Raybestos

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.

The PL is posted on the repeater's page on My GMRS, so no big deal. Also, it appears to be part of a linked system that is known for tying up multiple channels at a time with one conversation.

That's some crazy stuff! I am sorry for the loss of your old antenna. When your new antenna comes in, here is some music to assemble it by.

Box car is correct on all points. In addition to greater power and altitude, many repeaters use land mobile public safety/business grade gain antennas and low-loss feedline (hard line). All of this contributes to the extended range you enjoy on a repeater, versus ht to ht, ht to mobile, etc. This is why people who can afford it, spend the extra money on repeaters.

Uhhh....no..... I am not going to ask or demand that the FCC allow unnecessary clogging up of the eight few channels we have for repeater and 50W simplex use, thereby turning GMRS into something it was never even remotely intended to be.

There was the "pay to play" group. They rightly dropped their link. Then came Helene and they used the excuse of "disaster/emergency" to re-activate their toy. From monitoring them, the re-linking, as before, served no useful or legitimate purpose. It just ensured that multiple repeaters across a 75-100 mile stretch were clogged with conversations that sounded like 99% of the time, were taking place on one repeater. As before, one conversation on one repeater rendered multiple repeaters useless while it was in progress. As before, it was poor stewardship of available repeater and frequency resources. But hey, "we are in a disaster/ emergency". It also ensured that some clown playing with DTMF tones was "enjoyed" by all, as were occasional lengthy bursts of white noise in the system. They seem to have finally de-linked, at least until something else can be used as an excuse to re-activate their toy. Then, there is the more local bunch that was part of a network with a name that sounds like something to do with fuel effeciency. Looking on-line, that network appears to have all but fallen off of the map, yet listening to that system, it sounds apparent that it is still hooked into something and not a stand-alone.

Hi BradleyRN! Sounds like you figured out the tone thing and its purpose pretty well on your own. Believe it or not, I have known hams, including one Extra Class, who did not understand the tone thing, even after being licensed for years. Congrats! WRXB215 brought up an interesting point and it is possible that I misunderstood part of your message. Did you send the $50 to MyGMRS or to the repeater owner? If MyGMRS, WRXB215 is correct. That is to the people who graciously maintain this site. The repeater owner will not be made aware of it. If to the repeater owner, then check your e-mail for a message from them, advising you of the PL Code. I apologize for any misunderstanding. Also, when you hear an active conversation on that frequency, try activating the "tone scan" feature on one of your radios while a conversation is in-progress. If you do not get an indication of which tone is in use after a while, try the DCS tone scan. If you get a hit, enter that tone in your transmit "encode" and try to communicate. Ask what you need to do to get permission to use the repeater. Good luck!

You will need that "tone", whether PL or DPL. Check your e-mails if you sent in your money to them on-line. They likely sent you one with the PL or DPL they use in it. You will need to transmit that tone to access the repeater. Being that you are new to GMRS, I have a feeling that you will need additional help getting the tone into your radio. If so, no shame in that. Let us know once you have the tone, what type radio you have. Somebody else or myself will be glad to get you where you need to be with this process.

Thank You!

I have heard this is necessary. Ideally, the antenna would be designed, engineered, and made so this was not necessary. What materials are needed and what areas would need this treatment?

Thank You for reposting that, Steve! Yes, on my Android, where it went to yellow print on a white background, I could not read it.

That was interesting! Wish I could have read all of it. Unfortunately their webmaster didn't understand the importance of having a decent contrast between the background and the lettering on the latter portion. Hilarious that they blame OffRoaderX for their problems when he was just the messenger. I guess there really are people still who would "shoot the messenger".

"A GMRS user can expect a communications range of one to twenty-five miles depending on station class, terrain, and repeater use. GMRS stations cannot be interconnected with the public switched telephone network or any other network for the purpose of carrying GMRS communications, but these networks can be used for remote control of repeater stations. In other words, repeaters may not be linked via the internet—an example of an “other network” in the rules—to extend the range of the communications across a large geographic area. Linking multiple repeaters to enable a repeater outside the communications range of the handheld or mobile device to retransmit messages violates sections 95.1733(a)(8) and 95.1749 of the Commission’s rules, and potentially other rules in 47 C.F.R. Repeaters may be connected to the telephone network or other networks only for purposes of remote control of a GMRS station, not for carrying communication signals. In addition to violating Commission rules, linking repeaters is not in the public interest. Because GMRS spectrum is limited and used on a shared “commons” basis, the service only works well on a localized basis when users can hear each other and cooperate in the sharing of channels. Linking repeaters not only increases the potential for interference, but also uses up a limited spectrum resource over much larger areas than intended, limiting localized availability of the repeater channels." The above pretty much says it all. In particular, the part about: "In other words, repeaters may not be linked via the internet—an example of an “other network” in the rules—to extend the range of the communications across a large geographic area. Linking multiple repeaters to enable a repeater outside the communications range of the handheld or mobile device to retransmit messages violates sections 95.1733(a)(8) and 95.1749 of the Commission’s rules, and potentially other rules in 47 C.F.R. Repeaters may be connected to the telephone network or other networks only for purposes of remote control of a GMRS station, not for carrying communication signals." Any connection to another repeater constitutes one of the dictionary definitions of "a network". "From Vocabulary dot com: noun (broadcasting) a communication system consisting of a group of broadcasting stations that all transmit the same programs “the networks compete to broadcast important sports events” see more noun (electronics) a system of interconnected electronic components or circuits" FROM IONOS "Definition: Network A network is a group of two or more computers or other electronic devices that are interconnected for the purpose of exchanging data and sharing resources." Regardless of the method of linking used to attempt to circumvent FCC rules regarding GMRS linking, it is still an obnoxious practice that attempts to change the scope of GMRS from its intended purpose of personal communications into a hobby in and of itself, aka "ham radio lite".

True! The same as using a FRS/GMRS ht in the terrain I live in, as far distance goes. Please see my reply to dosw elsewhere regarding scanning/hailing on all five. Thank You for the reply!

Hi dosw! LOL@ "the baby monitor net" and "Mr Microphone simplex group". Seriously, I was just curious as to whether or not there really was such a net. At least the guy who started the GMRS/FRS Ch 19 thing put some thought into it and, in some areas at least, it has yielded results. While you "could" scan the five MURS channels and even call out on all five, that is unnecessarily cumbersome, even with only five channels. I am just double checking to try and find evidence, if any, that a MURS net with a suggested meeting channel exists. If not, I was going to suggest to the local area net that this entry be dropped from announcements as it serves no purpose. Thank You!