gortex2

Kind of screwy that this just came around, what with the election, Russia  allegedly going to start cutting under sea internet cables and so forth. I don't like it.

Ya the trip was amazing. Second time we have been out west. Last time it was GC and Moab. Now this weekend its front unit bearings as I broke a bolt in mine last weekend changing UJoints....Ya me...but better in the shop than on the trail. 
 

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

I believe a 10 watt difference in power is less than a decibel. That is miniscule and not even measureable in the Farz. If you can't reach the repeater with 40 watts more than likely you will not even reach it with 50 watts.

Just got back from a 6000 mile trip across the US. Some little riding in WY but now packing Jeep for a few JJ rides. Uwarrie next 2 weekends for myself then out to KY next month. Today need to pullallmy gear from the Gladiator to put in the JK.

Shot in the dark, but what you're probably hearing are those using Midland-type family radios that don't require a license.
To answer the "why did you get a license" question, because once you are granted access to a repeater with the access tones, all those "chats" go away.  On one of my GMRS radios with the "standard" channels programmed, I hear all the 'lil chillins chatting. Program in the repeaters with access tones and they all go away.

ok my rant of the day. If every lawn mowing, tow truck driving, restaurant wait staff, and a car dealer can use gmrs channels, then why did i bother getting a license? i drive from central jersey to south jersey (just across river from philly) and that what i get on my driver. So why be scared of using a gmrs radio or ham radio, fcc dont care. Oh and if u look at the map theres three repeaters if u follow 195 to turnpike south, tow company using those all day.

Yes, I agree if they will accept that their role has changed and it's not going to be what it once was.  Problem is that many of them feel that HF is the only method of communications in a disaster.  They somehow believe that Texas is somehow going to be the people to contact from Ohio in the event of an emergency. 
I realize that NVIS can limit the distance.  I realize that there are situations that do call for long distance communications.  And I guess it needs to be said that my frame of reference is the local groups.  Others may be doing something different but it seems the locals are stuck in the 1960's.  Hence the comment of a solution looking for a problem. 
And I have said openly that there are other things that are ham radio that could be brought to bear in a disaster situation.  AREDN is a big one.  A completely isolated medium speed IP based data network could be a game changer.  Employing WINLINK in shelters for citizens to email family and friends about health and welfare and carrying that traffic out of a disaster zone would be something.  But I see some saying that's not who they want to support.  They seem to think that the government entities are the only ones they want to deal with.  And there is no microphone involved so it gets poo pooed and forgotten.  Again, personal experience.
But with that experience, I am not seeing THIS ham community wanting to expand what they can bring to bear and only want to show up to pass voice and some minor data via packet at 1200 baud.  And I am not saying that the data transfer's aren't needed.  But if you can do that, and ship 10 fps video at 800 by 600.  Photo's and all the rest in a timely manner, wouldn't that be better?
 

Just got back from a 6000 mile trip across the US. Some little riding in WY but now packing Jeep for a few JJ rides. Uwarrie next 2 weekends for myself then out to KY next month. Today need to pullallmy gear from the Gladiator to put in the JK.

No worries. I appreciate that. I love the service too. I'm just a little tired. Just got home from a huge offroad trip to to Uwharrie and need a nap. LoL
 
Im definitely looking forward to meeting you. It's always great to meet someone passionate about the hobby and making new friends. 

Great Job Rich !
Finally An Intelligent Approach To Maintain The Required Compliance With FCC Rules.
Good Stuff......

Today's update:
 
TL;DW: Linked repeater networks in Texas, Arizona, North Carlina and Arkansas have shut down in the last 24 hours.

Well, the tower mine is on was 48K..... used.  Of course it came with 1.3 acres of land and a building.  Equipment isn't overly expensive.  Unless you compare it to the cost of a subscriber radio.  But It does cost money to get it off the side of your house and getting the antenna over 50 feet in the air.  And there are typically some sort of reoccurring costs involved with tower space.  That's where the cost of ownership starts to move people away from it. 
Yeah, a garage or basement repeater can be done for a reasonable expense, if you know what you are doing.  But I think that you are forgetting that there are people like you and me that have the equipment and expertise to pull equipment out of the trunk of your car, and put it all together with equipment that we have on hand.  Start to finish.  Mind you we rig the tower with equipment I own.  I have 1200 feet of rope, a Cat head winch, the proper blocks, harnesses and such.  Then I have the tools for prepping the cable for connector installation.  Cable grips to hoist it and the rest of the crap required to do a proper antenna install.  Not a mast pipe bolted to the peak of a roof.  The only thing I don't own outright is a service monitor with tracking generator / VNA to tune the duplexers.  That belongs to the shop I work for.  But I have instant access to it.   I / we are certainly in the minority with having all that.  Now I didn't buy all that new, but there were costs involved.  Does the average GMRS operator need that sort of stuff.  Not really unless they own a bigger tower (240 feet in my case).  But owning a tower, it's pretty much a requirement to have that gear. 
And I don't know what tower fee's are where you are.  But they ain't cheap here.  Ebay pricing and hamfest finds pricing for a MTR2000 or Quantar at around a grand.  A 600 dollar used duplexer. A DB-420 antenna is gonna be a few hundred.  Then some length of 7/8 cable that was pulled off a tower that's still good.... figure one or two bucks a foot.    You're right.  Not expensive.  The day rate for a tower crew to install it on a 200 foot tower.  That's gonna be 6 grand.  So your USED repeater system, installed, is going to be around $8000.  And that's not taking into account a cabinet, snap-ins for the cable, or some means to connect the cable to the tower.  And if it ain't YOUR tower, you have to do what the owner wants done.  No wire ties or other 'good enough' home remedies for lashing the cable to the tower.  So that price can easily balloon to 10 grand.  And to this point you haven't paid a cent in rent.  When we bought the site, we just paid up front for rent.  But going rate is 1000 plus per month from the big three tower companies.  So even at 48K.  That's ONLY 4 years of rent.  Sure there is a 200 dollar electric bill, taxes and the like.  But it ain't the cost of renting space from others,  and since it's owned, we don't have a requirement to use an 'approved' tower crew. 
So again, repeater systems ain't cheap.  Those of us that can do this stuff, and have the proper tools to get it done, sometimes forget TCO (total cost of ownership) of things. 
I use to scratch my head about a brake job on a car costing a grand.  Because I have done a number of them myself.  But I didn't consider the 20K in tools I have acquired over the years.  I was doing it with jack stands and a creeper (replacing rusted brake lines) but I didn't consider the building, lift, employee's wages and all the rest in that cost.  Of course I still do brakes on my older vehicles.  But there again, I have the right tools and knowledge to do it. 
 

Why not? There is nothing wrong with narrowband. One of the GMRS clubs I belong to narrowband their repeaters and there are no problems with radio communication. Public Safety has been narrowbanding well over 10 years now without any problems.

Well, here is the argument against that.  While users can go buy dirt cheap (less than 100 bucks) radios for talking on a repeater.  Repeaters are NOT cheap and are out of reach for many.  So the repeater owners are the ones that fill the need for repeaters in the GMRS service.
It's not the lack of channels in most area's.  It's a lack of repeaters at all in those area's. 

In California, the State-owned radio remote sites did not give away free space and service to the HAM Radio clubs/users. If they wanted to use/occupy a State-Owned site for space and service, they paid the same as any other entity.

This!  
The vast majority of people who buy and use GMRS just want to talk to each other. Most don’t even know or care about this site or repeaters, much less linked repeaters. Whether they use repeaters or not, if they end up unable to hear each other because of chatter that’s coming from linked repeaters, they probably won’t be impressed. 

It turns out I’m not in favor of linking, but I also don’t think the FCC is handling this correctly. I don’t think the regulations amount to prohibiting linking, even though their interpretation now says so. 

Another one down....

And while OffroaderX gave you the high level explanation.  I will go deep into the why.
First issue is GMRS isn't HAM radio.  Meaning the repeater is going to be owned and operated by a single individual and not a club.  They will not see or understand the concept of it helping the community once they read up on what the GMRS service is.  So that's your first hurdle to overcome.  And while it's easy to show reason for ham radio repeaters to exist since the government has emergency services all over the rules for ham radio.  The ARRL has emergency services all over the place on their web site as well. GMRS is NOT by design an emergency service.  It can be used for that, but it's not documented as being part of that.  Again more of the same issue to overcome.
Second is ham radio operators and what the city might have experienced in the past with them.  Hams, under the guise of the whole EMCOMM / emergency services umbrella seem to have a mentality that they are OWED access to any and every government owned tower, tall building and shit house with an antenna mount on it.  After all, in their mind, they are going to show up when all else fails, sporting a big red S on their chest and their orange vest will magically turn into a cape as they save the day.    But the truth is they will get access to a location, do a horrible install of some crap radio equipment that they have to go work on every other week.  Of course someone will need to meet them at the site every time.  So they quickly become a nuisance. Your problem again, the city people will not understand the difference between GMRS and Ham radio,, and there really isn't a technical difference.  A repeater is a repeater.  Ham repeater / GMRS repeater,  only difference is what programming is in the thing.  Now they may not have had a bad experience with ham operators.  But you can't really know that going in.  At least if  you are not a ham operator and know the history of their group and the city.
Next issue is a case of if they let you do it, they have to let others do it as well.  And that can turn into a mess for a number of reasons.  Again, this isn't for any sort of documented emergency services so bear that in mind.  They may say no just for that reason alone. 
 
Now we get into what they may or may not expect you to do if you are granted access. 
First is professional bonded tower climbers to do the antenna work.  And possibly a professional radio shop to install your repeater.  All of which is going to cost you money. 
Next is rent for the space.  Tower access is a valuable thing.  And most local government's know this because of the glut of cell towers that the carriers want to put everywhere and local governments seeing as an eye sore OR they see as competition for their water tower / radio tower for them to lease space on.  And if you are on there taking up space and creating loading of the tower, then other paying customers can't be in that space.  You would be surprised how they are getting wise to this.  Even to the point that many are having extensive antenna mounting structures installed on new and refit water towers they own in hopes that it turns into an income stream for them.  Not sure what you budget is, or what reoccurring costs you are up for, but understand that might be part of it.
Have fun, and good luck.
 

Drill a hole and put an NMO mounto n the roof.
 

The MTX575 does not have the ability to program via a PC or clone or any functions such as that. The MTX500 is the only radio you can program via PC from Midland at this time. If you read there is programming software for the unit you read wrong. Midland has stated this also in the questions on their website to others that have asked. 
The radio is not marketed to folks who want to add tons of stuff to the radio. Its marketed to the KISS method and they sell thousands of them for that reason. I'm not sure why its so difficult for folks to program. Mine took 15 minutes as did all my MTX275 mobiles to add DPL tones into my repeaters. 

I run LMR branded pepper shakers on UHF and 800/700 on my work trucks. I normally remove them monthly and even those at times have a small amount of moisture. I use the rubber washer under mine on my personal vehicles and have rarely seen the issue there. On my work truck I swap so much I normally use the ones built in.
 

I run LMR branded pepper shakers on UHF and 800/700 on my work trucks. I normally remove them monthly and even those at times have a small amount of moisture. I use the rubber washer under mine on my personal vehicles and have rarely seen the issue there. On my work truck I swap so much I normally use the ones built in.
 

You’re right.  Many of us don’t care.  Other than mild curiosity I don’t buy radios just to listen to other people’s conversations on an internet feed.  Perhaps few of us do, perhaps there’s very little traffic, and perhaps that’s why it’s not high on the priorities of the one person who maintains this site.
But that just conjecture on my part. What I know is that it costs money to maintain features like that.  Vote with your dollars by becoming a premium member. (Thank you @UpperBucks!)

I'm going to be a little harsh here, so bear with me. Send this thing back where you got it and get your money back. It was not intended for GMRS, and it won't work. Before you spend another penny on equipment, ask here first. A simple question like "Will an MMDVM hotspot work with GMRS?" would have been met with a resounding "no", and would have saved you time, aggravation and quite possibly money if you end up stuck with this thing.