DONE

I was thinking about this more and something that was mentioned but not really explained about having the PROPER test equipment when doing this. A standard watt meter is going to measure the power on ALL frequencies passing through it. Meaning if I connect a watt meter to a 10 channel combiner that has 3dB of loss in each port to the output, and I connect ten 100 watt radios to that combiner and key them all up I will see 500 watts of output in that watt meter. The meter is NOT specific enough to see the different frequencies, it only see's the TOTAL power passing through it. Why is that important? These CCR's are notorious for generating spurs on transmit. This can't really been seen with a watt meter, you have to have a spectrum analyzer to see them. But if there are 10 spurs at .5 watts each and a center carrier frequency of 5 watts. The radio is ONLY producing 5 watts on the frequency of operation, the other 5 watts of signal being produced is effectively noise. This is how the CB guys would get the big silly power numbers out of a CB radio back in the day. THe meter being used was seeing the primary carrier AND the second harmonic at double the frequency that was a couple watts. The meter just put in on the display. This is why a BIRD watt meter is more accurate. THe slugs are specific to frequency range. Outside that range, they don't work well and don't display the spurs. Of course no CB shops had spectrum analyzers that were actually in use, because they would show this and someone knowledgeable would see their BS for what it was. Same thing here with the 15 watts out of a portable radio. It might show it on the meter, but it's probably not all on the correct frequency, and the radio will NOT operate like that for very long.

really????? here we go again.

In addition to what Steve said. Mind you I didn't watch the video. But does it more than DOUBLE the power output? Doubling power output is an increase of 3dB. To change a standard S-meter fro S-1 to S-2 is a change of 6dB. Which of course isn't a real big change on the receiver end far as being able to hear a signal. My point is that you are not accomplishing much even doubling the output signal. So when you apply the stuff Steve said above to the whole discussion, it's really kind of pointless to do it.

Well, You really need someone that is familiar with communications to work with you to figure all this out. With GMRS, every member not related to another member needs to have a license. So if a father son / sons are involved, they could all operate under one license. But no one else can. With ham it's specific to the individual to have a license with the correct allocations for the frequencies in use. This is typically not an issue any more. But a Novice license holder would not be able to operate in the VHF / UHF spectrum until they upgraded to a technician license. But your best bet is a statewide part 90 itinerant license with a repeater pair and a simplex frequency. You would be using part 90 radios that could be used for ham OR GMRS with the correct programming. The other possibility is getting an MOU from the agencies you will be service and having their assigned frequencies for SAR deployments programmed into the radios so you would have direct communications with Incident Command. Of course, you NEED to have an MOU, don't just start putting public safety frequencies in your radio thinking it will be ok. If your group is established and recognized by public safety agencies and you get calls from them requiring assistance on a search, then they may well want you to have their frequencies programmed so that they are getting real time information AND so when a search is called for weather, or the individual is located, they would want to pull everyone back in without needing to track a group leader down for each group to call back searchers. SAR during an activation is considered first responders in many states. For that length of time you are technically recognized as public safety. That's what I would be looking for, not what cheap radio service can I throw together some radios and use cheaply as humanly possible. Look at it like this. IF you are doing high angle (rope) rescue. You can get proper harnesses and ropes that are specifically designed to be used in that capacity. Or you can go to the hardware store and get whatever they have available that has a minimum break strength above what your heaviest guy is. It will work after all right? Same thing with radios. You send people out into the wilderness to search for someone, that radio is their lifeline back to the world. If they fall and get injured then that radio will bring them help. What would you want to be out in the boonies with? A good quality commercial radio, or a 15 dollar import that you bought because it was the cheapest thing you could find?

More than that. Even if it was Part95E labeled for GMRS operation. Getting it to operate outside of the GMRS allocation would require a modification to the radio (software or hardware mod) which immediately invalidates the type acceptance of the radio, or ANY RADIO that you are modifying to operate out of the design parameters of the radio when it was new. To the OP What you have done is no different than putting 'extra channels' in a CB radio above CH40 and below CH1. You can't operate there either. And understand that getting caught doing that is gonna get your GMRS license revoked.

Well, you need to remember that HAM operations for EMCOMM are done for a served agency. And ARES is a 'by request only' group. Meaning if the local authorities / EMA doesn't request their services, they aren't required or wanted. Driving around after a tornado or other significant event isn't really the safest thing to be doing. Especially if you aren't fully trained for doing it. Downed lines, tree's in the road, flooding, or other issues can possibly strand or injure you and then all of a sudden you are a victim in need of emergency services for rescue. The situation is created by someone's personal need to go out into an area with damage and assess that damage. So are you trained in damage assessment? Are you part of Public safety? Have you even been to a CERT training? Who are you reporting the damage to? Have they requested damage reports? I understand the want, need and desire to be able to contact family in a time of crisis. The knowledge they are ok, and all is well can be important for your mental well being. GMRS will do you well for accomplishing that goal. If there is either LOS between your houses, or there is a repeater / repeaters that you both have access to that will bridge that gap. Remember that if you are using another owners repeater that others may well be trying to do the same thing. So keep communications brief. Establish the health and welfare of all parties. Make plans to communicate again at a specific time and clear the airways for others to use the repeater. Try to have multiple paths of communication available, and TEST those paths at least monthly.

Oh no,,,, not number of ham repeaters. Here we have a FULL dance card. I got the LAST available 2 meter pair for my P25 repeater and lucked into a UHF pair that a friend had and was abandoning that the repeater council transferred to me because the site I have has such good coverage. My UHF repeater see's some use. More than most but less than a few. The VHF repeater, as well as all the rest of the VHF repeaters in this area are stone silent. The VHF repeater does see some traffic from a south eastern ham net that is P25 and other digital modes I have that repeater linked to. But I haven't seen any local activity on that repeater at all on analog or P25.

That ship sailed in 1994 when I got my Tech ticket. KB8VUL I have actively tried, and continue to try to bring old hams back and convince interested folks to become new hams. But you have to want to get into ham for the right reasons. If you aren't looking to expand your technical knowledge, and use ham radio as it was meant to be, then why bother.

Except people to talk to. The FM bands are dead.

Actually I have, multiple times. It's just htat no one actually listens to what anyone is saying on this topic because they have some preconceived notion that it's just more of the same. And in truth, much of it is. Go back and look at my posts about NOT having more than one repeater that's linked to a system in any given operating area. Read the part about a requirement that ANY linked repeater owner MUST insure that a non-linked repeater with similar coverage footprint must exist where they have a linked repeater. While that is a certainty that 2 pairs will be consumed, it also ensures that a local repeater will exist for the locals to use that's not just some garage repeater with a 40 foot high antenna while the linked repeater covers 4 counties. And part of that requirement is the local repeater should have similar or greater public access. The interference thing is simple enough to deal with. Receivers at the transmit sites of the linked repeaters keeping them from transmitting if the frequency is in use locally. Simple enough to do. My take is to build it better, not just toss something on the air and hide behind the 'equal use' regulations about repeater frequencies. But I agree, it can't be 3 or 4 repeaters in a single area on different frequencies all linked together. Hell I even put in that the only way to do infill for coverage is true simulcast transmit on a single frequency, or don't do it at all. But, that's not gonna happen either. None of the linking will come back.... you have a better chance of winning the lottery than seeing the FCC change it's tune on this. And for the record. I never ask for a DIME to access any of my repeaters, linked or otherwise. And argued the point with others about charging. SO that don't fly with me either.

And that will probably be the end of propane fired anything on those grounds. Insurance companies tend to react to anything like this and tell policy holders that they will not continue their policies if they allow whatever source of a loss was to continue to be used at a facility. While there are several different 'reasons' stated for the removal of corporal punishment in schools, a bit of research will show you that the insurance companies, after paying out on a couple schools being sued, they put a stop to it by refusing to insure any school that still used that method of punishment.

Well, he certainly called out NotARubicon on that. The parties over. Lets leave this to die. There are other options. But no one seems to want to go that route. Easiest is change frequencies and bring the nodes up on ham. Ham repeaters can be closed, as in if you don't have a valid GMRS license and were part of the GMRS linked groups, your not allowed on the new ham repeaters.

102 dB of path loss isn't actually that bad. If a repeater is putting out 40 watts that's 46dBm. so 46 - 102= -56dBm. That friend is a SCREAMING hot receive signal and will lay the needle in the needle in the corner so to speak. When you get down to a -115 dBm signal level, then you will start to hear noise in most receivers. By -119dBm the signal is going to be noticeably noisy and broken. This doesn't take into account, antenna gain at either end OR cable loss at either end. But, if you know antenna gain, tower height (for cable length). The type of cable. The duplexer used, and you have a verified accurate antenna system with known cable loss and gain of the antenna. You can calculate the RF power level being transmitted at the site. And be fairly close, like within ten watts.

Center of the radiation source. Neither the tip or the base. However, with UHF antenna's int NOT going to make much difference. If this was an AM radio station and the tower was the driven element as many of them are. The tower might be 600 feet in height, but the center of radiation is the middle of the tower, or 300 feet. You can cee how that would make a difference

Ahhh, you youngin's are just getting your toes wet. Since this is about GMRS, I will leave the number of VHF radios I have out of it. XPR6550 - I know of 18 that are in 6 bank chargers. There are more floating around, those are the ones I am sure of. XPR4550 - Again, I have 6 for sure that I can point out. Probably 10 to 12 total. I sold off most all of the CDM's I had. But there was once 20 plus of them before a trip to Hamfest sent them away. I kept 6 of them for console radios and for repeater setups in the CDR repeater units. Couple XTS5000 portables 6 XTL5000 mid power mobiles one XTL5000 high power mobile One XTS3000 portable One APX 7000 portable (has VHF too) One Harris xg-100P (tri-band with VHF and 800) ONE APX8500 (popped final in the UHF section, needs fixed. Will get around to that. three MTR2000 repeaters two MTR3000 repeaters two Quantar repeaters three or four (can't remember how many got sold) XPR8400/8300 repeaters I did buy some CCR Quansheng portable because it's suppose to cover from 18Mhz to 1.3 Ghz. Firmware updated it and then lost interest in it. It's sitting here too. Don't know what else. Probably a few Kenwood mobiles.

It IS a wireline line by definition of wireline. Wireline, at least in the commercial radio field is any audio / telemetry that is sourced outside of the transmitter site. The method of transport isn't relevant. It can be microwave, phone lines, Ethernet, Satellite, or any other type of transport you what to bring up. If you are at location A and the transmitter is at location B, even across your yard, it's wireline. I understand you don't want that to be the case. You want to find some loophole that you can wave in the FCC's face and tell them to kick rocks. Part 95 doesn't define wireline. It defined elsewhere in CFR 47. I want it to not be this way too. I would be glad to put my repeater back up and link it so I can chat with others all over the place. But the FCC has decided that's not to be. Stop sitting here and complaining. I have already said how to go about getting it changed. Go do that and quit with this beating of a now mutilated dead horse.

Well, 70 Mhz was sold off and is no longer used for STL. So can't use 70 Mhz for it. But it would still be wireline control if you did that. So no,,not an option. Microwave. What sort of microwave? Lets pick that apart. Analog Microwave first. Which would be E&M which is wireline. Then how about TDM (T-1) which is a data channel (24 actually) requiring channel banks then classifying it was a 'network'. It does say NETWORK, not IP network. And TDM is a phone system technology so that may or may not play into the whole PSTN thing. But ultimately, the channel banks are going to create E&M ant both ends which is WIRELINE. NOPE. So then we say that anything above 1 Ghz is Microwave,,,, all the way up from there. Most of the stuff, be it WiFi or some other band is going to still interface as Ethernet. And regards less of you using IP (not sure any other transport is available) it's a network connection. Then it connects to some sort of node device. That device is either taking audio and putting it into a data stream, or taking it off a data stream and putting it back on a pair of wires along with telemetry (PTT and COR) and that once again is E&M which is, drum roll please.... wireline. You can't get past the wireline part no matter what you do unless you are running the repeaters back to back, and that is forbidden as well. Repeater pairs are fixed with a specified with an input and output frequency. You can't put the repeater output on a repeater input frequency to avoid the wireline rule without violating the frequency use rule for repeater pairs. So you understand. If you connect ANYTHING to a repeater that consists of TX /RX audio and telemetry and the source is anything besides the receiver output of the repeater in question, it's wireline control if you split hairs. If the source originated from a location OUTSIDE the repeater equipment location, it's absolutely wireline. So wireline is linking, Zello, running a controller remotely across phone lines, console connection from dispatch type equipment. And it's not limited to repeater control The rules say NO WIRELINE at all for ANY GMRS radio. So that means you can't connect any of that stuff to a 'control station' or 'base station' either and use it legally. Think about it like this. If the FCC decides it's coming for you. They are like Bubba in prison that's taken a liking to someone. You're gonna get it from behind. Bubba don't play 'fair'. He's ten times your size and he's got buddies (other 3 letter agencies). If he's decided that your cute (in violation) you are getting violated. Others might JUST hold you down for him. Or they may take a turn by auditing you, arresting you and putting you in WITH Bubba, or whatever else a 3 letter agency might come up with to come beating on your door at 3 am and apply to you. You want linking back? Pull a group together, then seek out other groups and combine as one. Get someone that knows FCC regulations like an FCC attorney to represent your group. Put together something that would be found as acceptable for the FCC to CONSIDER and have the attorney file a petition with the FCC for a rule change. Sitting and complaining about it on here accomplishes NOTHING. It's not going to come back without a rule change and in reality it's probably not coming back at all. But you are going to need to figure out ALL of the parts of why the rules exist and how to build out a linked system that would NOT violate those rules (like the interference thing). Then you get a proposal together that addresses the problems that it would create, how they would be mitigated and then ask for changes to the stuff like the wireline ban that can't ever be worked around.

I didn't see anything of the sort. Just looked

Jesus God almighty!!!! You all talk like it's a NFA stamped singularly owned automatic weapon that the ATF says you must be in arms reach of at all times with someone else is handling it. It's a GMRS radio. And Yes, anything that carries a tax stamp including suppressors, automatic weapons, short barreled shotguns, or the AOW (Any Other Weapon) can be shot by others that are not owners of the firearm, but the owner or a representative of the trust that owns the firearm MUST be within arms reach of the weapon at all times. If you go to a range that rents these you will have an employee of the business standing RIGHT THERE when you are handling, shooting, or even close to the firearm. And they walk it out to the range with you, hold on to it until you are ready to shoot it and then hand it to you while remaining right next to you. It's not because the M16 is 30 thousand dollars and an expensive AR15 might get up to 4K that is missing like 4 or 5 parts the M16 has. It's because they can loose their 30K weapon and all the other weapons they have including the normal stuff if they get caught NOT doing it by the book. There was a time that a ham repeater required a phone line or other RF control outside of the receive frequency for positive control of the repeater to take it off the air if there was a problem with someone being on it that shouldn't be. Those days are gone. Now you are required to have access to the repeater in 'a timely manner'. That could be 24 or 48 hours depending on the location of the install. And positive control could be as simple as being able to make a call and tell someone to not use the radio. Once you have informed them your hands are clean of it. Same with ham radio, you get on the air and tell someone to ID or leave the repeater, or stop using a repeater they aren't suppose to be on, it's no longer your issue. THe actions of the operator are their actions. Once you tell someone to not use your call sign, even after being told it was OK, absolves you of fault. Your requirements are to inform the family member that would be otherwise authorized there is a requirement to ID using your call sign and an assigned unit number and that covers it. And yes, if your brothers and sisters have licenses, since she is their mother as well she could use any of their call signs and an assigned unit number. And in truth that might be easier. But seriously, You have about as much of a chance of the FCC bringing in financial auditors to dig through a clubs books to verify they aren't selling air time on a repeater for profit as you do having them split hairs about your mother using your call sign and being too far away from you. Because the way some have explained it here, you need to be in arms reach of anyone using your call sign to stop them from using GMRS in a manner not within the scope of the service or something.

OK, now that you all have made fools of yourself and chastised the guy. Linked repeaters are now expressly forbidden by the FCC. There have been a LOT of discussion about the topic in recent months from both sides of the isle so to speak. But the one thing we can agree on is we don't want to hear about linked repeaters any more. It's not really your fault that we have been discussing / arguing the topic since before you joined the site. Yes, you could have searched 'linked repeaters' and probably figured out that it's not a topic to bring up now. But that's water under the bridge... Like a freakin tidal wave of water, maybe a tsunami, a small one, but still in the classification. So, there SHOULD NOT be any linked repeaters anywhere on GMRS. Of course there are still a few, but they don't get talked about. And no one is going to admit to having one on here if they do still have them in service. Sorry about the man children around here. The group is mostly well behaved and full of useful information and is typically friendly. But there are the occasions that they don't get their nap, forgot their safety blanket at home and act like children after you took their favorite toy from them. Then it turns into a day at the 'day care' in the toddlers room.

And all that needs to happen with a 'one way broadcast ' is for someone to reply to that transmission and then it's a standard conversation. One way broadcasts are NOT informational transmissions. Playing of music, recorded sound, or anything else that is easily recognizable as one way is forbidden. Keying up and making a statement about weather, traffic conditions, backup's or accidents are not purposefully a one way 'broadcast'. The problem in my eyes is there are getting to be too many ham operators that have switched over to GMRS, read the rules and interpret them incorrectly and then take a hammie stance of "YOU CAN"T DO THAT, SO I AM GONNA CALL IT OUT" getting on and chastising other operators thinking that GMRS is the same as their beloved ham radio and has to be protected from those horrible operators they THINK are doing it wrong. I promise you that a number of those operators called the FCC about linking and complained to the point they had to figure out something to say was wrong about it and as opposed to just saying, if you do it you need to consider these specific regulations and instead banning the act all together.

At one point they did make 7/8 cable with a solid center. But that was YEARS ago. My first question would be how long is this run of 7/8 that you have. There is so much out there that guys believe that they NEED big cable for everything, but fail to realize that short runs (under 50 feet) other, more manageable cable is fine for the application. If the piece of cable is in the hundreds of feet, putting effort into testing it is worth the effort. If this is some 20 or 30 foot piece of line, it's really not worth the trouble to mess with it.

Google search the whole story if you want crazy. As odd as stealing a tower sounds, the rest of it is really out there.

OH YEAH, ROGER BEEPS FOR THE WIN. And it's got to be the 5 tone beep... A single ping will NOT do Captain Rameous. But, you also have to have the double ping on key up and a couple noise toys for good measure. The orgasiming Meg Ryan, Good Band and the Ugly theme and a robotalk are requirements

Don't know if he approached it from that angle,,,, but if they just told him 'good luck' something ain't right about it. I have seen damn few towers that some ham would pass on putting stuff on. Especially if the price was right. So I really question what's wrong with the site overall that would illicit that response.