JeepCrawler98

Thanks!  Digging through the jargon and definitions it is starting to make more sense to me now...
Remote Control...

Operate...

Network Connection...

So when the FCC says:
"You cannot directly interconnect a GMRS station with the telephone network or any other network for the purpose of carrying GMRS communications, but these networks can be used for remote control of repeater stations."
It is pertaining to only to radio-to-telephone communication, namely using a radio to dial a phone number.  
Thanks everyone!  I love the idea of a network of connected GMRS repeaters, but that statement on the FCC site of "You cannot directly interconnect a GMRS station with the telephone network or any other network for the purpose of carrying GMRS communications, but these networks can be used for remote control of repeater stations" had me stumbling for a bit.

WENEEDMOARCAPSCAPTAIN!1

Good catch on this informal and informational page; the phrase "or any other network" showed up in November of last year per archive.org well after other sources in the FCC had stated that it's fine and well after linking had already become prevalent on GMRS based on that correspondence and the implementation of the 2017 rules. This 'minor' addition in my opinion is in conflict with prior correspondence from the FCC before this date, the current CFR (which of course represent the actual rules: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95?toc=1), upon which the GMRS community have already acted (and invested) in good faith.
Perhaps they're looking to discourage it, but in my opinion it still remains legal regardless of whatever the official sentiment may be especially since they already stated its fine in the past and the current rules are consistent with that. Perhaps someone inside the FCC had an "oh wait not like that" moment after evaluating impacts of the 2017 rule change, since GMRS absolutely exploded in popularity during COVID. Still - the rules are the rules and are the only thing that governs the service. The only thing that would concern me on the issue is any future proposed rulemaking changes or amendments (which I believe require a public comment period?)

Good catch on this informal and informational page; the phrase "or any other network" showed up in November of last year per archive.org well after other sources in the FCC had stated that it's fine and well after linking had already become prevalent on GMRS based on that correspondence and the implementation of the 2017 rules. This 'minor' addition in my opinion is in conflict with prior correspondence from the FCC before this date, the current CFR (which of course represent the actual rules: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95?toc=1), upon which the GMRS community have already acted (and invested) in good faith.
Perhaps they're looking to discourage it, but in my opinion it still remains legal regardless of whatever the official sentiment may be especially since they already stated its fine in the past and the current rules are consistent with that. Perhaps someone inside the FCC had an "oh wait not like that" moment after evaluating impacts of the 2017 rule change, since GMRS absolutely exploded in popularity during COVID. Still - the rules are the rules and are the only thing that governs the service. The only thing that would concern me on the issue is any future proposed rulemaking changes or amendments (which I believe require a public comment period?)

Good catch on this informal and informational page; the phrase "or any other network" showed up in November of last year per archive.org well after other sources in the FCC had stated that it's fine and well after linking had already become prevalent on GMRS based on that correspondence and the implementation of the 2017 rules. This 'minor' addition in my opinion is in conflict with prior correspondence from the FCC before this date, the current CFR (which of course represent the actual rules: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95?toc=1), upon which the GMRS community have already acted (and invested) in good faith.
Perhaps they're looking to discourage it, but in my opinion it still remains legal regardless of whatever the official sentiment may be especially since they already stated its fine in the past and the current rules are consistent with that. Perhaps someone inside the FCC had an "oh wait not like that" moment after evaluating impacts of the 2017 rule change, since GMRS absolutely exploded in popularity during COVID. Still - the rules are the rules and are the only thing that governs the service. The only thing that would concern me on the issue is any future proposed rulemaking changes or amendments (which I believe require a public comment period?)

WENEEDMOARCAPSCAPTAIN!1

Can you post a pic of your test setup and change your span to 10mhz centered on 465? The dynamic range on a NanoVNA isn't great but you should be able to see down to -70dB somewhat OK. A notch at -22dB is barely anything and indicates something's amiss.

That's a sad post to read; but I also think it's great that they posted the story directly and cleanly for the community to digest; it's disappointing that they weren't able to get the support they needed. Many don't realize the hard work and costs (be it direct or merit based) it takes to put up a good repeater on a good site; it's not just the hardware costs, it's the maintenance of the gear, it's the work to earn your keep there or pay the bill or both, it's the fuel to drive to these places which can be hours away, it all adds up both financially and in terms of time. These machines are ubiquitous, such a tremendous part of people's every day use yet in the background so that it's not realized that someone has to put them up and keep them up, someone has to pay for them in one way or another, someone has the balance their work/family time to look after them, and yet they're often made freely available to the community because it provides a public service for the greater good. They were assessed $125/month to be on a tower covering the bay area and then some; in reality this in itself is an amazing rental rate for a site covering small city let alone the bay area!
Support your local GMRS groups! It's hard, time consuming, and expensive work to provide these machines. If you can't do this financially; help pull some weight in other ways - step up as net control operator, help out newcomers, buy someone a beer, and if for whatever reason you can't do that, at least be courteous and don't complain that you can't receive it S9+60dB on a Boafeng in your mom's reinforced concrete basement 80 miles away.

That's a sad post to read; but I also think it's great that they posted the story directly and cleanly for the community to digest; it's disappointing that they weren't able to get the support they needed. Many don't realize the hard work and costs (be it direct or merit based) it takes to put up a good repeater on a good site; it's not just the hardware costs, it's the maintenance of the gear, it's the work to earn your keep there or pay the bill or both, it's the fuel to drive to these places which can be hours away, it all adds up both financially and in terms of time. These machines are ubiquitous, such a tremendous part of people's every day use yet in the background so that it's not realized that someone has to put them up and keep them up, someone has to pay for them in one way or another, someone has the balance their work/family time to look after them, and yet they're often made freely available to the community because it provides a public service for the greater good. They were assessed $125/month to be on a tower covering the bay area and then some; in reality this in itself is an amazing rental rate for a site covering small city let alone the bay area!
Support your local GMRS groups! It's hard, time consuming, and expensive work to provide these machines. If you can't do this financially; help pull some weight in other ways - step up as net control operator, help out newcomers, buy someone a beer, and if for whatever reason you can't do that, at least be courteous and don't complain that you can't receive it S9+60dB on a Boafeng in your mom's reinforced concrete basement 80 miles away.

WAV files work fine, so long as you resample to a 8Khz sampling rate with a single channel (mono) in an audio editing program (such as Audacity); the industry standard 44/48Khz sampling rates don't work.
I usually run the WAV route as I fire up audacity anyways to normalize the audio levels with normal radio traffic and apply an aggressive 300Hz HPF and 3Khz LPF to keep things inside of the audible passband of 300-3000Hz (which keeps the PL sub audible band and harmonics clean, since Asterisk can generate audio well below and above the audio band we care about). Exporting an 8Khz mono WAV file from there just saves a conversion step since you're already editing everything.

Ditto; all our hubs are recorded 24/7 and retained for 90 days, asterisk makes this cake to do - literally one configuration string and a cron job.
I do it primarily for my own entertainment, but also in case there's somebody using it in an emergency and a record of events is needed later on. We're also close to the southern border here so it wouldn't be the first time we've had some 'odd' traffic show up and work its way through the system; that goes straight to BP, and is one of the primary reasons we don't post our tones anymore without a slight sanity check first.

Contrary to common beliefs, once you step away from the keyboard and ignore the internet, you will find a vast number of Hams are GMRS operators and vice versa. In the hobby portions and in the community service areas, GMRS and Ham not only coexist, but work together with great success. At least when I have been for the last 20+ years.
 
Now, there may be some individuals who don't play nice and use GMRS v Ham as an excuse to show their behinds... but that is a "them problem".

Ditto; all our hubs are recorded 24/7 and retained for 90 days, asterisk makes this cake to do - literally one configuration string and a cron job.
I do it primarily for my own entertainment, but also in case there's somebody using it in an emergency and a record of events is needed later on. We're also close to the southern border here so it wouldn't be the first time we've had some 'odd' traffic show up and work its way through the system; that goes straight to BP, and is one of the primary reasons we don't post our tones anymore without a slight sanity check first.

Ditto; all our hubs are recorded 24/7 and retained for 90 days, asterisk makes this cake to do - literally one configuration string and a cron job.
I do it primarily for my own entertainment, but also in case there's somebody using it in an emergency and a record of events is needed later on. We're also close to the southern border here so it wouldn't be the first time we've had some 'odd' traffic show up and work its way through the system; that goes straight to BP, and is one of the primary reasons we don't post our tones anymore without a slight sanity check first.

Ditto; all our hubs are recorded 24/7 and retained for 90 days, asterisk makes this cake to do - literally one configuration string and a cron job.
I do it primarily for my own entertainment, but also in case there's somebody using it in an emergency and a record of events is needed later on. We're also close to the southern border here so it wouldn't be the first time we've had some 'odd' traffic show up and work its way through the system; that goes straight to BP, and is one of the primary reasons we don't post our tones anymore without a slight sanity check first.

Tones are not required; but unless you want to completely make a channel useless to any other repeaters on the same pair and potentially cause all kinds of interference you really should have one.  If you're running a machine CSQ it'll pick up ALL traffic and any background noise above your squelch level on the repeater input channel, regardless of if it's intended for your repeater or not.

List it now; I list repeaters months before they even go online just so there's a chance for someone to let me know if I'm sitting it on an occupied frequency.
 

At this time, we do not. We only support repeaters that are directly connected to a node or via a link radio.
Simplex nodes will add a whole new level of confusion and complexity for the users, and each node would typically only benefit one user. It makes more sense for us to devote our time and effort toward repeaters which generally cover more people. 

If that's RG58 that could be your culprit; suggest rolling up to at least good quality LMR400 to get it to work OK. By the book you should be running hardline, but that's overkill for this application IMO. Cheap coax makes noise under power of which a primary symptom is heavy receiver desense.
Also if you purchased an RT97 for the wrong band the notches on the internal duplexer will be way out of wack; meaning your receive is basically not protected from the repeater's transmitter at all (again, you'd get some major desense here). You can 'kinda' tune them with a nanoVNA (not well I should add, but you can get in the ballpark), but if you're not familiar with the process I'd have either a local comms shop do it for you or exchange it with Retevis.

PL-259 has decent loss at UHF frequencies; Type N is much better to use and is all you'll find on commercial repeater setups (sometimes even DIN 7/16 or flange connectors). On end-user equipment manufacturers tend to stick to the PL-259's since it's what people are more used to working with and they're robust.
You should get an SWR meter to check that antenna, it also looks like it has a few exposed joints in it; joints can raise the noise floor under power as well so it's yet another thing to watch out for. If you do end up switching it out for another model go for one with Type N connectors and crimp on a fitting on that LMR400. The Diamond X50C2 works decent for a home-use repeater and has some gain for the price, if you go above that start looking at used DB404/408/411's
Be mindful that when it comes to full duplex repeater setups; all the small unexciting details become a lot more important than the repeater itself - filtering, feedline and antennas are everything.

If that's RG58 that could be your culprit; suggest rolling up to at least good quality LMR400 to get it to work OK. By the book you should be running hardline, but that's overkill for this application IMO. Cheap coax makes noise under power of which a primary symptom is heavy receiver desense.
Also if you purchased an RT97 for the wrong band the notches on the internal duplexer will be way out of wack; meaning your receive is basically not protected from the repeater's transmitter at all (again, you'd get some major desense here). You can 'kinda' tune them with a nanoVNA (not well I should add, but you can get in the ballpark), but if you're not familiar with the process I'd have either a local comms shop do it for you or exchange it with Retevis.

Fair enough for simplex; but you have to remember that if you're using a repeater you don't own yourself you're actually actively using someone else's radio in addition to your own. This is why repeater owners may have their own rules and practices they want followed when using their hardware; sometimes these rules include not having roger beeps.
Since on repeaters you have people monitoring for traffic from others and are often dependent on them for communications, aside from the fact that they tend to be watering holes for radio traffic - you are forcing other operators to listen to you. Simplex, not so much a problem because you can tune out and not miss anything as you mentioned.

@WRPG591 What's your problem?  You are new to this public forum, but I am guessing you're not new to the internet.  @Sshannon provided an answer, @PACNWComms expanded on the why, and then a couple of us confirmed those points made by the first two.
If you don't like it when people try to help or contribute content, this group might not be a good fit for you.

wow...I didn't realize this was such a touchy subject.
@PACNWComms
I know that these repeaters are privately owned and not "public domain" which is why I push the request access button and ask for permission. My question was a simple one and it was answered by Sshannon. An answer I don't agree with because I'm also giving my email and call sign but one I must accept because it's the way the system is set up. I wasn't asking for your sermon. 
 
 
 

Try it with just the Transmit Tone and no Receive Tone.  
Be careful: some people claim that weather predictions heard on a Baofeng are unreliable! ?