RayP
-
Posts
75 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Classifieds
Posts posted by RayP
-
-
-
Marc and Sven, great comments! I ran out of upvotes but will get to you guys, tomorrow! I am convinced that the average citizens/voters in our country are little more than literal sheep, easily led and easily pushed; by politicians, media, and others, with cliche's, sound bites, and zero critical thinking. When I was a cop, back in the mid and late 2000's, there was a big push to get South Carolina a "cell phone law" similar to the abomination that Georgia now suffers under. I believe it has to be hands-free and if you touch it more than once, they can cite you, or similar lunacy. Everywhere I went, convenience store clerks, customers, and others would say "we need a cell phone law" (said in a smarmy, whiney voice). I always replied, "no we don't". I mentioned that for every discourteous or dangerous maneuver that one might do on the roadway, there was an existing statute in the SC Code of Laws which could be brought to bear on the driver who committed that act. All it takes, I noted, is cops familiarizing themselves with the statutes already available to them and utilizing them. Move over into someone's lane and hit or almost hit them; there's a statute for that. Run a red light; there's a statute for that. Sit in the middle of the road yakking on the phone or texting after the light turns green; there's a statute for that. When I saw someone doing something stupid like the above, I stopped them and ticketed them. I also let them know, when applicable, that it appeared that the reason for the violation, and therefore the ticket, seemed to be that they were engrossed in their cell phone. I advised them to pay better attention to the road.
Some people can multi-task well. Some cannot. I never got the point of creating another law, penalizing people for what they "might" do wrong instead of just going after the ones who are doing wrong. Who is the greater danger to the public, the guy or gal driving, with a phone to their ear, obeying all traffic laws and operating their vehicle in a competent manner, or the one who veers into an adjacent lane for whatever reason, including adjusting the climate control, adjusting their AM-FM radio, adjusting their underwear, or whatever? Target the ones actually creating the hazard, not the ones who "might" do something wrong. This is about as ludicrous as most gun laws. They operate under the perception that because you are wearing a gun, you somehow will not be able to constrain yourself from committing a crime with it. Gun laws only impede the law abiding, the very people who are not the problem. Criminals, being criminals, are mostly unimpeded by gun laws.
A year or two ago, I read an article where some honcho in the SC Highway Patrol was whining that our current texting law was too difficult for his Troopers to enforce and that we needed something closer to what Georgia has. I remember thinking that he either needed better Troopers or needed to re-train the ones he had. Instead of creating a new class of violator (to enhance revenue collection, perhaps?) go after the ones who are making dangerous maneuvers on the road. I mean, if talking on a cell phone is THAT dangerous, you won't have to follow them far before they commit a ticket able violation, right?
Finally, I will leave you with a quote my late maternal grandfather used to regularly repeat. He was right.
"The more laws a society has, the less justice"
Marcus Tullius Cicero -
49 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:
I have seen some disguise shorter antennas to look like vent pipes. Just a thought for those dealing with HOA's.
Running large conduit is a good idea. Just make sure there is enough room to pull the cable and also the PL259 connectors through, especially if you ever plan on running more than one cable in conduit. I will also suggest using the grey PVC conduit designed for electrical wiring since the curve fitting are a gentle curve versus sharp curves lie standard water PVC pipe fittings.
Great idea! There used to be a company that made such antennas for VHF and UHF ham applications. I believe their name was Ventenna, or something like that. If they are still in business, surely they could be persuaded to make a GMRS version.
Edit: Sorry. I just read elsewhere that the gentleman who owned Ventenna retired and closed up.
-
21 minutes ago, nokones said:
My MXT500 has a capacity of 128 channels and can be custom programmed for repeaters from Ch. 23 all the way to Ch. 128 and with split tones. Also, I can program channels 8-14 with custom repeaters channels.
I was not aware they had expanded the channel capacity of the 500 by that much. I stand corrected on that. Thank You!
-
-
I have long suspected that Midland GMRS design engineers suffer from some form of arrested development. So many things, they missed the boat on. With regard to ht's that are promoted for use in the wilderness (also their Base Camp radio), they have woefully deficient battery capacity. I believe most of their ht's are packed standard with something like a whopping 700mAh battery. Additionally, and as far as I know, none of the Midland ht's are repeater capable, yet they promote use of their ht's and repeaters (along with mobiles) for farm and agriculture use.
The mobile designs also are a mixed bag of weirdness. Some mobiles may only do narrowband FM while others are capable of narrowband and wideband on GMRS. Some of the smaller mobiles may not allow for different encode/decode CTCSS/DCS tones on repeaters that use differing encode and decode tones. The biggest issue with their mobiles that I see is they do not allow for programming additional repeater or simplex channels above the standard 22, 23, or whatever they come packed with. This means if you regularly travel into and out of areas where the repeaters might use the same frequency, say 462.675, and one repeater uses a 141.3 PL and the other uses a 67.0 PL, you will need to pull over and change PL's when driving out of one repeater's coverage area and into the coverage are of the other. Midland lamely tries to excuse this deficiency in design by saying they are making their radios simple to use for those who just want to hook up their radio and talk. Never mind that as you gain knowledge and/or benefit from the experience and wisdom of friends, you will likely want to expand the capabilities of your mobile radios. If your radio doesn't allow for such expansion, you are just out of luck.
None of the Midland GMRS mobiles include a cooling fan, something you will quickly understand the need for if making multiple key down transmissions in a short time or extended transmissions.
As WRYX926 correctly noted above, you will get a much better bang for your buck with a KG1000G or KG1000G+.
-
With growing children, a small attic antenna (provided you aren't using a metallic roof) hooked to a repeater might be great for your family, or other friends in the neighborhood to use. Something like the low-power (5-10 watt) Midland or similar repeater would allow for decent portable-to-portable coverage around the neighborhood, especially with something like the tiny WLN KDC1 ht's. Yeah, they technically are ham radios but I "hear" they work great on GMRS freqs if programmed for that.
Of course I have no actual experience using them for such.
-
On 3/26/2024 at 10:27 AM, nokones said:
Recently, a local Phoenix family drove up to the mountains northeast of Phoenix several days ago and got caught in a snow storm and they were stranded for several days. The family did survive and made it out unharm. They were lucky to be found by local Payson Area residents during the snow storm.
While they were stranded, they attempted to call for help using their cell phone but unfortunately, they were in an area of no cell service, which is not unusual in the remote mountain areas of Arizona.
However, the area they were in was well covered by the Diamond Point GMRS Repeater which is linked to other repeaters of the Southwest Community Radio System (SWCRS) that serve the Flagstaff, Phoenix, Tucson, and the eastern mountain communities in Arizona; and throughout the state of New Mexico. If they had a GMRS radio and if they were licensed and knowledgeable about the GMRS repeater system they could have use their GMRS radio to summon for help.
The point is, you can’t always rely on a Cellular Telephone for help, especially in remote areas. So, don’t leave home without your GMRS radio even in the metro areas. You can never plan when a GMRS radio will be the most valuable tool in the time of need.
A few months ago, watching this Mr Ballen YouTube video, I couldn't help but wonder if a ham, CB, or GMRS, radio in their car would have gotten this family help much sooner. Ideally, they would have had all three but even a CB or 2m ham mobile might have made the difference and the husband and father might be alive had they been in possession of something other than their cell phones. A firearm would have provided additional comfort given the interest that bears were showing the family in their unenviable situation, but this was the West Coast and they were from California, areas where the government keeps citizens generally disarmed.
-
5 hours ago, WSAA635 said:
So does the KH-805g have the same issues? Do all Wouxun radios have this issue or only certain models?
Not sure as I have never owned or used an 805G.
-
2 hours ago, OffRoaderX said:
I dont think you actually understand what the term "major issue" means. Now please write a page-long explanation of why i'm wrong so more people can laugh at you.
Sorry. I forgot that you believe all ideas and concepts can or should be adequately explained in 15 words or less, much like the original form of Twitter.
-
4 hours ago, Sshannon said:
So we’re all of the tones incorrect? 10%, 50%, ?
Did you see frequencies that were off also?It was usually one or two tones out of a template that I was putting together in a radio out of about 60-80 channels. Not a lot, but enough to be annoying because of the problem. My guess is, not very many people program much if any beyond the thirty channels these radios come packed with. Those people use standard tones of 156.7 or below and rarely use DPL. This allows the problem to go undiscovered and un-reported or under-reported. I seriously doubt that I am the only one who has noticed this issue. I wish anyone ele who has would chime in.
-
1 hour ago, Sshannon said:
Attributing this to sloppiness is presumptive. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the tone frequencies in the radio are based on a single oscillator. Components fail. That’s just a fact of life. Show me any manufacturer that has a perfect record.
True, but I have noted issues with the 905G (four individual radios), the 935G (one radio), the 935G+(one radio), and the S88G (one radio). Every 905 I had, exhibited the problem. Two were gifts for friends who I did not get a chance to pass them on to for a couple of years after purchasing them. The day before I knew I would be seeing these friends, I programmed them with a collection of area repeater channels and some PL'd simplex channels I had put in for off-road or on-property use. In testing them, some (but not most) PL codes would not decode between these two radios. Some PL's (pulling 250.3 out of the air) might allow one radio to encode and be decoded by the other, but the reverse was not true.
I generally like Wouxun over the other GMRS specific brands, but they need to tighten up on QC regarding PL/DPL encoding and/or decoding of their radio models.
-
2 hours ago, OffRoaderX said:
yah, i'm outraged... because its such a major issue...
Well, actually, it can be and is. Many do not grasp what PL/DPL (hereafter shortened to just PL) can do to enhance the radio experience. To many (most maybe), PL is just an annoying selection you have to make in your radio's menu or on the programming software, so a given repeater opens up when you transmit. They don't grasp how helpful it can be (provided it works properly in your radio and the radio you are talking to or repeater you are using).
Let's say you regularly use a repeater on 462/467.675 that uses a 141.3 PL. You monitor on your home base, mobile, or ht much of the day as do family and friends of yours for calls from each other. You also transact business on the phone, watch TV, listen to broadcast radio, and interact with others in person. Another repeater at a distance on the same frequency but using a 67.0 PL generates a lot of noise and traffic during the day, too. Being able to set your PL decoder so you only hear the repeater your family and friends use makes the whole experience of listening for them more enjoyable and less annoying when engaged in other activities. The same can be said for keeping out other noise sources such as kids or construction workers on the channel nearby, or computer noise, and other stuff that the carrier squelch in your radio just is not screening out very well. This is one of the reasons it is so annoying that some people go to the trouble and expense of setting up a repeater (whether open system or for a limited group), yet somehow just never had that extra thirty seconds it would have taken them to set a PL tone encoding on the output. This forces end-users to have to listen to every bit of noise from whatever source, in range of their receivers.
In a downtown big city, there are endless sources of noise that will regularly break through a carrier squelch and become like Chinese water torture to your ears after a while, especially if your radio is direct conversion, like a KG-935G or KG935G+. A PL module that works properly is a real ear and sanity saver.
Yes, it is a major issue for some.
-
5 minutes ago, Sshannon said:
Or just push the PTT on the repeater channel and ask if someone hears you …
Wake me when all is well with the universe. I suspect 80% of the tones on RayP’s radio were just fine.
Hi Sshannon! They aren't. If there is one thing in radio that I have an intimate working knowledge of, it is PL's. I suspect many do not discover a problem because they don't set the decoders, to begin with. The problems I have experienced with Wouxun GMRS radios, pretty much across the board can, as I noted earlier, seem to even vary with the day of the week, leading me to believe there may be an inconsistency somewhere.
-
5 minutes ago, WSAA635 said:
So basically, in a nut shell, to test out my 905g I need to program the Rx/Tx tones into a channel of one of my Baofeng radios then do the same with the 905g and if they talks I'm good to go. If they don't I have an issue. What would buytwowayradios do to fix it if I did have an issue? Is it something that I could easily fix at home?
If you are within the warranty, you are probably good to go. If outside the warranty, you are SOL. These radios are a "rig on a chip" and from what one of their guys told me, not much of anything can be done in the way of adjustments.
This is why I mention checking before it goes out of warranty.
-
1 hour ago, OffRoaderX said:
I have, or have had every GMRS radio that Wouxun makes. In some cases, multiple ones, and I have never, once, seen this issue. I also have many friends, and about 200K fans, and none, never, once, have mentioned this
Au contraire. The first time I saw it mentioned was a few years ago, from a commenter on one of your vids.
-
1 hour ago, WSAA635 said:
This-how do I test/check to see if my Tones are correct and do I need to check all of them or if one is right then will they all be right?
Absent some expensive test equipment, you will need to check the tones against another radio or other radios, or against a repeater known to be encoding and decoding certain tones. I had a 905G that would not decode a local Motorola repeater's output tone of 210.7. There were other tones I discovered by accident that would not encode and/or decode with another radio of the same model, when only a few yards apart. I forget which tones. I have seen one or two comments from viewers on Randy's YT channel regarding this issue a few years ago. I asked the poster for details but never got a reply. Then I had radios that exhibited this undesirable tendency.
Recently, I was testing simplex range between a friend's KG1000G+ and my own S88. We were using a 245 DPL. I had set the DPL in both radios and later double checked to ensure that I had not put in the wrong tone on one or a reverse tone. I had not. We were on simplex with varying signal strength between very good and very poor as I drove down the road. For whatever reason, when he transmitted on that simplex channel (between 1 and 7, I forget which), he would not open my decoder. I had to hit my monitor button to hear him. This is a real issue, despite apparent lack of reporting of same.
-
-
Congratulations on the new radio! I had a couple of the 905's as well as 935's and a S88. While Wouxun overall is superior to Midland, B-Tech, and similar brands, one place I have found where they seriously drop the ball is their PL/DPL encoding and decoding. I have had issues with all models I own(ed) with regard to PL/DPL encoding and decoding. It seems to be different tones or codes based on the particular radio and maybe even the day of the week.
I would recommend checking the tones against repeaters or known simplex operations in your area. If you find a problem, contact Buy Two Way Radios ASAP and make them aware of it. If you wait till after the warranty expires, you will be SOL. I hope at some point Wouxun finds it in their hearts to remedy the issues with their PL/DPL encoders and decoders.
Best of luck to you!
-
On 3/4/2024 at 7:45 PM, WRKC935 said:
And in this case, they don't seem to want to provide that clarification.
So let's try to decipher their version of interference, because that's the sticky part. There is a requirement to monitor the airwaves before transmitting on a frequency or any frequency used in the output of a repeater. So the situation would need to exist where two repeaters on the same frequency existed, one being linked and the other not linked. To create interference, a user would need to know there was a second repeater on the air in a given location that was not linked and know that it was in use when you keyed up into another repeater that is linked to that other linked repeater then causing interference.
Here's the problem with that. No GMRS type accepted radios that are truly Part 95 compliant have a HUB defeats PL/DPL in them. At least none I am specifically aware of and others are welcome to comment if they do exist. Going on the fact that functionality doesn't exist in all type accepted radios, there isn't a way to 'monitor' the frequency prior to transmitting on a local repeater that shares the frequency with another repeater. So the fact that you are talking through a linked repeater in another state that you can't hear for obvious reasons, or that you grab the mike on your part 95 radio and go to use it, due to the fact you don't have a hub defeats PL OR an unprogrammable busy channel lockout that can't be defeated, you would be in violation of the 'interference' regulation in both instances but the FCC not requiring a busy channel lockout or hub defeats PL function in the radio that wasn't able to be disabled gives anyone that would do this a way out and arguable defense in court.
Basically, it would use their regulations and type acceptance rules against them when they accused you of causing interference based on what they came up with for a reply to you.
I am not a lawyer, and don't claim to be. I just take their logic in this case and their written regulations and turn them around as a defense.
Also, other repeaters are not the only possible victims of interference from a linked system where distant stations cannot monitor local outputs for traffic. Simplex operators on those eight 50W simplex/repeater channels can also negatively be impacted.
-
On 2/27/2024 at 8:33 PM, WSAK691 said:
...I guess every area of the country might not resemble the rest, but I can tell you for sure that GMRS far more active where I am. There's still plenty of 440 and 2meter stuff, but all of those guys are just also on GMRS. Not sure why so many hams do that, but it seems to be a thing.. The GMRS repeaters out here get way more traffic than the club ham repeaters..
Not sure what others' motivation is, but I just got kinda tired of ham. Most of the interesting guys either died off or otherwise ceased operating. Then there was a population explosion of what Not A Rubicon excellently dubbed "sad hams" that I just lost my tolerance for. When the interesting guys were talking, and you were enjoying listening to their all-too-rare in ham interesting QSO, the needy sad hams would break into their conversation "just to say hi"
or to tell one of the guys he just worked Brazil on 20m, or maybe he worked Germany on 40m, or share some equally useless and unwanted bit of information such as he just bought himself a new $8K radio. For some, on that last item we would be glad for them, but this guy is Mr Gotrocks and loves to brag, brag, brag, all the time. By the time he got off of the radio, the guys having the interesting conversation had lost their place and were sidetracked for the rest of the day, or night. A couple of them do this like clockwork as though destruction of an interesting QSO were an aspect of the hobby for them.
Then there is the camaraderie! The GMRS guys I know, when we get together like at our monthly meet-n-greets, the friendship is genuine. You feel like you are with family. It's actual fellowship rather than everybody trying to measure and see whose is biggest. Another thing I prefer about GMRS over ham, we meet at different restaurants, in differing nearby towns each month. We have never met in a Gun Free Zone, the places statistically most likely to be hit by an active shooter terrorist. The ham groups I know of in a 50mi radius, they just cannot help themselves. Every place they find to meet is a Gun Free Zone under state law. Schools, churches, court houses, hospitals, government, buildings... I get regular invites to attend the ham gatherings but prefer to pass on them. There are other hams in our group, but they are some of the good hams not the sad ones. I can't speak for the guys you note getting on GMRS more than ham, but maybe they have similar reasons to mine.
Oh, I do keep ham gear in case it is needed. I just don't use it a whole lot as of late.
-
On 2/20/2024 at 10:00 PM, WRKC935 said:
OK, but lets look at this from the other side of the coin for a minute.
First is what's required for a linked repeater. Yes, there is a linking device and some sort of audio interface. Then there is the medium that is creating the link it self. This is typically going to be the Internet, but P2P Microwave technology can be used for a closed system with some semblance of redundancy that will deal a failure of the connected Internet. But you are NOT going to link a system the size of the MidWest group totally on Microwave hops. The towers are too far away from one another and the Maximum link distances are much shorter than the coverage area of a 2.4 or 5.8 Ghz hop with even the best dishes available. So to have minimum overlap to conserve frequencies as much as possible, there would need to be intermediary's in those links that didn't have a linked repeater on the tower, only a set of Microwave links to extend the distance enough so there wasn't miles and miles of overlap of repeater coverage.
But the most important part of the linked repeater system is going to be the repeater it self. And that is going to be as stable and operable as the power supplied to it, regardless of the ability to link out to the system. My repeater would fall off the system do to my microwave link failing, but it never went off the air all together. It just stopped being linked when the link medium would fail. Now, I provided a second repeater with similar coverage for local access. I told folks that were local to use that repeater for local conversations and how to tell when their conversations were local via the sound of the courtesy tone on the linked repeaer. But my point is that my repeater wasn't going to fail because the Internet went down. So for Emergency communications, it was built out to be better than the public safety system that we have in this county. And that's still the case. Since I support that ssytem I can tell you how it's powered. Yes it has generators that are propane with thousand gallon tanks, but the UPS / battery system is only good for about 30 minutes. So when a tank goes empty, they have 30 minutes to get a PROPANE truck on site to fuel it. And the links at the sites are powered off that same system. My battery plant is gonna run my site for 24 hours as it stands right now. The diesel generator has a 100 gallon tank that I can fill with diesel fuel from any source that has diesel. The county has equipment there that they have committed to fuel the generator per the tower lease during a major outage (the system there is the backup to the other propane fueled system). They have a fuel truck and a 20K gallon tank of fuel to feed that delivery truck by. And they have 24 hours from the time it runs dry until the battery plant goes flat. So if you are following all this, MY repeaters are backed up better than the statewide public safety communications system. And if they can't feed it, I have 24 hours to go find fuel (diesel) get it to the site and in the tank before I go off the air. And I can extend that by turning off other equipment and only running the public safety gear and the GMRS repeaters. So reliance on my gear is gonna be assured. Even a full failure of the repeater is only a minor issue as I have cold spares sitting there to be cabled in place and spun up. And before you ask about the tower failing, anything that will bring the tower down will destroy the building first. So again, My repeater isn't going to fail. There are a number of the repeaters on the MidWest system that are solar. They too will continue to operate without utility power or the Internet.
Now linking repeaters during a major disaster can be sort of useless, especially if those links cross great distances that are not easily to travel. If I am having a serious issue in Ohio, people in Wisconsin are not going to either care all that much or be able to provide much in the way of assistance in a timely manner. Which is the argument I have had about the whole Ham Radio HF communications thing. We just don't need it. Local comm's inside and directly outside of the effected zone, sure. Three states away, not hardly. But that seems to persist in the minds of the hams for whatever reason.
So why link at all? First thing I would say is it provides a way to draw people to GMRS to begin with. Getting people involved is the first step. Repeaters with traffic on them will draw more people in than repeaters that are silent. That goes for Ham and GMRS. If you link a bunch of them together, a short conversation will turn into a large round table discussion from people in multiple locations. This breeds extended discussion and radio friendships that frankly bring people together that wouldn't communicate otherwise. I have met people on the radio that I have now also met in person that are literally hundreds of miles away from me. Had it not been for linked radio, I would have never met these people. So there is that as well. The other thing it does, since it's generating traffic, is it gets locals to recognize each other and builds on the local community of GMRS operators. That breeds cooperation and brings people together of varying technical back grounds that can assist each other with technical issues, creates study partners and groups for other radio endeavors and license study for them to get ham licenses. And once those people that are local to each other realize this, and that the repeater they are on will work with out the link when the Internet is down. They can create groups, look in on each other, and support each other in the event of a disaster. So while linked repeater in a disaster aren't really a handy thing, unlinked repeaters are.
So, since you brought up the discussion of Long Distance calling. I am gonna slap you with a history lesson so you know where the moratorium on linking came from to begin with. If you look back to Class A Citizens radio Service from the 60's and the infancy of GMRS which started in the 70's, you might remember that the telephone company AT&T was the ONLY long distance carrier at that time. And most any telephone call outside of your local exchange was considered long distance. Pay phones were also a thing. So AT&T, concerned with their long distance fee's being circumvented by people linking repeaters lobbied the FCC to disallow linking via the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). And the FCC obliged them by codifying that in the regulations. It was done for that reason and that reason alone. Public safety radio service was mostly done at that time across dry pairs of phone wires and it was a know to work solution. But public safety wasn't going to be circumventing a long distance bill by doing so. That's where it originally came from. The ramblings of the guy in that video proved only one thing, he doesn't know his history.
So how do we move forward? That's the real question. The FCC. like any other governmental regulatory body moves very slow if at all on changing anything. But enforcement efforts on current regulations will change with the federal funding of the body. If their funds get cut, their enforcement will increase to increase their intake of money. And the fed's are certainly not the only governmental entities that will increase their enforcement when faced with a financial shortfall. Every little town and burg when faced with money problems will first and foremost increase enforcement of traffic violations to generate revenue.
So past that, what COULD be done. First thing is the FCC doing two things. First is allowing linking by any means. Requiring that linked repeaters will maintain their operation without the linking medium being present. Requiring that if you are putting up a linked repeater, that the area that repeater is covering is also covered by another non-linked repeater that has the same usage requirements that the linked repeater has. Meaning if there is some club fee to access the linked repeater that at minimum that membership is also provided access to the other non-linked repeater. Second thing is distance between linked repeaters or coverage overlaps. You are going to want a bit of overlap, but there should NEVER be two repeaters that are linked to the same system that overlap coverage by more than 25%. Back in the day when you had to use a slide rule and four pencils to calculate the coverage of a repeater, it was difficult to figure out the coverage of a repeater. Now, it's on line. You put in the height, power, antenna gain and line loss and it will spit out a map that is reasonably accurate. No rocket science involved.
Another possibility is setting aside certain repeaters as the only ones that can be used for linking. This will address the coverage issue in a different way. If you only have two or 3 pairs that can possibly be used, then overlapping coverage gets eliminated due to technical issues created by not having your pick of pairs. If you want to link multiple repeaters, spend the money and simulcast on a SINGLE pair from multiple sites. Yes, it's possible, yes it's silly expensive, but it's completely doable. I am not gonna go into what's involved, but Internet links are not gonna be any part of it for the simulcast portion. And those systems, because of the requirements, will be redundant and high availability. But, here again the FCC needs to change things.
Lastly is the FCC once it changes things is it gets back to enforcement of the changes. Get letters out to people that are violating and get them to cease and desist their inability to follow the rules. This stuff can be fixed. We don't need more pairs, we don't need digital radio technology to address these things, we just need a bit of change and a bit of enforcement help to get things going. And ultimately, GMRS people that find that radio is fun, by default will go get their ham licenses, which generates MORE income though licensing fee's for the FCC bank accounts.
Okay.
-
25 minutes ago, WSAN654 said:
30 day Test
called out for contacts in need of help on GMRS in busy areas.... out of 50 call outs 6 people got back
HAM in busy areas... out of 50 call outs 32 got back
SAD Hams are not that SAD they was available
maybe carry both radios on a road trip
it would be different in different areas I'm sure
If only GMRS ops would adopt trendier-looking traffic vests and hard hats, they would get a bigger response
-
Not sure. I know some years back, Kenwood made a dual band (VHF/UHF) mobile for ham that had a feature similar to what you describe. I think it was the TMV71A. I had one and I believe the feature was called "Reverse PL" or similar. I played with it out of curiosity but was underwhelmed by its performance in actual use. You could set it to "silence" a repeater using say, a 162.2 Hz tone, but it wasn't completely silenced, as I recall. The station transmitting the tone selected for "silencing" would occasionally open the squelch for brief periods of time. It did not offer the quiet that a properly-working PL or DPL does against a station not transmitting the selected PL or DPL did.
In other words, with my specimen, the technology had not yet been perfected.
Unique Repeater Setups
in General Discussion
Posted
Would this include the time when I was twelve, and I swiped a bottle of my sister's hand lotion and later that day, touched myself in an impure manner?