home and willing to respond in the interest of the day.

One of the other members can correct me if I am mistaken... but I believe an official opinion from either the Secretary or a Branch Chief of enforcement issued an official opinion that part 90 commercial gear was grandfathered in. There are several repeater owners here who have commercial, part 90 repeaters who have had many FCC site inspections and were found to be in compliance at every inspection.

Still a no go for me. Not sure why. I didnt realize the URL was outside the US. Most of my contracts are US DOD and Federal Law Enforcement. We're not allowed to use foreign resources (with extremely limited exceptions). Likely I never have.

He is in the south west corner of the state, near the NC/VA line, west of Martinsville. I don't recognize the URL and the page won't load o my PC or phone. So, I can't really say for sure.

Hmmm. I doubt anything will change anytime soon, but when the rules come up for re-evaluation, I wonder if it would be worth it for the Amateur Radio community to request a hardware certification exemption if they have both licenses and the equipment is capable of operating within the rules?

Me personally, I think the restrictions of type certified radios for free/public (not business or government) is completely stupid. I feel like most people don't know what is what and can easily end up breaking the rules by mistake. The truth is, I believe that while most ham radios are pretty cheap in quality, they are way better than any new part 95 product on the market today. Many of them are more than capable of performing inside the restrictions of GMRS. People should be allow to use them. That said, if someone is using one for GMRS, I couldn't care less, but I wouldn't go on the internet putting in writing that you are doing it and if someone asks me for advice in the forum, there's going to be a "by the book" response from me.

It's not legal. Same with baofeng uv-82 and all other non-part 95 certified radios.

I have a business account with Esri to use ArcGIS. About $4k a year, but they will even create custom maps for us, which is awesome.

That's great to hear! That is exactly the type of first step I would take. For what its worth, if a 10 or 20 foot pole mast will do the trick for everywhere you want to cover from a ridge line, a 100ah battery and a complete 120 watt solar system will cost about $550. If you can save the money on a tower and get permission for land use, you may be able to get coverage for around $3500-$4000 and run the system automatic/remote indefinitely. Good luck. I wasn't too optimistic at first, but I am getting excite and rooting for you!

As I mentioned, elevation is your friend. Be it a repeater or a simplex radio, the higher the antenna is, the more distance you are going to cover. As I look at the topo maps, there is a bit of a problem in your area. You have a lot of terrain deviation in a very sort distance. From the center of town, due to all the terrain obstructions, you would need a 200 foot tall tower for 5 miles of unobstructed radio path (10 mile radius) sort of. You are 100% SOL heading west. You would need the antenna to be a half mile in the air to get over the hills, down into the valley on the west side. Your only real solution would be to actually put a repeater up around 36.930917 -80.626221, running off 100% solar power, with an antenna on a 100 foot mast. Just a quick look, that would likely cover a 20+ mile radius. Though I would hike or drive up there with some mobiles or portables and do a ground level test, before I spend any money. A 100 foot tower that can take 90+ mph winds will cost you $13,000+, not including installation.

Shots fired! Haha

Welcome! Glad you made it over. Yes, in rough/steep terrain, most radio services have some issues. GMRS is a line of sight service, meaning the more stuff is blocking the path the the other station, the worse the performance will be. Elevation is your friend.

Howdy... You want to discuss the pro's and con's of what, exactly? What are you trying to accomplish? Also, a common thread among folks that are new to GMRS is wanting to install a repeater. There is significant cost and skill required to do it properly and with proper equipment. I wouldn't go down that path unless you have those skills or pockets deep enough to hire someone who does.

I don't mind being called out. I grew up on tuna. Couldn't afford that and the burrito. LOL That said, people don't have to have $5k in electronics in their vehicle. Affordable tech, installed correctly, can perform just as well. If someone can only afford or fit one, they should get what they like the most and will use the most, and just accept the short-comings and the fact that nothing is perfect. EDIT: I forgot to mention earlier. If you are going to run a CB... use Single Side Band. AM and FM are restricted to 4 watts. SSB is limited to 12.5 watts, is way more efficient and the signal travels way further. Much better mode.

I am bidding on a job right now. The customer is asking for a radio network to cover a huge campus with a 10 mile radius from the main site. They specifically asked for CB radio for several base stations and more than a dozen mobile units. We did a radio path evaluation and a live site survey to show them why CB was a bad choice for their area. We covered the entire campus with 2 watts on commercial UHF mobile radios, with no less than 5/5 signal reports. We also covered the main facility of 1,000+ acres with 1 watt on UHF handheld radios, with no less than a 59 signal report. All the same tests with CB radio, we had signals as low as 3/2 across the main facility and 100% signal loss after 1.5 miles from that location. CB can be fantastic in some cases, where UHF failed. This is mostly noticed in areas with low parasitic noise levels, such as out in the country and rural areas. On more than a few occasions, I lost my UHF connection to someone after 2.5 miles, but could reach them for 25+ miles on the CB. Because there is no such thing as a perfect, Jack of all radios, I end up with 3 radios in my truck... Ham, GMRS and CB.

HAHAHA! Pick a channel, I point the beam that way!