rdunajewski

I'm really going off of memory here, so don't yell at me if I'm wrong ( ), but I think it's 255 characters. Try anything you want up to that length, and if you break your account for some reason, just let me know and I'll manually fix it for you. You won't do any permanent harm if you try something that long. If it lets you enter MORE than 255 characters, it should only store the first 255 of whatever entered. Hope that helps!

This was a bit of a mixup. There should not be a warning anymore, as I've reinstated SSL (secure) connections to the forum. Logins should be encrypted once again. For the more web admin-savvy users, here's the gist of the story. The maintenance caused an issue with the administrator panel, whereby enabling SSL would create an infinite redirect loop. Without the admin panel, I couldn't undo the setting even if I manually went into the database to toggle the setting back. I eventually had to reinstall the forum software and reimport all the data causing a lengthly downtime. So now we should have SSL working as before, the admin panel is working for me (hooray!) and the bug with resetting your password for the forum has been fixed. Apparently the reCAPTCHA form was not showing over SSL, so you could never bypass the CAPTCHA prompt. My apologies if users have tried to bring this up to me in the past and didn't specify that it was a forums issue. Typically I presume bug reports are related to the main site unless you specifically mention that it is a forums issue. At any rate, thanks for your patience. If you notice any issues, please post on the board or feel free to contact me via email.

This is a little off-topic, and maybe it deserves its own post, but my take on linking is that it is perfectly fine providing the below criteria are met: The link does not use FRS/GMRS/MURS/Ham frequencies as the linking channel (900 MHz, WiFi, ISM [where allowed] would be OK) The link is not over a telephone line (Part 95 rules refer to this as "interconnection to the Public Switched Telephone Network [PSTN]") There is no way to make autopatch phone calls (if you're using VoIP as the link technology, that's fine, but if someone can dial in or out using a real "public" phone number, that's NOT OK) Common sense is used: there should be some reason to link machines. Long distance links are fine in my opinion but if you have 5 repeaters all within earshot of one another, do they really all need to be linked? No, of course not. That's just cluttering the few GMRS repeater channels we do have.I know the FCC's opinion on this is still very nebulous. Some people take a pure approach and believe any linking is not allowed, and some believe that if it's not explicitly banned in black and white, then it's perfectly legal. I have played around with using Asterisk as a linking mechanism and I believe it's stable and secure enough to be used on GMRS provided the above conditions are met. If anyone has interest, I have set up a central Asterisk server and a web interface for monitoring the system here: https://link.mygmrs.com/stats/view/20042 I'd love to get more people on board as this has the potential to bring "responsible" linking of repeaters to GMRS without willfully violating any FCC rules.

I made an improvement to the load time of the icons. Rather than waiting for all the repeater details to return, I'm only returning the barebones info needed to render the map. When you click on a marker, the rest of the information such as the rules/description are fetched from the server on-demand. At least on my PC, I see a big improvement in how long it takes the map to initially render, but I'd like your feedback. In case you see any errors or strange behavior, try refreshing the page a few times (pro tip: if you know how to clear your browser's cache, please do so as this will ensure you have the latest version of the map available). More improvements will be on the way.

This would be the colorful "Bluecom" guys. Here's an old post regarding them: http://www.popularwireless.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002299.html

Long story short, I got fed up with waiting to get around to a whole site redesign. The site is so old it needs an update badly but I don't have the time required to redo the whole thing from scratch. So I took a shortcut for now, and updated the map feature. Over time I will add to this map, so you can filter the results to better suit the search you're interested in. The long-term goal is to turn the map into the whole website, you can search, view, contact owners, add repeaters, and update your profile from that one page. This will take some time, however, because I will need to update the backend server software that makes much of the magic happen (which will make the site many times faster). By focusing on the map first, I was able to get something out with a quick turnaround and you may see tweaks to it as I see areas of improvement. Feel free to provide feedback. The slowest part of the map loading process is the loading of repeaters because the server/database is the slowest piece generally. Since I haven't formally announced the new map and its features, here's a short list of what's new: Fullscreen map that makes browsing many times easier whether you're using a desktop, laptop, or mobile device.Mobile-ready HTML5 map page -- header collapses to a dropdown making navigation easier. Animations may be slow on mobile devices, but anything modern should work quite well. Fine tuning will happen over time.Map is completely rendered on the browser, the only dependency on the server is loading the repeater information from the databaseIf geolocation is supported and you allow mygmrs.com to access your location, the map will load centered on your current location so you'll see the repeaters in your immediate area, not the entire country. Right now, we do not store your location using GPS. We do use your IP Address to estimate the city and state you are located in for traffic reports. Any website using an analytics service is storing this rough location information about you and is not considered a privacy risk.Coverage circles are hidden by default (you're welcome California users), just click on a marker and the coverage circle, if available, will appear.Selected marker will bounce so you can see which one was selected, especially useful in a dense area where you may have clicked on one of several markers.Info window is much more refined, and shows more information about the repeater including description. If you are not logged in, you will not see the Frequency and Tone information, and a warning banner should appear on the bottom of the map asking you to log in if you'd like to see this information.Clicking on the repeater name in the info window popup will take you to the old-style repeater listing. Here you can report the listing or request permission from the owner to use the system as before. Eventually this will be available all from the new map. So just make sure you're logged in to the regular site before going to the map if you want to see Frequency and Tone info. Let me know if you have any positive or negative feedback!

Hi everyone, I'm back just to give an update on the downtime that was reported by several of you today. It looks like the server that just the forums are on ran out of disk space due to log files getting out of control. I've purged them all and the login worked just fine. Initially I suspected a database issue but I saw shortly after that the disk space was the real culprit, and because the database could not save data to disk when you try to log in, it was giving a database error. Let me know if you see anything else being weird. I know I'm out of touch these days but Gary and William are doing a great job moderating for me, so thanks guys. Keep it up. Thanks, Rich

Dan, I've replied to you via email a few weeks back. You're welcome to use the repeater, just use your call sign and be courteous. I'm not active right now in the hobby but I know some others are using the repeater here and there. I opened up access to it to try to take me out of the loop. The other owner is Paul WQBC441, who is on the station ID.

Gary I PMed you, but there were still issues with email being sent since it is a new server, and users who never logged in before using their myGMRS username were getting login errors because the database we use to authenticate users is still on the main site's server. I've resolved all that, I think those will be the only major issues.

Gary, let me know if you notice any improvements. I've moved just the forum to a new server. Email may or may not work just yet, but let me know if you see anything else not working, like changing your profile avatar, uploading photos, etc.

Account integration is complete! This is how it works: Registrations are still disabled and will be indefinitely. Even though you don't have an account on this new forum, go ahead and try to sign in anyway with your regular myGMRS.com username and password, not your old forum account. If the credentials are correct, you will be asked to provide your email address. Please ensure you enter a valid email address so you can receive updates and private message alerts if you subscribe to them. Once you've entered this information, go ahead and finish creating your account. This should make logging in to the forums much easier for everyone!

Welcome to the new forums! Unfortunately, over the last year or so we've had serious problems with our previous board software (phpBB and vBulletin), so I did some shopping around and decided that Invision Power Board is the way to go. Between vBulletin and this new software, I've had to lay out over $400, so I didn't make the decision lightly. While it's possible to migrate the posts from the previous software, I decided it wasn't worth the effort. I prefer having a clean platform and I will be tying the forum software to your main user accounts, so you no longer need two accounts for the site. This extra step will take some time for me to implement, so I'm going to lock down user registrations so we don't have duplicate accounts everywhere. Keep a look out for an update in the near future! So without further ado, welcome to the new forums! I hope this will be our last migration for many years to come, and donations to help offset the software licenses would be very much appreciated.