SUPERG900

I'll jump on this topic against better judgement. 
 
If someone gets on my repeater without permission and is stupid its on them. If i gave them permission i take responsibility. There is no keeping idiots off a repeater if they want to no matter what we do. Just take it with a grain of salt. 
 
Back to reqular programming.
 

This ought to be fun...
How about a citation indicating that there *is* liability?
[Getting my bag of chips]
 

I truly believe that we must be prepared for whatever may unexpected happen. That's why my beer fridge stays 100% stocked at all times....

I truly believe that we must be prepared for whatever may unexpected happen. That's why my beer fridge stays 100% stocked at all times....

Heh.

With a pi-star, you get: One Hotspot To Rule Them All!  BM,DMR-MARC,DMR+,TGIF,YSF,XLX...  but you can't play unless you join the priesthood of DMRGateway freaks.

The Chinese do make some great stuff, but they just don't have the brand visibility that western companies do. Also, they're not going to invest much in operating western based import divisions due to the politicization of market access by those countries. Many have heard of the difficulties that Western companies have in operating in China - this is because western nations use commerce as a cudgel to force other countries to follow their policies. The Chinese know this. However, they aren't adverse to selling to local importers based in the countries they are exporting to. This maintains an arms-length distance between Chinese companies and western political jurisdiction. Who can blame them? We read in the news about Chinese companies under sanction for doing the exact same thing western nations have done for decades - but the irony of it seems to be lost on many.
As to the quality of imported Chinese goods - that's simply producing products at the price points western importers are willing to pay. After all, in countries like the US, the average working stiff has been losing his purchasing power since the 70's and he really can't afford the good stuff, and the importer likes his over the top markups. And that's another story.....
 

First off, it is doubtful people will show up at your house because you install a repeater. Under Part 95 repeaters don't have to be coordinated by an assigned FCC coordinator and listed. Your repeater operates under your call sign on GMRS. The only way you might get people showing up is if you have HOA restrictions and you violate them. Secondly, your repeater will only be available to people operating on GMRS frequencies, not FRS or Bubble Pack radios that do not require licensing. Bubble Pack Family Radio service radios are what you would find in most people's "go pack" as they are what's found at your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy. 
 
Before spending that cash I would also do a little research and see how many potential users that could currently use your repeater. Do a search on the FCC website to see how many people are currently licensed for GMRS in your county. Expect that number to slowly grow once you install the system. People will still need to purchase GMRS radios and hopefully get licensed for them as well. Again, you aren't going to find GMRS radios in the local big box stores. Thirdly, and most importantly, you need to think about your coverage area. Talk out isn't as important as talk in or receiving signals form low power hand held radios. For that, you will need height on your antenna which means a tower or pole mounted antenna. Finally, your repeater is a LOCAL resource, it won't be of much use in an evacuation as there would be no one local to use it. It may be of use to those evacuating through your coverage area but it won't help you or your family if you leave the area.
 
In all actuality, I personally believe you would be better served by having you and your family get amateur Technician licenses and use the money to install both a 2 meter base and mobile system for your house and vehicle. Tech licenses are not difficult to get and the infrastructure for 2 meter VHF and 70 cm UHF repeaters is quite robust across the country. For amateur help go to the ARRL website and look up what amateur clubs are in your area. Many clubs have websites where you can look up the number of repeaters in your area. You can also use sites like Repeater Book to do an area search for repeaters. Amateur clubs will hold classes free of charge to teachthe required rules needed to be licensed and there are several free websites that offer practice tests to help you pass an exam. All this advice is worth exactly what you paid for it as  it's just my opinion.
Bill WRCM737, K4BJW

Not all CCR’s are complete junk. The original model D878UV I have is an alright radio. Is it the equivalent of a higher end Motorola, Kenwood, ICOM etc., no but it gets the job done I wanted it for and didn’t break the bank. The later models I question if the performance and features justify the significantly higher prices, which I don’t think they do.
People use to laugh at Japanese electronics, like the current Chinese stuff, but they got better and higher quality. The Chinese radios will likely do the same sooner or later. If you start looking at test equipment designed and manufactured in China you quickly find out it isn’t junk and the higher end stuff is really causing manufacturers like Techtronics and Keysight (spin-off of of the old HP) headaches in the low to mid-tier equipment range. 

From the FCC:
"RR holders are authorized to operate most aircraft and aeronautical ground stations. They can also operate marine radiotelephone stations aboard pleasure craft (other than those carrying more than six passengers for hire on the Great Lakes or bays or tidewaters or in the open sea) when operator licensing is required."
https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/commercial-radio-operator-license-program/commercial-0
 
I would take that to mean that you may be authorized for any band, but only for Marie or Aeronautical uses. Similar to one using marine radios/frequencies inland for hunting, its outside the authorization and highly frowned upon.
 
If you have your RR license, you have some knowledge. Getting your General is not much more information to review than Tech, and you get 99% of the Amateur spectrum.

Yes, you can use an amp but why? It would be less expensive to just buy a higher power radio without the multiple point-of-failure hassle.

"Officer, arrest that man for reckless redneckitude!"

The Anytone's have always had the capability to change the talk group of a digital channel on the fly - and I use that functionality occasionally. Mostly though, I like to create individual digital channels for each of the talkgroups I commonly use on a particular repeater. This way, I can simply simply use the channel knob of the radio for selecting my most-used talkgroups on the current repeater - and I use 'zones' button to select different digital repeaters. I usually reserve one channel on each digital repeater as a scratch-pad for on-the fly talkgroups that I'm not worried about maintaining.
 
For analog repeaters - I create a zone for each analog network, and a channel in that zone for each individual repeater.

"In the old days, we used to..." <insert your cb revenge story here>.

DMR isn’t that complex to setup. It’s just messy. For a single repeater which supports multiple talk groups the easiest solution is use one memory for each full time talk group using the appropriate color code and time slot. The repeater frequencies, and just about everything else, stays the same. I myself have used 6 or more memory slots in a radio for just one repeater due to all the supported talk groups.

Alright.  Since I am the guy with the tens of thousands of dollars setup and the commercial install I believe I need to interject here.  Never did I say that a small repeater system is useless.  And there are COMMERCIAL repeaters available that ARE indeed two mobiles in a box with a controller between them.  And those work find if that is all you need. 
My point was if you are going to put up a big commercial grade install that you need to NOT pull the crap of wanting fee's paid for access, as this level of install has a huge footprint that will interfere with other repeaters on the same frequency in that footprint.  And the frequency resource is limited for repeaters.  I am all for guys that want to put up a repeater on their roof or short TV tower and be able to talk 8 or 10 miles.  This sort of thing SHOULD be encouraged.  But you still need to be aware of others on the frequency and try to find a quiet pair to set your repeater up on.   
The other thing that needs to be said here is IF you are going to stick an antenna WAY up in the air and cover a 60 to 80 mile radius, you DO need to have good commercial equipment and not two portables with a back to back cable between them and a cheap duplexer.  And here's the reason.  If you are the only one that will be using it, and the usage is light, it don't matter.  But with a big coverage footprint there is a good chance that it will see a lot of use and portable radios are NOT designed to be run at that duty cycle.  The commercial repeaters I use for GMRS are 100% CCS (continuous commercial service) rated.  This means they are designed to be transmitting up to 100% of the time, 27/7/365 and live.  If you were to try that with the two back to back mobiles the transmitter would not survive the abuse, even with a fan and additional cooling.   Now, my repeaters are only logging 30 to 45 minutes of use a day currently... but that number keeps increasing.  And that's fine.  I built it to run all the time, and offer it for free to all licensed users in the coverage area to use at their leisure.  But I would hate to see someone put in inferior gear at some remote site and it die when it was needed.  That situation is actually worse in my mind than it not being there at all.  Because if it's needed and expected to be operational.  And that operational repeater is part of someones emergency plan, then it needs to work as such. 
 
 

"Officer, arrest that man for reckless redneckitude!"

Bit of a necro, but specifically.. You are supposed to use the minimum power required to communicate as a ham. It's on the test, lol.
Seriously though, I can't imagine what you'd need 1500 watts for... Few of us have a 500+ foot antenna to stick our comms on to really get value.

Assuming you're using the SimpleUSB audio interface, you can run "simpleusb-tune-menu" from the SSH command line. You'll get a menu where you can tune the RX and TX levels. The proper way to tune the RX audio is to have a service monitor inject a 1 kHz tone at 3 kHz deviation (for narrowband) or 5 kHz deviation (for wideband) and use the "rxdisplay" feature to get the audio level to be right around the 3 kHz or 5 kHz marks on the audio meter. With practice, you can tune by ear and get very, very close. A common thing to watch out for is the pre-emphasis setting. If you audio sounds too tinny or too bassy, the pre-emphasis settings on the node, repeater, or both are set wrong.
If you're using the myGMRS image, don't run the "asl-menu" tool or you can mess up your node, since that is meant for hooking up to the Ham AllStarLink network.

I'll cross post this here from Reddit since it's reference information and will be a hot topic I'm sure.
IMO don't start hooking up your TNC's just yet, this doesn't do much for the users, just a bit for the manufacturers.
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For reference; here is the full rules on data on GMRS with the change implemented as outlined in the Appendix "Final Rules"; the change is in bold:     This fortunately/unfortunately depending on your side of the fence means that we cannot hook up APRS modems to our handhelds with removable antennas or mobile radios due to the "removable" antenna limitation. Also - does anyone know if MDC1200 or FleetSync are not permitted on removable-antenna radios or on the repeater inputs since they're data transmissions? This is common practice, but I'm not so sure it's legal practice.   I had approached the FCC on the APRS topic as I feel the above as written applies to handhelds and only new radios seeking certification (what about attaching a modem to a historically certified radio?) below is the response I received at the time:     The above is a written response, not a ruling and it could be argued I feel, but that's their stance anyways.   Onto the CB topic! The determination on CB radio FM is interesting; but a maximum 8khz bandwidth is going to make it super narrow band (most narrow-band FM is 11.25Khz)

What's the make, model and type of duplexer? Duplexers always lose some power, I've measured losses like that first hand on the Jesai, Fumei and other Chinese flatpacks around the 6-7dB range which is exactly the power drop you're measuring. They're really only acceptable down to about a 7mhz split or bigger, not the 5mhz split we're used to.
If it's something with a reputable brand name, it's not normal. a Celwave/Phelps Dodge or Telewave duplexer will have insertion losses around 1.5dB or so, if you take your time tuning those you can get that down to 0.8dB or so; if you get something like that the 42W you measured would be up around 35W after passing through...

As long as you are not transmitting on the 467.000 repeater input part of the band you are not interfering with a repeater.   Its not a prevailing opinion, its an FCC reg. 
 
The 50 watt simplex frequencies are the same as the repeater output frequencies, they are shared.
 
7 miles would be possible with well elevated antennas.  A directional antenna isn't that much help in the GMRS frequency band if there are obstructions.
Height is might.
 
I have made 11 mile VHF simplex contacts with my Anytone 50 watt VHF mobile, UHF/GMRS is harder without pure line of sight.

Gee, I'm a little confused here Miichael. When I tune to a repeater I thought my receiver was set to the output of the repeater rather than the repeater input frequency. Is it different in your radio?

Folks,
 
There's a new talkgroup on the TGIF DMR (digital mobile radio) network that represents the Tucson GMRS Association for dual GMRS/Ham licensees - it's on talkgroup 527. Anyone with a amateur license is welcome to tune in and pipe up - you're welcome! If you're itching to get into digital mobile radio - we can help.
 
This talkgroup is only being carried on the prime.tgif.network (beta) and not the older (soon to be disabled) tgif.network. You need a DMR id of course, and you'll need to sign up at https://prime.tgif.network. TGIF is a newer DMR network, smaller, and runs very clean - no packet loss or congestion like the bigger DMR networks. We're quite impressed.
 
There are instructions at https://prime.tgif.network on how to sign up for TGIF and how to configure a pi-star hotspot for DMR on the prime.tgif.network.
 
If you need help, or have questions on how to setup a pi-star hotspot for the Prime TGIF network, you can catch me on this thread or you can email: SuperG@arrl.net

Lol... wife and I had a conversation about the flag pole antenna last night. She said she should have ok'ed it. She doesn't like the idea of the bird feeder attracting deer and pest.
Her: was the feeder because you want to watch birds? Or was it always the antenna?
Me: Antenna of course...
Her crap should of just bought the flag pole. At least I could of chosen some flags.
Trust in the fact your wife knows that it is a new radio... lol.... It has just entered the rolodex for potential memo later.
 
I am looking at alternative mounts and antennas. The general ticket is on the back burner for a bit. Here is the conversation with a fellow ham last night.
Him: So why not just a straight HF rig in the truck
Me: only a technician
Him: get the ticket
Me: too lazy
Him: Oh one of the 4 banes of the amateur radio operator.
Me: 4???
Him: Yes. 1.) Not enough money for the toys 2.) Too lazy to do it right now 3.) XYL 4.) HOAA
Me: so many abbreviations in amateur radio
Him: QRM, 73
Me: WTF, QRM??? you are standing in front of me.. hey get back here.
 
 

I got my extra class ham license in 1985 and live out here in Spokane.
I often monitor the ham repeater system here that covers essentially the whole eastern half of Washington state.
I also belong to the Spokane VHF Club.
 
I find that most of the hams are surprisingly receptive to GMRS and many (or most) of them have their GMRS license.
They talk about GMRS on the ham repeater now and then.
They also have discussed it on the VHF club net and at meetings.
 
The reason is that most hams have family members and fishing buddies who are not hams.
So ham is pretty useless for communicating at camps and family outings. 
Most hams love all kinds of radios.
 
Also, hams believe that GMRS brings people into ham radio.
So they don't see it as competition.  They see it as something that promotes amateur radio.
 
Of course there will always be some delicate egos out there.
A few guys see ham radio as a religion.
They worked very hard to get a license and don't like people who just "wrote a check".
 
I almost like GMRS better than ham sometimes because it is less exclusive.
Ham is sometimes just too quiet.
 
Vince