gortex2

Or just grab a RT97 for half the cost of the KG1000 setup....
KG1000 - $369.00 x 2
Duplexer - $150 (Fumie China Duplexer)
Various cable - N-PL259 (Radio to duplexer) - $25-50
Power Supply - $100....
Granted the RT97 is a high power repeater but 99% of the folks that will be putting up a repeater are doing it at home on a garage or house. The RT97 is a all in one box. Just program and turn on. Simplicity for many. And to be honest if you have a great location the repeater will do fine with portables. Just another option.
 

The OP references 462.575, and I believe he is hearing the same GMRS repeater I mentioned in my previous post. I don’t know the exactly location, but it is in the south Jersey area, east of Philadelphia Pa. If the OP would like to confirm that as correct, that would help clear up some confusion.
If this is the repeater he is talking about, it is solely a GMRS repeater, not some public safety radio system, and not any sort of organization that has legitimate ties to public safety. It is simply a pay-to-play GMRS repeater that has wide coverage. If the owner was at one time, employed in public safety, we can only be thankful he is no longer involved in that field.
There is no listing for this repeater on this site or others, as far as I know. There is a listing for a repeater in Delaware County PA that calls itself “LEARN South”, and I recall seeing at least one other repeater that called itself LEARN, which is some nonsensical reference to law enforcement, but has nothing to do with actual law enforcement or any other public safety concern. In the case of the “LEARN South” repeater, I believe the owner has a part time job related to the public safety field, but in no way does this repeater have any direct connection to any public safety activity or government agency. These guys simply use the acronym as a means of propping up their own self-esteem, which is why I used the terms whacker, wannabe, foamers, strokers in my previous post. I forgot to mention posers. Very similar psychology to ham radio operators that would purchase a badge with “Radio Operator” embossed upon it. Don’t forget to purchase the handsome wallet that can hold the badge, giving you even more authority when you “whip it out”.
Again if the OP is talking about the same 462.575 repeater, and he references the owner 820 (I said 825 in my previous post…820, 825, whatever it takes), I have heard this guy argue with, and threaten, people who have put up their own repeaters, because I believe he runs a community tone panel with many tones, and that makes it difficult for someone to put up a repeater without “getting into” this guy’s repeater. I can hit this repeater with a handheld inside my house, some 40-50 miles away, so it is excessive in it’s coverage…IMHO.
If that is the same person, I mentioned before that this man is arrogant and ignorant, and wants to control this repeater pair in order to force people to pay him for access. Such behavior amongst humans is pretty commonplace, and doesn’t impact me at all, but the OP started the thread wondering how they get away without ID’ing, and if they were actual law enforcement personnel, would they have an exemption from ID’ing. To my knowledge, from those I have heard on there, they are not employed in public safety (maybe I heard one use who was, but others I know are not, as I have heard them on the ham bands as well), and no such exemption would exist for members of public safety. This is GMRS, and all are subject to the same rules. The only place where law enforcement has an exemption is at the local Stop-N-Rob where they don’t have to pay for their coffee.
And I seriously doubt the FCC would care about the lack of ID’ing on this, or any other GMRS repeater. The FCC only serves special interests of corporations like Motorola. It does not care about the citizens of the United States of America. The guy who owns this repeater is just a flawed individual who equates having a large footrprint repeater to compensating for shortcomings in his own life. As this individual would say when signing off…”820 10-7”

For once I agree with OffRoader and we need more info. What is LAW ENFORCEMENT EMERGENCY RADIO NETWORK ? 
 

While it's specifically not my call, I don't believe that personal nodes are allowed on the system.  Has to be a repeater with reasonable coverage. 
That being said, how this is being accomplished is not some super secret thing that you can't have info on.  It's really nothing more than a IP PBX (Asterisk) running some additional software to allow it to communicate to radios.  That being said, Hams refer to it as ALL-Star link and there are tons of pages that will lay out how to do it with very cheap parts.  And you really DON'T need to be on a system.  You just need one end of it to have a public IP on the Internet so the other node can always find it.  Two nodes that are aware of each other that are programmed to connect to each other will do so without any additional servers.
Now that's out of the way, remember that this DOES use the Internet to provide connection between the nodes.  This system is no different.  Having expectation that it's going to work in the event of a disaster is setting yourself up for a serious disappointment.  So that that under advisement.
 

Call your local 2-way radio shop. Shops like mine sell good used Motorola or Vertex analog UHF mobiles all day long at under $200, tested, tuned, and ready for install. We don't bother with eBay anymore due to all the seller fees and payment charges. 

Conversely most true "commercial" (business/land mobile) radios are not supposed to be programmable by any front panel controls -- per FCC regulations these are supposed to be programmed by some service center to just the frequencies authorized by the license held by that commercial entity.
Even old (circa 1995) GMRS radios only allowed one to set CTCSS tones, toggle high/low power, and toggle duplex (repeater)/simplex mode. The TWO channels specified on one's license was to be programmed by a service center. Even my ancient Maxon GMRS 210+3 (which was a decent radio in that age, as it had 8 preprogrammed/fixed channels -- the new interstitials 1-7, FCC designated emergency channel (usable regardless of licensed channels -- but only for emergency use unless you had asked for it as one of the two channels on your license) 8, and two "shop programmable" for the licensed channels 9-10.
Of course, Maxon included the 6 page programming manual ? -- pop the rear cover, hold a micro button, scroll up/down to find first frequency, lock it in, repeat for second frequency...
 

So your on portables. Drive a mile from the repeater. Then test. Dont test with both radios in the vehicle at the same time. Dont believe anything the repeater says for coverage unless its a true coverage map. The "circle" is only based on what they enter and is not accurate. 
The distance you get on simplex is about average in a neighborhood. Not sure what you were expecting. 

All amateur HT's can be programmed from the keypad. And you'll never see a Motorola that can be programmed via Chirp. Motorola has a proprietary programming system.

My state (Montana) publishes this interoperability guide for radio frequencies:
https://media.dojmt.gov/wp-content/uploads/MA_Manual_2021_color_website.pdf
Line A figures heavily in it.

Yes, there is.
You are going to connect it up as if you are tuning it and look at the notch that shows up on the VNA. 
With one that's correctly tuned for a single frequency, the notch should be fairly tight, but you will be able to see the notch go down, and then come back up.  The deepest part of the notch is the primary tuned frequency.  You can also put markers on the close repeater frequencies and see what the difference in the notch value is.  Obviously it will NOT be as deep as the primary tuned frequency but you can see what the numbers are.  If the numbers are 3 dB or less between the center tuned frequency and the frequency of operation then you are gonna be safe to use it on that frequency.  Now if you don't understand dB measurement then 3 dB doesn't sound like a lot.  But it's 50% of the specific signal level.  Lets say you are running full legal power of 50 watts.  That is 47dBm.  If you loose 3 dB of power it's now 44dBm.  Thing is 44dBm is 25 watts.  So a 3 dB change is NOT insignificant.
 

A typical "notch" style compact duplexer (the ones you usually see advertised at prices around $100) can have a really wide and lousy tune job applied - and will "cover" the whole GMRS band, but they won't do it very well.
If you're OK with having 3-5 dB of desense - then yeah, go for it. It will halfway kinda work as long as you've got a strong signal into the repeater.
 

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.

Well regardless of reasons when you sign a contract to be on a tower things need followed. We ran into this when I was at the radio shop. Our owner let a small ham club on the tower and the install was horrible. He gave them 3 months to resolve the issues. They did nothing so he kicked them out. Regardless of service its not your property. In todays world I can't imagine the tower owner didn't kick the stuff out already. When rent isn't paid normally it was 3 months and I went and powered off the equipment until we got paid. Sounds harsh but its the reality. Lessons learned by that club. 
This also enforces the issue to all the new folks on this board buying $25.00 radios the real cost of repeater ownership and time commitments it takes to do a proper site. 

In the old days (late 90s and earlier), .675 was an FCC designated Emergency/Traveller Assistance frequency; If your license did not explicitly select .675 as one of the TWO frequency (pairs) assigned, you could ONLY use it for Em/TA (if you had a radio that could be used on more than two channels -- many HTs of the age just had a toggle switch between A and B channels *, which would have been programmed for the two frequencies on one's license). And, as mentioned, organizations like REACT attempted to standardize upon a CTCSS tone for that purpose.
 
 
* which made the Maxon GMRS 210+3 rather desirable -- it had the seven interstitials locked into channels 1-7, .675 locked into channel 8, and channels 9&10 programmable for the frequencies stated on one's license

While I agree we need more in some areas half the people on this forum complain about spending money on a decent handheld or mobile....

What I would like to see is that everyone have the same pl tones in place on the same frequency. So no matter where anyone traveling could talk to anyone. 

I actually use a wide footprint to tolerate high winds.  You can bring them in and reduce the footprint, but it will reduce total tolerated wind speeds.  There is some math that can be done to find the critical angle if you want to go that route. 
 
I don't have any issues with a ground plane.  All of my vertical antennas have built-in ground planes in the mount or are half wave antennas that don't need a ground plane.  So, the actual ground quality doesn't matter.  It does play in if you try to use a dipole for HF, though. 
 
I have seen some creative engineering... and I aways ask "if it works, was it really a bad idea?" LOL 
 
Yeah, I was thinking pulling the seat and putting a short mast (5', maybe) and rotor would be good. Not to mention you can climb up there to work on it easily, which is awesome. 

This is the tower I have access to that was bought and paid for by a ham.
I am gonna say that jealousy doesn't really play into it.  But I could be wrong.
 
As far as the misappropriation of taxpayer assets. Gonna have to say that, yes, that tends to irritate me.  Now i am not gonna say that every ham group is full of idiots that would pull crap like the OP was talking about.  But those guys and groups are out there.  And I have seen where hams had gotten into agreements that were out of bounds.  If a ham repeater is in place for EMCOMM for a county or other served agency that is being hosted totally free of charge, no insurance, power bill or anything else, then that equipment, at least in the eyes of the state of Ohio is to be tested on a regular interval and NOT used for general communications.  There were two ham repeaters that were installed for an ARES group locally that were actually pulled from service because they were specifically paid for with a federal grant and then were used for general communications.  The tower access agreements were also written specifying emergency use only and were granted free tower access due to them being for that specific use.  
And like I said, we can't approach a street department and borrow their tractor, dump truck, put crap in their buildings for storage or any of that.  It ain't allowed.  Because they are government (taxpayer) assets.  A tower really should be no different.
 
Tower rental rates.
Have multiple customers on ATC sites.  Paying between 1000 and 1600 per site for two antenna's and a microwave dish.  Antenna's are at 130 and 150 and the dish is up at 200.  These prices are common in this area.  They are also on private sites and are paying less than that.  But if you are renting from any of the major players, then you are paying these sort of rates for relatively low mounting positions on the towers.  The pricing structure in your area may not be the same.  I can only speak to what I have first hand knowledge of.  This also applies to the way hams and ham clubs conduct themselves.  If what he's saying is 100% correct and you are REQUIRED to be a member of their club to access a tower that doesn't belong to them, they are not doing it right.  I have been to sites that hams were allowed full access to and they are typically a total mess.  Cable held to tower legs with electrical tape if at all, improper cables used in the radio hut to protect from interfering with other tenants at the site.  Skipping on proper grounding (of course I am R56 certified so I am a grounding and install NAZI and immediately notice such things). 
And I directly deal with it as a ham and a tower site manager.  I get requests, some that almost sound like a mandate, that some ARES group NEEDS access to a tower for EMCOMM for free.  I know better, the problem is that elected officials typically don't.  They hear it's for public safety and disaster preparedness and immediately agree without any actual research, or it was done years ago by some verbal agreement by a friend that was also an elected official that never really had the right to do it and now it's just in place. 
I am all for providing hams access within reason for both EMCOMM and hobby use.  And I don't believe they need to be made to pay the standard going rates that a cell phone company is required to pay.  But they need to install to the same standards, use good equipment and not mobiles screwed to a sheet of plywood and hung on a wall with wires going every which way.  But then again I have seen commercial radio companies that had install quality that made most ham install look good.  But that's another story.
And as far as the government being aware. 
The guy that owns that tower shown above is an IT admin and a ham.  Of course he also climbs towers, since he has that one, but is not a licensed bonded climber. 
I went at the request of a county EMA to oversee and test antenna's and lines once the climbing and work had been completed by the tower climber that the hams were bringing in.  The county had been told the guy was a TOWER PROFESSIONAL by the local ham group the work was being done for on a county owned tower at a city owned site.  The guy that showed up as the TOWER PROFESSIONAL was the guy that owned this tower.  They had told him little about what he was going to be doing, and I questioned what was gonna happen so I brought MY rigging equipment and tower winch in case it was needed.  We pulled 300 pounds of stuff off that day and replaced 4 antenna's and two feed lines.  He was totally unprepared for the job, because HE wasn't told what it was.  I had a feeling that something like that would happen and was prepared for it with equipment.  And the whole situation stuck me between my buddy and my customer that I HAD to tell them he wasn't a tower pro.  And I even had hams coming up to me trying to tell me how to rig the tower, tie proper knots, and all sorts of crap.  I ahve spent to last four years working all over that tower, rigging it, installing and removing antenna's and I was the one with the gear that was even gonna make the job possible.  And I am getting told I am using the wrong knots.  BTW, I was using bow-lines and figure 8 knots.  So yeah, my personal experience with hams has been questionable at times for the last 20 years I have been a ham.
 
 
 

^^^^^^^^^^^ 
I hate linking for that point. And its the same conversations on ham or GMRS. The only GMRS repeaters around me are run by hams and just use it as another ham repeater. Drives me nuts. 

Since the OP asked for opinions, I will offer up my opinion. 
I disagree with his statement that more GMRS repeaters are needed. In my opinion, GMRS is not a hobby, it is a service primarily intended for short-distance communications, to facilitate the activities of the licensee’s family. Since that intended purpose comes directly from the FCC’s definition of GMRS, I don’t see why we need more repeaters.
My opinion is that GMRS is not ham radio. It is not CB radio. But the high profile GMRS repeaters in my part of the world are used by people that already talk on CB, and on ham radio . The conversations are exactly the same, regardless of where they talk, so why do we need to waste precious bandwidth on GMRS for those conversations, when we already have other band allocations for that ?
For those that believe GMRS serves a function in civil emergencies, I would also direct you to amateur radio, specifically the ARES/RACES groups that provide those functions. Again, I believe we do not need to duplicate these functions across radio services. It is fine if a local neighborhood repeater such as mine could serve people in a time of need, but that is not it’s true purpose, and I don’t have lofty goals of making it that way. And most people within the couple of miles range of my repeater would not have access to repeater-capable radios, and likely only have FRS radios, so it would be of no use in that case.
My repeater covers maybe 4 miles…on a good day, and only with mobile radios (hey, GMRS stands for General Mobile Radio Service, not “sit in my easy chair with my walkie talkie and talk to someone 40 miles away via a repeater”). It serves the needs of my family for short distance communications. We do use Zello as a means to extend coverage, if necessary, but it is again only for the family…not for a guy in Michigan to ragchew with a guy in Florida, or to hold “nets”. This is exactly why the amateur radio service exists, and where these activities should take place.
A nearby GMRS repeater is connected to the MyGMRS network, and it simply transmits conversations of people not even within the state, all day long (not really all day, just exaggerating to make a point). A nearby ham repeater is connected to the America Link network, and transmits conversations of people not even within the state, all day long. What is point of having these broadcast stations, when local users are not using these repeaters ?
We do not need more repeaters for GMRS. We need fewer people that think GMRS is CB or amateur radio. 

Amazon Prime Home Delivery FTW!

If you buy inexpensive electronics from Amazon and it doesn't work correctly, don't automatically assume it's cheap Chinese electronics... you may want to check your video footage.
 
This 'was' a sensitive piece of electronics... RF Frequency Counter. The second one I bought in a week, because the first one didn't work correctly on delivery either. hmmm... I wonder why.  At least Amazon gave me a refund.
 
 

DMR /is/ a 12.5kHz service, using two 6.25kHz time slots. Making GMRS an NFM service essentially takes out the "interstitial" frequencies (which currently are lower power and overlap the primary/repeater channels). They'd just be very tight packed non-overlapping channels, and would probably be up'd to full power (50W) for GMRS.
"first round of renewals in 10 years"????
My GMRS license is already past its third (and likely 6th) renewal. The ULS system doesn't have the history from the paper-only days but shows my license was renewed in 2010, 2015, and 2020. It most likely had renewals in 2005, 2000, and maybe first issued in 1995 as that is the time period of my first GMRS radio -- the Maxon GMRS 210+3 radio (at the time, a $300 HT). GMRS existed in the 60s already (as Class A of the Citizen's Radio Service; CB is Class D). It was highly restricted as to usage: basically one requested a pair of channels for the license (yes, only TWO of the eight primaries were allowed), and communication between different licenses was rare, base to base was prohibited, mostly one was to talk to family members residing with the licensee.

Ahhh, no. 
I am all for people that know what they are doing putting up good equipment after they have PROPERLY identified an open repeater pair in their area that will not interfere with the operations of others.  I am willing to assist folks that want to do it right, work with other repeater / system owners to minimize interference and create additional coverage in area's that are lacking any current coverage.  But I don't really think it's a good idea for EVERYONE to put up a repeater. 
First problem is the definition of a repeater.  And depending on who you talk to that ranges from a quality 100% duty cycle commercial repeater and duplexer on an antenna of reasonable height to two mobiles or even handhelds taped together with an vehicle antenna on a wall mount screwed to the peak of a roof on a one story garage.  And what that sort of this does is screw with a big repeater because the person that was told they needed to put up a repeater did so without even bothering to check the frequency first to see if there was another one that covered their area. 
You need to monitor a frequency for a MONTH before thinking you can use it.  You need to setup a PC with a VOX audio recorder like ScannerRecorder that will record any traffic on that repeater output.  And you need to do this with an antenna that's outside and up at least 30 feet.  If you can't do that, IMO, you don't need to even consider putting up a repeater. 
We are limited to 8 repeater pairs for all of GMRS, everywhere. And repeater owners need to cooperate with each other to manage this resource.  Failure to do so will just create problems. 

I guess that was my point. Some discussions get wrapped around the axle for days or weeks. We have thousands of folks using GMRS with no licenses. Following best practices and doing what you can as a licensed user is all you can do. I have no ID on any of my repeaters and as your friend had multiple inspections by the FCC with no issues. 

I guess that was my point. Some discussions get wrapped around the axle for days or weeks. We have thousands of folks using GMRS with no licenses. Following best practices and doing what you can as a licensed user is all you can do. I have no ID on any of my repeaters and as your friend had multiple inspections by the FCC with no issues.