Raybestos

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.

Even the Baofeng UV5G has a better channel setup than the GM-30. The UV5G allows for setting up additional channels such as repeater channels with whatever PL tones you might need or even simplex channels with whatever tones you may need in addition to the standard 30. I get that there are some people out there in the world who will only ever use their GMRS radios to communicate simplex with one-another and some of them may actually never use the PL on their radios. More power to them. I find it difficult to imagine the majority of GMRS users will not at some point, either from personal curiosity or with encouragement from more technically savvy friends, decide they want to use performance enhancing features on their radios like repeaters and PL codes. For those people, such a poorly designed radio as this will be virtually useless. I gave mine to a GMRS newcomer who had expressed interest in buying one so he could see what he would have been getting and to save him the aggravation.

I bought a GM-30 earlier this year and found it to be a total piece of crap. Instead of giving you "extra" channels you could configure to your own needs as the Wouxun radios do, the GM-30 gave you a few sets of eight (repeater/50W simplex) channels and ONLY those channels. The only channels fully configurable to your specs were the thirty standard GMRS channels. I forget how many sets of those eight repeater/50W simplex channels it had, but one glaring glitch was that the odd numbered channels (15, 17, 19, 21) would only allow for simplex use, and the even numbered channels (16,18,20,22) would only allow their use on repeaters. I even got the much superior RT Systems software in hopes it would allow for a work-around, but it did not. My guess is that your group if on a repeater is on one of those odd numbered channels, and if on simplex, is on one of the even numbered channels. If you are trying to communicate with your group and are using the "extra" channels, try using GMRS 15 thru GMRS 22 if on simplex, and GMRS 15 Repeat thru GMRS 22 Repeat (in the first thirty channels) if trying to connect through a repeater. I no longer have that radio, but it seems they had some crazy numbering for the repeater channels like "Repeater 1" thru "Repeater 8" or similar. I thought FCC rules required a standard numbering system for GMRS radios. If you can't get it to work and you still have time, send it back and get a refund. I waited too long to start trying to program mine and by the time I realized it was a dog, it was too late to send it back. I did buy a Radioddity GA-510 and am generally happy with it. It is a ham radio but fully configurable on all channels and will allow programming of FRS, GMRS, MURS, and more. Good luck!

I hope so, too. I wonder if he has any radio gear. If so, knowing that would be helpful so searchers and the public in that area could be encouraged to turn on their radios and monitor for possible distress calls from this gentleman.

Hi Uncle Yoda! In the scope that I have always heard the term "node" used, they are always hooked to a network of some kind and almost always simplex or semi-duplex without a repeater function. That lack of repeater function leads to the enhanced potential for people trying to talk through the node transmitting on top of each other. I apologize for the lack of clarification. When I posted that I was getting a lot of back-to-back phone calls. That may not be a complete definition, but it is how I have generally understood nodes.

Just be cautious in applying that technique. Sadly, it has its limitations. My ex did not buy into my story that the other woman in the house had always been there.

The key is to play it off very smoothly. My last wife, not a radio or a gun person, would occasionally question a new radio or gun in the house. "No, it has always been here. Don't you remember it?" Or, you can try, "It was at my mother's house. She was tired of it taking up space there, so I brought it here." Best of luck on your new acquisitions!

Nodes are kind of like a linked repeater, but in some ways even more annoying. Like a linked repeater, they frequently pipe in blather and useless conversations from other parts of the state or nation, that have little or zero relevance to anything in the local area. Like linked repeaters, they have the potential to tie up one of the precious few (8) repeater pairs/50W simplex channels that GMRS has available, with useless chatter that has no relevance or bearing on the local area. Unlike linked repeaters, people using a node may not be in range of one-another and as a result, will not always hear each-other when communicating with someone via a node. This may result in doubling and unintentional interference in the local area around the node. For instance, you may have a node piping in conversation from another county or state in your local area. You are located fifteen miles west of the node and hit it and receive it with ease from your home. Another guy lives fifteen miles east of the node. Likewise, he hits and receives the node with ease from his home. You and the other guy, however, cannot hear each other. Let's say the two of you are each in a conversation with a third guy who is coming in via the node. Each of you will hear and talk with this third guy. If it is a lively conversation, since you and the guy fifteen miles on the other side of the node cannot hear each other there may be doubling, or stepping on each-other's transmissions when trying to talk to the guy on the node. It will create difficulty for him in hearing the two of you. While there might be legitimate useful potential in having a node at a remote site for limited use by you and close family or friends, most are just a cheap way to clog up one of the few channels on GMRS that are available for repeater or 50W simplex use.

I know it is a pain in the rear, but if you feel up to it, and you really do need to be in the mood to do such, try sending the FCC a request that they address this festering issue. I did last year. They acknowledged receipt but that was the last I heard of it. The more requests they get to fix this problem, hopefully prohibiting ALL forms of repeater and "node" linking on GMRS, the more likely they are to act. Wish I could help with a link or such but once I finished the task and cleaned up all the hair I had pulled out of my head and armpits while trying to navigate the FCC site and processes, I forgot much of it. You are a GMRS licensee so you have some understanding of what I mean about that.