WRKC935

Well, I sort of have issue with that. But I also don't know if his situation changed, rent got increased or what motivated him to decide to do that. So I am not going to disagree with the actions of that repeater owner, because I simply don't know why he did it to begin with. I will say that there is a huge increase in GMRS users lately. I am getting 4 or 5 new requests per week, and I have one repeater that's linked and one that's stand alone. Both are seeing increased traffic month to month. And with that you are going to get some folks that have it in their head that paying for a license gives them access to anything they can program in their radio. Of course that's not gonna be teh case in all situations. And, you are going to have people that want to cause trouble, because it's their nature to do so. You can always contact the owner and ask why, and if he's wanting a reasonable fee, make a decision to drop him a few bucks to access his repeater. He might just give you permission since he's not had problems with you to begin with. It's hard to say.

Well, I am in a unique situation that allows me to NOT charge for access. The antenna system, equipment and all the rest was assembled from gear that I had. We have the expense of maintaining the site since it's owned privately and therefore we maintain it, pay the power bill, taxes and the like. But I will tell you that if I had to buy the stuff that makes up the repeater system, it would be thousands of dollars. If we couldn't climb the tower which is the case if you don't own the site, that's thousands in labor. Point is that a paid membership repeater that has reasonable coverage in your area isn't a bad investment. Situations like mine are all but non-existent. So it you are paying 100 bucks or less a year to access a top notch repeater system that covers your area well. You would be YEARS in just breaking even doing your own thing with your own repeater. And frankly, guys don't always have the knowledge to do it correctly and bringing in a person that is knowledgeable is costly too. I use to poo poo on the idea of a pay to play system. But they are certainly a good option for someone that has no space, location or ability to put up a repeater. And the pay repeaters, if nothing else typically have excellent coverage.

Now this is a PERSONAL OPINION. But I will voice it here. When you put a repeater into service, you effectively take that repeater pair away from anyone else that might want to use it. Now the regulations for GMRS allow for this to a point. And for a small footprint repeater that covers a town, city or other small area, ok what ever. But when you build a wide area repeater, and do similar restriction, no one in that coverage area can use that pair effectively. When you decide to build MULTIPLE wide area coverage repeaters like that with similar restriction, then you are going above and beyond in being a dick. You hve now restricted multiple repeater pairs for your own groups communication. If you are going to build wide area coverage systems, they need to be accessible to all license holders. You have stopped their ability to do their own thing without causing 'interference' to your system and in effect are creating interference for the communication of others by doing so.

Well, I can't speak to the repeaters you mentioned. I can tell you what I personally have bit since I am in Ohio that will do you little good. If you search my other posts, it's been spelled out a number of times. But I will say that my stuff will stay up for WEEKS at a minimum, and I work to increase that time whenever possible. All that being said. And as mentioned, you absolutely can attempt to work with a local repeater owner to add battery backup to their system. But there are things that you need to know about that system before going down that road. First is what repeater and accessories are connected to the repeater in question. If it's just the repeater and it has some level of being connected to battery, then it's a pretty simple operation. If the repeater is connected to a repeater controller, and it's running on a power supply other than the one feeding the repeater it can get more complex, but not impossible by any stretch. So the first thing to find out is what equipment is in place. Then figure out what power requirements it has. Many repeaters have DC input that can either be used as a backup, or as a direct power feed to run the gear. I am doing that. My gear is run from 24 volts, and that power is derived from a 48 volt battery system. Now you don't need to do all that. A string of two batteries will run any legal GMRS repeater since we are limited to 50 watts of output power. If you connect multiple strings in parallel, then you add storage capacity to the battery plant. I currently run 6 strings myself. The batteries are all the same capacity which is 110 Amp Hour. So each individual string will provide 110 Amp Hour, and since there are 6 strings that is 660 Amp Hour of capacity. You do need to run batteries that are similar in capacity to make sure that the power is delivered equally from all strings. Also, it's is REALLY important that each string is individually fused and all feeds from the BUSS are fused when running multiple strings of batteries. Shorts placed across any part of this type of system will flow eminence amounts of current. A short WILL cause a fire. Number 2 wire shorted across 2 or more strings of batteries will become red hot in seconds when these levels of currents start flowing, so proper fusing is not a choice. Besides that you will need a charger that will maintain the batteries and possibly power the repeater while grid power is present.

I don't know what their stock on hand looks like. I would venture a guess that some vendors will buy up certain items and deplete their stock quickly. But those items would be the stuff that has a history of selling. If MFJ shows up to Hamvention this year, that of course will also run those numbers down quickly as well. And while they are claiming that they will be repairing equipment within the warranty period, I don't know what that period is. Also, he's said that he will remain open until he has sold everything off. Again, there are items that are good sellers and no doubt items that might sell one or two a year. I doubt that he will hold out until it's all gone before throwing in the towel. And lets be honest here. The guy is 80 yrs old and MFJ is run as a sole proprietorship. If something happens to him, my guess would be that it will come to a quick end at that point. Any family he has obviously isn't interested in selling ham gear or we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would expect his probate to have an auction to liquidate the assets of the business in that case after some time and again, that would be the end of it. We are back to the fact no one wants to see the business continue to operate, the owner included.

OK, first, multiple PL, which is a 'community repeater' isn't illegal. It has been done in the past and no doubt will continue to be done. Kenwood repeaters are the way to go here as the Motorola stuff requires a secondary repeater controller. Benefits to multi-PL is you can have a repeater that is both public (PL #1) and private (PL #2) and be right with the world. You can communicate via your private PL to your short list of users, and have the repeater open to all users without disturbing you. Now, stuff I am doing. Of course we know that hardline is expensive. Antenna's are too (at least good commercial stuff). I happened into an 8 port transmit combiner that I converted to two 4 port combiners and then added a hybrid combiner port to it in order to run 2 GMRS repeaters (600 and 675) on the same antenna. This consisted of two dual isolators, a 50/50 power divider and the existing can in the combiner. The two repeaters are feeding the two dual isolators, which feed into the power divider (working backwards) and then into the can that feeds the spider going tothe transmit antenna. That combiner also has a ham repeater at 442.775 feeding it. the other combiner only has a single GMRS repeater that belongs to the site owner. There is discussion for additional UHF repeaters to be put at the site for other hams to take advantage of the combiner and antenna heights. Of course, free or even reasonably priced tower access for a ham / gmrs repeater is a rare thing indeed. Other 'odd' things that I am doing. My repeaters are all 24 volt DC powered. MTR2000 /3000's are great repeaters, but they share one failure point. The power supplies in them tend to fail when running them from 110/220. But the 24 volt power input still works fine in most cases of a supply failure. So I am running a stack of 48 volt to 24 volt buck converters in parallel (old telco gear) that are 40 amps each on the 24 volt output. With 5 of these in parallel, I have a sizable supply of 24 volt power. Of course running those does require 48 volts. That is derived from an ElTek rectifier that has 6 30 amp modules in it and charge and maintain 6 strings 110amp hour batteries. The 48 volt also runs other microwave equipment and ethernet switches at the site. Last time I ran the calculations for expected battery capacity based on the load at the time I was at 4 days. So that's a bit outside the norm. Not too far, but not typical. I would have to think on the other 'non-typical' things I am doing with the current setup. While I know how to and have the ability to run receive sites on my setup, I somehow accidentally setup the receive and transmit antenna's in such a way that my coverage both directions is equal on both portable and mobile subscribers. If you can hear it it will hear you. So receive sites would actually break that equal coverage thing I have going on. Now my control station setup is a bit different that most. I am running a Motorola MotoBridge system that locates the radios and the gateways at the tower and the 'consoles' at my house via a microwave link to the tower. I have 2 gateways in active use and 3 more to install and expand the system as needed. The MotoBridge will allow for direct control of APX/XTL and XPR radios. In addition I can do tone remote (have a VHF and UHF MTR setup for tone configured as base stations) local control for basic PTT and audio and they will interface to several other radio types that are no longer around. I was doing this with a Centracom console system but that was becomeing difficult to deal with and I backed away from that for the time being.

The big issue I see with it is that hams are an unhappy bunch when something changes in their orbit. So the issue becomes when some other company buys it and only takes on part of what the company was. If they do Ameritron and Cushcraft but leave MFJ and others to fall, the backlash will be huge. And the truth is that this couldn't have come at a worse time overall. Ham radio as a hobby is waning right now. GMRS is on the upswing and I see that trend continuing. There are NEW manufactures for GMRS radios. Companies that never bothered with GMRS before are getting into the mix because the see profit in it. When was the last time, outside or the CCR's that a new player came the table making ham radios or even accessories that wasn't a small mom and pop place? The ham community is to blame here for the lack of any significant interest in someone buying the business. If there was a profit to be made, some investor would be all over it. But that's not been the case. And I would have to question the statements about affordable gear. Look at the MFJ 259 antenna analyzer, then look at the import nano VNA. How many VNA's can you buy for the price of one 259 or 269. And most of the rest of the MFJ products have counterparts available on Amazon for much less than MFJ's product that performs the same task. Sure there are a few items that will be missed, at least until the rights expire and they start being made under some hard to pronounce named Chinese banner. And the stuff will end up being sold on Amazon and Temu for a third of what MFJ wanted for it. I am not blaming MFJ here. They supported the ham community way past it being profitable. But as I said before, the ham community didn't support them the same way.

I am assuming that you are running a ham radio type controller on the repeater. Commercial repeaters, at least the Motorola stuff will hold off on running the ID until the channel is clear and if someone keys during the repeater ID it will stop and allow the traffic to pass and wait. Mind you that's the IDer that's built into the repeater and is programmed when you setup the other stuff in the repeater. I know that ham controllers will force the ID on the air. Some of them will ID at a lower audio level in the back ground, others will just interrupt the traffic. Of course on HAM radio, the chances of life safety or any sort of priority traffic being interrupted are typically low. With commercial and of course public safety traffic, it's not that way. But the cops and firemen don't really need a repeater controller that keys up and voice ID's with time, temperature, city and state location, PL in use, or any of the other crap that hams have announced on their machines. My machines are all Motorola branded and CW ID from the repeater. The two that have linking controllers do talk. The GMRS link machine will announce when it connects and disconnects. The P25link ham repeater will announce the active talkgroup if certain talk groups it works on when it's keyed for those talk groups. But even those CW ID with stripped PL because I just don't want to hear it. Ham's take the IDing every 10 minutes to an extreme level in some cases. Other hams will get on you, some will even chastise you for forgetting to ID, like it's going to effect them and their license if you get caught not doing it. GMRS isn't that way that I have seen. We remind people when we give them permission to access our repeaters to remember to ID properly, but no one is on there playing radio cop demanding that people ID. Ham unfortunately is that way. I remember getting notices from a local OO when that was still a thing not long after I got my ham license. He was one of those pricks that was mad at the world, the league and the FCC that a no code license had been created. I had a no code license and he didn't like that at all. So when he put his OO (official observer) hat, if you were a no code tech, at 10 minutes and 30 seconds, he grabbed his pen and started writing out a notice for you. And this was to the point that we all thought (the no code license holders) he was autistic or a radio Nazi.

There is something else that I believe contributes to the GMRS interest exceeding the interest in Ham radio. That's the persona of HAM. Ham radio in at least some instances has been portrayed as nerdy. It's connected to big towers in the yard with big antenna's on top of them. Have you ever even seen GMRS portrayed in a TV show or film? If it's radio related, it's always ham. It's some desk full of radios typically with the operator being some level of eccentric, or otherwise odd socially. Since GMRS isn't put on display in any fashion, people don't understand it, and therefore don't believe it's going to make other people think they are some mad scientist if they get involved with it.

It sounds like you are doing range tests from a vehicle. First issue with a yagi, it's directional. Please don't be offended if you knew that. And I am working from an internet post here so I don't 100% understand what's going on. It doesn't seem like you are trying to take to or hear a specific repeater, but that might not be the case. Because the yagi is directional it's only going to work good in one direction. The higher the gain of a yagi, the tighter the front end of it is and the narrower the pattern, meaning a narrower path of coverage. Second thing is are you testing from a vehicle with a portable or a mobile radio with a mounted antenna. Might seem like a silly question, but with all the BS radio distance ratings of radios, if you are new to this and have unreasonable expectations based on what the box or the manufactures advertisements indicate, you certainly will NOT be the first to be dissatisfied with the real world performance.

Straight forward instructions here download the image from elsewhere here on the site download and install WinSCP on your computer download the .sh file below open the .sh file with wordpad on your PC and edit the NODE NUMBER and PASSWORD with the information you got from the site. rename the file once edited and saved to 'repeaterfinder.sh' follow the directions for creating your SD card for the Raspberry Pi. insert the card in the Pi and boot the Pi up. Login to the Pi with the standard credentials provided in the network book (this is also downloaded from this site) Once the Pi is booted and connected to the network you PC running WinSCP is on, connect to the Pi with WinSCP via the IP address of the Pi. Once you are logged in, you will need to copy the 'repeaterfinder.sh' file to the /home/repeater/ directory. When you have copied the file to the Pi, you will need to login to the Pi and navigate to the above directory. Once there type ./repeaterfinder.sh or bash ./repeaterfinder.sh The script will run and configure your Pi as a node with the provided number and password Once the Pi reboots, login into the Pi again, the password this time will be repeater. You will need to change this by typing 'passwd' You will be prompted to type a new password at that point. Remember that you have to make modifications to your router / firewall to allow connection to your node. This information is in the workbook as well. If this is not to be common knowledge please delete this and let me know it's gone. repeaterfindernew.sh

I had grand plans to operate at the tower site, then view the eclipse. Never got to the tower site today at all.

Keep getting this. Sometimes it makes my node unlink No such command 'node-23903*CLI> rpt fun 23903 *321800' (type 'help node-23903*CLI> rpt' for other possible commands) No such command '[Apr 9 00:17:01] NOTICE[673]: chan_iax2.c:9712 socket_process: Registration of '23903' rejected: '<unknown>' from: '34.194.144.228'' (type 'help [Apr 9' for other possible commands) No such command 'node-23903*CLI>' (type 'help node-23903*CLI>' for other possible commands) node-23903*CLI>

Roger beeps interfere with operation, no, typically not. DTMF ID, possibly. Might put a repeater controller in some odd state and lock it up. Again, possible but not probable. MDC CAUSING issues? No, I can't see any way that would happen. However, there is something called ANI or RAC that uses an MDC sounding code to access a repeater. And there are controllers that will look for specific MDC codes that are in a database to allow access to a repeater. So if you are on a system like that, the MDC is a requirement to access the repeater in question. Mind you these are not common at all. But I have seen it both commercially and here on GMRS. All that being said. The repeater OWNER is going to have the final say on any of the three being used on their repeater. A lot of owners don't care for roger beeps. I am personally one. If I wanted a courtesy tone on the repeater (roger beep) I can add that myself. I do support the use of MDC on my repeaters, but don't require it and I don't run RAC / ANI access on my repeater since it's an open repeater.

If the owner has multiple repeaters, you should probably request access to all of them. Now I would be all for giving the ability on here to grouping repeaters together for access requests if the owner / owners choose to do that. But outside of that happening, I would advise you to request for each one or put in the request if it's ok to access the other repeaters and let the owner make the decision.

If you are spotty into the repeater, a directional antenna with higher gain could help. Downside to that is it's going to be directional and only effective talking to that specific repeater. If you only use that repeater, then it's not really as big of a issue. But you need to get a commercial frequency antenna and NOT something for ham. And more elements leans more directional gain. So look for something with 6 or 8 elements. Going from spotty to solid signal into the repeater might not be possible though.. But it will be an improvement. Of course, use the best cable that you can reasonably afford and will work with your installation.

Well, this sort of nonsense is a result of a non-engaged repeater owner. As a repeater system user, paid or not, you have no real say in what that repeater carries for traffic. Ultimately, if you don't like it you can make a comment about it if you choose to but your final say in the matter is when you change the channel or turn off your radio. You have NOTHING else to do when it's not your gear. If the repeater owner allows that sort of conduct, then that's how it is. But an engaged repeater owner that pays attention to what's going on with his / her repeater should be dealing with that. Telling people that they are NOT going to argue, cuss and act the fool on the repeater and to either stop or go kick rocks is the way it needs to be handled. And if they refuse, you shut off the repeater for a while. And the repeater owner can record the traffic, get call signs if the users are actually saying them and file a complaint with the FCC. If it's a common thing for these people to act up and break the rules (causing interference) then the FCC might get involved. But end users really have no say in the content. And people shouldn't just throw up repeaters that they don't pay any attention to and let others act foolish on them.

For a commercial license, you are going to want to request Itinerant frequencies. And you will need to request them for coverage in whatever area you are going to be operating in. Since you are in the logging industry, you will be moving around obviously. Not sure what part of the country you operate in, but you can indicate that area, or those states when getting the license. Not sure how large an area you would be working for a specific job, or if a repeater would be needed. If you are trying to cover a number of miles, then a repeater might be required to provide that coverage. There are repeaters out there that will run off 12 volts. My advice would be putting the antenna up on a topped tree with some sort of chain mount. Or if you have a piece of equipment that is stationary throughout the job and is at a higher elevation then that might be an option as well. Mind you I don't know much about the industry past watching the 'logger show' back in the day. I just built something similar to this for a utility contractor that repairs storm damage. They go out and replace poles and wires that are down from storms. We set them up with a couple repeaters that were in weatherproof cases that would run on 110 or 12 volt and they would just lash a pipe to the top of a pole and setup there. What you don't want to do is get a fixed location license and then move around with it. What I mean by that is if you are in Salem Oregon and get a license for there, you can't take that equipment to Portland and operate on that same frequency legally. You will no doubt be interfering with someone that has that same frequency there. SO you have to have a different type of license to remain legal. Operating on GMRS can't really be legally done since it's not really for business use. So again, Itinerant licenses are the way to go here. And there is NOT a license that you can get in the USA that will allow you to operate in Canada either. So be aware of that. EDIT>>> OIL AND GAS??? Oil and Gas and underground work is going to fall under MSHA regulations in addition to the standard FCC radio stuff. As mentioned you are going to need radios that are rated for the environments you are working in. Honestly, you are going to need professional direction here and NOT the ramblings of some keyboard hero's on a hobby radio site. Not getting that professional assistance and using the wrong stuff will catch up to you when some MSHA inspector shows up and looks at your radios and slaps you with fines and shuts down your operation. When you mentioned 'Forestry' as being your industry, there isn't the requirements for specific radios there. As mentioned by @LScott “intrinsically safe” radios are going to be required for any operations around a well or underground. That rating insures that the radios will not be a possible ignition source in an explosive gas environment. Using radios that are not rated as “intrinsically safe” will get you a hefty fine and shut down by an inspector. And for underground, I believe MSHA requires radio for all personnel working below ground. The underground thing becomes a different issue. Obviously there would be little to no coverage below ground. If you are working in mines, then that has already been dealt with by the mine owner. They may have contractor radios for use in there facility, or you can get an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) giving you permission to have your radios programmed to their radio system. It would cover what operational abilities you would have when doing so and what types of communication was allowed. Meaning what types of radio traffic would be permissible, just emergency, emergency and operational, or emergency, operational and general. But you and your crew would be expected to abide by that when operating on their system. Again, this is stuff to be looked at by a professional radio vendor and not just some guys on the Internet. Yes, I am in the radio industry. But I am in Ohio and not where you are, so I ain't really trying to push you to a specific radio vendor, but knowing enough about MSHA regulations since we have customers that fall under their regulations, I can say that not getting proper advice on this isn't a good way to proceed.

Without knowing your budget, I would toss a couple idea's your way in the 'reasonable' cost arena. Motorola on both counts. First would be the CDM mobiles and HT series portables. These were in their day the go to for law enforcement and fire service use. Very rugged and reliable. Second, for a slightly newer Motorola radio I would look at the XPR 4550 mobiles and 6550 portables. Again, the go to for public safety. They have DMR functionality but that can't be used on GMRS or FRS. But they are a really good radio as well. Any of the radios mentioned will need to be programmed with a computer and the required software. That being said, having radios that can't be messed with that are being handed out to workers, the fact they are locked down is a good thing. Having limited channels, functions and the like means that users are less likely to end up off on some random channel or frequency that it's the one you need them on. And these radios or similar radios from other manufactures can be used on commercial frequencies if you decide to get a business radio license later down the road. THe offerings that are GMRS specific radios can't do that, they are going to be locked to the GMRS service.

The big issue I have is people not understanding how to conduct communications with more than two people on the radio. The idea of letting people take turns just escapes some people.

doesn't matter

What ever..... you win, you're the greatest.

Don't be a dick because I know more than you. Quick scanning Grinder, do some research and learn stuff. Then maybe you will know as much as I do.... but I doubt it. You're the one doing GMRS video's. How about you explain it detail what I was talking about in my post? I mean that was a really watered down version of how that all works. You could go into the weeds about how path loss is actually effected by different environments, the amount of expected per city block and how the calculations are done and averaged in a 360 degree plot for a distance specified by the user. You could explain the time it takes depending on the granularity of the mapping. How it's normally only done in 5 or 10 degree increments but can be done in finer increments at the cost of processing time. That a 10 degree map is averaged and can miss certain things that might block a signal that will show as good on a map. How the maps that are used for a reference are really important to be up to date so that they will indicate those area's that will have the signal blocked. You could go into what HAAT (height above average terrain) is and how it effects things. How the same maps are used for those calculations. The 6dB realized gain that you get every time you double your antenna height and how radio stations ERP is actually calculated using that information. There is a LOT that can be discussed with UHF coverage. Could talk about multipath fading and why moving less than a foot in some instances can get a poor signal full quieting. Lot's of things to cover. But I know Grinder is waiting for you. SO you go boy.

Doesn't matter,. no one needed to know or was curious anyway

There are some RoIP boxes out there that allow radios to be connected to IP networks for remote control. But I don't know of any that have a phone app that are reasonably priced. That being said. And mind you, this will require some Linux and Asterisk knowledge, but there is the apt-rpt add on for Asterisk that will allow a radio to be connected to an Asterisk server as an extension and then you can use Zoiper or another soft phone app on your mobile to connect to the radio. Cost is no more than the interface to the radio which can be built with a few parts and a CM108 USB sound card dongle. I think they are about 10 bucks all in if you build it. But you are going to need to load and install all this (Linux, Asterisk, apt-rpt, and Zopier) and configure it. If you are computer savvy, and know how to solder, then it's not a huge deal.