WRKC935

So then we get into the 'redneck rectification' part of it where the owner shows up at the GMRS users home. I was having this discussion about HOA board members and 'enforcement agents' that don't understand the law. Feel that THEY are the law. Or in some cases are a narcissist. You take a state like Florida that is fully in support of stand your ground and Castle Doctrine, and show up to a users house there. So you are one 'get the F out of here' from being trespassed. If you refuse to leave, you are already breaking the law. Criminal trespass is when the police write you a notice. But as soon as the property owner tells you to leave and you refuse, it's trespassing. It's not at a criminal level, but it's still illegal. But you are pissed and they are talking on YOUR repeater. As mentioned above, FCC has jurisdiction, NO ONE ELSE, including police. It's no more trespassing on your repeater than a pilot flying over a road is speeding. So you are really pissed and refuse to leave. Then decide to make threats, or your REALLY dumb and have made threats over the air or some other method of communication that is loggable, record-able and presentable in a court of law. So we now have threats, are on their property and are refusing to leave. GMRS operator is also a gun owner. But your pissed, he's used YOUR repeater. So you approach him in a way that HE believes is threatening... and it all goes to hell quick. You are going to the hospital or worse. You figure you will sue, if you survive. Tapes are played of you threatening him. Other's that were on the repeater are called to the stand to say they heard the threats. You weren't at a neutral location, you were at HIS property / home/ whatever. Key word is HIS. And you after all that approached in a threatening manner. So how mad are you about him being on your 'private repeater' again? HOA people sometimes do similar dumb stuff. It's not gone down this road that I am aware of, but it certainly can and probably will. Point is don't be that guy. Oh yeah, and don't think this means you need to go carrying a gun into this situation. Then you have committed multiple crimes while armed. Most states make all those mid-level crimes felonies. So even if you get your head straight and don't end up shot. You're going to prison, for some time. You convinced it's that important they aren't on your repeater?

Personally, if you are a GMRS user and tie up a repeater pair with a wide area coverage repeater, effectively soiling the channel for all other users to use. And then close the repeater to other's or require fee's to access it, well. I REFUSE to do that. I will take my equipment off the air first. And of course if I am pulling it down because someone decided to misbehave and pissed me off to that point. I will tell ANYONE who ask why and WHO is responsible for the dead air. Wide area, meaning some number of COUNTIES... Not a garage repeater with a 20 foot antenna. Now, my read of the regulations. And this comes from a number of different pieces of 47 and 95. Type accepted radios have ALL repeater channels programmed into them. They do NOT require special programming by a radio shop to access any allocated frequency or PL/DPL. Part 90 DOES require professional programming. And those professionals CAN get into problems with the FCC if they start sticking stuff in a radio that is NOT suppose to be there. That can be other LMR frequencies, Public Safety frequencies or anything else that the user has no right to. The FCC allows under part 95 for radios to go out to the consumer with all 15 repeater channels in place and the ability to program them at will. So point 1 There is NOT a requirement in the rules, as stated here that makes a GMRS license holder get special permission to access any repeater or use any repeater pair with any PL/DPL they see fit to. The only regulation is you can't use SIMPLEX on the repeater input frequencies. Point 2 Per the regulations, all GMRS license holders have equal access to all allocated frequencies within the scope of their license. Back in the day you got 2 frequencies. One was the 'traveler channel' at 462.675 the other repeater pair was assigned to minimize interference. So nothing that says you can't talk on the outputs. Point 3 What the FCC does state is that you can NOT generate HARMFUL interference on any frequency in the allocation. Use of a repeater is not harmful interference. Keying up and playing music, making noises, transmitting dead carriers, or a list of other things is 'harmful interference' And the method that the transmissions are happening, like someone keying over someone else of course is harmful with out question. Keying on on a GMRS repeater and giving you call sign and speaking o someone else if you are responded to is NOT harmful interference. The FCC isn't going to see it that way, and you should know this via reading the regulations and attempting to follow them. It you are that obtuse that you don't know what's inferred by the government, it's not the goverment's problem or concern how you think it reads, it says what it says. And then they are going to make a judgement call on what is and is NOT interference, harmful or otherwise. Point 4 So My opinion, Marc's right. At least at a federal regulation level, there is NOTHING that says you can't When you get into is it illegal trespassing? A cop can no more write a speeding ticket to a commercial jet pilot when they fly over their jurisdiction, that they can enforce use of the airways. That all falls on the FCC and their discretion. Now, an uninformed cop might try to do something with it until the guilty party tells them they are out of their jurisdiction and have no ability to enforce federal regulation. That may or may not work in the moment, but once people with actual knowledge of this stuff become involved like judges and prosecutors, the only thing that happens is the overzealous cop gets his jurisdiction sued for false arrest, imprisonment and a bunch of other crap. Some cities have laws that forbid the possession of equipment that is programmed specifically for their owned radio system. But then it's the police being interfered with and NOT GMRS. And the police can be brought into court over their misuse of frequencies. I know of a dept that was using 151.625 which is a 2 watt itinerant frequency as a dispatch frequency at 100 watts. Their all knowing radio guy did it, and never really bothered to explain what he had done. They were complaining about others being on their frequency, which wasn't 'theirs'. When we figured out what had been done, there was a call placed to the high ups at the dept about it and it got quickly dealt with. But they DID get a letter from the FCC soon after since someone had turned them in. But here again. GMRS user on GMRS frequencies is NOT any of these situations. If they have the license, they are good. If they are on FRS radios with no license, again. They are good. Nothing enforceable. The BS that Kentucky has on the books about radios in vehicles is so poorly written that a cordless phone could be in violation of their laws if they have a single low band licensed frequency anywhere in the state. Their law doesn't say programmed, it says capable of being used on. Yes, a real radio person could modify a cordless phone to hear and talk on low band. If it ever gets fought to a federal level, the state would loose. And if you want to REALLY make a cop mad, take an old X band radar detector and modify it to TX and RX FM audio. Of course no one uses X band any more, but when they did, talking (ham call IDing) and it coming out their radar unit WILL get you pulled over,,, but hams DO have an allocation on that frequency as a secondary user and if you are operating as a ham operator, it's ultimately legal. And made a pretty good jammer to boot.

Might be eBay overdoing their restriction of listing items then. Not like they are known for going overboard on listing restrictions. At one point you could buy almost any firearm part available on eBay that didn't have a serial number. Now you can't find a listing for a childs nerf gun if the word gun is in the listing. Moto may have said no more Hytera, and while they were at it claimed the software in any Motorola was non-transferable and they couldn't be sold either. I haven't looked at what you are talking about, but I don't really have a frame of reference to know what it was to compare it to. It's hard to say what eBay is doing. And the Motorola thing may not have anything to do with the lack of Hytera listings on eBay. But it makes the most sense.

Probably more to do with Motorola suing Hytera and winning. Part of that was no one could sell or resell certain Hytera radios that violated IP laws where Hytera took source code from Motorola and used it in their radios. The findings were that neither Hytera nor their dealers could repair, modify, program or service in any way those radios. Moto may have decided to do a smack down on eBay for some reason. Someone mentioned that the number of commercial radio's in general dropped off. Was that Motorola stuff, Hytera and Baofeng (same company or at least factory) or just in general? I can't believe that the FCC after putting out a notice that they what to streamline things and back away from silly regulations that they would have given eBay a directive. But I don't know that for certain.

I believe the biggest thing that slowed it down was the FCC thing with linking. GMRS was a social gathering spot that worked across not just state lines but different regions of the country. The FCC deciding to clamp down on linking I believe killed a LOT of interest. The repeaters (linked ones anyway) fell silent after they were unlinked, and some were just turned completely off, like mine was. Now I had two repeaters on the air. One was meant for local conversation and the linked was was wide area. That was by design and the local repeater stayed on the air. A few moved over to it, but other users just disappeared. And I bet that was common everywhere. Far as the gatekeeping. There does seem to be a contingent of people that got it in their head that GMRS was suppose to strictly be for immediate family and low level business communications and that social conversations weren't it's purpose, and argued that point until the rules specifically stating that is was for personal conversations between users. That sort of pulled the wind out of their sails about it's purpose. But if you are familiar with who those people are, there have been similar efforts made by them that weren't directly related to usage. But were negative about using the service as a social gathering place. Far as the whole 'sad hams' thing. Personal opinion was that sad hams that were spending their time wringing their hands about ham radio not seeing ANY growth or at least a significant drop off while GMRS was going like gang busters with new licenses every day. I can see them reciting from How the Grinch stole Christmas, but referring to how GMRS was stealing prospective hams because they had a required test that GMRS doesn't and it needed to be stopped. In fact the FCC guy from the ARRL luncheon video that made the comments about it being 'illegal' was a ham and had been for a LONG TIME (30 years) at the point he made the comments. There is quite a number of hams that are scared to death that the FCC is going to come in and take all the ham bands from them and auction them off for cell usage or something similar. Do I believe that sad hams called the FCC over and over complaining about GMRS repeater linking to force a reaction, YES I DO. The FCC got bored with it and instead of doing the hard thing and fixing the regulations so they couldn't be interpreted 3 different ways, which required a bunch of procedural stuff, they took the 'easy path' and decided to interpret them in as far fetched a way as they could and ban the act outright. WITHOUT ACTUALLY CHANGING THE REGULATIONS. Of course, that shut the hams up. Their phones quit ringing and that made them happy. Of course we got screwed in the process. But that's the breaks. Nevermind that at that time, there were more GMRS licensed operators than ham operators.... but you know, it was easier. I will openly admit that I have been a ham for 30 years. But I don't align myself with many of them and their bullshit. I do see that we need MORE technically savy people involved with GMRS since a larger number of the folks that were getting into it has ZERO technical knowledge, and were getting what little info they had from one or two people on YouTube that really aren't all that technically minded either. But I have also seen in here that the non-technically minded seem to want to argue with folks that have 15 or more years experience with two-way radio as a profession and make statements that clearly indicate they have no idea what they are commenting on. This is now to the point that I don't even want to bother with correcting the statements of stupidity because the commenter will argue the point, while being completely wrong. Yeah, I got started in two-way radio as a career path 15 years ago this past May. So I might just know a little something about UHF radio. So when it's getting to the point of infighting and the sort of crap that is going on now. Why would someone want to be bothered with GMRS or Ham for that matter?

QUOTED FOR TRUTH. And a big reason I have pulled back even trying to properly and correctly answer this sort of question. I have ONLY been a commercial radio tech for 15 years. There are a couple others on here that have more time in this business than I have. At least one of them posted in here on this very topic. First off referring to an audio connection of a radio as Ethernet, or resembling Ethernet in any fashion.... WHAT??? Maybe it's like a telephone too since the RJ family of connectors is also used. Hell we probably don't even need DSL modems to get Internet. Just plug that Ethernet cord right into the phone jack and it should work just fine. While the racing radio setup does this, it's designed to do it and isn't a simple dual RJ45 adapter. Can it work, possibly. And possibly it will not. It could do any number of things including damage the radio depending on the switching of the PTT, power and other things in that mike connector. It COULD be fine, or it could not be fine. Without seeing the schematics and understanding the circuit for both the mike and the radio, I can't 100% say. I will say that you are taking a chance of letting the magic smoke out of the radio though. So be aware of that. This site has gotten to the point that it chides people that are knowledgeable and their factual and correct statements are frowned upon and made fun of by people that frankly don't know shit and have an over abundance of proving that with their statements. Or they just simply refer to the ones that are knowledgeable as 'some people'. So, do as you like. It might burn up your radio, or it might not. It might sound like crap on the air or it might not. I can promise you this. I don't really care. Others on here have attempted to explain with technical detail why what I just said is correct. Those points were argued by others that I would question if they posses the technical knowledge to make such statements and argue such details.

From a technical and hardware standpoint. Where are the radio's going to come from? While some hams bought up the low band commercial gear for ham use, most of that has flushed through and is gone. Repeaters..... There haven't been low band repeaters built since the days of the MICOR, at least by Motorola. They had tube finals that are now obtainium. Yes, I know 3 guys are gonna pop in here and talk about the 4 they have on the shelf. So that's 12 tubes. Where are the rest of them going to come from? So then it's NEW radios. From a new source. No one on the commercial front is producing radios any more, and unless they ca see selling millions of them, none of the big commercial guys are gonna go back to that. And even if they did, you're talking about radios that will be over a grand to purchase. So then you have the chi-com stuff that will need to be filling the void. They don't currently support the platform. The dual band and single band chi-com radios that are in the pipeline are the same radio they produce as the UV-5R and other common chi-com radios. They are HIGH BAND VHF and UHF. And that appeals to a number of people. Even they aren't producing VHF -LOW transceivers. So new product for how many people? Remember that you can decorate a Christmas tree with Baofengs for less than the purchase of the tree, on sale. Everyone bought a number of them and they toss the guts in a new case, toss some better firmware at it and give it a new model number and they flock. If it's JUST a GMRS radio, and I am betting that the FCC will be watching, it's not gonna be 40 bucks for a portable and 125 for a mobile. And have you ever SEEN a duplexer for low band VHF? Let alone priced one. They are HUGE, and they carry a HUGE price tag. I don't know that the GMRS community is going to take to repeaters costing 10 grand or more with a duplexer and antenna, and 500 dollar mobiles. Oh, and Low Band antenna's.... that's not going on a 1 1/4 inch mast pipe on the end of your house either. And repeater / real base station antenna's are 40 plus feet of vertical real estate. But the bare minimum 1/4 wave is still 8 or so feet. And that's gonna be unity gain. Honestly, I see this as an idea by someone for a radio service that doesn't really know radio.

As I have said several times on here. GMRS is radio facebook, radio chatroom. It's how many are using it. It's a social gathering spot for people that just want to chat. The reason GMRS and not HAM is HAM requires testing and more effort. With GMRS, you pay your money and you get a license. And the codgers involved with ham radio aren't always real welcoming to the younger generation either.

And for the sake of the discussion, there is NOTHING stopping you from putting a repeater up, on one of the frequencies they are using and talking on it. And this is for the same reason I gave before on them backing themselves into a corner. They have a linked repeater system and have overlapping coverage of a number of the pairs if not all the pairs. But again, who are they going to call? The FCC? I seriously doubt it. Because again, backed into a corner with no recourse. What are they gonna tell the FCC? They going to admit they have all the pairs tied up with linking? That they are running a for profit business selling air time on GMRS? I personally dealt with this in Ohio. At first I was willing to try to work with the guy. But he started telling me HE had the pairs and I could only run a short antenna and low power. His repeaters (turned out to be paper repeaters) were well established. When I started looking into his repeaters, and found his business license and it stated he was for profit selling air time on GMRS, I picked the two pairs he was on and parked repeaters on both pairs. He wasn't happy. I invited him to call the FCC and told him I had all of it documented including his state business license where he was selling air time for profit. It never went any further.

Gee that sounds like a ham radio conversation. Seriously, at a bare minimum the way to report it is saying that the repeaters are being keyed with out the person accessing them being within the coverage footprint of the repeater. This is causing harmful interference on that frequency / frequencies in a specific location or area. That is spelled out in the blurb the FCC put on the their web site about why they don't want people linking repeaters. No way to monitor the frequency in use before accessing it and causing interference. Mind you I am all for linking GMRS repeaters, and have even come up with ways to mitigate this and other issues that were cited as being the problems with linking. But the FCC says the rules are what they are, so until they change the rules, I don't link repeaters. Now I will say this, that group has backed themselves into a corner. If someone is interfering with their linked repeater system, they have ZERO recourse to deal with it. It's like having a house full of drugs and calling the cops because someone stole their bag of weed. The FCC is the only governing body with GMRS. If they call the FCC, then they open themselves up to being looked at for what THEY are doing. So that's not really an option for them. Local police and government in general have no ability to enforce FCC regulations. So, the option they are left with is the redneck thought process of "I'm gonna *insert dumb redneck statement of violence here* and that will get it done. Of course the problem with that is the local police DO have the ability to deal with that. And although I'm not sure what Georgia's laws are but if they are like Florida then doing that sort of thing might involve a free trip to a hospital or even the grave yard. While people may claim that they will just go drag them into their yard and throw them a beating, it's rarely done for that reason. And can escalate quickly if they do. And the police will still not give a rip about the GMRS interference, the assault, battery, menacing and all that WILL get a response.

I see this question so often that this almost needs to be a direct post about it so it can be referenced. I came up from CB radio many years ago where guys would think that if they had a 1:1 match that they had somehow accomplished something almost magical and akin to hitting the lottery. Or they would brag about how they had a 1 to 1 match and how great their radio system worked and nothing could come close to it's performance. The truth is far less dramatic than that. And when you really start to understand signal levels, delta of signal levels, meaning how much difference in signal level A from signal level B actually is and what the perceived and actual effects of that level difference is, you quickly find out that it ain't much. Now you meter actually SHOWS the percentage of signal forward VS reflected which is SWR. SWR is the RATIO of forward vs reflected power. Of course reflected power is power that is NOT being radiated by the antenna. Some same it backs up to the radio and is burnt off as heat, others will tell you it reflects from the radio back to the antenna and is then radiated (which is BS and due to phase changes would really DECREASE your signal) and there are a few other stories out there of what becomes of the reflected power.. but the crux of it is, it's not going out the antenna as signal. So then we get into the discussion of decibel or dB. And here's where the rubber really hits the road. Because while the radio is rated in WATTS for transmit, the receiver is rated in dBm for receive. And the whole idea of GMRS radio is talking to others. The other guys receiver is what you are trying to effect a response from. And NO amount of power matters if there is no one listening on the other end. That is referred to HAM radio at this point... no one listening. So a cool little tidbit of radio is that wattage can also be expressed as dBm. Now, some might know something of decibels from school and that it's a logarithmic number that is a delta or difference from some other value. That's where the little 'm' comes in on dBm. The 'm' in this case is 1 milliwatt and it equals 0 dBm. so the 'm' sets the reference point of the delta. Positive numbers are values above 1 milliwatt and negative numbers are values BELOW 1 milliwatt. So then we can start looking at something recogniziable. 0dBm = 1 milliwatt 0.001 watt 30dBm = 1 watt 33dBm = 2 watts 36dBm = 4 watts 39dBm = 8 watts 42dBm = 16 watts 50dBm=100 watts 60dBm = 1000 watts Couple things to see here. A change of 3dB is double / half the original power. 10dB adds or removes a zero from the value and 30dB of change is 1000 times or 3 zeros So for every 10 dB of change, you add or subtract a zero or move the decimal place up or down. Now we have that established. We can get into receivers and receiver sensitivity. Most GMRS radios are going to hear down to -115 to -120dBm range. Now that's pretty wide, but that range covers from the crappiest radio to the best UHF receivers you will find. Then we get to the 12dB Sinad which is a 12dB signal to noise ratio receiver test. This is the intelligible signal (receive audio) being 12dB above the background noise in the sound coming out the speaker. Still has some noise but is fully understandable. This falls around -108 to -105. Then there is full quieting at -100 to -90. That is a dead silent signal where only the intelligence (spoken word) is heard in the receiver. These are in 10dB hops. Remember the 10 dB rule right. It's a signal level change factor of 10, one decimal place. Obviously smaller changes can be measured with test equipment. But your NOT going to HEAR a difference in the speaker with less change than the 10 dB hop. So NOW we get to SWR. And we start looking at signal change based on SWR or 1.5 , 1.75, 2, and 3. Anything over 3 is bad. And it's not really effecting the signal levels mean as much as it's creating a problem for the radio that's transmitting. All numbers are based on 100 watts transmit power. 1.50 : 1 SWR is 4 watts reflect and 96 watts radiated or a 0.1773dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 1.75 : 1 SWR is 6.7 watts reflect and 93 watts radiated or a 0.3152dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 2.00 : 1 SWR is 11 watts reflect and 89 watts radiated or a 0.5061dB difference from a 1 : 1 match 3.00 : 1 SWR is 25 watts reflect and 75 watts radiated or a 1.25dB difference from a 1 : 1 match SO... it takes a signal change of 10dB to HEAR it, and these changes are less than 1dB change until you get out in dangerous territory. So from a perfect match to a 2 : 1 match makes basically NO difference in the signal the other guy hears. These are the numbers. All this is on the web, and yes I use a calculator for it because math SUCKS. But it doesn't lie. But this is how I can sit down and figure out if you give me distance, antenna gain at both ends, cable loss at both ends and receive signal strength, I can tell you how much power you are running. There are some other things not mentioned like path loss that are taken into account (that's the distance portion) but it's all numbers once you have a good understanding of it.

The services that would be limited by FCC rule are the services that have height limits on antenna's. CB would be a good example. A CB antenna per the rules is limited to 50 feet AGL. So you couldn't use CB radios in an aircraft. Commercial radio under Part 90 would be another since at least repeater antenna's are both power and height limited per the issued license. GMRS really has no AGL restriction. The only thing in the rules regarding height is that if a mounting structure (tower) is over 200 feet that it be registered as an obstruction and properly lit within the guidelines of the FAA regulations for it's height. Ham radio is the same way. They aren't really height limited, they just need to follow the 'hazard to navigation' regulations that the FAA has for towers exceeding 200 feet in most area's and whatever regulation is imposed in area's around airports where there are additional restrictions.

An 'In the weeds" explanation of a trunked radio system, at least the MSI P25 version. The way this all works, at least at 700/800 Mhz, is every frequency is assigned by the FCC a channel number. These channel numbers are set in steps of a specific channel spacing and start frequency. With VHF it's not that way, VHF requires the channels to be programmed into the radio with TX and RX frequencies and the channel number is assigned by that programming. So as mentioned there is a 'control channel' that is effectively a data channel. All radios use this to connect to the system. When a radio is turned on it finds the control channel of the closest site and then announces it's presence. The system will acknowledge that radio and do one of three things. It will OK the radio to be on the system, it will deny access or it will if told to by the system admin send a stun / kill command to that radio and disable the radio. If the radio is allowed on the system, that system will process the radios request for access to a specific talkgroup. The radio talkgroup is remembered by the system and the site it's connected to. When that talk group becomse active the control channel will tell the radio to go to the specific assigned channel for the traffic and begin listening. It will pick the channel in b ased on a couple things. First is the standard round robin assignment. The next available channel on the site is used. But certain channels can be set to NOT use that talk group, so it can skip certain channels. It can also use lowest channel TX time to equalize the TX loading on each channel based on total time of transmit for each channel at a site. Now, since you didn't mention that you had to reprogram your scanner, your not hearing different conversations on a specific channel that was only for police previously, or any of the other stuff. I am gonna say that you are probably NOT listening to a trunked radio system. Back to the programming and channel assignment. When you setup your scanner, if it's 700/800, you will only need to put in the control channels and the stepping information. The scanner will know what frequencies are assigned to what channel numbers with that information. If they used VHF or UHF frequencies, you may / will need to program all used frequencies manually. Refer to Radio Reference for programming information on your specific system for more information

You are STILL not going to be able to have them on the same frequency if they are linked. In order to do that, they need to be run by simulcast controllers. They need a GPS referenced timing standard and frequency standard. There is a lot more to it than just linking them together. And I promise you adding height to your tower will be cheaper. Not to mention that they will need a stable connection between them. THe Internet ain't gonna do it, you will need s Microwave shot between them so there isn't the changes in latency (link delay) that is present in Internet linking.

OH,, PA's are FUN. Driving past the football team and yelling out " RUN FOREST RUN" in a really goofy way. Rolling up on a deer in the road and barking at it. They fall on their ass while pooping all over the place. "Driver, put down the phone and drive your vehicle" in some sort of official sounding voice can get the phone tossed in the back seat, hands at 10 and 2 and the guy or gal looking around for the cop car. I skipped the CB PA setup and went right to the 100 watt siren for a cop car / fire truck. The air horn function also works very well to get peoples attention. Siren function was disabled, but the radio pass through was also handy for sort of what the OP was talking about. Far as his situation. The 4 watt amplifier in a CB radio driving a single speaker isn't going to put out much audio over a wide area. Find a few tripods, get some horn speakers attached to those tripods and find a 70 volt professional audio amp to drive them. Speaker horns should be 70 volt as well. Then plug a mike into it and run some wires. That would be your best bet. A single point PA speaker to cover a wide area doesn't work for two reasons. First is that the level of sound in close would be too high if you wanted it to carry very far. Second is tied to the first, you don't have control over the surrounding noise, so it would need to be really loud to overcome the baseline noise. Spread out speakers that are not crazy loud will get you heard without scaring the deaf and dead.