pcradio

The net controller from Hawaii did come on and speak briefly about how Maui needs help, but he didn’t go into detail.  I was their last check-in.  
I think I’ll go see if there are Hawaii related DMR talk groups I can monitor.

I’m listening to the California Hawaii Pacific net on 14.340 MHz.  They’re just now doing check-ins.  The net controller is in Hawaii but hasn’t been talking about Maui, at least while I’ve been listening.

Gonna expand on what I said a bit.
There were / are technical reasons that the regulations were put into place that simply continue to exist even though the technical reason no longer does.
I sort of spelled out the HAM VS everything else reason.  And the real truth to that is if you had a radio that was full TX/RX from 400 to 500Mhz (UHF) and you started showing up on commercial and public safety parts of the band.  The argument could reasonably be that the radio came that way and I just used it.  Hence the TX block for the ham radios and of course the no end user programming for commercial and GMRS radios.  It keeps people from doing dumb stuff and minimizes the calls about interference to the FCC. 
We as radio operators know that only goes so far.  There will always be those people that will interfere with communications on any repeater they decide to.  And that's part of the draw for public safety to switch their operations to 700/800 digital trunked radio systems that require a system key and assigned ID to communicate on the system.  It's a more effective (not 100% effective) way of keeping purposeful interference to a minimum and offers ways of stopping it by disabling the radio ID from accessing the system.  Some of this functionality has existed in analog for years in the signalling systems like DTMF and QC2 where the radio ID could be sent a stun command and the radio would disable transmit.  That was effective for radios that were stolen or misplaced that were programmed to accept the command and be stunned.  With the newer digital trunked systems, the ID can be disabled in the radio system.  Since the radio ID is transmitted every time the radio is keyed, the system can ignore the radio and block it's access to the system regardless of the programming in the radio.  This happens at a system / repeater level. 
This was looked at a number of years ago by some ham buddies of mine that were fingerprinting radios.  Every radio as it goes into transmit 'rings up' as the transmit oscillator comes online and the modulation circuit becomes active.  This 'ring up' is typically unique to every radio and can be used to identify a specific radio.  That part they had down.  The next steps were to compare that to a set of files that were banned radios and disable the repeater if a banned radio was attempting to transmit.  The computers we had at the time were simply not fast enough for all that to occur before the person started talking.  Of course this was all done in the days of 8 and 16 bit computers running DOS ( think Windows 3.1 time frame)  and the first generation of SoundBlaster sound cards)   Software was called XMITid.  Written by Richard Rager. 

The kind of short version is we share a well. The booster pump and reservoir tank are closer to my house. The tank is 10 feet lower than my house and 20 above his. Over the last 6 years we have experienced at least 15 power outages with several of them being multiple days long with the longest being 5 days. The pump house with it's own electric meter is closer to me. With a transfer switch we can run the well and booster pump on a generator. The 5 day outage was accompanied by 6 feet of snow over a week which made snow shoeing up and down the hill the only method of travel. We will run the generator for the well and booster pumps on a schedule and use radios for coordination. He was using one of my radios. Now he has his own. Last week we lost power three times for 3-4 hours at a time. We have started turning on our radios when we lose power just in case. 

Just my (conspiracy theorists) opinion, it's the same answer for radio, firearms, and everything else the government touches... it's not about safety or the people; it's about control. 

The FCC is just keeping us safe, how dare you question their motives!

I have no understanding why the FCC can't, or wont allow multiple type certifications for a single radio. My point here is that I can't see any reason that you can't legally buy a type certified radio that covers both MURS, FRS, and Marine VHF. Is this because the manufactures don't want to bother with this? Or is there something within current FCC rules that I'm missing that prohibits this?
Currently there's four "services" that do not require licensing, Marine VHF (license requirement eliminated in 1996), MURS, FRS, and Citizens Band (11M).
Marine VHF is an interesting one. The limitations are pretty generous. The way I understand the current rules for Marine VHF is that as long as you are using to communicate with another person on (or near?) a navigable body of water, it's within the rules. So technically, if one party is on a kayak in a creek large enough to allow kayaking, and the other is onshore (and at  no specifically defined distance from the water), communication on the Marine VHF band is permitted. Anywhere in the country. The power limitation is 25 watts for Marine VHF.
What burns my bacon is you can buy a radio(s) that does have this capability (but they're not "legal"), so the technology is available, but the FCC wants you to buy 3 radios... Hmmm... maybe I just answered my own question...

But no one ever heard him… he should have got a Garmin inReach . The end. 

Hard to say. Would depend on usage I suppose. Wouxun is well liked. Retevis are well packaged. Then there is Anytone. Then the Big Three. Others might have a different view of the landscape. What's casual to you and how that matches up with a feature set might take you a while to sort all that out.

I have bought several of them over the years and all surviving ones still work fine.  The UV-5R is my go-to if there is a good chance the radio may not return in one piece (or at all).  They're cheap and they work.  Good stocking stuffers too.  I need a big UV-5R PEZ dispenser.

Thanks Randy, great video.

I don't see why not. That is not very far for GMRS as long as there are no hills between your antenna and the repeaters. In fact 5 watts should be enough. I live on a 500 foot hill and with a roof top J-pole can easily reach 30 miles simplex using Wouxun KG-935G+ handheld to the same radio in a mobile set up using a mag mount antenna. That's just furthest we have tested, I think it would reach much further given line of sight conditions. 

Hey folks. I just wanted to take a minute to thank the members of MyGMRS.Com for the support and well-wishes.
 
I know sometimes we bicker among ourselves, but at the end of the day we're all human, trying to enjoy the hobby and help we're we can. All of the messages, emails, etc. have really shown me what a great group we have here and how when someone is truly down, the petty stuff gets put aside and concern for a fellow member becomes the priority.
 
Again, thank you all. - Marc

Ham doesn't get used for off grid or local communications because everyone is down on HF contesting. I gave up on Ham. While I do find a handful of Hams in my area that do utilize the VHF/UHF bands, no one really does much with it outside of quick chats here and there and a few nets. I keep the license just in case the HF bands get destroyed by other forces and everyone decides to come back to VHF and UHF, or in case I run across someone who actually wants to use it (all wishful thinking). I really try to do my best to not think about it, but it makes me sick to my stomach to see how much technology is available to Hams and all of the millions of possibilities there are to communicate using VHF and UHF and Hams would rather activate parks on HF, leaving GMRS with only 8 repeater pairs to play with that can fill up quickly and are not allowed to be radio linked. GMRS is more likely to be used by all people in an emergency situation or off grid purposes compared to Ham Radio that will only be used by a select few Hams in a select few situations. So, my focus stays on GMRS because my wife and I can use it without her having to study up on a bunch of stuff you do not need in order to just pick up a microphone and communicate. It also allows the rest of my household to use it. 

Personally, I would love to see the FCC allow the MURS band to be used with higher power (50 watts), give GMRS users 462-462.725/467-467.725 so we have more space for repeaters, simplex, and linking. Take those who lost their place in the 462-462.55/467-467.55 and put them in the 440 Ham band that doesn't get used in a large majority of places in the United States. Then, allow crossbanding or linking between the VHF and UHF and just label the whole thing GMRS. This stuff can be done with plug and play equipment. It would make more sense than allowing large amounts of frequency spectrum to go to waste. And, if you got those ones out there who prefer to use digital, the FCC could make allowance for that also. That way, in the end, more bandwidth would be getting used and the FCC would be making money on spectrum that is not getting a whole lot of use as it sits. Seems to me to be a win win all the way around.

Got the radio today, and got it programmed using the CPS. It wasn't nearly as bad as some of the reviews I had come across mentioned. Getting 12V to it to get it to turn on was another story, since I don't have a power supply for something like a base. I ended up modifying an old computer power supply that I had laying around that I've used for other things, and cut the lighter plug off the radio. 
A lot of the reviews of the programming software mentioned having to type in everything by hand, but what I found was a little different. On the farthest right column, there is a box with 2 arrow symbols pointing right (like this >>). Double clicking that brings up a box that allowed me to name the repeaters and select the tones from drop-down lists. All in all, I think it took me about 15 minutes. 
The next step is going to be running a wire from the battery, through a fuse, then to a relay behind the dash of the truck. From there, I'll use either the stereo turn on wire or the accessory wire off the ignition switch to trigger the relay to turn the radio on and off with the key. After that, it's going to be antenna wiring and then testing. 
I'm still trying to decide how I'm going to run the antenna cable, since it is only going to be a mostly temporary installation. Once the weather cools down, I'm planning to put an NMO mount in the roof and adding the MXTA26. 

The Baofeng UV-5G appears to be certified. 
 
FCC ID: 2AN62-UV5G
 
I have had several Baofeng UV-5T radios and they work fine on ham. The early ones had low modulation and issues with tones above a certain frequency.

To me the digital speech modes sound like the speaker has a drunken slurred voice. Better processing might help some, but higher fidelity requires greater bandwidth. 

People started telling me about this a few months ago and I thought they were full of it, but I finally saw the listing on Amazon...  My biggest issue I see is the confusion it will cause when telling "some people" that you're using a UV-5R on GMRS - "some people" wont know if they should report you to the FCC or not.
Rumor has it that a very popular and beloved YouTuber will be making a video about this in the coming days.

Drag the "VXR-7000 Series" icon to your desktop (create a shortcut). Right click on the icon and go to properties. Add a -d" to the end of the target line and click OK.
 

I was very impressed with the KG-UV9PX

If you think using codes will "protect" you - then have at it.  If you're really looking at things from a SHTF perspective, analog radios are problematic to begin with, especially if you're in a single frequency/channelized domain.  If I have bad intentions, I really don't need to know specifically what you're talking about, I can pretty much determine how many different people I hear talking, and I can easily triangulate your signal to figure out where you are. 
 

Hey guys just received my GMRS license and a wouxun kg-935g plus. Was hoping to test fire the new radio this weekend. Did pick up a Nagoya ut-72g for extra fars for convoys. Thanks!

For the UV-9G the # key only changes power levels in frequency mode. In memory mode you have to use the menu button and go to menu 2. 

I second the Garmin Glo2. It is a small blu-tooth unit for gps only I use it on my Ipad and it improves the lag time for the gps to update.

Pure..Gold....
I cant thank you all enough.