WRKC935

Naaa, I think we have similar jobs and see similar silliness. But, I think you were missing my point. If someone modifies a commercially sold ham radio that is 'type accepted' for ham use under part 97, and you cut the block out of it and transmit on some other service, be it commercial LMR, public safety pool or even GMRS, it's illegal because it's not a type accepted radio for that service. Service being controlled by another part of the FCC regulations. We are 95, ham is 97, commercial is 90.x for SMR and 90.y for public safety. Anything is pretty much legal on ham (part 97) as long as it's spectrally pure enough and below the maximum power level for the band it's on. Of course, GMRS and SMR are not that way, the radios have to be tested and accepted for the specific service they are operated on. GMRS there is little enforcement and there is a lot of lee-way. Not that the LMR is closely watched either, but there is more enforcement there than GMRS or ham.

Well, I have only be a ham for 20 years. Do I have an agenda, yes, I dislike stupidity and to a lesser degree, wackers, or wanna be public safety types. These aren't the average hams that want to do their part, pass traffic in a disaster situation and conduct themselves 'professionally'. I am referring to the clowns that have a light bar on their car, a big sticker about weather spotting, fake radar dish on the roof of their car and the mandatory ham radio 'police badge' further indicating their self importance. And the modification to the radio makes it 'illegal' under part 90, not part 97. The radio was never type accepted under part 90 so if it transmits there it's automatically in violation. This is regardless of any other regulation or stipulation in the rules that says any means at your disposal.... if you take a ham radio and transmit in another part of the spectrum that's regulated under a different part of the regulation, then the radio has to meet the requirements of that part of the regulation. Ham radios are NOT part 90 approved, therefore they can't be transmitting there. It's just as illegal to spin the dial on your HF radio down to the AM broadcast band and start transmitting there. Again, not because of the part 97 regulations, but because of part 73 that regulates AM FM broadcast. And the number of regulations they have to follow is FAR more strict than ham or even part 90. And that's a piece of the spectrum that WILL get the attention of the FCC if you go messing about in it. Here's the problem with all this. This lie has been being told to other hams for YEARS to the point it's common. The League refuses to set the matter straight, and tell hams to stop spreading this myth because it will drive away some part of the ham community as a whole that believe they need to be able to talk to the police or fire dispatchers directly 'just in case'. And the truth is a lot of those guys are one step away from getting a Crown Vic and turning it into a wanna be police car and ending up on the front page of the newspaper for being arrested for impersonation of whoever. Now all that being said, if you are stuck on a mountain top and you are in trouble, can't get down, or whatever the case may be. If you have a radio that will talk on the police, fire or dog catcher channel and you call for help, NO ONE is gonna fault you for that. And I seriously doubt you will end up with a fine from the FCC for transmitting a distress message. But there are limits to when it's acceptable. And with this specific situation, none of those limits were met.

The FCC in truth is partly to blame for this stupidity. Somewhere in the stacks of pages of FCC regulations there is a passage in the hammie law that states that A ham operator may use ANY means at their disposal to communicate an emergency. Now this has little clarification where it explains that if a General class operator can't raise anyone on the allocated frequencies of his license, he can move to the Extra class frequency allocations and and communicate there. But he HAS to remain within the allocated amateur radio bands. So the clowns see this as an excuse to remove the transmit block that keeps their 2 meter ham radio transmitting between 144 and 148 Mhz. And they cite this very regulation as the reason to modify their radios... so just in case they need to talk directly to the police or fire they can. I remember when Radio Shack brought out the HTX202 radios that would NOT even receive out of band. They were a kickass radio, worked extremely well but guys refused to own them because they wouldn't operate out of band. Had the FCC CLEARLY stated that the any means at their disposal within the allocated amateur radio bands, all this crap wouldn't be as common as it is. This goes back to the days of code requirements and 5 different licenses classes in ham radio. But it allowed a Novice license holder to use 2 meters in the case of an emergency. It was NEVER meant to allow hams to talk to police on their ham radios. And this stupidity is still prevalent in ham radio. I have heard numerous complaints that there is no radio that will connect to an 800Mhz trunked radio system that a ham can get. And they NEED it 'just in case" and have gone as far as stating that they need to have some public safety frequency available for them their ham radios will work on so they can advise of an emergency. Public safety communications is for the greater public good. Not the good on an individual. Meaning if the cell networks are down due to an earthquake. There is a building on fire with 30 people trapped and your father is having a heart attack, getting on the fire / ems frequency and calling for help will get you told to shut the hell up and ignored. The lives of 30 people are MORE important than that of a single individual. And they are NOT going to send resources for a single individual if they don't have them in reserve, which after a major earthquake, they are NOT gonna have. But getting on their frequency DOES put that group of people in greater jeopardy if they are communicating with you and not each other do rescue them.

Have you run any updates on your node lately? I am thinking that there might be a version limitation on the software we can run and have it work with the rest of the system. EDIT: I just did a lookup on the IP I am seeing giving me the reject. It seems to be in an AWS datacenter in Maryland or Virginia. Thinking that's NOT you. Log into your node. run the command sudo asterisk -r and wait a few minutes. See what it shows in the logging output.

I just brought up the logging on my node. I am seeing a reject for an address in the 34.194.x.x subnet. Not sure who that belongs to, but I am not attempting to connect out to anywhere that I am aware of.

Now mind you I am ASKING because there were new 'rules' put into effect. But was there any issues with interference or excessive key-ups with no one talking on your repeater? I only ask because the MidWest group has stated that they will be banning nodes for 24 hours for infractions of the rules. Not saying this is the case,,, only asking a question here.. So please don't think I am implying anything. Try connecting to my node directly.... 23903 and see if it works. I will try to monitor and attempt to see if the connection is coming through.

OK, so a final update on the path I went.... I did have some 3 dB high power directional couplers that were in band for GMRS frequencies. I connected the dual isolators to that 3 dB coupler and terminated one of the coupler outputs to a 100 watt 50 ohm load. The other output was then connected to the can in the combiner. Effectively I built a hybrid combiner. Tuning it is a bit sketch as I have to tune it between the two frequencies. But I am getting 3 times to power out of it I was before. Mind you that's only 12 watts per frequency, but it's progress. I am gonna check to see what the repeaters are set to power wise and if they are under 50 watts, I will be turning them up to that level. I expect a minimum of 3 dB of loss in this configuration but that's WAY better than 10 or 20 dB that I was seeing. I have the new antenna in the air and the cables in the building. I need to finish terminating the lines in the building and land them on the PolyPhasers. Then cut and run new lines to the combiners from there. Have the materials, just need the time to get it done. Planning on flying a DB420 to replace the DB-408 receive antenna as well. Once that is all complete I will be working on redoing the interface for the 600 repeater to the Midwest link. I have been having audio issues on the transmit site, but i think that was more a subscriber issue.... will know more once I get the repeater on the other combiner and into an antenna. Once all that is done, I will be spinning up a ham repeater on one of the combiners. Should be analog at first. May look at doing a P25 mixed mode with it.

SO you DON'T have to have a commercial business to get a repeater pair?? If that's what you are saying that's REAL interesting. There are still some 800 SMR frequencies out there to be had. And the utter glut of 800 radios, repeaters and the like are all but free plus shipping. I was selling XLS5000's at Dayton Hamfest for 30 a pop and I am sitting on several 800 quantars that my plans were to convert to 900 and put on ham. But if I could get a single 800 pair, run P25 and AES or even DES. I believe I would be doing so.

We need to be supportive of them coming out. It takes a huge amount of courage to face yourself and openly admit to who you are. That courage needs to be admired. Oh, wait... you are talking about pulling your radio and getting a different one. Nevermind. I was picturing the Village people all dancing around with the KSG1000 radios with Diana Ross singing her coming out song. Sorry.

And honestly I find this to be disheartening. Not the old guy part but the total lack of involvement from the younger guys. And the fact that the ones that do get involved are the vest and light bar guys. Others on here have mentioned that part of amateur radio is emergency communications. And that's true. But This stuff was established when public safety communications was FAR different than it is today. Those changes have made the police and fire systems far more resilient and reliable than back in the day, and the amateur radio technology has for the most part stalled. The 'old guy' mentality I believe has something to do with it, lack of accepting change, or new technology. So public safety, The Red Cross, and other 'established' emergency groups have shiny new radio systems that have redundancy and we have 2 Meter FM and HF simplex. But we can talk simplex.... except those shiny new PS radios have that ability too. And the ham community is almost at odds with it self to move forward and those that are willing lack the funds and the spectrum to do so, at least in my area. By that I mean no one is actually looking at where they need to place repeaters and infrastructure to provide an alternate path for emcomm and those that actually DO, can't get a repeater pair to put in the equipment. There are probably 30 VHF ham repeaters in the Central Ohio area. No one uses ANY of them. But ask for someone to give up a pair so it can be moved to a better site on better equipment and they poo poo all over that idea, stating it's THEIR repeater pair and it's gonna remain that way. But if you call for that guy on HIS repeater, with HIS call sign on it, he's not even listening to it, let alone anyone else. And frankly it's sad that ham radio has fallen in this rabbit hole. And I really don't know if there is a way back at this point. Not to mention the idea that guys are getting DMR 'hotspots' and forgoing a repeater all together. What's the point of using RF to communicate 6 feet to your Raspberry Pi and then onto the internet? Seems pointless. And with the available dongles, you can forgo the radio all together and connect your computer to a microphone and talk without RF being involved on your end at all. So, we eliminate the radio part of ham radio and what do you have left?

You know,,,, the obvious... sometimes ain't so obvious. Frequency spacing is my problem. Too close. For commercial, and even ham radio (density of used repeater pairs) you have to work with what you have. GMRS.... NOTHING is assigned, nothing is fixed use. If you want to put a repeater up. You put it up. If you're a nice guy, you work with the co-channel users and either host them or assist them with reprogramming their stuff, but it's not difficult to work out a mutually agreeable situation with regards to repeater frequency pairs. 462.725 and 462.550 will fit in the combiner... and run 600 on another combiner.... problem solved Epiphany in the shower this morning.

Well I was playing with it tonight. The cable length of the spiders is SUPER critical. I do hate tuning by cable length. I need to find my male and female N barrels. Found a few and was able to move it around some and got some of teh power back. Had 18 watts out with 40 in at one point on one channel, but the other channel was 1 watt out. That's not gonna work obviously. I did pull 675 out of the mix in that set of cans and was able to get something resembling reasonable output of 8 watts. While that sounds like a silly low output, I was able to hear the thing from 60 miles out with 2 watts of output, so it's not as bad as it looks. Will be setting down this weekend with it, retuning the isolators and building new cables. Considering using sueperflex hardline for the cables as it's WAY easier to put together and test and then trip if needed as opposed to RG-214 that has to have the braid brushed out and the center pin resoldered every time it's cut. Only issue with the hardline is the length measurement for the actual connectors. Will cut long and creep up on the right length. A drill powered prep tool is your friend here. Decibel and dB Spectra both used hardline on some of their 800 combiners so it's not something that hasn't been done before. I know that 125Khz is gonna be really close spacing. But I have the same unit with 452.2375, 452.3625, 454.475, 454.075, 454.175. It works,,, lossy but not as bad as mine right now. And if that doesn't work there are is a two port hybrid sitting on the floor next to it that will work.. but it's only a two port so I would still need two antenna's to get all three GMRS repeaters on the air. I would be elated with 15 watts out. If I get to 20 watts, I will seriously need to consider receive sites.

fair enough

I was using the UV5R as an example. But radio is radio. And while the big name manufactures DO markup their prices a good bit from teh actual investment in the radio they are selling, there are still technical differences that make them better. Now, granted the WouXun, BaoFeng and other CCR's are FAR less expensive new than the Motorola counterparts, there is a reason for at least PART of that difference. And the part I am pointing out is the selectivity of the receiver. And I will say that they are NOT what they were either. Going back to the Maxtracs and Maratrac's, you have to retune the first filter stages to get them out of band. If you got a 150 - 174 radio and thought you would just put 2 meter frequencies, you found it didn't work worth a hoot. At least until you retuned the front end. They aren't that tight any more. But they aren't bad either. Point is that good filters cost money, and a 200 dollar radio is not gonna have those filters. Now I am not gonna argue that the radio will not perform without those filters, because it will work in most situations. But when you get into an area with a lot of intermod and high RF, those missing filters become apparent. Guessing the Woo Sun or funky bowl radios all come out a different door at the same factory no doubt. And for the record,,, YOU said shitty,,, not me.

They make a blank chrome cap for the NMO mount that has no hole in it. We sue them at the shop to cap NMO mounts on retired public safety vehicles.

Still fighting with this dumb thing. And it's really doing odd things. 725 with 40 in gets me 2 watts out 675 with 40 in gets me 10 watts out 600 is with 40 in is 20 watts. So I decided to disconnect the 600 and 675 and see if it was interacting. It is... I get no output from 725 with 675 disconnected. But it has no effect on 600. Gonna run 600 and 725 in one combiner and 675 in the other combiner and see what that does. I did make new cables from the cans to the star but that had little effect. Gonna play with putting ham stuff in the other ports but I need to get a second transmit antenna in the air so I can split these stupid combiners. I do love radio,,, it's so much fun.

Well, yes, to a point. And then not so much. CCR receivers have the issue of being designed for DC to daylight with no band specific filtering. That band specific filtering keeps stuff that's not in the band that the radio is designed to operate in out of the front end of the radio. I can walk around a hamfest where every third person is transmitting and STILL receiver the guy's signal that's trying to talk to me. I tried that once with a UV5R. It failed miserably.

there was a repeater on DMR on either 625 or 575 a while back here in central Ohio. It seemed to have disappeared now. But yes I have seen it happening too.

Yeah, I have a bad habit of letting trolls get the better of me and reacting poorly.

The issue with this design is receive attenuation. The design is a window filter and then a split duplexer. The Duplexer is going to present 2dB of so of loss and the window filter another 3dB of loss. For transmit, that's significant but will not effect the TX as much as you would think. But on the receive side, it's gonna make a repeater receive rather deaf.Another option is to use the two antenna's and a RX multicoupler and TX combiner. OR an RX multicoupler and the transmit side of this setup. The RX multicoupler is gonna have a window filter to pull out the RX and an amplifier to compensate for the loss in the window filter. Sure it takes an additional antenna, but you can stick 8 transmitters (at a higher loss figure) on a single antenna. And the combiner can be used for ham and GMRS and of course any commercial LMR in between. There are some calculations that need to be done so that there is no interference due to mixing in the combiner but those are simple enough calculations to do. But it does raise a question. Can you increase the power output of a repeater past 50 watts to compensate for the losses in a combiner?

Well, I have these same combiners in other commercial sites running at 25Kc spacing and they were bought that way. Not questioning what you are saying. Just know through research and experience that this model will support 25Kc and not have this level of loss. Gonna try rebuilding the cabling with the odd multiple of a 1/4 wave to the star with the frequencies now in play. If that doesn't work, the unit is actually a DB-4379-8. Meaning original design was 8 transmitters on one antenna. I have the unit split into two 4 port units. If I need more spacing I will put 725 and 600 in this one and put 675 in the other one on a different transmit antenna. It doesn't sound like the ham frequency should be a issue at all though?

So which part of "I turned it all back on" did you miss exactly??? Not to mention the several times I specifically said I OVER REACTED. Guessing you missed that too. And how many repeaters have YOU put on the air up to this point. "When you learn to separate greater good from personal hurts - world will change towards better future." Dude, this is GMRS. We ain't out to change the world here... it's just some radios. You drop some higher calling crap like that and talk about MY ego. Right. But that is pretty funny... I did get a chuckle out of it.

I have a combiner that I am needing to replace the cables between the output cans and the combiner spider. Currently have a loss figure WAY above what the manufacture rated the system at for the spread I have. Freqs are GMRS, spacing is 725, 675 and 600 so .050Mhz and .075Mhz. Combiner is rated to .025 but the losses go up a lot when it's that tight. Any big brains out there that know how the harnesses in these work that can help a brother out?

Gonna get me a roger beep, and door bell for key up and an echo board so I can sound like one of them big rig radio operators... maybe even get me one of them linears.

That's pretty much true actually. Getting an antenna designed for 430 to 450 to work as efficiently and with a proper SWR on 467 Mhz is gonna be difficult if there is much gain to the antenna. And HAM antenna's are pretty much all designed as gain antenna's. I am not saying it will not radiate power at all. Hell I ran a VHF radio on a DB-404 (UHF antenna) and was talking 90 miles with it. Now I was talking to repeaters on tall towers and it was mounted at 110 feet on a tower that sits on the highest point in the whole county and is within 200 feet of the highest point in the entire state (1549 feet, Ohio) but it would have worked BETTER if I was on a proper antenna for the band I was talking on.