Raybestos

I feel your pain! All three (FedEx, USPS, and UPS) can be pretty terrible in my area. FedEx, the worst, is bad about promising delivery in a two or so hour window, early in the day. As the day wears on, the window gets moved later and later in the day. One day, I had canceled all appointments to wait at home for an "adult signature required" (firearm) item to return from the factory, where it had been for repairs. I left a note on my door to allow me time to get there and to knock and ring repeatedly. About 1:30PM, I checked the tracking info and it said "recipient not home", "ticket left on door". My doorbell never rang and there was no knock. Also, no ticket was on my door. I made multiple calls to FedEx and was generally told "tough" and they would bring it tomorrow. It seems to be a game with their drivers to avoid delivering packages in any way they can today. I guess it never occurs to them that they will eventually have to deliver it. Last year this time, FedEx mis-delivered 1,000 rds of .22LR (Mini-Mags) to someone else's house. The picture (proof of delivery) they took was not my porch. I walked my whole neighborhood and never saw a porch that looked like the one in the pic. Thankfully, the place I bought them from made it right.

Man, those DIP switches go back a way! My wife's grandmother gave the wife her old IC2AT. It was probably one of the first ht's that did not require crystals for frequency changes. It had thumbwheel frequency selection on top and no PL encode or decode. It did have a DTMF keypad on the front. There were only a couple of repeaters you could use it on locally, but it was a cool piece of yesteryear technology.

I do agree, and congratulations on testing AND passing your exam! I recall in the late 90's, in my area, packet weenies had much of 2m simplex polluted with their noise makers. No joke! Depending on the day or week, there were times you struggled to find a simplex 2m channel to yak with friends on. It seemed as though every simpex channel was occupied by that annoying "SCREEEEECH" every few seconds. My friends and I had to use PL to keep from hearing that. I wound up buying a PL decoder board for my radio and had one sent to a friend whose budget didn't allow him to purchase one. At that time, many 2m transceivers could encode a PL but you had to buy the optional board for decode (radio silence). Some jerk even had one set up on 146.52, the nationwide simplex call channel. Thankfully, that eventually died down, or they all figured out they could run their noise makers on the same channel and not interfere with one another.

Why and for what possible good reason? Once again, it sounds like someone wanting to turn GMRS, with its very limited bandwidth, into "ham radio lite". Rather than additionally trashing our already scarce bandwidth, why not get a book, study it for a week or few, and get your Technician license? Then play with gizmo gadgetry where there is adequate bandwidth and existing infrastructure for it until you heart is content

"X as in xylophone"

I never ceased to be amazed at the control freakism some repeater owners display. Thankfully, most areas have at least one like the guy you talked with who was the owner and from the sound of it, a really cool guy. I chuckle at the numerous repeaters listed on here with a 5 or so mile range and listed as "permission required". Seriously? Do you really expect such a glut of operators within that tiny footprint that you need to control access to it? I know, they are totally within their rights to require permission but it is interesting to do amateur psych evaluations on some of these guys based on their control levels on their repeaters. Then you have some who go into great detail as to what can or cannot be said, how to say it, and even want to know what type radios you are using before they deem you worthy to operate on their system. I can see a simple "ID and follow the FCC rules" or "keep it family friendly, no profanity", but some of these "thou shalt and thou shalt nots" are comical. Anyway, I am glad you and your son connected with a really great repeater owner.

Well, your reading comprehension seems to be as poor as your mathmatical skills. "I am in a general area with two linked repeaters tied in to more. Conversations entirely on the most distant one regularly tie up the two closer to me. Another guy has put up a big repeater tied in to a big national network along with a couple of nodes and another guy still, felt it necessary to link his short range repeater into that network." Maybe I am wrong, but I count six frequencies being polluted in one area with garbage from elsewhere. A couple of new repeater (or "node") ops pop up in the area wanting to delight us with their ability to hook their device to the internet and all eight channels are spoken for during much of the day. IF as you say, your devices are the only ones in your area, then maybe not so much harm. Again, in GMRS we have ONLY eight 50W Simplex/Repeater Pairs which are practically the same thing. If the idea that so many new repeater operators have that it would be such a great idea to link to this repeater or that network holds, then you can soon have a problem. If you are a ham, why not spread your joy of linking on ham freqs, where repeater and simplex allocations number in literal dozens, rather than fewer than a dozen? In my area, the problem is knocking loudly at our door in the here-and-now. You seem only concerned with rules being followed, not so much courtesy or consideration for other users of limited frequency space. I understand that in San Francisco, the law allows people to relieve themselves on sidewalks. I guess you would be fine with that. Just because one "can" do something, doesn't always mean that they "should". But don't let courtesy or consideration stop you from having fun and showing others how smart you think yourself to be.

Back in the early 90's, I kept a Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner in my locker at work for those days when I was stuck doing dispatch for my small department. One night, stuck on dispatch, I was scanning the 800 MHz phone bands and it stops on a conversation between two females who were obviously of the lesbian persuasion. One was at home and the other was out doing a paper route in the early morning hours. The one doing her paper route was talking the other through, ahhh, some things. I kept thinking that the one at home sounded familiar. I continued listening and could not escape the feeling that I knew the voice of the one at home. After a while, there was a loud train whistle on the end of the one at home. She told the one on her paper route that she would need to hold on a minute until the train passed as she couldn't hear her with the train right behind her house. Then it hit me. I had lunch with the one at home the day before, about 16 hrs earlier. It was my girlfriend's adult daughter. My girlfriend was busy that day and it was her daughter's birthday. My girlfriend was unable to take her to lunch because of her job and the girl's dad was being a jerk and not communicating with her. My girlfriend asked me to take her to lunch so that someone did something nice for her, and I did. I didn't make the connection until I heard the train as she had a railroad track in her back yard. Needless to say, I never told my girlfriend or her daughter what I heard.

I am in a general area with two linked repeaters tied in to more. Conversations entirely on the most distant one regularly tie up the two closer to me. Another guy has put up a big repeater tied in to a big national network along with a couple of nodes and another guy still, felt it necessary to link his short range repeater into that network. AFAIK, GMRS was not created so that people get to "enjoy" useless chatter from across the state or across the nation. It was for families, friends, and others, to have reasonably reliable two-way radio comms in their local area. I define "local" as how far a base, mobile, ht, or repeater, can reach to other devices in the area it is set up in, be it 5 miles or 100 miles, depending on terrain and gear used. If dead air is so worrisome, there are options available without unnecessarily clogging the 8 existing repeater/50W Simplex channels with pointless noise. Ideas include: 1) get your ham Tech license. It really isn't that hard. A little reading and study. No more Morse Code test. Hams have waay more repeater frequencies at VHF and UHF and can therefore better handle the linking. 2) If too lazy or whatever for #1, CB allows for talking and hearing skip from all over. Unlike internet linking, which is really no different than VOIP phone calls, your radio, antenna, and location, come together to allow you to talk to a distant state (or country) using the airwaves, not a glorified phone network. 3) If your base, ht, or mobile, allows; program in some ham repeaters or other frequencies and listen to them. 4) Download a scanner app and listen to public safety and ham stuff from across the country. 5) call someone on your phone, in the next county or the other side of the country. Be it a friend, relative, or a random desk clerk at a big chain motel; you can experience the same "thrill" of talking to distant places using the same (VOIP) technology that makes those trendy and kewel repeater linkups possible. And you don't even have to remember to key or unkey a mic!

The unlawful DMR stuff is bad enough. That, however, is not a good excuse to add to the pile and make it worse.

There are areas in and around the Greater Columbia (SC) Metro Area where you hear incessant DTMF streams, digital noise, dead carriers, and other stuff on a pretty near constant basis. As big cities go, this is not one of the larger ones, therefore I would expect the same or worse in other areas.

Agreed! Once again, in a perfect GMRS world, with no linked or "networked" repeaters, this should be a minimal problem. Absent garbage being constantly piped in from across the state or across the nation, most repeaters I have ever heard, have little traffic. If you regularly operate on one repeater output for 50W simplex, and a repeater becomes active, you could switch to another 50W output and probably find it vacant. Without linking, the chances that all eight are in use via an overpowering repeater in your area are kinda slim. With so much linking, well, that can be a problem in some areas, especially when all eight 50W channels are blasting the same conversation out at the same time.

Great, another excuse to clutter GMRS frequencies with digital noise. MURS (already thoroughly cluttered) or ham might be great places for this technology, though.

Hi James! I understand the headache thing. Once it is adequately explained, hopefully it will fit together more easily for you. I will try to do that but if I inadvertently leave holes of gaps, please feel free to question me. This will be lengthy so I beg the pardon of those who feel that all comments should be brief. Your mobile, base, or ht, when operating through a repeater will necessarily transmit on one frequency (the repeater input), and receive on another (the repeater output). Those input/output frequencies need to be spaced a certain distance from each other frequency wise to prevent de-sense and other issues of self-interference by the repeater to itself. On land mobile UHF frequencies in the USA (like GMRS), the standard spacing is exactly 5 MHz. Using the lowest GMRS repeater pair for instance, to operate on repeater channel 15, your mobile, base, or ht (here shortened to ht for brevity) will necessarily transmit on 467.550 which is where a repeater using repeater channel 15 listens for all transmissions. When the repeater hears a transmission on that frequency (its input), it begins transmitting on the output channel (462.550). Audio (voice, etc) received on the input is transferred to the output and broadcast over it, where others' mobiles, bases, and ht's receive it. Given that ideally, a repeater is up high on a tower, water tank, building, mountain, etc, and usually with a large gain antenna, it enables transmissions from an ht to be heard and retransmitted at much greater distance than would normally be possible. The repeater is doing something that most ht's etc cannot do, which is transmitting and receiving at the same time. When your unkey your ht, the signal into the repeater drops and after a few seconds (usually 2 or 3), and the repeater stops transmitting. That extra 2 or 3 seconds is called "hang time" (often erroneously referred to as "squelch tail") and is helpful in determining your relative signal received from the repeater and whether or not you actually keyed it up or "hit it". It can be set by the repeater owner regarding duration and some repeaters (thankfully very few) may have no hang time at all, leaving you to guess whether or not you hit it or whether or not it is even on the air. If the repeater is using carrier squelch (aka CS or CSQ), chances are high that it will regularly receive and re-transmit traffic intended for other repeaters operating on that same repeater frequency or "pair" (input/output). Those transmissions could be in the same town or even hundreds of miles away depending on elevation of the repeater, the other system ht's, band conditions, etc. Enter CTCSS/DCS! CTCSS (Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System) and newer DCS (Digital Coded Squelch) allow a repeater owner to set his repeater's tone decoder to a specific tone. That tone will be needed before the repeater receiver can receive an ht's transmission on the input and begin re-transmitting it on the output. Other signals using carrier squelch or a different tone will not open up the receiver and activate the repeater. Think of the tone decoder (for instance set to 141.3 Hz) as a lock. The encoder on your ht, also set to 141.3 is the key that opens the receiver and allows it to key the repeater transmitter, rebroadcasting your transmission over the repeater. The term "encode" is generally associated with transmitting from a given ht or repeater and "decode" is associated with the receiver on a given ht or repeater. You encode a 141.3 tone so the repeater's decoder set at 141.3 will open up and activate the repeater. Likewise, most repeaters, as a convenience and courtesy to their end-users, will encode the same tone on their output. In this example, we will say that when this hypothetical repeater begins transmitting, it is encoding a 141.3 tone on the output. As many ht's (and mobiles or bases) have rather loose front ends (the part of your receiver that screens out a host of noise and interference sources), being able to set your ht's decoder to that output tone to keep your radio silent except for stuff coming through the repeater is a big deal for many. Setting your ht's decoder to 141.3 on this repeater will greatly reduce annoyances from other repeaters, kids playing on FRS, intermod, spurious signals, etc, from coming through your speaker. Unfortunately, some repeater owners neglect to set the encoders on their repeaters, forcing their end users to endure the aforementioned noise sources and more. Some repeater owners who limit access to their repeaters may encode one tone on the output and require a different tone on the input to make it more difficult for an unauthorized user to hack their tone by using tone scan. Even if the repeater encodes a tone on its output, you have the option of leaving your decoder on your ht turned off if you desire, allowing you to hear other repeaters, simplex conversations on GMRS/FRS channel 15, etc. Many repeaters have a Morse code automatic ID which will sound every 15 minutes during a conversation and at random times throughout the day and night. As many repeater operators thoughtfully set their repeaters to not encode a tone during these random Morse ID's, setting your decoder on your ht can let you work, watch tv, and sleep better, if you have your radio on while doing those and other things. I hope this was of some help.

I realize the FCC does not condone scramblers on ham or GMRS. That said, I wish there were a hack to activate scrambler encoding, along with the decode feature some Wouxuns have, in case things deteriorate to a WROL situation. No, the voice inversion scrambling would not give you total privacy, but it would eliminate around 70% of a potential listening audience from hearing your group's transmissions.

On all of my ht's and mobile radios, I set them to encode (transmit) only on all thirty channels with a 141.3 PL. As this is the universally (in the USA) accepted travel and open system tone, I figure my chances of being heard increase greatly, whether on an open system repeater, or on simplex where an operator needed more protection from noise blaring through their speaker than the carrier squelch alone on their radio had to offer. As others on here have correctly noted, I leave the receive on those channels in carrier squelch (cs) mode or "Off" on some CTCSS Decode menus. For some reason, many repeater operators just couldn't spare that extra 30 seconds it would have taken them to program their repeater to encode a tone on the output to match the one required on the input to activate their repeater. If such is the case on a repeater you are trying to use, if your CTCSS decoder is turned on, you will not hear that repeater, thus the cs mode. Most of my stuff is Wouxun, so adding other repeaters and simplex channels where differing PL codes are used is no problem. If you have Midland radios or similar that do not readily allow addition of more repeater and/or simplex channels, programming your radio as I described above may not be a luxury you can partake of on all channels. I hope this helps.

Normally, I would totally agree. That said, we only have eight 50W Simplex/Repeater channels on GMRS. In an increasing number of areas, more and more repeaters and "nodes" are being added which pipe in inane chatter from all over the state and/or nation for much of the day. This makes ignoring those setups less of an option when the garbage being piped in from elsewhere ties up half or in some cases, all of those eight channels. If your own bike is using a repeater or 50W simplex to stay in touch with family or friends in your local area, riding it becomes very difficult when you have multiple repeaters or nodes that pipe in pointless chatter from around the country jamming an axe handle between your spokes. Just sayin'...

Lemme know if you get it to encode on the scrambler feature!

I will be coming back to give this an up-vote when my reactions bank is replenished.

I think GMRS can accomodate family/personal use as well as occasional socializing/chatting. As others have noted, long-winded keydowns and blather for the sake of blather can be annoying but occasional conversations are good and can develope friendships and a sense of community on a local repeater(s). I think GMRS was intended for mostly local comms and should stay that way. In my book, "local" means as far as one radio can reach to another or to a repeater. If your setup and the repeater allow you to reach the repeater regularly at 150-200, miles away, you are local. If rare conditions let you hit a repeater 700 miles away, that is cool, too. Most would be glad to hear from you and to say "hi". These pointless linked and networked systems are an abomination in that they pipe in jabber from other areas that have nothing to do with your local area. A husband trying to reach his wife (or vice versa) traveling through a cellular deadspot will play heck getting through to each-other on the local repeater when it is jammed with ratchet jaws who are all on one or two repeaters on the other side of the state or nation, being piped in because the local repeater owner thinks being linked in to these drones is somehow "kewel". If there is a break in the ratchet jawing from afar, and the husband and wife do connect for a brief talk, expect some emotionally needy dork on the other side of the country to break in because, "I just wanted to say hi". Honest, in most cases, we really don't care what is happening hundreds or thousands of miles away, or what someone in those distant places has to say on GMRS. If DX is your thing, get a ham license. If you are too lazy for that, use CB when the skip is running. Or call up some friend, relative, or random person a few states away or even in another country, and talk with them on the phone. You will be using the same technology that allows for these repeater and network links on GMRS, but without denying someone else use of the frequency who is hundreds or thousands of miles distant.

Well, for one thing, ham is not an acronym.

Midland FRS/GMRS radios, IMHO are junk. Their design engineers from what I have seen, apparently never used an FRS/GMRS radio, or talked to anyone who did. Let's start with their ht's. AFAIK, none of them are repeater capable. Last time I checked, their "go-to" ht battery was a whopping 700mAh. You would think that a company that pushes its stuff as being for people enjoying the great outdoors would offer something considerably greater (at least 4×) for portables than 700 mAh. This includes their "Base Camp" radio. I guess they figure you won't wear out your hand OR the hand crank charging it back to 700 mAh. Then there are the mobile radios. Again, far as I know, none of them have dual conversion receivers, which can make a big difference in keeping noise and interference from nearby transmitters on GMRS as well as other sources out of your speaker. They have some great designs as far as "controls on the microphone" go, but drop the ball with the rest of the package. With the exception of their current "top-of-the-line" mobile @ 50W, none of their mobiles allow for adding additional channels beyond the packed 22 for repeaters or simplex. Midland tries to excuse this incompetence by saying it makes the radio easier to use for people wanting to just communicate vehicle-to-vehicle such as off-roaders, which are one of their targeted bases. What they don't tell you, is giving you the option to add channels would in no way make their mobiles more difficult to use and would greatly enhance their usefulness down the road if/when a customer decided they want to have access to repeaters. For instance, what if your off-roading buddies and yourself explored an area where the two nearest repeaters were on 462.675, one 20 miles east of your area of operation with a 141.3 PL and one 20 miles west of it with a 173.8 PL. Depending on where in your area you are, you will pick one up much better than the other. Should you need help from outside of your group, one of those repeaters will be necessarily how you summon help (breakdown, tow, medical, etc). If you have one programmed into your radio, to access the other, you will need to program in its tone, first. If it is an emergency, it will be a pain to have to change the settings, especially if you have not done so before and are well-versed in the procedure. Having the means to add channels, you can have them both in your radio and changing from one to the other is as simple as turning a knob or pressing an up/down button. Midland design engineers decided you do not need that convenience. Ditto if you travel between the two repeaters regularly. You might live near the 141.3 repeater but drive to work which is in the 173.8 repeater's coverage area. To be able to use the 173.8 repeater, you will need to pull over and change the settings going to work and again going home to use the 141.3. Being able to just turn a knob or press an up/down button would be much easier but again, Midland design engineers decided that you don't need that convenience.

It happens in a lot of places. Recently, on another site, I was reading about a guy in Georgia who was paying $150/month for a primo GMRS repeater site so he could communicate with his family. He had the misfortune to be located where all eight pairs were clogged with repeaters that were part of a linked, mega wompus, system. He noted that for large chunks of the day, all eight pairs carried the same people, having the same conversations, about the same thing. IMHO, this goes against the original intent of Class A/GMRS and is just wrong. In my area, two repeaters are linked to a four repeater system. For the most part, it isn't too bad except for Sunday evenings when they are tied up with an inane regional or national net, or the occasional needy sounding guy mumbling on and on in broken English in the next state. Then you add another guy piping in drivel from all over the country with the possibility of adding "nodes" to clog up other 50W simplex/repeater channels and soon you have a big, unnecessary, cacaphony, tying up those few pairs for people wanting to utilize them for local comms. It just isn't necessary. If you are the only networked repeater in your area then Kudos for putting up a stand-alone for local comms. I don't believe I mentioned simulcasted repeaters but it did cross my mind. I am fully aware of how expensive they are and how tight tolerances have to be, therefore I did not mention it. It just gets aggravating that most people I hear talking about putting up a repeater seem heck bent on either linking to other repeaters in their area or linking to a network, apparently just to keep noise going across the frequency, and not caring that they hinder people trying to use GMRS for its original intended use of local area communication.

Never mind that other users in a local area of a linked repeater might want to try and communicate using 50W simplex or via a repater but multiple or all (of the eight available) 50W/repeater channels are clogged up with the same people, having the same conversation about raising chickens, fishing, cooking beans, or whatever. This is a waste of scarce available spectrum and terrible stewardship of the available channels for GMRS.