SteveShannon

Call up your friends who use GMRS radios and say “Let’s start a club!” Then just get together every so often and talk about GMRS radios. If you want to have a repeater, chip in some money (quite a bit) and put one up. If you want to solicit donations you’ll want to incorporate as a tax exempt corporation. There’s a fee for that. Then file a 1023 form with the government to get off to become a 501(c)3. The short form costs $275.

I agree completely.

I’m not certain why the FCC would allow any outside labs to certify equipment without some kind of validation of the lab’s ability and trustworthiness. And if equipment that has been “certified” by that lab fails, both the equipment manufacturer and the certification lab should have to answer why. That has nothing to do with racism.

A glass mount doesn’t sacrifice much either, but there are nice looking kits that replace the factory shark fin with a gps antenna and NMO mount which do not require additional drilling.

Just to be fair, @Socalgmrs has said good things about Midland antennas; it’s the radios that he disparages.

I made the change to “unusual”.

I don’t know about the RT97L, but not all radios display changing channels when scanning. That was one of the original main complaints about the Yaesu FT5DR. It showed the new channel when it paused, but not until then. A firmware update has partially fixed the problem. But it could be that scanning only works when you’re in base station mode; a scanning repeater would be kind of unusual.

I think it would be fairly easy to show that a person is profiting, if it’s true. Because a GMRS repeater is not allowed to be operated commercially, placing your own repeater on your own land would not include an assumption that rent is entitled. The IRS would eagerly participate if a person were not declaring income and if the person were declaring income the FCC would have a case. The owner of the repeater would be expected to have records showing that every dollar of income went to a reasonable expense. But, it can cost a lot to own a repeater and folks who provide them for the rest of us should not have to bear the full burden; they just can’t profit.

I think you’re probably kidding, but just in case someone takes you seriously intentionally submitting an incorrect address is something the FCC does actually pursue legally. They don’t care if a person uses a mail forwarding service or a PO Box; in fact they even encourage it for people concerned about privacy or physical security. But you must submit an address where you can be legally served. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-122A1.pdf

At a rocket launch on the Black Rock desert I picked up enough leaded solder to last my lifetime. Some very fine stuff and some that’s about two times as big that’s multicore with rosin flux. And it’s all smaller than the old “Radio TV” solder that I still have. The smallest stuff is perfect for fine pitch SMT.

Ha! Except they’re using GMRS radios.

That’s how they are here as well, but there are only a handful of us who actually have licenses. The vast majority of GMRS just buy the radios and use them miles away from populated areas. Honestly, that doesn’t bother me a bit. Maybe there shouldn’t be GMRS licensing for handheld use or lower than some wattage level.

There’s a subscription service that allows you to manage all of your auto-subscriptions… See, this is why the USA is the greatest!

All cables with a chip require a driver. Some versions of Windows have the drivers pre-installed, but not all. Because there were a lot of counterfeit FTDI cables, the pre-installed drivers in Windows 11 check for counterfeits which sometimes can cause problems.

I don’t see the usual black banner with dollar sign that indicates you’re a premium member, but sometimes that get out of sync between the two different portions of this site. Premium Membership is $50 annually. I know Rich has added additional membership levels that don’t cost the full $50. If doing as Gil recommended above doesn’t answer your questions then consider reporting your own post to catch Rich’s attention.

All regulatory agencies interpret their rules to their favor, from the ATF to the other end of the list. FCC is no different. Unlike some of the other agencies they don’t seem to enforce their interpretations very often. I have no idea how you reached such a conclusion, and it’s not worthwhile trying. I’m glad they post both the rules and the regulations . I even agree with many of their interpretations.

No, the fact that it already shows the proper TX and RX frequencies indicates that you don’t need to do anything else with the offset.

Maybe. Some repeaters have been linked, so it’s possible that’s what you’re hearing, but it’s also possible that you’re receiving them directly via a phenomena called tropospheric ducting, which can cause UHF signals to travel farther than normal distances.

Although I am not a fan of linking, what you quoted is not the written rule. That’s the FCC interpretation of the written rules. It does reference the actual rules it interprets (95.1733 and 95.1749) however.

Maybe, but I think that a good lawyer could argue against that. FCC does define “Network Connection”: Network connection. Connection of a Personal Radio Services station to the public switched network, so that operators of other stations in that service are able to make (and optionally to receive) telephone calls through the connected station.

Everyone sounds drunk.

How are you measuring SWR? How sensitive is the measurement device to reflected power? What kind of coax are you using? How long is that coax? What power are you testing at? Where are you measuring the SWR? All of those questions must be considered in order to understand what you’re actually measuring. But again, a low SWR doesn’t mean an antenna is good for transmitting or receiving. A good dummy load will always provide a good SWR measurement. Nor does a slightly high SWR measurement mean an antenna is bad. A high SWR antenna with no transmission line still gets the power out. What kind of antenna is it? How does it work in actual real-world tests involving transmitting and receiving? Try it.

Those SWR readings are good, but SWR readings alone do not make an antenna good. Also, measuring SWR at the radio end of a lossy coax cable will always give SWR readings that are artificially low.

I hope you stick around and I hope you do ask questions. Some are more difficult than this one but sometimes people just need to chill and remember that they weren’t always so perfect.

Hi Dave, Gil, @wruu653, pointed out that the repeaters appear in a search if you turn on Stale and Offline repeaters. But then I found something weird, a mismatch (I think?) between map view and tabular view. If I do a tabular data repeater search to include stale and offline, both repeaters appear on the map. But if I go to map first and turn on those two switches for stale and offline, the repeaters don’t appear on the map. I have written to Rich, the site administrator, to learn what I might be doing wrong. Anyway, if you do a repeater search to include Stale and Offline repeaters, both Eureka repeaters appear in the list, allowing you to select them. If you do that they appear on the map and more importantly the owner’s call sign is available for you to contact him. You might want to contact the owner and ask him to update his data on the site.