DeoVindice

There is nothing illegal about warning traffic about police/sheriff/state troopers,Leo positions by radio or flashing head lights or other such methods.   They may not like it but it’s not illegal.    

Here’s the actual rule the specifically permits traffic reports:
95.1731(b) One-way communications. The operator of a GMRS station may use that station to transmit one-way communications:
(1) To call for help or transmit other emergency communications;
(2) To provide warnings of hazardous road conditions to travelers; or,
(3) To make brief test transmissions.

Why would that not be legal.  Almost anything is legal on gmrs especially traffic reports. Obviously that some one knows nothing or is just being a jerk. 

Put the mag mount on a cookie sheet or 16 inch pizza pan and test again. Unless your antenna is specifically marked as a No Ground Plane required, it needs a ground plane as the ground plane is actually an integral part of the antenna's makeup.

The once was Laird LMR antennae are marketed by T E Connectivity and have been for about a year or two now.

Several years ago I was on a solo motorcycle trip to east TX. I was east of El Paso on I-10. It is a very boring stretch of highway, fast but boring. I got a call and because I couldn't see who it was from I answered it. It was an "IRS police officer" telling me I need to pay my late tax bill or they were going to come arrest me. I kept him on the line for 30 minutes asking questions and sounding worried. about 20 minutes in I got belligerent and very sarcastic. The last 30 seconds of the call he was cussing me up one side and down the other in his heavy accent. He finally told me he would have a team come to my house. I told him that would be great and asked that he be the number one man in the stack. He loudly invited me to have sex with my self one more time and hung up. That phone call made my day. The FCC is pretty much worthless when it comes to scam calls.

OMFG, I would PAY to see how that plays out!   OMG, OMG, what if EVERYBODY started to do that?!

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.
 

I didn't start this thread to stir up trouble or infighting. I only posted it because I had run across some new information that I felt needed shared. To set the record straight, I'm not totally against linking GMRS repeaters, but when there is a slight band opening, from my house I can hear the same conversation on 5 of the 8 repeater channels. That pretty much forces all local traffic down to 3 higher power channels. If it is allowed to go on as is, soon it will be all eight of the repeater channels. I'm also a ham and totally understand courteous operating is a must no matter what radio service you are operating in. Filling up all the repeater channels with the same linked conversation does not strike me as being courteous operating.

Hi Marc!  I agree with you about satellite/voting receivers to fill in reception gaps for mobiles and ht's on large footprint repeaters.  That really adds no additional interference issue and requires no additional use of scarce bandwidth.  I see no harm with that.

We are talking about the government here. They can't do anything simple. The only exception that I ever saw was while I was in the military. Military manuals are about the only government printed documents that are easy to understand (for the most part).
I have no skin in this game since we don't plan on ever linking our GMRS repeater.

I always tell those clowns that while I am an honorably retired cop, I will not contribute to them because most of these organizations speak out against restoration of our gun rights, such as "Constitutional"/ Permitless Carry bills.  Funny, they never try to argue.  They just hang up on me.  🙂

I would rather buy an used Motorola radio for the quality and longevity and the features rather than a new $18 CCR junk that does not have near the features of a professional Motorola.

He already stated that the used Motorola he would buy rather than a CCR has quality, longevity, and features.
But in a real SHTF scenario (rather than a Red Dawn style farce) having the durability and especially the receiver quality of the Motorola far outweighs the  inclusion of “face programming, no noaa, no am/fm broadcast radio, no vhf,uhf monitoring”. 

Everyone's most favorite hand held radio is the best.... And not a single sole can change that

Why pollute the limited spectrum of GMRS with blather from other parts of the country?  A stand alone repeater allows for better, uninterrupted local coms than one linked to a net or other repeaters.

Spectral purity info would be nice. As well how sensitive receive is.


Maybe a flir/thermal image after some usage. I am curious about were energy is most wasted in the radio. Only to see what part may fail first.

Edit to add flir request.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

While it's a good courtesy, realistically monitoring for co-channel traffic works for backyard repeaters, but as soon as you put up even a standalone machine on a mountaintop with a 100+ mile footprint, no user can adequately monitor for co-channel traffic on any significant area of the total footprint.
Of course linking makes the monitoring footprint bigger and thus enhances the issue, I'm not saying there's no correlation there, but it exists on just about all repeaters to some degree and especially so for high-coverage machines. By nature repeaters exist to cover areas that you cannot monitor with your HT/mobile/base alone, and most repeaters (being duplex) cannot do BCL on their own transmit frequency without some external receiver that interlocks on the transmit frequency (which has other technical challenges, such as locking out on natural interference, or self-interlocking with its own carrier).
The monitoring rule is intended to have users avoid getting a repeater to step on another station elsewhere in the coverage footprint by monitoring first, but this cannot be realistically ensured for even a decent standalone repeater, so this issue is not exactly linking-specific.

I'd rather just run Call Alert via MDC, although training my wife to use the MDC features might be a challenge.

Aye, but in many parts of the country, this goes on every day.  The annoyance these Chatty Cathy's generate on one repeater is multiplied by each additional repeater in whatever network or linking system they are connected to.  The thing that makes the whole linking system thing so annoying is that these marathon filibusters often take place on one, maybe two at the most, repeaters; yet they jam up multiple repeaters and pairs in a county, state, or larger geographical area.  In areas where these linked systems are prevalent, not only are repeaters in said "network" tied up, but so are other repeaters owned by different people, or people just trying to use those few (eight) 50W Simplex channels to keep in touch with family and friends. 

The Southwest Community Radio System (SWCRS) has two separate simulcast systems. I believe both are a three site system with one in the Tucson Area and one in the Albuquerque Area. You can reach them at swcrs.org or tucsongmrs.org for the specifics of their systems.
They have the Tucson system phased pretty good very seldom do I here any wah wahs and warbles.

Amateur Radio and GMRS.......They are separate services, I'd like to see it stay that way......Why usurp another radio service and ruin it?????
GMRS+ is a load of crap - It is the last sheet on a roll of TP, worthless. The whole idea is NO EXAMS to use GMRS.
Just because "we" hams can do it, doesn't mean we should on GMRS - experimental use? Aren't our amateur bands underused as it is? Policing??? "Self Policing" simply means YOU are policing YOUR OWN operation, not anyone elses.
Channel cops?, Lets get them kids using their radios illegally --- That'l teach 'em -- we can hold their parents liable.
It's ridiculous
Get real.

That's the usual offset, however the rules don't require it. Note the FCC rules simply state what frequencies can be used for communications through a repeater, sections A and C, but don't mention a required offset.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95/subpart-E/section-95.1763
Some have used a non-standard offset, still using the official frequencies, as a means to keep many users off a repeater since many radios "assume" a fixed 5MHz offset with no option for changing it. That leaves just those people with commercial grade radios that allow programming in separate TX and RX frequencies.

First, depending on how much real estate you have in your vehicle or home, I always recommend having it all.l  I have HF, Ham VHF/UHF, and GMRS in my home and in my Jeep.
 
Don't think of it as better or worse. Just different. What differences serve a purpose for you at any given moment is the right answer. 

Ham offers more frequencies, more options to explore as a hobby, more repeater coverage, while GMRS offers ease of use with family and friends that have no interest in radios other than to communicate. One may help you get assistance where there is no cell coverage while the other may help you spot that tire placement off road or keep you in touch with your wife at camp while you paddle a kayak around the lake. Is one better? Sure the one you need to do the thing you want in the moment. I fully am in favor of both.