WRKC935

I prefer TenSR and Harris channel banks for simulcast personally. Ant MTR2000 repeaters. But that's what I know.

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.

Thank YOU.... that just brightened my whole day.

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?

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.

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.

Yes, that was deserved. But then again, I believe I did just that. Filterless.

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.

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.

The thing I don't understand is this is touted as a 'simulcast' voted system. Now I don't know this system, or how it was built. But SIMULCAST to me, especially if voted, is multiple transmitters on a single frequency, with the receivers all shipped back to a 'prime' site where the receive audio is voted and the voted audio is then shipped to ALL of the transmitters with the timing controlled. The transmitters are all frequency referenced and the audio is launched based on a 1 pulse per second timing that's also GPS time based. The PL if one exists on transmit is referenced and is timed for the leading edge so it's all going out at the correct time in concert with the other PL tones. Yes, that's a mouth full. But I know enough about how it works that I have designed, built, and rebuilt several systems that were analog simulcast. But here's the thing, it's a single frequency, not like the 'linked' systems where a multitude of different frequencies are in play and where the coverage is across States, not smaller geographic area's. In fact toy can't do the simulcast I am talking about at great distances. You can't get the delay right for all of it. You build simulcast to cover a city, or possibly a county. You CAN'T cover an entire state with it. So I don't know how to react to this. On one hand, I want to say 'here we go again' referring to the November ARRL / FCC luncheon and discussion that took place. Which turned out at that point to be nothing. On the other hand, was it some FCC field agent warning his buddy that heads are about to roll and he needs to shut down before there is an active investigation into this stuff. We already know that there are FCC agents on this board. They are probably NOT going to reveal themselves, but they are here regardless. I will tell you this. The FCC does go out prior to VIP visits when the Secret Service is involved and monitor to ensure the communications for those folks is clear and usable. Those guys can't afford a communications failure at any point. Will they be looking at GMRS during that time. It's certainly possible. They monitor a LOT of stuff. IF the FCC is building cases on repeater owners, those cases are probably already being looked at and investigated. And I am willing to bet that if enforcement happens, it will happen to everyone that is linked together at the same time, or at least in the same week (receiving a letter). What others have said about letters is correct. You are NOT going to get a 'warning' that you are being looked at. You will get a letter saying that you were observed doing X on some date or dates. It will give the location of where the signal was coming from that they observed. And it's going to give you some amount of time to reply. It may or may not include a finding of forfeiture (what fine you are going to pay, that you are going to loose your license / licenses or whatever they decide to do to you). And it might give you some federal court house that you can come in and argue your case before a federal judge. How all that gets handled pertaining to the fines, loosing your license and what not are going to be dealt with individually and will no doubt depend on a number of things. So is it time to pull the plug? I can't speak for anyone else. But I am tired of this popping up over and over again. If there are fines and such, they aren't going to be cheap. And for some, loosing licenses are going to be a issue far beyond just GMRS. For those of us that are commercial radio tech's or involved with commercial radio as a profession, that could be devastating due to loosing one's ability to make a living. And if you think that the federal government is going to care,,, you're wrong. So personally, I am gonna just shut it down. This time for good. It's not worth the headache at this point dealing with this crap popping up over and over again and trying to figure out how to approach it. I frankly have better things to occupy my time with.

Yeah, I am in agreement. I am guessing that they are using this to link repeaters and radios together. But that is already handled with the MYGMRS system. And, if you are knowledgeable enough, there are ways of connecting 'headphones' to that system as well. And a Microphone. For that matter, you COULD connect an IP phone to your node and use that as well due to every node being a full PBX. But I really am not going down that rabbit hole.

You didn't give much info other than your number of channels and that it's across multiple counties. First off, are you running these frequencies in a radio or a scanner? Second, are you wanting to hear what's going on it the county you are currently in or all the counties all the time? And if all this stuff is crammed into a transceiver, are you also using that radio to communicate on ham / GMRS? So the first thing I would do is verify that 'priority scan' was disabled. Priority scan will look at the channel on the dial, then the priority member, then the next member of the scan list. This repeats for EACH frequency/ channel in the scan list. This of course slows scanning WAY down. Assuming that we are talking about conventional radio channels and not trunked talk groups. Scanning between conventional and trunked talk groups the radio has to change modes, again slowing things down a lot. I am going to assume that this is all conventional since you are at least inferring that it's in a transceiver and not a scanner. My advice would be find a scanner that was conventional only, which are cheap to get, and put all that stuff in it. That enables you to create different scan zones that can be broken down by county / service (fire, PD, GMRS, etc) and then quickly selected or unselected from the front panel. But you also need to be aware that some states have laws on mobile scanners, pertaining to having one at all, or having one with public safety stuff in it while mobile. That's on you to figure out. But if it's legal, a scanner is going to be able to scan much faster than any radios you are going to come across. Even my old outdated radio shack scanners that are 20 years old scan faster than my APX7000 Motorola radio. So that's something to consider as well.

Spam from here? I am yet to see that with any of the repeaters I have listed here. But I would be curious to know how much the owner monitors his repeater if he's concerned with 'spam' from the GMRS web site. I am betting that this is another case of a repeater that got installed and forgotten by it's owner.

Well, I don't know that anyone here understands what this is or what a Audio Aggregator 25747 is. A bit of a description of what you have going on here and what you are trying to accomplish might help. Or you can keep us guessing.

Yeah, mine is listed as open but I get requests all the time too. So you had an argument with the owner of the repeater that you were going to have FREE access to. That seems like perfectly reasonable thing to do... Do you remember (probably not) Nancy Reagan's catch phrase? You might look into that and take her advice. Then, with you hat in your hand, apologize to the guy and see if you can get back into his good graces and get permission, hoping he's not a scorched earth type of guy like I am. Because personally, if you are dumb enough to argue with me prior to getting permission of at any point after that, it would be a cold day in hell before I let you on my gear. But that's how I roll. But if it's the guy on here I am thinking it is. He's actually every bit the A-hole I am and wouldn't pee in your face at this point if you beard was on fire. So you might be screwed.

That is some sort of ERROR beep. Could be low voltage feeding into unit, could be high SWR, could just be programmed wrong. I would check the manual, specifically the error codes and see if that sheds light on it.

To the OP, don't think this is specifically an attack on you. This is a more general statement because this question gets ask here and on numerous Ham Radio forums all the time. I don't understand how people get the idea that they are going to replace hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure (CELL and PSTN) communications systems with a 35 dollar license and a 40 dollar handheld radio. Is there some web site someplace telling people this is even possible? Has the lack of technical understanding of communications reached a point that this question can even be ask honestly? The only way that you are going to talk to someone in California consistently with a UHF radio is get in your car and drive there. Sit outside their house and have the conversation simplex (radio to radio). Other than that, your out of luck. As others have mentioned, Ham radio using HF (frequencies below 30 Mhz) makes it possible, but BOTH of you have to be licensed to do that. You are both going to need a reasonable sized antenna to do it, and it's not going to work 24/7 due to propagation of the radio signal. And frankly it's not going to be cheap. It's not going to be millions of dollars, but it's at least going to be thousands if not tens of thousands. Because the more you spend, the more consistently you will be able to get a signal across that divide. And if you are talking grid down SHTF situations, then you are looking at solar and wind power at BOTH ends because even generators require electricity to continure to operate. Now I realize that a generator MAKES power. But it really doesn't MAKE anything. It converts the energy in fuel to electrical energy. How do you get the fuel in a grid down? Normally you would just go to the gas station and get a few gallons of gas. In a grid down SHTF world, the gas stations don't have electricity, so you ain't getting fuel. And in those scenario's some fool with guns is standing there at the gas station demanding food, gold, ammo or something for that fuel if they can get it out of the tanks. Here's a solid truth for guys that are trying to figure out prepping and dealing with a SHTF situation watching YouTube videos. No one that actually knows how to deal with these situations are going to tell you their secrets. Because having stuff is one thing. Knowing how to get stuff, and live in a manner close to a normal existence is something else and part of that is NOT telling other how to do it. There will be a competition for getting materials, fuel, food and the like when this hits. We saw it during Katrina when they stripped the stores clean, down to taking the racks and display shelves. And all that stuff is just there... low hanging fruit. People will become violent to attain stuff, because they are too stupid to be prepared, too stupid to think about getting stuff any other way. And the one's that know how to harvest the stuff that's not sitting there to just be taken with violence are going to get the stuff they need to survive and exist after the shelves are picked clean. The fewer people that know how to do that, the more stuff will be available for them to get. And that's only logical.

Yes, but their technology is far better than most of the rest of us have to track signals.

Couple things to know about radios in general. First is power output. A radio that has V power output is going to perform the same as any other radio that has that same power output. This is assuming that both radios are transmitting a signal that is legal, where the harmonics are below the required level. Not gonna go into the weeds on that, but you can look it up. Then you get to features, menu items and the like. The multi thousand dollar radios typically have LESS features (higher end commercial radios) than a 40 dollar Baofeng or Btech. They are NOT designed or built for radio hobbyists, they are designed for public safety communications where the user just needs to talk and listen. Menu items all revolve around that and extra's are not there to overly complicate the radio. THe other modes like P25 have no bearing on GMRS because it's not legal to use P25, DMR or those other modes on GMRS. The service is limited to basic wideband FM analog communication. So we get to the last part, the receiver. And this is the part where the better radios will shine over the inexpensive ones. Things like adjacent channel rejection and front end filtering in the more expensive radios make them better. Mind you, if you are operating in a suburban or rural area that doesn't have a ton of RF noise and trash in the air, you may never see the difference. But we have taken a Baofeng and a Motorola HT1000 up 200 feet on the tower. The HT1000 worked as it should. The Baofeng would receive all manner of noise and garbage and was almost unusable. Taking both into a busy downtown area of a major city would show similar results.

I guess 'draw' isn't a good description, other than an inductor looks like an open (not ground) the instant power is applied. The bigger issue is if it takes a hit right at the antenna, you get hit by the lightning, and the inductive kick. So you get blasted twice. Mind you that it seems the ham mentality is if a single service loop is good, then rolling 15 feet of cable up is better. And if a pre-made cable is used, there is just no way it can be cut to length. So it gets coiled somewhere. I have seen more than once where someone bought a 100 foot pre-made cable to go 30 feet and teh other 70 feet is in a coil someplace. Sometimes its at the base of the tower, sometimes at the entry to the building, and ever behind the operator desk. As a commercial radio guy, this drives me nuts.

I will say this about any sort of coil of cable right under the antenna or anywhere else. It is going to be an inductor to lightning. If you properly ground the antenna to the mast or with a ground wire for non-conductive masts, then it probably doesn't matter. If not, then it may draw lightning more so than an antenna that has no inductor directly below it. I believe the reasoning for it was it's a 'service loop' if your connector goes bad or you change antenna's. Gortex mentioned they don't do this on commercial installs. And that's due to there typically being two cables in the run. The larger vertical run of cable up the tower and then a smaller, more flexible jumper from the top of that run out to the antenna. At least that's what we do if the feed line up the tower is 7/8 or larger. Hams probably started doing it because of the experimentation involved with ham radio and cutting a cable to length limits what can be put up in place of the old antenna, and jumpers and the like cost money they might not be willing to spend. I have seen 7/8 out to antenna's, but they are antenna's designed with a pigtail cable to feed them. It doesn't work well for antenna's with fixed connectors in the base of the antenna, and depending on the cable size and antenna design, the connector might even be to large to enable the connector to be threaded up to the antenna, like the Station Master antenna and a run of 1 1/4 or larger. THe connector for that antenna is recessed into the bottom of that antenna and a 1 1/4 connector would not directly connect to that recessed connector. There is just no room to get a wrench in there and tighten it.

Well, it has sort of happened. At least in the commercial radio field. On Jan 1 2013 the FCC implemented a requirement for all commercial radios to be 'narrow band' and support 12.5Khz channel width's. Many radios that were still in use that didn't support the new mandate had to be replaced by that date. Failure to do it had the possibility of significant fines from the FCC. Now I never heard of anyone getting fined, but I do remember replacing a ton of radios and repeaters that customers were actively using in the year or so prior to that date. So it wasn't really a type acceptance reversal, but it did make illegal to use a vast number of radios.

The physical math for this stuff isn't as hard as you might think. Calculating ERP the 'easy' way. First thing is to convert your RF power in watts to dBm. Lots of phone apps that will do that for you. Then you subtract the cable loss in dB from the dBm number from the above conversion. Then ADD the antenna gain in dB to that number. Take the resulting number and convert it back to watts from dBm. That's all there is to it. Now there is a second part to it if you are so inclined to do it. Mind you this is a comparison number and not a 'true' ERP number. But for every doubling in antenna height, you 'gain' an additional 6dB. Now of course, cable losses increase with this, but it's pretty much a standard calculation used by RF engineer types. So that can be applied too if you are trying to figure out how much better having an antenna further up than you already have it.

And that is when you put your arms out and tell the responding officers to arrest you for having an assault rifle. Let them bring a hi-lift jack into the court room as evidence and then DEMAND they be arrested for being that stupid. Sue the dumb bitch for calling the cops to begin with and made damn sure you have the jack she thought was a weapon in the court room when you sue her. This is why I live where I live. We don't have this sort of bullshit here and I refuse to move to other places where they do. Police around here would tell her to shut the F up and if she refused to do so, SHE would be arrested, not the owner of a hi-lift jack. I am telling you right now. These people are being trained to spool people up. The people responsible for allowing people to continue to be this damned stupid are looking for a violent uprising from the people with common sense because they are the biggest threat to them taking over and running things. All this crap that we are seeing on a day to day basis where people get more and more off the reservation isn't happening by chance. And until people figure this out, find the root of the movement and call them out with proof it's happening, it's going to continue until they figure out the right buttons to push and all hell breaks loose. Problem is that when that happens it will be too late. The people with common sense and a sense of basic morality will be labeled as dangerous and enemies of the state. And if there is a gun even present, used or not, it will be the reason to ban all firearms and start the collection of them.