rdunajewski

Hi Jerry, I own the Fort Pierce repeater which covers the Port St. Lucie area very well and with a good base station you should be able to get to West Palm Beach. For your house, you would need a UHF base station antenna outside as high as you can practically get it (ideally on your roof if that's possible). Elevation is the key to getting better range. For a base radio, you can use a mobile radio and a power supply hooked up to the antenna. Some form of lightning protection for the coax that comes from the antenna is advised, especially in Florida. There are Polyphaser surge suppressors that you can buy which will protect the radio from a surge in the coax caused by a nearby strike. For your mother's house, depending on where she's located she might be able to use a handheld radio which would be good for mobility, but you'd have to try it out and see. I'm not sure if you have a GMRS license yet, but a license would cover yourself plus your immediate family members which includes your mother, so there's only once license to purchase from the FCC. Once you have a license you can register for the main myGMRS.com website and you'll see the frequency and PL tone information needed to program your radios to the Fort Pierce repeater, and you can try it out. I actually put up this repeater for my elderly aunt and uncle who live on the island. Their cell service isn't great and they have become stubborn and don't like to evacuate when there's a hurricane. I wanted a way to reach them by radio, or a way for them to call others for help if they ever need to. I live in NJ so I have linked that repeater over the Internet which allows me to talk to them when I'm not in the area.

Happy New Year everyone!

Looks like the issue is fixed now. There was an issue with server resources that were running low.

Thanks for the heads up. I see the issue and working on the fix now.

PM sent

We carry the RT97 GMRS version which is FCC approved (FCC ID 2ASNSRT97). The problem is that while the label says it's 10W, it's really set to 5W (for the GMRS version). I believe this is done to allow any of the 8 repeater channels to be used with the included duplexer without having to retune it (although the desense will be getting worse the further you get from the center frequency of the duplexer). At 10W, the tuning of the duplexer is even more critical and they wouldn't be able to get away with this. https://shop.mygmrs.com/collections/featured-products/products/retevis-rt97-gmrs-repeater-5w People seem to like them, they are very simple, there's a dedicated TX/RX board (not just 2 HTs inside), a DC/DC converter, and the LCD display/button board on the front of the case, plus a 10W-rated notch duplexer inside tuned to somewhere in the middle of the GMRS primary channel range. Comes with a AC power supply, a 12/24V cigarette lighter plug. Antenna connector is a UHF female (SO-239). The case is die-cast metal, not plastic.

The rumor I've heard is that there's no FCC rule, but the OET (Office of Engineering and Technology) at the FCC has put out manufacturer guidance about 30-channel limits. These guidelines help a manufacturer determine what will be certified by the OET and what will be rejected. If true, it's a major issue because new GMRS radios are following this "standard" and there's really no justification for it in the Part 95 rules.

Hi Joe, As long as those radios have an accessory connector that provides PTT, COR, and RX/TX audio you should be able to interface it with a URIxB from DMK Engineering. We sell linking bundles that give you the Raspberry Pi and the URIxB, you just need to add your own cable to connect to the radios. Depending on the type of interface required, we can make custom cables for $40-50. Asterisk nodes aren't exactly plug-and-play, but the ones we sell are pretty close. We configure the software for you so once you plug in the Raspberry Pi it'll already be "on the network", but you'll still need to tune your audio settings to get the volume levels correct and make sure the PTT polarity is correct, for example. Many people buy these kits because they get you 90% of the way there and only a little fine tuning is required which is going to vary with each person's individual needs and hardware, so that's why it can't be 100% plug-and-play. For those who are interested in a DIY setup, we have the software image available or you can buy an SD card with the software preconfigured with your node information for a nominal charge. All of these can be found on the myGMRS Shop: https://shop.mygmrs.com/collections/repeaters-and-accessories/products/repeater-linking-bundle https://shop.mygmrs.com/collections/repeaters-and-accessories/products/sandisk-8gb-microsd-card-mygmrs-link https://shop.mygmrs.com/products/custom-repeater-cable-25-pin

Hey Jim, You can check out the Bronx Zoo GMRS channel on Zello. The NYC guys run that and it's usually linked into their repeaters. We had a few Zello check-ins on the regional net last night. Hoping in the next week or two I can make it down to Woodbury and get it back online. I'm building a redundant setup so I can go and swap out any component that failed and I'm working on a better Internet solution as well, since that has been flaky.

Hi Bob, The main part is the /etc/asterisk directory which has all the config files. As long as you overwrite the ASL ones with the myGMRS ones you should be good to go. There are a couple of extra services that run which would need to be installed under the VM to have the full benefit. One is for adding your node to Node Manager (web-based control of linking commands) and the other is a script that runs every 10 minutes to update your local list of nodes which is basically your whitelist of other nodes that you will allow to connect to you. I can help you set that up once you're ready, we can do a TeamViewer session and I'll show you the steps -- it should take less than 10 minutes.

They are selling modified Part 90 Baofeng radios (poor quality ones at that) as the simplex transmitter. That's in violation of the Part 95 certification requirements, for one. I also don't know the legality of holding bingo over the air, which it looks like they removed mention of on the website. I don't recall if they were playing for a cash prize or if it was just "for fun" but that brings interstate gambling rules into question.

Editor's note, the linked site runs a network that runs against FCC rules. Furthermore, they have been contacting our network users to try to bring them over to their network, sometimes by offering help and logging into their node and switching them over. I strongly recommend you steer clear of them, and certainly we won't tolerate cross-linking between the two networks as it has caused problems.

PHP 7 is installed on the command line by default but there's no web server (Apache or Nginx) installed by default, but it can certainly be added using apt-get. I know some people have installed Allmon or Supermon on their nodes easily as well. The question is can you tap into the GPIO pins of the URI device while app_rpt is using it, and I'm not sure. However, you can use the app_rpt features to toggle these pins like by DTMF command or by setting a schedule, for example.

You're just not using enough heat sinking. 100% duty cycle or bust!

There's one input tone that I'm aware of, and there's no tone on output. This was done to force everyone to monitor before transmitting since NYC is so RF dense. I haven't tried to use it in many years, so I didn't even know it was operational. There's a note on the listing from 2017 saying it was suspended for interference reasons, but I don't know if that's the latest info. Here's the listing for it: https://mygmrs.com/view?id=2604

I got a small batch of them in, but they all sold out (have one left) in only a few days. I placed a larger order so there will be a bunch more coming in. Don't have an ETA yet. Retevis wasn't even stocking them in their US warehouse yet, so I think I'm the only US dealer for the RT76P at the moment. They sell them on eBay but they're shipping out of China.

I use a Cradlepoint mobile hotspot on Verizon for 2 of my sites. Generally speaking, they're pretty bulletproof. The issue with using mobile Internet is that the cell companies block port forwarding, so you won't be able to accept incoming connections from other nodes or open up SSH access if you want remote access for yourself. However, you can use a VPN server with some fancy routing to get around the limitation, or you can add the Static IP privileges to your Verizon account (costs a one-time $500 and allows unlimited static IPs, I believe). One of my repeaters is using the static IP method, but I don't hold the account so I don't know every detail. It may only apply to business accounts, not sure. I do hear it's one-time and NOT per-IP). The only thing I recommend is that you have a way to reboot the Raspberry Pi remotely (i.e. via DTMF or if a ping to a server fails and a power outlet can be set to reset everything). It's rare, but once in a while I lose the VPN connection to my server and it won't reconnect automatically. Not all of my repeaters are nearby (one is in Florida), so I need backup methods to make sure I can reset everything if the normal connection fails. If you can easily get to your repeater site to fix something, then that's fine.

It's possible there's an issue on that particular hub. It was recently added so I'm not sure if something is up with it. Sometimes if you just power on your node the other nodes haven't had a chance to learn about your node, so when you attempt to connect they will reject you since you're not on the whitelist of registered nodes. Waiting 5-10 minutes at most will solve that issue since they will fetch the list of known repeaters and yours will then be on the list.

They didn't even ask me to pay, they just wanted me gone. Either they were upset they agreed to no rent and wanted to kick me out, or they saw the non-compete clause in the contract with the wireless companies and wanted to clean house. Either way, I ended up scoring a much better site with patience and hunting around. I'm on a 500' tower a few miles away now. There was a company who needed a new site to cover their customers so I found the site and piggy-backed on their combiner. It helps to know people in the industry, so I lucked out there. There were other issues where the person who granted me access to the site was on the board, and got approval from the president of the association, but the whole association didn't vote on it. So I think there was some bad blood between the members and I was the casualty. As far as the install, I had a local radio tech do the install since I live in NJ, and that way everything was done professionally and someone could be on-site with a day's notice to fix anything. We did a minimal install, small antenna, small wall-mount rack out of the way so it didn't bother anyone. He worked with the building maintenance guy to make sure everything was good. I also think the antenna drew the attention of the wireless companies because they figured that condo had contracts to lease the roof space already, so it'd be easier to talk to them than to start from scratch with another building.

Sounds like this was a Midwest net on Saturday, and not the regular regional or national net. That's run by the Midwest GMRS group, so I would mention it to them if there's a problem. I know the Midwest group has some nets throughout the week and the regional net is on Thursdays (whereas all the other regional nets in our network are on Sundays before the national net).

I was able to get free access to the top of a condo in Florida on the beach by mentioning that it would be perfect for emergency use and residents of the building could get a license and use it for free. I eventually lost the site because wireless companies were snooping around and wanting to kick any "competition" out, and the condo association was wondering why I was there rent-free when they had a paying tenant looking to come in. My mistake was not getting a contract or lease agreement with them. If I had that, they would have been able to tell the wireless companies tough, we already have an agreement and you'll have to deal with it. It can be an informal contract, just says why you're there, what you'll pay, and for the longest period of time you can negotiate at a time (so you're not having to renegotiate each year, for example).

You can run a NOAA weather alert from the node, it'll fetch high-priority alerts like tornado warnings and such, and announce them over the air.

I sell them on the store but I don't have any in-hand. I'm testing the waters and shipping them from Retevis directly but was just about to place an order for some stock. Sounds like I should play around with one and provide feedback to them before placing the order!

4G has many bands which vary by carrier. None are in the 400-500 MHz range of course, so it should be okay as long as harmonics don't pose an issue with one of the bands. Even so, that usually wouldn't be catastrophic to 4G as I believe multiple bands may be leveraged concurrently depending on the area.

Unfortunately, no. The database is synchronized with the FCC database so we can't go in and manually enable licenses. The FCC publishes a copy of their DB every week with updates given every day. However, these updates are always at least 1 day behind. Your license was issued yesterday, so it will either be in today's update or tomorrow's. So far, we have not received the Wednesday update.