wrci350

Uniden BCT125AT. You can get one for just over $100.

Yup. And fixed station <> base station. ?

OK that's totally false. Care to show us where in 95E it says that? Oh wait, it doesn't. What it DOES say is this (in 95.1763): (b) 462 MHz interstitial channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable and base stations may transmit on these 7 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5625, 462.5875, 462.6125, 462.6375, 462.6625, 462.6875, and 462.7125 MHz. (c) 467 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, control and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels. Mobile, hand-held portable and control stations may transmit on these channels only when communicating through a repeater station or making brief test transmissions in accordance with § 95.319(c). The channel center frequencies are: 467.5500, 467.5750, 467.6000, 467.6250, 467.6500, 467.6750, 467.7000, and 467.7250 MHz. And in 95.303: Control station. A station at a fixed location that communicates with mobile stations and other control stations through repeater stations, and may also be used to control the operation of repeater stations. A GMRS "BASE" station (which is almost certainly a mobile radio connected to a power supply and an external antenna) is a control station.

OMG really? I don't need an explanation of the less than and greater than signs. It was a typo, and I fixed it.

The 467 interstitials are restricted to HTs, are they not? I appear to have lucked out with two Diamond antennas, as far as working on 2m/70cm and GMRS. The X50NA I've been using for almost two years has a SWR just under 2.0 on the GMRS repeater inputs. Not great, but OK for limited use. I just put up a V2000A and it has an SWR< 1.5 all across the GMRS 462 and 467 frequencies.

That would definitely not be type-accepted for either service. If you dig into the website further it's an either/or ... there is a MURS version, an FRS version, and a PMR446 version for Europe. But you have to pick one.

Couple questions: Where are you when you hear these pages, and what radio(s) are you using?

Not considering. Done deal.

I would remove the receive CTCSS tone and see if that makes a difference. It's possible that the repeater isn't actually transmitting the published tone or the signal is so weak that your radio cannot detect the tone.

If all houses were produced by one manufacturer and sold through a small set of resellers at a price set by the manufacturer then I would agree with your analogy. How about, "Best tickets for this sporting event are $75 but you can get them for $400 from some guy standing in the parking lot the night of the game. That means the price of the tickets is $400." Fortunately I have a small stockpile of Raspberry Pi's that should last me until they can be purchased for $35 (the price) again. ?

"The price" has not changed at all. Go look at an authorized reseller's site and you'll see they are still the same price they were two years ago. Unfortunately, they are also all out of stock everywhere. There are people out there that are buying them from an authorized reseller (on the rare occasions that they are available) and turning around and selling them at highly inflated prices. Illegal? No. Immoral and wrong? Some would say so. Others would say they are good business people. But either way, the official prices have not changed.

That's true everywhere, whether the tower is owned by a corporation or an individual. "My tower, my rules." As others have said, your choices would appear to be: a) find a company or organization that has a tower and would be willing to let you rent space on it or b) put up your own tower.

Set the tone mode to "Tone".

The receive tone (from the repeater back to your radio) is never required. You can configure your radio to "Tone" mode (TX tone only) and it will work just fine. The advantage to using a RX tone (assuming that the repeater is transmitting one!) is that you will *only* hear traffic that matches that tone. Here's an example. Keep in mind that the repeater output frequencies are shared with simplex users, including FRS users. If the kids next door are talking on 462.550 on their little bubble-pack HTs and either not using a tone, or using a different tone (say 110.9) then if you don't have the RX tone set on your radio you will hear them. If you DO have it set, you won't. Hopefully that makes sense

Looks fine. As I said, if you can hear the squelch tail then chances are you have it programmed correctly, since you are opening the squelch on the repeater and you can hear it when you stop transmitting.

"If I transmit on either of my GMRS I hear the squelch tail back from the repeater, but I am not hearing what I am transmitting on my other radio." How close together are your radios when you are doing this? If you are holding one and the other is sitting a couple feet away, it is quite likely that you are desensing the second radio when you transmit on the first one ... in other words, the only thing the second HT can "hear" is you transmitting, but since it is trying to listen to the [much weaker] signal coming back from the repeater, you get nothing. Get a family member to take the second radio out in the back yard and try your test. If you are hearing the squelch tail from the repeater, chances are you have the radios programmed correctly.

Radio Reference. www.radioreference.com

I don't think anyone on RR is being mean or snarky to you. Usually when someone asks a question like yours they are interested in *their* area, and as I said, "Upstate NY" means different things in different parts of NY. The meta-answer to your question is, "YMMV". Different areas of the country have different levels of GMRS use, and that's true with different areas of Upstate NY as well.

Hmmm. Either of those entries *should* work. I'm not sure if I've ever used the / for hour, but I definitely have for minute, and I definitely have listed hour numbers like that. If it were me, the first thing I would look for is another entry that is already doing the same thing every hour. When you said that the second one didn't work, what do you mean? Error saving the crontab file, or just no time/weather?

Not sure why you have taken offense to the question you were asked on RR, since "Upstate NY" means very different things depending on where in NY one lives. If someone had asked "Does anyone use GMRS in California (or Iowa, or Virginia)?" the response would have been the same: Where in California? The answer to your question is going to vary depending on where you are. Sounds like there isn't much activity in the Capital District. Curious though: How are you listening? Are you using a GMRS radio and scanning all the channels? Do you have tones turned off, so you'll hear *any* traffic on that channel? Or maybe you're doing the same with a scanner? In Western NY there are a couple GMRS repeaters with very large footprints (reachable from several counties). Most of the traffic on those is still radio checks, although I think they run a net once a week. In Monroe County there are several other repeaters with varying footprints. None of them get much traffic. The purpose of GMRS (as defined by the FCC at least) is not "pick up the microphone and chat with random people". It's designed to be used for communications within families and other groups. That doesn't mean it can't be used for rag-chewing, and I believe there are repeaters (and even networks of linked repeaters) that get used that way, as if they were a 2m or 70cm ham repeater. That hasn't been my experience in <this> part of Upstate NY. Most of the traffic I hear on "GMRS" channels is actually FRS, since FRS radios can (and are!) used by businesses. Since GMRS is UHF, and given the terrain in most of NY State, you will be lucky to hit a repeater that's 30 or 40 miles away from you unless you and it are both on mountains. So unless you plan to travel, you may have answered your own question if there is no (or little) GMRS activity in your area. The fact that there is a repeater in Wyoming County that can be hit from Ontario County isn't going to do you one bit of good.

How are they operating illegally? The FRS channels are the same as the GMRS channels with the exception of the repeater inputs. The only difference is permitted power level. So if they are using the channel that happens to be the output of your repeater I'm sure that's annoying, and I don't have an issue with you politely asking them to move to a different channel, but they aren't doing anything against the Part 95 rules. Or am I missing something?

I would definitely do the test you suggest ... drive a bit away (1/4 mile should be plenty!) and try it again. If you are hearing the repeater when you unkey then you are hitting it.

Sounds very much like it might be desense. Your HT can hear the 467.x transmission just fine ... but that's ALL it can hear.

Pretty sure the OP said the issue was with *transmitting*. If it was a receive problem, then this would be a useful debugging step. But the receive tone doesn't come into play with transmitting. @WildzebraHow far apart are the mobile and the HT when you are testing? If they are only a few feet apart and you are transmitting on high power, it's quite possible that you are desensing the receiver in the HT ... that 50 watts going out on 467.x makes the HT deaf on the corresponding 462.x frequency. Have you tried moving the HT further away? Many (but not all) repeaters also have a courtesy tone or a squelch tail that gets transmitted after a radio unkeys. Do you hear that?

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