SteveShannon

Yes, GMRS radios can only operate in the GMRS frequency range (aka band) which is in the 462-467 MHz range. There are lots of different communications bands within the 100 and 200 MHz ranges. Broadcast FM, air traffic, business radios, MURS, public safety(police, fire, ambulance), television, animal trackers, and amateur radios.

Here’s the FCC page that discusses “intercepting and divulging” communications. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/interception-and-divulgence-radio-communications It’s interesting how it’s written. It appears that the FCC has a very narrow range of options available to them. For instance, listening to cellular conversations isn’t prohibited, but the law prohibits the FCC from authorizing equipment that provides the ability. My search also found that some places do attempt to limit ownership of police scanners. In some cases they prohibit using scanners in the commission of a crime. In other cases they simply prohibit civilian possession. I suspect a good lawyer could defeat those simple possession laws, but of course that costs money.

Prosecution on multiple fronts happens frequently. Agencies will band together to throw everything they can at a person, and jurors, hearing of the long list of charges will frequently vote guilty on something because if a person has been charged with that many offenses he must have done something wrong. im not saying that’s the case here. In this case I believe that the clear cut violation is to the fcc regulations. The forest service could also charge him with some type of interference, but they may want to wait and see how the fcc case proceeds.

I haven’t, but it sounds like it would be fun. I’ll look it up.

He transmitted five times on the frequency they used to direct aircraft the first day, “thwarting” their ability to effectively respond (according the the public statement). He transmitted three times on the second day. At some point during the second day a supervisor dropped what he/she was doing to tell him to knock it off, in spite of the characterization of the fire incident being described as an “all hands on deck” event. I could understand someone making an emergency transmission on an unauthorized band once, but eight times? The guy was trying to make himself more important than he is.

I never did find something that clearly states he transmitted after the personal warning, but I had to chuckle at this post: walrus01 16 hours ago | next [–] Oh wow I literally know this guy. Jason Frawley. He's a big part of a very vocal group of rural, deep red state WISP operators who think they're god's own gift to network engineering, and mostly worship at the altar of one specific political figure. Watching their antics has been an endless source of amusement. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen Jason and his cohort shoot themselves in the foot with some ill-advised network architecture, rf engineering or network engineering design choice... That he's out there interfering with licensed bands and emergency services is totally unsurprising. That's only the tip of an iceberg of weirdness. There are very, very few FCC enforcement bureau staff members in WA, ID, OR. You have to do something really egregious to get on their radar screen. Every time the FCC fines someone $10k+ it goes in their public daily digest emails as a "notice of apparent liability" and is quite a rare event in the Pacific Northwest. It is not at all as if the FCC has vans full of guys with spectrum analyzers and such driving around the area trying to hunt down and fine people for petty reasons. To get fined by them you really have to go far outside the accepted norms for two way radio or wisp operations in the area. He has network equipment and repeaters at the mentioned elk butte site and probably thought he was doing something to protect his gear. His FCC licensed part 101 fdd band plan ptp microwave links are all part of the public record as part of the FCC ULS public data for the curious.

I don’t know. In a ham group someone said that he did continue even after a personal visit, but I have no specific knowledge besides the article I quoted. But eight times he transmitted on their frequency with his ham radio handheld while they were trying to direct aircraft. I’m not full of sympathy for him. I’m surprised there aren’t criminal charges.

“According to the FCC account, a Forest Service supervisor drove to the airstrip, identified Frawley as the person and told him to stop.”

What version of Windows is running on your computer? See if this helps: https://thegeekpage.com/mscomctl-ocx/

When tone mode is set to Tone, that’s equivalent to having the receive tone left blank.

But within these forums (fora?) we have had accounts of Surecom 102 meters that did not match higher priced instruments which were known to be nearly accurate. I suspect most are pretty close, close enough for hobbyists like me anyway, and I would trust a Surecom if I had previously compared it to something better, like you have.

Actually you do. If you set Tone Mode to TONE, like MichaelLax said, it’s the same as turning off the receiver tone in CTCSS. If you set it to Tone SQL or Tsql or however your radio shows it, then you’re requiring a tone before your radio will unsquelch. And you really cannot have it set to DTCS. That is a different kind of tone.

I saw that, but the way I understood it, the RPT-TONE setting eliminates the tone that your radio sends at the end of a transmission, which eliminates the squelch tail for someone listening to you. It isn’t there to prevent you from hearing a squelch tail. Rather than seeming like a placebo, you might hear a difference on a radio held by someone listening to you. if they have a similar setting that would help you, but only for transmissions from their specific radio. Do the bubble pack FRS radios have a way to be configured or are they just PTT, channel, and volume? I still think there should be a way to prevent the squelch tail on the 935, but maybe it’s just an artifact of those particular FRS radios. Have you listened to any other radios and if so was the squelch tail as bad?

That’s called squelch tail. I’m not familiar with all the settings on the 935, but using PL tones can result in a longer squelch tail than using no tones.

Although 1.39 is better, 1.59 is a low enough SWR that you can use the antenna without fear of damage to your radio. Based on reports here the Surecom 102 is notorious for being inaccurate for its power output readings, but as long as it’s measuring a near minima for SWR it’s somewhat useful. I would just use that antenna and enjoy it. You can go broke and crazy chasing low SWR without making a real world difference in range.

Fortunately it’s not like that everywhere. Although our ham club is mostly older guys (including myself) we have very smart and forward thinking young people involved as well who are doing great things with real repeaters that they are monitoring using things like 5GHz links. They’re playing with SDR dongles and squeezing a lot of interesting listening out of them while monitoring public safety communications. They’re setting up WinLink connections so they are able to send long distance emails and data files in case the internet fails, which would complement HF for long distance voice communications. Yes, some of us do have our hotspots. I think of them as training wheels while we learn how to set up our codeplugs. I first assembled my hotspot so I could play with DMR, but last week I got a new Yaesu FT5D radio and by flipping a single bit I was able to turn on YSF support so I could learn some of the ins and outs of System Fusion digital communications. When I was learning how to build my DMR codeplug I thought that was very confusing until it finally clicked and now all makes sense. I’m at a similar point on the learning curve for YSF. At the same time our club members are helping provide communications by volunteering with Search and Rescue, the Sheriff’s Department, and county emergency response as well as providing communications for runs and bike races through the mountain trails where cell service is nonexistent So, the radio portion of ham radio is far from being eliminated in my area, but there are always some who don’t see what’s really going on who think it is.

That looks correct, but I agree with MichaelLAX that setting the downlink tone off is something to resort to in case you don’t hear anything.

Unless you are above Line A, you can use channel 19 for anything your GMRS radio can do. I wasn’t aware that 18 and 20 were reserved for emergency use. Where did you learn that?

I see what you were asking. Yes, a parrot function is nice to have. I have a couple digital radios and I use parrot rooms to test them without having to ask for a radio check. For a repeater that processes voice transmissions in software and which has some small amount of memory, a parrot function which could be activated somehow would be a nice feature.

I thought he was simply saying that if spread spectrum were implemented many more people could simultaneously use a GMRS channel without interference from others on the same channel.

Maybe it’s not something you did wrong. Best wishes!

Well, I sent a report to Rich. He’s good about seeing those. I’m sorry I can’t help you.

Well, you’re obviously logged in to the forums, so that seems to be okay. The other portion of the website requires a separate login. Is it possible that you didn’t set one up there?

I’m sorry for your troubles. Sometimes it takes a while to import new call signs from FCC. I don’t know if your call sign is recent or not. You don’t know me from Adam so I wouldn’t be insulted if you said no, but if you want to send me your phone number in a private message I would be happy to try and set up your account, then all you would have to do is change your password to something only you know.

There are patents for new glass couplers that cite the high losses of capacitive coupled devices. Apparently there are at least four different ways of through glass coupling. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6661386B1/en You also must consider that an antenna connected that way doesn’t really have a ground plane (I presume) so it’s starting with a disadvantage anyway. But as they say, “Any antenna is better than none.” Use it and see if it works well enough.