
WRKC935
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FCC Shutdown of New York GMRS Linked Repeater System
WRKC935 replied to OffRoaderX's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
I honestly wish they would speak up. It would clear up the confusion a LOT. -
Club memberships required to use (aka Pay to play)
WRKC935 replied to UncleYoda's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Huh? American Tower, Crown Castle and the others give discounts for ham??? When did that start? I know of a couple sites that they bought that the previous owners had extended low rent leases for hams that carried over. But at least in once case, when that lease finally expired, they went to full rent of over 1K a month and then tried to force the repeater owner to have their antenna removed by one of their 'approved' tower contractors at a cost of over 5 grand. They ended up abandoning the antenna system -
FCC Shutdown of New York GMRS Linked Repeater System
WRKC935 replied to OffRoaderX's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
And in truth, we don't even know that happened. -
FCC Shutdown of New York GMRS Linked Repeater System
WRKC935 replied to OffRoaderX's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Wait.. What??? polite manner? You some kind of kinder gentler leftist that believes words are violence or some stupid crap like that? If someone deserves to be told to F OFF you look them in the eye like a man and tell them to F OFF. There is no polite at that point. If that's what they have coming, that's what they get. You don't try to be polite. You don't try to sugar coat it or attempt to spare their feelings. At the point that F OFF is appropriate, that's what they get. Speaking of F OFF, You sit here going on over and over on the forum that HOSTS the linking servers for the ROGUE REPEATERS and continue to pop off at the mouth about how these ROGUE REPEATERS are the bane of GMRS and will no doubt destroy the very fabric of the GMRS service, and anything else related to Part 95. You don't like the idea of linking repeaters. We get it. All too well. THE HORSE IS DEAD.... leave it be already. -
That is very true. I had a thought on all of this that I posted elsewhere in the forum. Short version is this. If that email was sent from an FCC mail server, it was archived. A FOIA request would reveal the email completely, and verify it's real. If no email was sent from the FCC servers, then this is all a hoax. If it's a hoax, why was it done, who was involved in the hoax and if there was money paid for access to the repeater system that was turned off, was that money returned? If it's proven to not be a hoax, and there is FCC action about to take place, then that will be proven out as well.
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The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Tell you what. I am gonna drop a bit of knowledge that someone more enterprising than me can pickup and run with and run this crap to ground proving once and for all if any of this crap is legit. Or if once again, things have been made up for whatever reason creating all this hate and discontent. The claims are that the email came from an employed FCC agent from his office email account. Well, that email server, and the contents of EVERY EMAIL in it are property of the tax payers. And are ALL subject to release to anyone making a FOIA request to the proper people. The government will have no choice but to provide the email, unredacted since it's certainly not going to have anything in it that would be considered of an interest to national security. So, if someone were to take two sentences from the email and make a FOIA request based on those sentences, or of course if you have more info, like the date and time it was sent... BY LAW the emails going into and coming out of all government email servers have to be saved and archived. The FOIA request requires them to search for it and provide it. So if someone is motivated enough to get to the bottom of this, that is the way to do it. The ONLY reason it would be withheld is if there was an actual ongoing investigation concerning the repeater system and it's owner. And if that's the case and you get told that, I would begin looking for terminations for not following procedure of an FCC agent. Otherwise it's probably made up BS. -
Well, you bring up an excellent point. And this is something that I personally have wondered about myself. I errored on the side of caution and shut my linked repeater down. Mostly because I don't want to be the guy that they make an example of if they go that route. But that being said, if the owners financial situation changed with his repeater system, or he just got bored with it but had agreements with others to use it, and got bored with that idea. Telling everyone that his 'buddy' the FCC agent told him to shut it down and then wanted his user list, that would first off be enough of an excuse to pull the plug, and with the member list thing, be enough motivation for the users to not ask too many question or raise too much hell because he might turn them in. But it remains a good enough reason to pull the plug without any additional explanation and the lack of any other information would keep others guessing and partly scared about getting in trouble themselves. Effectively shutting them up. Of course if it's all bullshit and he made the whole thing up, there is NO WAY that will ever come out in the open. The fact he lied to take away a bunch of peoples wide area repeater would not go well for him. And of course, there was a call sign on the repeater, so it's not like he would be hard to physically locate. There are people that would show up on his door step and demand answers, or possibly even become violent about being lied to and taking away their repeater access. I did take mine off the air.... but I didn't lie about it,,, I said I was tired of second guessing the FCC. I was tired of worrying about being the guy they might come after and make an example of. And I was the ONLY repeater in the entire state of Ohio that was linked all the time to other repeaters in other states. Did that fact make me a bigger target for enforcement? I don't know.... but in my mind it could have. So I just shut down and will remain that way until the FCC specifically says we can link repeaters, run simulcast repeaters and all the rest. At that point, I have a STACK of MTR2000's sitting ready to go. And I am getting ready to build two node interfaces and configure two node SD cards for other users that want to link their repeaters together. I don't have an issue at all with linking. I just ain't gonna sit and worry about it every time one of these stories comes out and wonder if I am next on the list. I am NOT here to tell others what they should do. I am gonna do me, and the rest of it is up to others. But I will say this. I certainly would NOT want to be that guy if this is all BS. I also would hate to be The video creator that put those videos out there if it's found that this is all BS. Because this was all closely watched and I am sure that those videos generated a LOT of income due to the number of views. I wouldn't want to be the guy that profited from BS being put on YouTube and creating all this nonsense either.
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Yeah, what's going to happen is as the GMRS user base grows and more repeaters go on the air, it will get to a point where people will start complaining to the FCC about their repeaters they just put up are being interfered with by other established repeaters. The FCC is going to react at that point. Since the frequencies we are using sit in the middle of the commercial band that is saturated with users in about every urban area there are NO additional frequencies available for the service. So how do they react? They can go back to assigning repeater pairs to the license holder. Only allowing the license holder to have 2 pairs, one being 462.675 (traveler) and one other pair. They can narrowband the service and take it to 12.5Khz channel spacing. This takes all the older wideband only radios and removes them from being used on the service. Now MOST radios built in the last 20 years will work with that channel spacing. But be warned, you will LOOSE at least 1/3 of the coverage foot print of all repeaters when they are switched. Of course that also doe's something for the interference issues since the repeater coverage drops. Or, they can break in off in us and take the whole service to 6.25Khz channel spacing, which would remove the ability for MOST of the current radios to be used. Effectively making everyone buy a new radio to operate on the service. But I am talking that even Motorola XTS /XTL radios will go away. If you want a Motorola radio, your getting an APX at over a grand each minimum. But all the BTech, Midland, ETC ETC stuff will be illegal to operate. You can have more channels, but you now loose 2/3 of the current wideband coverage footprint of the repeaters. And of course it's not just the repeaters... simplex coverage will suffer just as bad. Lastly, they could really do us dirty and go the way many on here seem to want them to go and allow DMR or some other digital format. Problem with that is again, new radios as all the current GMRS specific radios like BTech and Midland are analog only and will not support digital modulation. So again we buy new gear that's not going to be cheap since there are license fee's to be paid for the vocoder in the radios that exceed the cost of a new BTech for just the license. Then we get to the interference issues from adjacent repeaters. With analog, you get hetrodyne first, then there is some noise and audio quality issues before the signal gets bad and the interference gets to the point that you can't understand the repeater you are listening to. With DMR and other digital technologies..... you have BER. That's Bit Error Rate. The signal is good, then it gets a bit funky, then it's just gone. The BER gets beyond what the radio can 'fix' and you get nothing after that. Digital radios will blank out around the point that you are at the beginnings of audio quality issues with wide band analog. So while digital will talk farther than analog on a quiet channel, a shared frequency will have less coverage due to interference from neighboring repeaters on the same frequency. So be careful of what you wish for. Oh, and if you think that this is going to get them to open up linking, it will do the exact opposite. Linked repeaters don't allow you to monitor the repeater output for a repeater you are linked to. So it could be creating interference at the other end that you wouldn't be aware of. But just because you aren't aware of it, doesn't mean it's not causing an issue.
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The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Well, don't feel bad about that. Because I was running 600 and 675 in a DIY Hybrid combiner, I was getting about 18 watts out of the building with the repeater at 75 watts. Then 350 feet of 7/8 cable. So your 12 watts at the antenna isn't really bad at all. Now receive is a receive multicoupler with a window filter. But of course, what gets lost in the cable is just gone. I have considered a TTA on UHF but haven't gone down that path yet. I have a couple old 800 units that I was thinking about removing and replacing the window filter on, but that's a down the road project. And I talk 60 miles in some directions so I am not hurting regardless for performance. -
The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Yeah, i dealt with a guy that was thinking he was going to do that. He had 15 paper repeaters registered on here. When I started looking into his 'system' I even found a business registered with the state where he was marketing air time on GMRS. The tower owner already had one open repeater on the air that he made open. I put my repeater on the air as well (675) that was open. My coverage footprint covered several of his 'pay to play' paper repeaters. Of course he wasn't happy. He threatened to call the FCC. I reminded him of the regulations for selling air time on GMRS and his repeaters started disappearing, not that they existed to begin with. In truth, I was never able to verify he had ANY repeaters on the air. But I know due to the location of several of them, there was never any equipment at those locations for at least the last 15 years because I was in those sites and there wasn't any GMRS or even UHF equipment at those sites. But putting up free open access repeaters in the coverage area of pay to play repeaters typically makes them go silent. People will go with the free option every time if it's a good quality and fills their needs. -
The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Yes, what you are saying is true to a point. But it's really going to depend on the infraction. If it's linked repeater ownership... I disconnected the link and have no intention of reconnecting it. Or I took the repeater off the air permanently. With those corrective actions, there aren't any additional remedies. Excessive power output... checked the programming of repeater in question and it was set for 100 watts. This was an oversite.. reprogrammed repeater to correct power level and verified power output with brand X watt meter that was calibrated on 6/2023, serial number 23252... or what ever with a E100 slug that was calibrated at the same time. Again, nothing else to correct. With GMRS specifically, we aren't limited to any Maximum EPR, antenna gain or height. We just can't interfere with other licensed users attempting to use the frequency, and that's only within reason. If you move into a house next to an active repeater site, you aren't going to be able to complain about not being able to use CH 16 if the repeater is on that channel. Now if the site has all 8 pairs tied up, then there is the possibility of someone at the FCC considering it to be a complaint. Now if you are into an ERP power level issue with a commercial license, and you botched it by putting the antenna too high, with too much gain, and running over the licensed output power level to boot. That's the one where they might keep banging away until you are completely compliant if you tell them you just turned down the power. -
The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
You are correct. They don't drag anyone into court and that was my point. For a lawsuit to happen someone needs to get a finding against them and decide to fight the FCC in court, and loose. Then drag it back to a higher court and WIN. ONLY at that point can they demand the rules be amended. And the costs for doing that are going to be ridiculous. So 951 is also correct, it's doubtful that it will ever happen. -
The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Well, it's going to need to be an enforcement action first. The FCC is going to need to act on the regulations as written and drag someone into court. Now that's no how the FCC typically works. They send a NOV or Notice of Violation letter to you asking you to explain the violation and typically but not always to explain what corrective measures you have taken to resolve the violation. Here's where it can go a number of directions. If your letter explaining your violation reasoning and corrective action satisfied them, and they don't get any more complaints, then it ceases at that point. But they can send a NOV and an NAL which is a Notice of Apparent Liability, which is FCC speak for a fine / ticket. Within that letter there is typically more strongly worded indicators that while it's your right to have your day in court, that you will be responsible for your travel, the full court costs and a bunch of other stuff that can result in this costing lots of money. This is where most people break. When they start in with telling you that you were observed doing X on the listed days, and you can be fined Y dollars per day per offense. People freak out and don't go fight them in court. So that's the FIRST hurdle to get over. Then you need to LOOSE the court case and bring suite in a higher court that the actions weren't against regulations or something. After you WIN that case, as part of the win you can demand the rules be cleared up. Because outside of that, the rules are not going to change. And OSHA is alive and well, thank God. -
The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Well, Marc brings up several good points. I am gonna throw some more gas on this fire and bring up another regulation that I have seen pop up. That being the requirement to listen to the channel / frequency you are about to use before transmitting. This was to verify that another repeater/ simplex user is NOT currently using the frequency before accessing it yourself. Commercial radios used 'HUB' or some other similar feature that when the mike hangar (knob on the back of the Microphone) was taken from the mike clip that is mounted to stow the mike when not in use disables the PL/DPL/CTCSS tone for the receiver and allows you to listen to the RX frequency in CSQ. This isn't a part 95 specific requirement, it's written elsewhere in 47 as a requirement for all services other than maybe HAM but I am betting it's a requirement there to. Commercial guys know this as 'monitor'. No one bothers with it any more but it's still on the books. There are ways around it. First being the class of licensed frequency you have. Again, going to commercial part 90 stuff, there are classes of frequencies. These are designated by the number behind the FB, or Fixed Base designation for the licensed frequency. FB2 is a shared frequency that has the requirement to monitor the frequency as there are other users in your area that could be licensed for that frequency as well. Then there is FB6 and FB8. FB6 had no requirement to monitor but may be shared at a distance typically greater then your normal coverage area. Then there is the FB8. FB8 is considered a 'control channel' level license. These are allowed to transmit in the blind at all times. If you have an FB8 license, there is zero requirement to listen first and you are allowed to transmit on that frequency at all times. In a trunking radio system, these are what are used for control channels. The rest of the channels are typically FB6, having no requirement to monitor but a small possibility exists that you may encounter some interference occasionally. Back the the requirement to 'monitor'. Obviously we don't have licensed 'assigned' frequencies any more. So there is a requirement to monitor before transmitting in all cases. And how many linked repeater systems have output frequency receivers that are monitoring the TX frequency and will deny the repeater the ability to transmit if there is another user on the frequency locally? Of course the answer is none. And you are NOT going to be able to monitor a repeater frequency in Iowa if you are in Florida. And that is how we get hung on linking regardless of with part 95.XXX says. If you are in Florida and key up a repeater in Iowa that shares a frequency with another local repeater, or someone is using that channel simplex, you just caused interference with that user. It's also how they CAN go after repeater users that are not repeater owners. -
Yeah, that's just wasteful... especially since we are limited on frequencies. Now I have said before that we (and hams for that matter) don't have huge budgets to select our tower sites of construct a site where we need it to minimize overlap. But there is little sense in putting several wide area coverage repeaters on the air when the overlap completely. When I was still in the game for linking, I was looking at fill sites. Low power, low profile sites that would fill in specific area's where coverage wasn't as good as I liked. But that was starting to get into heavy RF coverage calculations, high power (20 watt) attenuator's for both TX and RX so that I could limit the coverage. The one site I was looking at had antenna's at 400 feet. That created a problem because I needed them much lower but that wasn't an option. Now that I have got off the linking boat, it doesn't matter so much. But I was looking at actually building two additional sites that would have been true simulcast on 462.600 for a total of 3 sites.
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I prefer TenSR and Harris channel banks for simulcast personally. Ant MTR2000 repeaters. But that's what I know.
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You would need a minimum of 2 pairs to pull it off. Using two would allow for some overlap and not run the cost of equipment to the moon by requiring the system to be true simulcast where the frequency and audio launch times were GPS controlled. The other part of the problem with simulcast beyond cost is knowledge. GMRS is a 'by rule' service. You agree to follow the rules and that's the ONLY requirement. Non demonstration of any knowledge required. Designing and building a simulcast system requires specific knowledge that is not common even in commercial radio tech's.
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Thank YOU.... that just brightened my whole day.
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A truly 'SAD HAM' answer. Just in GMRS. Hams do this all the time to new guys that don't know anything. At least the SAD HAM's do by your definition of SAD HAM's. Just go make another video about his question and link him to it. Then you can get paid more. After all you ARE the GMRS mouthpiece. Your vast knowledge and experience with GMRS should be shared and all will benefit from it. Could always direct him to your AI Chat bot and have it answer for you. I mean that's what it's for right?
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No, but I did wire his tower building, mow the grass there every other week since 2019, painted the outside of the building, cut brush. Dragged thousands of feet of hardline to the site ranging from new 1/2 inch to several 200 plus foot lengths of 7/8 and 1 5/8 line. repair radios for him and a number of other things that I can't even remember right now. But I figure I should do that.
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Well, because I wasn't comfortable with bootlegging. Matt (the guy that owns the tower) had his license for several years. We were using GMRS both on a repeater and simplex for tower operations. He would be up the tower and we used radio's so we didn't have to holler up and down the tower. I didn't feel comfortable about it so we were gonna switch to Itinerant's. He told me to just get a license, but I didn't really want to spend the $70 at the time. So I get an email from Paypal that I had a deposit from him for $70. So I got my license. Then I got nuts. We put up the dual feed DB420 and connected it to the two 4 port transmit combiners and I put up the 675 and then found out about linking and put up the 600. Matt already had the 725 on the air, but it was running on a GR1225 repeater, so I put it on a 40 watt MTR2000. Then I put the 442.775 on the air on another MTR2000. So I have 3 UHF repeaters that went on the air in the course of a month. But if Matt hadn't sent me the money for the license, I may not have ever bothered. But I am glad he did at this point.
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Yes, that was deserved. But then again, I believe I did just that. Filterless.
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The answer is NO. We don't NEED it. We don't need a forum attached to it where clowns like the OP can come on and ask truly dumb questions, and yes folks there ARE indeed dumb questions. This thread right here proves that. Asking a bunch of people that are personally involved with something, on a forum were it's whole purpose is that something if it's needed. That would be a dumb question. We don't need people on such forums that are so full of themselves that they have created an AI chat where you can chat with their AI. Really? You actually did this? You self centered egotistical clown. I would rather wire my balls to a fence charger than have a conversation with you or your AI clone. Where does this shit come from? Can you actually fit your head through a doorway? The level of self promotion here is at a new level of wow. I half wonder if you, or someone with your mindset creates bogus accounts to post things like this to generate fodder and stir up hate and discontent for your own personal amusement. Which brings me to the stress of dealing with the outright stupidity part of dealing with the whole thing. People asking questions over and over that have been answered a hundred times already but are too lazy to search the forum to see if there is already an answer to their question. Trying to figure out the FCC and what they may or may not begin enforcement of the regulations. And what those broadly written, impossible to decipher codex's mean. And get to get hit every 6 months with some new video of some interpretation of said regulations, or the proposed threat of an enforcement action. Nope, we don't NEED that headache either. At least I don't. So, it comes down to this. We do this because we CHOOSE to. While GMRS, within it's written regulations, was really not meant to be a social gathering of people for idle discussions about a range of unrelated topics. That is exactly what it's being used for. We enjoy each others company, and engaging in those discussions. So we choose to engage. And it's not really a hobby per say. It's a conduit for direct conversation between people. We choose to have those conversations, to interact with those people at the other end of the radio for social reasons. And dealing with that number of people will bring out the need to deal with people that you might not want to deal with. But that's part of it too. But, remember this too. YouTube is monetized. For every click of a video, someone gets paid. That's a business, even if it's not a direct marketing of some material or intellectual item for direct sale, it's still a method of generating income.
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The Future of Linked Repeaters??? Must Watch!
WRKC935 replied to marcspaz's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
Don't know that I would agree with a single transmitter and voted receivers could or should be considered 'simulcast'. And with GMRS being limited to 50 watts of TX power, unless you had a really crappy transmit site that has a bunch of noise, additional receive sites wouldn't do much for coverage. Now I know of a couple ham repeaters that are running 300 or better watt's and are over 500 feet up. Those do benefit greatly from voted receivers. But when you are on ham running that power level, you aren't gonna be using a duplexer anyhow because your never going to get enough isolation and maintain that level of power through it. But if you were in say, New York City, or some other densely populated urban area, and had a high transmit antenna, I could see it helping a UHF 50 watt repeater some. Still gonna hear better than it talks though. The linked repeaters we have through the mygmrs system is what I would refer to as 'multicast'. And with GMRS of course, we are stuck to the 8 pairs we have, but I have seen multicast systems that covered multiple bands both commercially and with ham. It's more prevalent, or at least it was, with ham. Guys would link VHF / UHF and 6 meters, or 900 all together and offer access to all radios that way. I don't know if that's still a thing or not. I considered a V / U / 900 system at the tower on ham,,, even thought about it being P25. But there is so little traffic on ham any more, I don't know that I will bother. Your SAR system sounds like two Simulcast systems that are linked... that's different. But whatever works. -
Wasn't paying attention to the fact it was getting close. Had planned on getting a couple antenna's up. Too hot to climb the tower at this point. I might operate some tomorrow and Sunday, but with the heat that's forecast, I don't know I will be spending a lot of time on the air.