WRKC935

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.

OK, then... We have a live one here. Part of what I do for a living is track down and market vertical real estate for commercial radio use. So while you may think I don't know what I am talking about, I can assure you I do. So I will now just spell it out. If you don't have interest from ham operators then you are wanting too much money, or your tower is crap. But it could be a combination of the two. There aren't but two reasons that a tower that is height X can be 'easily extended' 30 feet to height Y. It's either some crankup deal or someone got lazy and decided to not stack the rest of the tower. And you are in the same state as this https://www.kxan.com/news/national-news/ap-200-foot-radio-station-tower-stolen-without-a-trace-in-alabama-silencing-small-towns-voice/ So anything to do with a tower in that state is sketchy to begin with. But maybe that's where the tower came from to begin with. If you are actually wanting to generate profit from the site, advertising it on Craigslist ain't gonna help. Neither is finding hobby radio web sites and forums thinking you are going to find paying customers. And assuming you have already approached all the commercial radio shops and got laughed out of the building and are marketing to hams and GMRS users on web forums tells me this thing must be a peach of a tower. Which is why I mentioned that if the site is marketable and desirable you might consider listing it with the big three vertical real estate companies. They will come in, tear down your crap, put up a multi carrier tower and let you park your stuff on it and PAY YOU to do it. But of course the site needs to be desirable to them. My guess is it's not. So, like the ham's and numerous others have said. Good Luck.

Your first issue is you are marketing to people that don't want to pay for space. Ham clubs are notoriously cheap. And even if they have 4 repeaters to cover an area that could be covered by one repeater on your tower, those agreements are already in place and working. You mentioned that the tower 'is only raised to 70 feet' but could go higher. Is this some crank up tower or do you just have additional sections sitting there to be put on top? Is the tower properly installed and guyed correctly or is this on a property formally owned by a ham operator that started installing a tower and just never finished it? Wind loading and tower stability is a thing. And having hams tell you good luck is a concern unless you started quoting costs to them for rent and they lost interest at that point. There use to be places on most of the major vertical real estate companies web sites that you could register a location for consideration. If the site is marketable, they may come in and build a tower. But that will only happen if they have a tenant for the site already. But the site needs to be marketable. There has to be a need for anyone to want to occupy the space. And just because it's a good site for coverage of the surrounding area doesn't mean that area needs coverage. There is a lot that goes into mapping out tower coverage, first of which is population of the covered area. There are HUGE swaths of land out west that have zero towers. That's due to the fact there are people in those areas. There needs to be users in the coverage area for it to make any sense to build out that coverage area. And if this is a crank up tower, then no you don't have space below the top. Crank up towers are designed to come down. If you start connecting stuff to the tower below the top, then it will not retract. Not sure if that's the case here. But I figured I would mention it. EDIT: One other thing. If this is sitting on a 600 foot hill, it's getting to the point it's too tall for good local coverage. Special antenna's with down tilt would need to be used (very expensive) to drive the signal down and not at the horizon for it to have good coverage in close. I have seen repeater installs fail to cover area's close to the site but talk 90 miles out because the antenna was a high gain design and basically talked over the area close to the tower.

Quantar or an MTR2000 would be what I would use. Both are 100% CCS rated duty cycle so no amount of ham use will effect either one of them. The MTR2000 does offer something the Quantar doesn't for down the road. That being the STM32 interface that can be dropped directly into the chassis in the expansion card slot. That card allows for ALL digital repeater modes to be supported. I would think you could interface an STM32 into a Quantar as well, but it's not going to be as easy. Of course the Quantar will support P25 natively where the MTR will not. But again, you said analog only so that might not ever be a consideration. I would say that you might want to PM me on here. I have a couple VHF MTR's sitting in a rack that need a home and I am looking for a VHF Quantar for a project. Not real woried about the spur. I am betting that it can be dealt with easy enough.

A large VHF set of tubular aluminum can's might change tune based on how they were sitting when tuned. Anything built from extruded aluminum is going to have enough rigidity to be mounted in any configuration without it being an issue. A small 'flatpack' duplexer like the EMR pictured is probably the LEAST prone to it flexing from it's orientation. But mounting them on an uneven surface MAY cause issues. But, on the flip side of that, a flatpack duplexer is a NOTCH only type of filter and the bandwidth of the notch is wide enough that even if they were lightly tweaked, I seriously doubt that you would be able to see a difference on a tracking generator or a VNA.

You Rick rolling people again? I will see your "GMRS" video and raise you a Amateur Radio EMCOMM PSA video

You can link them directly with the 'mygmrs' image but you will need to edit some files to do it. The way the system worked when it was up had a server that housed the database for the different nodes. That is the server that made it 'work' without the need to manually edit the files. The specific file is rpt_extnodes_gmrs. which was in the path /var/lib/asterisk. Here is the format of the file. 21700=radio@66.158.37.66/21700,66.158.37.66 21701=radio@67.52.45.142/21701,67.52.45.142 21702=radio@66.158.37.66/21702,66.158.37.66 21703=radio@67.52.45.142/21703,67.52.45.142 The 217XX is the node number, then the public IP address of the node / UDP port number used. Then the IP address again. You will need to edit that file, or create another file with that information in it so there is a whitelist and connection path to the other node you are trying to link to. BOTH nodes will need entered into that file on both Raspberry Pi's for it to function and connect. The reason I bring up creating another file is there is a script that runs every 10 minutes that updates that file. I don't know if it will blank the file if the server isn't available. I don't THINK it will but that hasn't been tested. For more specific instructions on getting it working, you should look up information on AllStar Link. It's the ham radio software used for lining repeaters that the system was based on. It's been around for a long time and is well documented on the web. There is also a different system called GMRSlive that has an image that directly allows you to configure it with this information and has a better interface for getting this going. The myGMRS image is really meant to be automatic and as such requires a strong understanding of Asterisk and the rpt app within Asterisk to modify it to work correctly. Disclaimer: What I posted here is for academic use. Choosing to implement a system using this information on a radio service it's not allowed to be used on is YOUR choice. I am only providing info, not telling you to break the FCC regulations regarding linking or any other FCC regulation. I don't care what you do. Just don't tell them I put you up to it. Because it's your Circus and Your Monkeys.... NOT MINE. EDIT BTW: I am waiting on confirmation that I can go into this topic with a full explanation of how to do this. Once Rich says it's OK I will post it, but not before. But what has been said here and a bit of google searching and research will get you where you need to go.

hamfest fleamarkets

Yes and no, but connecting two separate radio's together and calling it a repeater, like ham operators do is not a part 95 or even part 90 accepted 'repeater'. Wireline is remote link. meaning the TX and audio source are in two different places. Any remote control where the intelligence being transmitted outside of the shared specific RX frequency is wireline control. Meaning that what I am doing with an IP based console with the radio's at the tower site, a microwave link to the house and the console being operated from my house is 'wireline'. Of course, I am going to continue to do that, but it's still technically illegal.