Raybestos

Hopefully, the FCC will have the foresight and the sense to make linking repeaters prohibited, by whatever means. They got it right about it not serving the purpose of GMRS with linking. This is a cancer that never should have seen the light of day.

Boy, did you ever get reamed out! I guess I need to confess my sins and hope they are a little kinder and gentler with me. "Forgive me Father for I have sinned..." Back in late 1992, I planned a vacation to Middle Tennessee with my girlfriend at the time. While there, we were going to do some research that had the potential for us to split up and check out old grave yards. In that day, nobody I knew had a pocket or belt size cell phone. I had a hardshell portable/mobile and had to punch in an activation code for any roaming area I might try and use it in. There was no FRS. There was no MURS. GMRS existed but as far as I know, you needed prohibitively expensive Moto or GE radios for that. The night before we were to leave, I was in Radio Shack and saw a pair of Itinerate Business ht's (1 or 2 Watt) that were packed on the Red Dot channel. From listening to that channel on my scanners, I already knew it was a mostly unlicensed free-for-all. Still, it fit my needs at the time, quite well. CB ht's were too big and bulky. Their antennas were too long and they did not work satisfactorily inside of buildings. These small business radios were just what I needed to keep in touch with her for safety and convenience. They were CSQ only with option to add another itinerate business channel, which I never did. The xmit and receive audio of those radios was outstanding. We used them throughout the trip and occasionally on her small rural tract of land, back home. The only other party besides my girlfriend that I talked with on the trip, was a guy in Gatlinburg. I was on a mountain about 18 miles from Gatlinburg and asked if anyone was out there. This guy was on a mobile and we both heard each other with full quieting signals. Were we taking that trip today, FRS/GMRS would have met our needs perfectly. Back then, there was no such option, especially on a budget and on short notice.

Says the guy who has a home where he can key up one of his favorite repeaters, 69 miles away, with just about any ht he happens to have laying around.

Yeah, 100, 200, or however many users ×2 or so kerchunks a day might get a bit annoying. I have never heard that level of kerchunks from people casually checking out the system on any repeater. The occasional malicious interference generator, I have heard do that, but that is a whole other situation. Can you imagine 100, 200, or more pointless ID's and contacts in the same day?

Hi OffRoaderX! I meant to say "harder". I have since corrected it. If one is determined to hack the tone, they will get it. That is true. If there is not much traffic on the repeater to allow for tone scan, the next way they might try hacking it is going through all possible tones to see which one keys up the repeater. If there is no hang time, that option is pretty much off of the table.

As to kerchunking, I never got why some people got so bent out of shape about the occasional kerchunk. Yes, frequent or continuous kerchunking can be annoying. I get that. Occasional kerchunks never bothered me, though I have known plenty (mostly hams) who got totally bent out of shape over it. "Why do some people not spend the extra effort to identify along with the kerchunk?" Probably because they just wanted to ascertain that the repeater was working and/or get an idea as to how well they could receive it from their present location. They may not have wanted to get trapped in a long conversation with one of the many emotionally needy souls who sit by the radio all day, waiting for some hapless soul to identify so they can pounce on them.

Some owners of closed (owner and close associates only) repeaters will set it to zero hang time so that potential intruders do not know there is a repeater there and if they do, it makes it harder for them to hack the PL or DPL. I understand and get their reason for doing that. Why anyone running an open system repeater would set their hang time to zero is beyond me. It is a total (b-word) move in my opinion. Leaving at least a two second hang time lets users know that 1, they hit the repeater, and 2, gives them some idea how well they can hear the repeater from their present vantage point. I was aware of at least one well-known radio dealer that set up an open system repeater with zero hang time. Also, they required a tone to access it (good idea) but did not encode the tone on the repeater's output (dumb idea). That meant if the end users (who frequently were their customers) would often think there was no repeater on the air when traveling through the store's area, due to zero hang time. The lack of a tone on the output also meant if your tone decoder was turned on, you would not hear anyone responding to you. It also meant that since your decoder had to be turned off to hear the repeater, end users potentially had to listen to static from various sources, as well as FRS kiddie talkies and the like while monitoring that repeater system. None of these things went far towards giving a good impression of the expertise you might expect from that store's technical staff.

I understand that it can be fun to ask in a desperate voice, for someone to bring a roll of tp to the dressing room. Reiterate that you had to go and there is no tp in the dressing room and you really need some to "clean up" with.

I have posted this before. For those who have seen it already, I will beg your forgiveness on the redundancy. For those who may not have seen it, I hope it helps. Any radio I have which allows for more channels, in addition to the main thirty most radios come packed with, I do the following. I set each channel to encode only, a 141.3 tone. That is channels 1 thru 30. Being that 141.3 is the most commonly used tone and the travel tone on GMRS, I figure it enhances your chance that someone might hear you throwing out your call when on the road. You may be trying make a contact in an area where someone has their radio's PL decoder turned on to screen out random noise from automobile circuitry, gas pumps, or kiddie talkies. I leave the radios decoder off (also known as carrier squelch mode) in case someone hears me and responds, but is in carrier squelch mode, themselves. Either way, if in range, we will hear each-other. Also, for whatever reason, there are quite a few repeaters out there that require a tone (again, many use 141.3) to access the repeater, but do not encode a tone on the output. Should you hit one of these repeaters, if your PL decoder is on, you will not be able to hear anyone responding to your call. Channels above 30 (31, 32, 33, 34, etc), I set for repeaters I commonly use or anticipate some day traveling through their area, including encoded tones and (if applicable) decode tones on the repeater output. I follow this protocol on my radios and those of friends whose radios I program for them, provided they have the ability to add channels beyond the main thirty. Oh, time saving hint: If an ht capable of transmitting on all thirty, I program it like that on all thirty channels. If on a mobile, since they do not transmit on channels 8 thru 14, I do not program a tone as it would be pointless.

Interesting!

What is this? Are you talking about what is commonly known as a "parrot repeater" that automatically re-transmits a received signal on the same frequency a few seconds later, or something else?

Agreed! One popular radio oriented site is moderated to death. I think most of its moderators get a below-the-belt rush from locking threads after proclaiming "All that can be said here has been said. LOCKED!" even when there was quite a lot still worthy of being said and asked. They love deleting comments or locking threads if the forbidden topic of "encryption" is mentioned in a way the moderators find to be "unclean", even though encryption is a major problem confronting most users of that site. Better no moderation or not enough than too much, any day of the week.

Yes. Even if it had an input AND an output tone, you could get away with programming your radio to only encode the tone on transmit. For reasons I will never grasp, an awful lot of ham and GMRS repeater owners just don't have that extra thirty seconds it would have taken them to program their repeaters to encode a tone on the output. While the repeater still works that way, it deprives the end users of being able to program a receive (decode) tone in their radio, meaning they will likely have to listen to kids playing with FRS radios, computer hash, and other noises, when using that repeater.

It is inevitable, when a number of men (and sometimes women) wind up using shared frequencies in close range of each other, conversations will start. Eventually, these conversations turn to what type radio and antennas they are running. Then cable, microphones, ht's, and other stuff. Eventually, these people want to meet face-to-face and see who they've been talking to. Friendships and alliances develope. That was 27 MHz CB in the 1960's and it is GMRS, today. I see nothing wrong with that. A sense of community and familiarity is good in that not only these guys, enjoying a sort of "hobby" aspect of two-way radio have someone they can call on for help (car trouble, suspicious vehicle following you, etc), but their wives, children, or girlfriends, have this resource too, so long as there is a radio in their vehicle. The linking of repeaters and other hobby-like experimentation does seriously detract from the original intended purpose of personal communications, IMHO. So many people I know act like studying a book for a couple of weeks or a month to get a Technician ham license is this insurmountable hurdle, like they were expected to go to college for a decade and get a Doctorate in electronics or something. I could almost understand it if Morse was still a requirement, but it isn't. I hated the code requirement as a kid but as an adult, found that getting 5 WPM really wasn't difficult. 13 WPM was a bear, but that is all water under the bridge, as they say. If someone wants to do exotic stuff like repeater linking and digital modes, let them get their Technician or higher license. If not, learn to live without the exotic stuff and enjoy GMRS for what it is.

Though in theory it shouldn't be this way, performance of a given radio on Narrowband vs Wideband can vary by make, model, and in some cases, individual radios. Personally, I program all of my GMRS radios for Wideband on channels 1 thru 7, and the eight repeater and/or 50W simplex channels. Channels 8-14 are I believe, hardwired for Narrowband per FCC regulations. Hopefully, OffRoader X will reply as he has a metric ton more experience in the off-road world than I.

You might be right. I can't imagine how or why so many elements were altered in each one if it were a legitimate mistake, though. Stuff like the Ft Meyers coverage map, the Kershaw GMRS repeater (in Lancaster County, SC) being listed in "Lancaster, NC", DPL Codes from Columbia 725 showing when they are not currently on the legitimate page, and other stuff. Still, weirder things have been known to happen, so you might be right.

Hi Uncle Yoda! It appears that this is a situation like WRXP381 and WRUU653 had indicated. This looks to be a bogus creation along with three others, that interestingly all wound up under one guy's "My Repeaters" list. All four have a coverage map for the Ft Meyers, FL area. I know the owners of three of the four. You can see where the creator of the bogus listings used parts of past listings, current frequencies and PL's, and other stuff thrown together. The all lower case type, is another clue, though on one, the lower case is on the location, not the repeater name. I can't imagine why anyone would do this but it seems likely it is some childish need to make people think you put up repeaters that you never did. Used to see this in the old ARRL Repeater Directories of previous decades. I haven't bought one in over 15 years, but people would list themselves as having (ham) repeaters up, year-after-year-after-year, that either never existed or had not been working in years or even decades. The ARRL would not accept the word of anyone but the repeater "owner" about status or anything else, therefore these vapor/paper repeaters infested their directory for years. As I noted somewhere else, I guess this is the same pathetic mindset that motivates some people to commit "Stolen Valor" and claim to have been "Special Forces", "Navy Seals", and similar who were never those things and in many cases, never even served in the military.

Thank You, Steve! Can you advise me on what the reporting procedure is? I cannot find a "flag" or "report" button for the bogus repeaters or the page for the guy who has them in his "my repeaters" list.

So, does an Administrator or other person at MyGMRS eventually remove those bogus listings (and maybe the account who created them), or do they just stay up indefinitely?

That's a great bit of advice! I always wanted one of those, anyway. Thing is, I have so many actual ghosts in my house, one of those things would probably go haywire.

Weird things do happen. Please see my edit to my above post. In the mid 1990's, I worked at a police department that operated on 460 MHz. One night, we had one of those weird and rare, "pea soup" fogs that was very RF friendly. For about 2-3 hours, another department was coming in loud and clear. It used the same PL as our department as it broke through on our PL decoders on our ht's and mobiles. We could hear their dispatch and some of the cars coming through our repeater. Likewise, some of our cars and ht's would key up their repeater and make strong interference where our repeater just barely came over it. I wanted badly to ask them where they were but knew I would probably get a butt chewing from one of the Sergeants or Lieutenants given that our whole city was dispatched on that channel and was very busy. We never heard that department before or after that, so it must have been at some distance. We regularly heard other departments 100 or so miles away, if we turned off our PL decoders.

It can and does happen, but usually not very often. It certainly is not likely that it would be recurring for around a month. A friend worked in a VZW call center about 20-25 years ago. He told me that periodically customers would call from South Carolina, complaining that they were billed for roaming and long distance when they were talking to someone inside of their local calling area. He said the bill, and their database showed the call as having been made on a tower in New York state. He said his Customer Svc representative was arguing with a customer about this. He told her he would handle the call. He explained to the rep and the customer what happened. The call log showed the customer making or receiving calls within thirty minutes before and after the disputed call. They were on local towers in South Carolina. The disputed call had obviously hit a weird condition, "band opening", or "skip", which allowed the pocket-sized phone to hit a tower in New York state, incurring the roaming and long distance charges. There was no way the customer could have travelled from SC to NY, and back to SC in such a short time frame. He issued credits and apologies to the customer. He said they had a handful of such incidents over about a two year period of time. If that can happen at 800 MHz, it can happen at 462 MHz.

Is it possible that you are getting bled on by a repeater more close to yours and that the people in Indiana you hear are on a linked system that a more local to your repeater also is on?

That is an interesting thought! I was unaware of that possibility.

Browsing My GMRS repeater listing just now, I noted the number of repeaters listed for SC had jumped from 41 to 43, but I saw no new listings. Finally, I noticed that the listing's for Hopkins and Palmetto GMRS Columbia 725 had "duplicates" with the "duplicate" listing in all lower case letters. The information for both differed somewhat from the legitimate listings to include a coverage map for Ft Meyers, FL for each. Looking around, I noted similar weirdness on other states' sites, to include the Kershaw, SC repeater being listed on the North Carolina page as being Lancaster, NC. Again, the coverage map shows the Ft Meyers, FL area. Under the Georgia repeater listings, there is a lower case listing for "camden", again with a Ft Meyers coverage map. Not sure how widespread this is but I wanted to make you aware of it.