WRKC935

Go pop some popcorn and kick back.... This WILL be a long read. So you have you license. Now you want to put up a repeater. Great,,,, maybe,, usually. But have you thought it through or do you just really want to hear your call sign coming across the airways if CW? This is going to explain how to do it right to NOT cause interference with other repeater owners and be mindful of the limited resource (8 repeater pairs) we have been designated by the FCC. This will cover planning, equipment, antenna's and everything in between. Please ask questions about the topics as they are posted, and if you see something missing you would like covered, message me and I will do my level best to cover that topic. I have been a commercial two-way radio tech for 13 years a ham for almost 30 and have been working on electronics and radios for 40 years. First thing is to listen. Listen to the repeater pair OUTPUTS. These are the 462 frequencies in the 462/467 pairs. They are what the repeaters will be transmitting on. The reason you want to listen is you want the quietest one for your area. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the one with the least traffic. So if you have several repeaters around you that are not all that busy, but the signal from them is always very strong and clear and maybe a busier frequency talks alot, but is far off in the distance 4 towns over, any your plans are for a small footprint, with a 30 or 40 foot tower, that may well be the better frequency to choose. You need to consider a couple things here. Number one is the total number of pairs available. We only have 8 for EVERYWHERE. Why is that important? Because the guys with the monsters, like me how just talked to a guy 40 miles away from his repeater, can cover huge area's with their repeaters. And some of them see the value in what they have and allow others to use it openly. That's my stance on it. I say the same thing to everyone that asks. Make sure to ID your station and have fun. But if you are sitting on an otherwise open frequency, he may not use it for a wide area coverage machine. I am thinking on writing a thread on frequency management at a state level for GMRS, but that comes later. So back to the footprint you are looking to achieve, and you need to be reasonable here. Don't decide to build a monster, tie up a pair and make the repeater closed to all but you and your wife and kids. That's not proper use of the airways. And in my opinion is a bit of a dick move. SO lets say we are going to use that pair that you can hear a repeater on but it's very weak signal and can't always be heard. You NEED to locate the owner of that repeater and verify where he is located. If he's a weak station but he's right up the road, then don't use that frequency. If he's 2 counties away, you are golden. You need to find out what PL or DPL he is using on his repeater and NOT use anything close to that. If he's running between 67 and 103 you want to be at a minimum at 141.3. This will minimize the potential of interference. You also need to verify that you are either very noisy into his repeater or you can't hit it at all from most of the footprint area you are wanting to cover. Now a quick side note. Repeater talkout (how far it talks) is controlled by two things.. first is antenna height. Height is FAR more important than power level. But power level does play a role. And you ONLY want to run enough power to provide signal levels in your desired coverage area to capture the receiver of a mobile or portable radio. Meaning, if you are wanting to cover X number of square miles and that can be done with an antenna at 40 feet of height and 10 watts, Don't set the repeater up to 50 watts. It's not necessary and again, it's not good frequency management. So you now have a pair picked out. What about a repeater? A repeater is required to ID unless YOU and those under YOUR license are the only ones using the repeater. The minute that other license holders are allowed to use the repeater, it needs to ID itself. Now this can be done with a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino or some specific module for CW ID. You have options. You can use two mobile radios as a repeater with a cable between them and an ID board. You are not required to have voice announcements, roger beeps or any of that. So it can be a simple set of radios. (Motorola CDM series work great and the 16 pin interface makes connecting them very easy). Or you can buy a repeater that is a purpose built device. There are a number of options. More to come.... stay tuned.

Have you figured out who I am? Geeze,,,, I just looked up your ham call. That's not the one you had when we were all hanging out on the 24 years ago

So I did talk to a guy in Marion Ohio today on the 675 repeater. He was mobile, with a 15 watt radio. So the coverage from the site to the Northwest and North seems pretty good.

And this folks is what happens when someone asks something that they should KNOW the answer to..... like "if I transmit DMR into an analog repeater, will another DMR user hear me" which should be obviously NO. And at that point, one would have to assume the other person or people in the thread will assume you know NOTHING of radio and the underlying technology OR you do know and are asking really silly questions to irritate the folks in the thread. Then we need to retort by talking about all the effort put forward to further GMRS and it's users. The TWO HUNDRED dollar a month electric bill, hosting TWO repeaters on the site,,, or the taxes, building upkeep, repeater upkeep, overall mundane site maintenance like mowing the grass. Na.... I don't do ANYTHING to contribute. Not one damn thing. And while the two GMRS repeaters are NOT the only radio equipment on the site,,,, the fact its' done for FREE. Well don't see any effort there. Whats wrong with subscription fee's??? You're gonna ask ME that. The guy that has two repeaters that cover 7 counties in Ohio that are free to use by ALL what's wrong with fee's. Simple, if you can't afford to have a repeater on the air,, take up a limited number of repeater pairs, and think you should be somehow entitled to MONEY for your effort... well screw you. That's whats WRONG with FEES. Go spend 48K on a tower site. 1800 a year on taxes. 15K to rehab the site. Then put a GMRS repeater on the air FOR FREE and support all this out of pocket and then question me about fee's... I have tried to be nice... I am done with that. You don't like me... fine... You don't like what I have to say... don't read my posts. You want to get on my thread, and ask stupid questions that my WIFE actually laughed at because SHE knew you can't TX DMR into an analog repeater and have it come out the other side as DMR. NO,,, I am gonna call you out on it. I brought up post counts because if you were some noob with 5 or 10 posts, the question is relevant and you would be deserving of a real explanation. Not the case here. Oh, BTW,,, she is an accountant. I am the professional radio guy. She's just been around it enough to know better. Only chimed in... but are done with ME and the thread. The what the hell are you still posting for? You said you will stay out of my lane and ask that I stay out of yours. So I said NOTHING and stayed in my lane. PAY ATTENTION,,,, YOUR TURN SIGNAL is STILL on from the lane change there bud. Here you are.... back in my lane. So at this point... this whole thing has been hijacked. It needs closed or deleted.

Enough. You have 272 posts on here... do you ever read what others have said? You certainly can't be that obtuse. The guy has a for profit business hosting GMRS repeaters that you have to pay a fee to access. He has a list of at LEAST 20 repeaters on this site through out central and southern Ohio. Some of them are at tower sites that I can say for a fact he has ZERO access to. And I have been in them and NO GMRS equipment exists at these sites. And when I say business, I mean established business with a State of Ohio issued business license, tax ID number and these documents indicate it's a for profit business. Which if you had read the rules pertaining to GMRS and fee's you would KNOW that's illegal. Now, how profitable his business is. How many actual subscribers he has. The real number of repeaters he has on the air. I have zero clue on any of it, and don't care. But specifically to the "whats' wrong with that?" question.... it's against the FCC rules. Using DMR or ANY digital modulation (MDC and other positoning data transmissions are NOT digital modulation) is against the regulations for GMRS. And since I know someone will disagree, you are allowed short data bursts for ID and GPS location, but they are analog modulation of digital data, not a digital modulation as defined by the emission designation . And I am thinking that we need to get this thread back to the original topic of the tower build out.

I think I was pretty clear here. A DMR radio will not be able to TX into an analog repeater (required by FCC rules pertaining to GMRS). The repeater would need to be a DMR repeater. I am curious if you are trying to shine me on... or if you really don't understand radio systems any better than you are indicating? If you don't know.. that's OK. Having a GMRS license doesn't require any technical knowledge of radio, like ham radio does. But I am not sure I can explain this enough if you don't understand the difference and why it wouldn't work.

NO that is NOT what I am saying. The only way that works is if there is a DMR repeater programmed for that frequency and color code you are on. If the repeater is analog ONLY as the FCC rules require then they would NOT hear you transmitting on DMR. Whats' more that is illegal to do, so I wouldn't advise it.

That's interesting that they don't seem to care. I ain't gonna lie. If I could run DMR on GMRS, I certainly would. Well actually I would prefer to run P25 on GMRS and AES encryption. But the rules say no... so No.

I haven't made any attempt to decode it with a scanner or service monitor and get the CC or Group Call ID numbers to see what it is for sure. I would hope that it was clear. But figuring that it's DMR on GMRS which as you pointed out is illegal, going the extra mile and encrypting it wouldn't be a surprise. I can't remember if I am hearing it on 625 or 575 but I think it's 575. I may throw my Whistler scanner in the van and see what I come up with at some point. The other thing I would like to figure out is if it's a repeater or just a subscriber. I would guess it's a repeater because I hear it from Columbus all the way to Mt Vernon.

Nope,,, it's happening. I would venture a guess that the guy that is running the GMRS pay to play business is the one doing it, but I don't know that for certain.

To be honest here. Once the 35 dollar GMRS license actually goes into effect, I never read where you can't purchase a license in another persons name and gift that license to them. Obviously I wouldn't expect folks to be buying licenses for everyone they are acquainted with. But for those that show a real interest in it, and for those that have the means to do it. I don't see a reason NOT to if they are unable to for any reason short of being banned from having a GMRS license (due to felony convictions and the like). I don't see GMRS being ham radio. And I hope it never goes that way. And in truth, I wish that the ham's that got licensed for purposes OTHER than the true nature of ham radio like SAR and such would have gone the GMRS route instead.

I believe I need to say this after the Darth Vader post before. Here's my personal take and my situation. Most of you are NOT going to be able to park an antenna system 240 feet AGL and 700 feet HAAT and connect your repeater to it. I can. Most of you are NOT going to have a multi-port TX combiner that allows you to connect MULTIPLE repeaters on multiple frequencies to one antenna. I have that as well. Most of you are not going to have a stream of faulty equipment that you have the knowledge and equipment to repair and put on the air and instead need to purchase new or used hardware that honestly ain't cheap. Again, perks of being a radio guy. Some folks will say it's just too old replace it, so I do. I ask what they want done with the old stuff and remind them it's technically classified as hazardous waste (due to chemicals in capacitors and the lead based solder) and they request we dispose of it. All that being said. If you had the ability to park an antenna that high. Cover 7 counties with your GMRS repeater and have that level of coverage, you no doubt would but it's not in the reach of many. For me it's right down the road, so I do it. And the fact that's it's NOT on a 40 foot TV tower in the back yard and can only cover the two closest towns and no further, I feel it's my responsibility if I am gonna occupy the frequencies that I need to allow EVERYONE that is licensed and operates within the rules to use the repeaters I provide. So I do allow everyone. I closely follow the laws. I do have others around me running DMR on GMRS, Selling access as a for profit business (his business license attached to his GMRS site indicates its NOT a non-profit) I refuse to do either. If I want to sell air time,,, I will go get an FB6 or market frequency (would need it due to footprint) and sell air time on a commercial community repeater. I ain't into that though. Don't think that since I do this, you need to do the same. But if you DO decide to put your GMRS repeater system on full send and cover 7 counties with it, remember that you ARE creating interference for others that are not. And in doing so, their repeater on a 40 foot tower becomes useless to them as you overpower it when your repeater starts to transmit. That guy SHOULD have access to your system because you are denying him access to his stuff. Or at least interfering with it a lot. I have worked with and continue to work with the local guys. We have put together a band plan, I have setup duplexers and repeaters for those guys to interleave their channels with my efforts to minimize interference. And I will continue to do so.

Update to this build out. At this point. I will not be building out 625 or 575. I have encountered both analog and DMR repeaters??? on these frequencies in the coverage area that the system exists in. The coverage footprint would be identical to the repeaters I have on the air at 725 and 675 and this would not be fair or reasonable for those system operators to attempt to compete with my coverage footprint. If those frequencies clear at a later date and no other repeater exists on those frequencies, or I am approached by those system owners wishing to plug their repeater into my combiner and share my antenna system. I have zero interest in interfering with other open systems. And I will work to maintain coverage for other GMRS users as long as there is a perceived need. At this point I am going to redirect my efforts at setting up the dispatch console and the resources for it. And increasing the HF antenna performance from the site.

Another option that is NOT that tape is what they are doing now with fiber runs down a tower. You tape the line down with 2 inch tape then wrap it with 3/4 fiberglass packaging tape and then wrap that with more of the 2 inch tape. The fiber glass tape is as strong as the aluminum tape and is easier to work with. That 425 tape will cut the snot out of you if you are not careful with it.

OK,,, progress update. Have two repeaters on the air now. 725 and 675. the 675 has traveler PL in it. Need to get 675 on the console and both on the logging recorder. But that's not a big deal. When we added the second repeater and went to the split antenna's the talk out suffered and we ended up installing a Station Master antenna on the TX combiner to make up for the loss. This will most likely end up being a db420 before long though. I am still not happy with it as it don't talk out like it did with the 408 on the top of the tower. Combiner is tuned for 735, 675 625 and 575. If these two get busy I will add another repeater. But I doubt that is gonna happen. Number of users on 725 never really took off like I thought it might so we will see how things go. Site is now going to have public safety radio equipment in it and will meet all requirements for that level of communications equipment. Meaning battery / UPS with generator. So the repeaters WILL have 100% expected up time short of equipment failure. Repeaters are listed on here. As stated on the listings these are OPEN repeaters and if you hear us on feel free to say hello. For short comms, 725 is fine... If you are going to rag chew, please use 675 and leave holes for others to join in. Access IS FREE... donations of useful equipment and cash are always welcome but NOT required for access. We are looking at installing solar and wind generation gear and hope to have the repeaters with GREEN power.

For all of you that have rattled on about the 'cost' of putting up a GMRS repeater as an excuse.... We bought the TOWER SITE ours is on for 48K. So your few grand for an antenna and repeater don't hold water. Mind you they are not the ONLY radios on the tower. But crying about the cost of a repeater, antenna and line sort of falls on deaf ears for me. Spend 50K plus before you can even have somewhere to plug in the repeater and then we can talk. That being said. GMRS is NOT ham... it is a short form of private LMR. And you can have "closed" ham repeaters that are club only if you desire to do that. And you can require the payment of dues for entry into a club to get access to a ham repeater. The difference with GMRS and HAM is that with GMRS, you can do the same thing, BUT you can only take in enough money to support and maintain the GMRS system. It can't be for profit. And it can't go for club fee's or other nonrepeater costs. So my take is this.... it is YOUR repeater. You can choose to allow all comers, or you can choose to have it remain private and only used by you and your family. If you choose to accept donations... great. Electric costs money... tower site insurance costs money,, fixing stuff costs money... but while we would never refuse to take a donation,,, we will not ask for them either. Lets break down some REAL costs. Site 48K... rewire site 10K, monthly cost of ownership due to electrical and reaccuring stuff like taxes $200 - $400 TWO MTR uhf repeaters 800 each. 4 port combiner new cost, 8K per port. 600 feet of 7/8 hard line at 2 bucks a foot. Receive multicoupler for RX and window filter $3k new. Two DB-420 antennas (one TX one RX) 1.2K each new. I don't want to HEAR what it cost you. I don't much care... We are hosting TWO fully public GMRS repeaters which will be 3 total as soon as I get time to set down and repair the TK-850 Kenwood and program it. Then it will be 3 open repeaters. Tower is 240 feet tall. GMRS repeaters talk 3 counties away in most directions to a mobile with a reasonable antenna. When you spend that sort of jack and put forward that sort of effort, let me know and I will listen to how expensive it all is. Until then STOP hiding behind the cost of it. If you don't want to share, don't. There is ZERO requirement to do so. If you want to put up a repeater that is closed,, do it... but remember that if you are holding others back from having a repeater, because you happen to be able to cover 9 to 12 counties, don't. Will we be tying up 3 of the 8 repeater pairs,,, in a sense, yes. But they are open to ALL. And we have only irritated ONE person. He runs some sort of GMRS business. And the fact I am interleaved on his pairs, and stomp his coverage in the dirt with a single site where his crap is from here to there and back again and he STILL don't have the overall footprint we have. I honestly don't care if I am killing his pay to play GMRS business. And YES it's a business with an OHIO issued business license for GMRS. If you are reading this... you know WHO you are and who I am.... sorry but you don't get to claim all the freqs for your business and then be mad when someone comes in with a better system and allows folks on it for free.

Well, in this case you are. I WORK for the company that put in the last of the public safety DMR systems in Ohio. And then bought it back. And oddly enough, we installed the system that was 3 counties away, that was interfering with at least one of the channels and had that customer complaining that they were hearing the DMR noise from a repeater that was 3 counties away. Installed on a 4 story building, running a 40 watt XPR8300 repeater on VHF. The Frequency in question was 155.415. Motorola was NOT pleased at all about any of it. They had never interferred with each other when they were bout analog. Never even heard each other. But the DMR being heard by teh analog was an issue, and the bigger issue was the DMR subscribers were hearing the analog signal strongly enough (was a 5 site simulcast system) that they were not fully capturing the DMR signal and the BER was climbing to the point they were unable to decode the signal. It happened on 3 of the 4 public safety VHF frequencies. If it were UHF, it would most likely been different. We did some testing to see if it could be fixed. Tried setting the radios to color code free instead of channel free. No dice. We also tried to see how well DMR would talk out. Took a subscriber out to a distance that it was hearing mostly noise on NB FM. Switched it to DMR and had a BER that floated between 2 and 3%.

Yeah, I have ask several questions about this topic here and over on chat. No response. I gave up on it. But I am unwilling to rely on a R-Pi for any communications interfacing or control. I do know that the Asterisk software will run on a computer, or even a VM in a container. But the specific configuration for linking comes from the system administrator and requires addressing and some other configuration on both ends. I understand that supporting different configurations and platforms is a pain. But I can't see personally purchasing equipment and software configurations to grow someone else's system that I am allowing on my hardware that I am freely providing to the GMRS community to use. If I was one of the clowns that has a "club" that is actually a licensed business and taking money for access to the repeaters, then sure. But I am not charging. And my repeater will operate just the same with or without a connection to the 'network'. As far as your specific situation. There is nothing that stops you from using a ham style controller on a GMRS repeater. But if you have a RIM interface on your repeater, I believe it will ID your station for you anyway which is all that is required. If you choose to go further, you can search around for ham radio R-Pi or Arduino repeater controllers that will control the repeater. And the R-Pi ones will give you additional functionality if you desire that.

This statement is based on what exactly? I run two systems that are on DB420's for TX and RX. One has an 8 port combiner and the other has a 6 port combiner. Cable for TX and RX is 7/8. Cable length is 400 on one and over 500 on the other. Combiner loss is 4-6 db depending on the port and the base stations are set for 20 watts. The system consistently out talks it receive but has a 50 mile radius of operational use. Height is of WAY more importance than power out. If you sit down and run the numbers, 20 watts out of the repeater into a 6 db loss is 5 watts up the cable. 500 feet of 7/8 cable is .787 per 100 foot. That is an additional 4 db of loss and two connectors are an additional .5 each.... total cable loss is 5db. So 5 watts into 5 db of loss gives you 1.58 watts at the antenna connector. Antenna gain is 11.3 db. That makes the ERP 20 watts. And it talks over 50 miles in all directions. Of course the reason it don't hear as well is there is no tower top amplifier driving the receive cable and the loss ends up being too great for TX/RX equalization. The Tram antenna is 5 dbi gain. Not the best thing on the planet but it's better than a coat hanger. The tower is 50 feet so the cable run is under 100 foot. Yes, his duplexer is showing an issue, but the cables being backwards aint it depending on where he checked the Power out. If backwards, the output would have been no where close to 50 watts same as if it were mistuned on the TX side. RX tuning may be an issue, as well as a bad RX cable. Point is that the loss of 3 or even 6 db of power level has only a small effect on the overall range of a repeater, depending on the circumstance of the installation. Here's a better question... Where did he check the SWR and what meter did he use? Reason for this question is simple. Go back to my install. Take a Bird meter and check the forward and reflect at the combiner output. You use a 25 watt slug, forward is 5 watts, reflect is .5 watts... why is even doing this wrong, and what is the actual reflected power at the antenna?

Run two radios and two antenna's. You are not going to find an antenna that will properly do all three and have any gain. (only option is a mobile discone). The other issue you run into is there are no ham radios that are natively GMRS radios and dual band, unless you have stacks of money and buy a Motorola APX 7000 or 8000 which are dual band and will cover all three. A modified ham radio wouldn't be legal on GMRS anyway.

Yes, split repeater tones will give a level of privacy to repeaters. Another option is the RAC code. This was a thing back in the 90's that still exists occasionally in commercial radio. The RAC or Repeater Access Code, was a data burst that the repeater was programmed to hear to go into transmit. It was also a Motorola thing. I don't believe, but could be wrong, that only Motorola radios would generate a RAC. To hear it on the air, it sounded like an MDC1200 burst. Kenwood I believe used a DTMF version of this. I will say that running MDC1200 can be handy if you are having issues with folks squirreling on your repeater. If you run it and then comment about it not being on their signal, you can get them to enable it with and ID. If you have the correct setup, or a radio that will do it, you can send a STUN command to that ID and turn his radio off. While this will generate a LOT of hate and discontent, it's effective against morons that can't seem to understand what a private repeater is. Of course, it's a mostly Motorola thing and you can't as far as I know STUN a CCR. But I sure wish you could

Well, couple things probably going on. First is what cable were you using? I am guessing that it was RG-58 or some other inexpensive cable. I have seen this before with both poor cables and damaged cables / improperly installed connectors on cables where the shield was failing at the connection point. It would be interesting to see what the cable loss on the cable you were using was. Cables are a mixed bag. As are connectors. A good quality phase stabilized lab grade test cable that is 6 feet long will cost over 200 bucks. And the cable due to the connectors are rated for a certain number of uses as the connectors wear and begin to leak RF, and the captive center pins begin to loose their springiness and fail to conduct as well. Mind you this is stuff that is used in the microwave engineering arena's and not even considered at the two-way LMR level of work. But professional two-way guys even pay attention to their cables when dealing with 700/800 stuff. I personally have seen overused cables cause radios to fail tests and alignments that were addressed by simply replacing a worn out cable. If you were getting enough signal to hear it 1/8 of a mile away, you have a bad cable. There is no other logical explanation unless the radio you were using had an internal antenna, or the antenna design was such that the antenna connectors outer body was the live connection. Newer better quality radios use a SMA or BNC connector for the antenna. Some of the old stuff like Motorola SP50's and others the antenna had no center conductor and fed the RF to the threaded part of the antenna. This of course would turn the cable shield, dummy load body into an antenna. second was the quality of the dummy load. Again, there are a number of grades of test equipment. The old 'cantenna' dummy loads that were designed for ham HF use were a poor quality load and were designed for HF only use. A good lab grade load is going to have an N connector or other good quality connector on it. Be mounted with a flange mount and have a single non-inductive 50 ohm resistor in it. Others, not so much.

It really depends on how you look at it as to if it's truly a threat or not. Motorola figured out that DMR is a REALLY bad idea for public safety in the VHF and UHF bands. Issue being the way that the FCC granted frequencies in those bands during the days of wide band FM don't work with DMR. CO-channel users interfere with each other a lot when one is on DMR and the other is on analog. Second is the unwritten requirement of interoperability and THAT specifically being a matter of national security. Motorola does not, and will not make a radio that is DMR and P25. P25 is the standard for public safety. DMR is really in the US for public safety. So if it ends up there, and everyone else is using P25 then there is an incompatibility that can't easily be overcome. Sure there is patching and other means. But you are not going to take a DMR radio and turn the knob and talk to the P25 system or vice versa. This in some twisted interpretation of things be considered a threat to the national security, depending on the situation and circumstance. If the commies are invading down through some border town North Dakota, and the local PD is on DMR, they can't warn of the pending invasion,,,, I guess because the rest of everyone else is on P25,,, maybe... i guess. But Hytera is a Chinese company. Meaning they are run by that government. Are they friendly to us???????? Depends on who you ask and when you ask. But with any communications gear, are there internal things going on there or could there be that may breach data security? If you put into a IP networked device to "call home" and bury that in the code that no one will see. How closely is the IP network traffic being watched as it's exiting a repeater? If they get the conversations from some hammie or warehouse worker about a toilet being clogged, who cares. If they are getting personal information about people having their tags run by law enforcement, getting SSN's addresses and such, that could be a problem. IS it an issue? Probably not.... but one firmware update could change that.

Please understand I speak to this from a perspective of a ham that has had exposure to how to do ARES WRONG and 12 years of being a commercial radio tech with 90 percent of my work being in the public safety arena and being a CERT member. The 'problem' with ARES is it's turned into a solution looking for a specific problem that has been worked on since 9-11. 30 years ago when every little town and burg had a police force with their own radio system and those systems being all sorts of different technology, on different bands and being supported and maintained at vastly different levels, ARES and the idea of needing to provide EMCOMM to served agencies was a thing. Now we have these state wide communications systems that everyone is on. Have overlapping coverage from hundreds of sites throughout the state (I am in OHIO... largest trunked Motorola system in the world) the need for EMCOMM is really not there. Of course, depending on where you are your mileage may vary. The next thing is ARES is not and never has been considered a first responder. So they don't fall under the public safety umbrella. CERT actually does. This means that CERT can have private commercial repeaters and radio systems / and access to the large trunked radio systems for EMCOMM. I pushed long ago for CERT to take up use of the now largely abandoned VHF/UHF public safety radio systems that stopped being utilized after everyone went to 800Mhz. The biggest issue with HAM is it's not controlled. And while it does say in the rule book that emergency traffic on ham takes priority, have a situation and see how many idiots come out of the woodwork on the local repeaters that are still in operation. My advice, for what it's worth.... research CERT and have a discussion with the local EMA director about CERT. There is a training component to it, and you learn some valualbe skills. And you are more that just radio operators at that point. You are still available to do the things that ARES would be involved in, but you are also trained and recognized to do more than that.

I am getting ready to put a second repeater on the air on 675 with the traveler PL 141.3 on the air. Thoughts were to tie this into the midwest gmrs system. This brings up some questions. First is should i have it nailed up as a constant connection or have it switchable. My thoughts are leave it nailed up so that users that are not aware it's linked or how to operate the links will still see the benefit of the widened user base. And of course the traveler channel being linked give anyone requesting help a better chance of getting ahold of someone to at least make a call for them if needed. I have looked at the interface and it's straight forward. Looks like Allstar which I have. Assuming this also requires a R-Pi or some SBC, Has anyone run this on a full computer and if a full computer, has anyone experimented with running it on a VM in a container? My P25Link R-Pi is actually a VM (natively a R-pi with a Perl application) that works well. Hoping to continue that trend and virturalize the computer part of this link to save space. Does anyone see an issue with putting the traveler channel on the link and specifically the midwest link... I am in central Ohio if there is a better system to be linking to I am all ears. Comments and thoughts are welcome here. If this is a bad idea, let me know.