gortex2

This is just another of the 300 reasons I wish there was a moderator on this forum...

So whats odder is back in the old days when we had a repeater for home use we had a "remote" at our house for control of the repeater. It used a RTL (Radio Tie Line) from our house to the mountain top. I know in those days it wasn't cheap. Autopatch was a thing then on ham big time but you could not add that to GMRS. But wants needed as Dad would call and mo would tell him to get xyz on his way home. Later on control stations took over for remotes. Just funny how stuff progresses. Isay just enjoy GMRs for what its built for and fdont try to make it something it never was. Jeep riding, talking to kids in a park, hiking, caravans home use is what 90% of the folks who use GMRS use it for. Its only folks here that have to have linking and nets. 

Techinically you can cover an entire state but I know what you mean. Here is one scenario - County simulcast system with multiple sites and voters. Coverage needed in XYZ area. Add single base radio and use same "simulcast comparators technology as the simulcast. Technically from a "equipment" standpoint its still simulcast. From a user perspective if I talk on the "city b" radio everyone hears me in "city a" and i am voted even if its only one repeater. On the subscriber end you could do vote scan in the MSI world and the system would be concidered "multicast". Ive installed a few of these. While not desired sometimes thats the only way to do it. Our SAR system is almost exactly this as we couldn't license the same frequency in b county. So 4 site simulcast with a 5 site on another frequency. With proper equipment its pretty simple to do. 
Knowing the area the issue took place a well as some some of the players I'd probably done the same thing. For guys who work in the field you dont want to be at odds with customers and definately with the FCC. Think we are on the same page here @WRKC935.

So whats odder is back in the old days when we had a repeater for home use we had a "remote" at our house for control of the repeater. It used a RTL (Radio Tie Line) from our house to the mountain top. I know in those days it wasn't cheap. Autopatch was a thing then on ham big time but you could not add that to GMRS. But wants needed as Dad would call and mo would tell him to get xyz on his way home. Later on control stations took over for remotes. Just funny how stuff progresses. Isay just enjoy GMRs for what its built for and fdont try to make it something it never was. Jeep riding, talking to kids in a park, hiking, caravans home use is what 90% of the folks who use GMRS use it for. Its only folks here that have to have linking and nets. 

So whats odder is back in the old days when we had a repeater for home use we had a "remote" at our house for control of the repeater. It used a RTL (Radio Tie Line) from our house to the mountain top. I know in those days it wasn't cheap. Autopatch was a thing then on ham big time but you could not add that to GMRS. But wants needed as Dad would call and mo would tell him to get xyz on his way home. Later on control stations took over for remotes. Just funny how stuff progresses. Isay just enjoy GMRs for what its built for and fdont try to make it something it never was. Jeep riding, talking to kids in a park, hiking, caravans home use is what 90% of the folks who use GMRS use it for. Its only folks here that have to have linking and nets. 

Why was this link not posted in the thread about this same product?
Licensed for 10 days, registered user at MyGMRS for a week, 11 comments, 10 of them in the same post about this same concept.
I understand wanting to get the word out about this new product/concept/whatever, but I kinda feel like creating a Wikipedia page about it and vomiting it here isn't the best tactic.

How are linked GMRS repeaters less cumbersome than ham radio? 
With eight repeater channels in total, and untrained users operating in panic mode on both the repeaters and on the eight simplex channels that share frequencies with those repeaters, linking GMRS repeaters, except on a prearranged published schedule like an amateur radio sked or net, could be useless.  You're better off using personal services for proximate communications and get your news from battery powered receivers capable of tuning HF and the broadcast bands.  

According to the president of the GMRS Alliance club that shut down, Carl, the club has around 226 members
The club does NOT have it's own repeater system, they were provided site access to a "simulcast multicast system" as club members that was hosted by a un-named "different person or entity's" network along with a few "member repeaters" also part of the network
The "custodian" of the simulcast system got the email asking to shut down the network - NOT the club or or any of it's members, although the club president was CC'd on reply to the FCC
The email was real - the repeater custodian and the FCC agent that sent the email have a working relationship
It sounds to me like the whole network was ran by somebody else - most likely leased from regional business band radio provider with multiple sites. The custodian gets a email from his FCC buddy that said shut it down and he did before they came knocking at the door. I'm sure that GMRS doesn't pay the bills in commercial radio arena and he doesn't need to make a enemy of FCC if they want to say on the good graces of his company's governing authority. At least he got a warning.
As far as the FCC wanting a list of call signs that use the repeater, I can kinda see that as well. They were provided site access to a "simulcast multicast system" as club members and the FCC might want to send a warning letter to the users about the situation but I'd think they would get the message once the repeater network is off the air.

Collapsed?
If one of my friends who worked for an enforcement group called me and gave me a heads up that might keep me out of an enforcement action, I would not argue. I would simply say “Thanks!” And take their advice. An early warning system is nice to have. Why argue with them?

I have an opinion, but it is just that - an opinion. I consider GMRS as super-FCS, not HAM lite. I have no issue with local repeaters, but if you feel the need to "rag chew" with someone four states away, take the test and get your HAM license. But that is just my opinion.

It was a voted simulcast system using commercial LMR equipment. Nothing to do with Zello. They did state they had put one repeater .back on the air with a zello connection but my guess is to monitor it. 

A link to the draft Wikipedia page appears at the link.  It’s for people who want to learn more about an audio aggregator.  Everyone else can easily ignore it.
But I don’t really see much use for the Audio Aggregatoron a PC as a way to connect a radio to the internet, when a raspberry pi running allstar or Shari does it easier and with a lot more community support.
 

My thinking is more along the lines that something is coming down and they don't want alternate means of communication to be in place.  Single repeaters are just that, somewhat localized.  The string repeaters cover large areas that are normally covered by more elaborate systems that when down effectively quash communication.
Ya, I'm one of those.

In case anyone missed it, Not A Rubicon has an excellent interview up on YouTube now, with the President of the impacted club in New York State.  Things are different than what most of us guessed but it is NOT a hoax.
 
Thanks  Randy!  👍👍👍👍

And he did not disappoint us!  VG video this morning with the Club President out NY way. Seems the e-mail to the repeater owner is legit, he and the FCC person who sent it have a "working relationship" but the Club Prez would not elaborate. And he did state the club would not be supplying any callsign information.

Thanks Randy

@SteveShannon No i dont think that is the issue. Depending on configuration they could be reprogrammed for local use. Its up to the club and tech working on the stuff.
For reference on a similar system deployed - 4 Quantars, 4 MLC8000 IP Gateways, 1 MLC8000 Comparator. IP linked via IPSEC tunnels on private microwave service. All 4 are setup for BASE only configuration. If I drop one link the other 3 still TX and RX. The 4th sits quiet. If the link is pulled from the comparator all sites RX but have no comparator to tell them to TX. As said previously I could set one site for local "fallback" but if that is the site severed now when a user keys up both that site and the simulcast sites will key up and casue distortion for end users. Unless you can 100% control the link from the comparator to the site it can casue alot of trouble. With different frequency use it can be mitigated but thats how it works in the MSI world. 
Our SAR folks had a similar setup in the past with 2 TX sites and 3 RX sites. That was on T1 and used 4W circuits to the comparator. Same thing could happen but the comparator and one RF site was in the same site so the other site could drop and the main site would stay on the air. 
I think the "link" word can be missrepresented a bit as the majority of the users think of the repeater having a link to another site via allstar/mygmrs/etc which normally runs on a Raspberry Pi or similar non critical device and not the traditional industry networked solutions. 
I'm sure this will get worked out and something will come back on the air. If the FCC determines and provides written information that this can't be done I would think it would be step one to end the linking systems in GMRS. 
 
 

The main idea of the ground is to help the surge to ground. I'd up your wire from 10 to at minimum 6 guage. Lightening arrestor should be as the coax enters the building. 

The main idea of the ground is to help the surge to ground. I'd up your wire from 10 to at minimum 6 guage. Lightening arrestor should be as the coax enters the building. 

If it was already written with CPS 2.0 - then there's no going back. (Well, there are ways, but nobody wants to send a rookie down that path!)
Good news is, if they already did the updates & got it to 2.0, then there's little harm in using CPS 2.0 to make the changes you desire. You will need to activate that EID for the software in order to write a wideband frequency back into the codeplug. Hopefully someone already walked you through that part.
You have a much better repeater than a Bridgecomm in my opinion, and I wouldn't get too worried about writing to it with CPS 2.0   The troubles come if you take something with really old original firmware & try to write it with the latest/greatest.  Sounds like Used-Radios already did the work to get you up to date.

Where would the additional pairs come from?  Any petition would have to solve that. 

Well, for that to go anywhere it would be a year or so of petitions, a couple years of hearings, and a couple years before manufacturers start making radios with the new pairs (of course those with chirp or proprietary software for programming will not need to wait). But even with new pairs, and software, a lot of radios aren't going to transmit outside of today's GMRS frequencies. They're not supposed to be easily modifiable, right?

No. GMRS is not about that. Thats what Ham is for. 

So first thing to do is make sure your PC, CPS and USB cable all are working as one. I only use factory MSI stuff so drivers are never an issue. Many have driver issues with aftermarket USB stuff.
Open CPS - Read Radio then save thecodeplug somewhere and dont touch it. Then modify or make your changes and write to repeater. Then save as a new file name. 
For you changes
Lastly I assume you have CPS 16 ? Or is it 2.0 ?
 

The XPR8300 is very first generation for the TRBO series repeaters. It's really just 2 XPR mobiles in a box, with some specialized hardware connecting them, and specific firmware loaded into the mobiles to allow them to act as a repeater.  The XPR8400 was the 'improved' 2nd generation unit with more memory, more features, and a better cooling fan configuration.
There is no option for an analog 'courtesy tone' in the standard XPR8300 configuration. You can get that courtesy beep if you add on an external control panel.
Assuming that you have CPS 2.0 from Motorola with the Wideband EID - I would not bother to mess with the repeater other than pulling a codeplug & storing that copy for future reference if you might ever need it. It might be a good idea to also grab the  MotoTrbo "Tuner" software & use that to read & store the tuning settings for the repeater just in case.
There is absolutely no advantage to 'upgrading' the XPR8300 to CPS 2.0
If you have a working machine, and it does what you need, I'd really think twice before trying to touch it with anything above CPS 16. There are wideband enabled versions of CPS 16 'in the wild'  that would allow you to make the CWID changes & hangtime that you're asking about.