Raybestos

Ever since CB days I would give the kids with new walkies a thrill around Christmas by talking to them. That they could reach another person a few blocks or a mile or two away was a form of DXing to young radio enthusiasts. I recall as a child, how many of the curmudgeons would cease talking to us once we told them we were on an unlicensed walkie-talkie. One guy who told me he couldn't talk to walkie talkies (then FCC rule about not talking with unlicensed stations), I later learned had never even had a CB license. GMRS has so much better range than the old CB Channel 14 radios with the long antennas that always got broken off. Plus, GMRS and FRS can legally talk with each-other!

LOL! For decades, hams have (rightfully) been on the receiving end of jokes about their boring conversations; which frequently center on medical ailments, trips to the doctor, their "roids", bp meds, etc. I am aware of one GMRS repeater group whose "administrator" cannot bring himself to make a series of transmissions without regaling the audience with the latest on his c-pap machine, his latest heart attack, his latest planned surgery, etc. If that were not bad enough; there is his "beans, peas, corn, taters, maters" ad-nauseum, monologue about what all he did in the garden that day. Often, he sounds like he is three sheets in the wind, which can add an element of entertainment value to his radio broadcasts and internet postings. He would make a great ham except that he thinks he lacks the intelligence to pass the test. Thankfully, he never tried to find out.

Funny you should say that. I think some or most of that group might be former or retired cops.

Even the two methods above may not work at all times. In my state, there is a clique that has maintained a GMRS repeater presence of sorts, for over a decade. They are listed on MyGMRS.com. For as far back as anyone I know remembers, they have been "members only". They have always had a disclaimer to the general effect that they were not accepting new members due to concerns about potential overloading of their repeater in the event of an actual emergency. The comical thing, is that I know people who regularly monitor their channel and have never heard any transmissions from them. Others that have, heard very brief traffic maybe once or twice in years of monitoring. Obviously, overloading is not a concern so why not just say, "It is our repeater and we don't want no dang outsiders on it", which is their prerogative? Getting back on track, a while back, a guy put up another repeater with wide coverage on their operating channel. He likely did the "listen for activity" thing and hearing none, decided to park his large, "network linked" repeater on their operating channel. Had the guy done the right thing and left it as a stand-alone to benefit the area GMRS community, he probably would have been fine. Instead, he piped in garbage from all around the country via some linking network and the existing, mostly silent, repeater guys had a cow. The silent guys plus the owner of another repeater about 40 miles out were not happy and raised a stink. This led to a frequency change of the newer networked repeater which despite claims to the contrary, is still tied to some network with regular traffic from 700+ miles away on it. Had the new guy just left off the linked network garbage, the little bit of local traffic on the channel likely would have been tolerable to the legacy repeater guys. The frequent obscenity, profanity, and other noise coming in through the network is likely what created the uproar.

"IF" the offending party should be located, possession of and proficiency with the use of a rettysnitch and/or wouff hong have been reported as effective remedies for such behavior. Unknown to myself, is whether or not these devices are effective on non-ham problems, or problems occurring on frequencies allocated to other than ham use. But hey, it might be worth a try. http://www.natradioco.com/rdey/whrsl.htm

Old Man Willis?

Me too! Thanks!

Ohhh...that's why it has been so dead on here the last few days! I wondered why nobody was commenting much. Thank You for the info!

Delete Duplicate Post.

Usually, I get an update via e-mail from My GMRS on Sunday nights with any new or changed information for repeaters across the country. I did not receive one last night. Did anyone else not get one? FWIW, I checked my SPAM and "trash" folders to see if it accidentally went there. It did not.

The 1.8 SWR, while not ideal, shouldn't hurt you too badly, unless the KG1000 has an "RF fold back for higher SWR". Some VHF and UHF ham radios are so sensitive on RF foldback, they reduce power significantly with SWR as low as 1.5:1.

Well, it looks as though you eliminated that problem as a possibility. Good job! The Messi & Paolini (I call it Nancy Pelosi) cable, if I read their chart right, has a loss of 3.6 db at 400 MHz. Obviously, it will be a bit higher at 462 MHz so you are probably right at or knocking on the door of 3 db loss, xmit AND receive. That means if your radio is putting out 50W at the radio, your antenna is getting 25W. If you can hear the repeater well, it should be able to hear you. I hear and see so many places promoting LMR400, the Nancy Pelosi, and the like for UHF, even though it is lossy at UHF. Still, it is better than RG-8. A 50ft run will probably be okay. To be honest, at 3db loss, if you hear it you should be able to hit it, which brings us back to my theory that you may be in a good spot to hear it on 462, but an absolute null at 467. I know it is probably the last thing you want to do, but I would go on the roof and move the antenna a foot or so sideways and or forward and backward. To prevent additional such trips, have your wife or other trusted person in your radio room, ready to try and key up the repeater at your direction. If possible, back away from the antenna when they do so to minimize body capacitance and other possible weirdness which might change once you are back on the ground. This brings another thought. Can you hit the repeater with the 935G from inside your home or outside? If so, it is very likely a null you are dealing with. https://messi.it/en/comparison-chart--attenuationpower-ratio.htm

Good catches, Steve! Without a specimen in front of me at the moment, I don't know if the KG1000G has an audio adjustment on its menu or not. Possibilities are numerous, including those you have found and fixed.

Tcp2525 may be on-target. Do you have another radio to monitor your own with? Ideally, a ht with a "reverse" feature, or the means to program 467.700 in as a receive frequency. If not, then try monitoring your transmit audio (voice) on a simplex channel and see if it comes through. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that for some reason, your transmit audio is weak or non-existent.

Yeah! Unfortunately, if you go 100ft or longer with that stuff, you will lose quite a bit of signal on xmit and receive. I wish BTWR offered hardline/Heliax assemblies for GMRS, which while expensive, is what you really want when going for longer runs. One possibility worth mentioning. I have no experience with your antenna, so I don't know if it is prone to this issue or not. Some antennas perform differently, from different parts of the antenna on semi-duplex (repeater) modes. As such, you may be where you can hear the repeater just fine but transmitting on 467 MHz, you may be in a total null to the repeater. IF this is the case, and I know this will be a PITA, you might want to try moving your antenna left or right, or forward or backward on your chimney. Just a foot or so change in location can be enough to get you out of that null. Be careful that in doing that, that you don't unintentionally move the antenna where your receiving the repeater is now in a null. From personal experience Station Master antennas are terrible about this, both the VHF and UHF versions. They are excellent for simplex, but can be wonky on semi-duplex. IF you find out the repeater you are trying to use has a Station Master, this may be your problem.

Regarding your first paragraph, that was my very first thought(s) on reading the OP item. It was so "cliche'". No way was it an original item. Corny, too. It reminded me of another over-used cliche' item we all probably heard on various TV documentaries, commercials, etc, between the 1970's and 1990's. Remember the ones that started out, "America has had a years-long love affair........with the automobile." I agree with pretty much all of the rest of your post. GovCo has tried to make hams as close to obsolete as possible, for emergencies. They want to be the alpha and the omega of our needs. More control, that way. Many ham clubs have made themselves obsolete and useless by focusing on shiney things rather than utility and usefulness. One club I was a member of in the late 1990's, had a great local area linked repeater system. Thinking back over the years, it was probably the only linked repeater system that was worth a cuss, that I ever used. It covered a big portion of the middle of the state, in and around the state capital. In those days before everyone had a cell phone in their pocket, or even a cell phone at all for that matter, it allowed ham friends and families in the area to stay connected while on the road. A couple of blind members, husband and wife, used it so she knew when to expect him home for dinner as he took a handicap bus service with an unreliable itinerary home from work, each day. An autopatch allowed others whose wives were not hams to call and advise them of their progress getting home from work. This system was also a great social conduit, keeping many friends in touch, each and every day. Then the family of a former member, then deceased, put a curse on the group from which it never fully recovered. Like many non-ham families of deceased hams, none of them wanted his old radios and stuff. They offered the club his old radios, most bordering on or past obsolescence by then, if the club would build an "Emergency Trailer" and put his name and call sign on the outside. The jump to claim this guy's old junk was immediate and relentless. Our repeater system was beginning to suffer from age and neglect. It needed what funds and resources were available, ASAP. Suddenly, 110% of all resources (funding and manpower technical expertise) was going into this stupid emergency trailer. Several of the more level-headed members and myself tried arguing that we needed working repeaters more than a trailer that at most, might be used twice a year for stuff like Field Day, and maybe another special event. Given recent history, its use, much less "need" in an actual emergency was unlikely. These cries fell on deaf ears and the majority pushed forward to build the trailer and let the repeaters further atrophy. As a few of us had predicted, in the years that followed, this must-have emergency trailer saw scant use, and never for a real emergency. Membership dwindled as the repeaters deteriorated even more. At every meeting, a couple of dorks in the club hierarchy would always poll the remaining membership about what we should do to increase membership. A few of us always responded, "Fix the d-mn repeaters!" Of course, this always got ignored. The repeaters all suffered from neglect and became pretty useless. Membership dwindled. I left the club as it no longer served any legitimate purpose. A ham from outside the club patched up the repeaters as a gesture of kindness. Eventually, for whatever reason, he stepped away. A statewide (tax funded) group took on fixing the two remaining repeaters, but apparently, somewhere along the line, distanced itself from the club. Now, that club is soliciting donations for the two remaining repeaters. When I was still an ARRL member, I used to laugh at how many clubs nationwide had gotten on the Emergency Trailer bandwagon. You were nothing unless you or a member of your group had a pic in a recent edition of QST (ham magazine) of yourself or fellow members in your club's trailer, with a mic in your hand, a hard hat on your head, and a traffic vest on your torso. Some groups still have it right. The Mt Mitchell repeater (145.190 MHz) by all accounts, helped get a lot of emergency traffic through in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee, following the Hurricane Helene disaster. That repeater has provided wide-area coverage across several states for decades. May its life be long.

It is wonderful to see the concept of full quieting discussed on a GMRS forum. I do an eye roll every time I hear someone on a GMRS repeater tell someone else on the repeater that they are putting in a S-8 (or whatever) on the repeater. Ya big dummy! That is the signal the repeater is putting on your receiver. It has nothing to do with the power or signal from the radio of the guy you are talking with. The best measure of the other party's signal through the repeater is "heavy white noise and barely readable", "some white noise but readable", "full quieting into the repeater", or some variant thereof. Kudos for creating this topic!

Hi Uncle Yoda! The 550 is now showing as "Off-line". Not sure what happened to it. That other one you mentioned, everyone I know in the area has laughed about it for years. They have that silly disclaimer that it is "members only" or similar, but always say that they are not currently accepting new members because of concerns about overcrowding in an emergency. Seriously? I know people that monitor it regularly and never hear a peep on it, or maybe hear a brief test or kerchunk at times. Why they don't just say that it is a private clique and they don't want anyone else joining from outside, rather than playing word games, nobody I know has figured out. I think you called it with "...just camping out on the frequency." The one guy who located a repeater on top of their (mostly unused) channel would have probably been fine had he not chosen to pipe in garbage from all around the country via that network, artificially creating frequent traffic on his repeater and causing them to feel somehow "threatened".

If a group has endeavored to hog up all eight pairs in an area, if someone puts up an independent repeater and it happens to cause the greedy hogs interference, I look at that independent owner as performing a great public service.

Thank You!

Hey, since you are in the DC area, you might be the guy I have been wanting to run in to to ask something. Back in January of 2021, there were reports in alternative media about the military "jamming" CB, MURS, and GMRS in the DC area. The sources have a long history of fear porn and frequently there being nothing to many of their "pending doom" stories. Commenters on these sites were noting that possibly ham and even EMS were on the receiving end of such jamming. Again, I never saw any verification from radio-oriented sites or sources. I do not recall if this was around the time of Jan 6, or later, around the time of the Biden "inauguration". Do you know anything about this?

Were there New York State wildlife officers in your back yard, trying to murder it?

https://images.app.goo.gl/gnsbTUzw5kTn1gwu8

When you finally come to the realization that the New World Order ensures that they own all candidates with even a remote chance of making it to the White House (always "R" or "D"), it becomes impossible to believe that we can vote our way out of this mess. State and local elections, depending on where you are, yes. I am becoming more and more convinced that all US House and Senate races are equally rigged.

I have had similar occasional issues with this model, the KG935G, KG935G+, and especially the KG905G. It is as though Wouxun has somehow baked an intermittent CTCSS glitch into many of their GMRS radios. I have thus far not been able to identify a specific channel or tone where the problem is more constant or pronounced on. All of these radios are now out of warranty, but do work as they should "most" of the time.