SteveShannon

Bigger (taller so they are above the trees) antennas for all of the radios would help but there practical limitations. Same for power output. Different frequencies are less affected. You might listen in to see how 2 meter ham radios do in your area.

No, you used the correct term. For many years, the common method of scrambling has been voice inversion.

Did someone say that phonetics were required?

GMRS is subject to the restrictions listed for all the personal radio services. This is the rule that addresses scrambling: 95.381 Voice obscuring features. A grant of equipment certification will not be issued for any transmitter type that incorporates one or more voice scrambling or other obscuring features for any of the Personal Radio Services that provide for voice (telephony) communications on shared channels (see § 95.359), if the application for such grant is filed on or after December 27, 2017.

Some of these radios are derivatives of commercial radios and simply include some of the features that already existed. Some even include voice scrambling which we are forbidden to use in GMRS. One of my ham radios (an Alinco, but I believe a derivative of an Anytone DMR radio) even has AES 256, which is pretty strong security, also forbidden for use in a ham radio. I guess I'm on my honor.

The 462.675 MHz frequency is the receive frequency for your Anytone or UV-5R radios. 467.675 MHz would be the transmit frequency. That's either directly entered or entered as a +offset of 5.000 MHz. The input tone is the tone your radio must transmit using CTCSS. It's an input to the repeater so the radio you have must transmit it. The output tone is the tone that the repeater sends out (transmits). If your radio is set to a different CTCSS tone for receive it will not reproduce transmissions from the repeater. However, if you don't program a receive frequency into your radio, it will not filter any transmissions and you will hear everything transmitted on that frequency. I usually recommend that people leave the receive frequency empty until they know they have the transmit tone working and that they're activating the repeater. Some software requires that you set a MODE. Usually the choices in the MODE column include Tone or TSQL. Tone means that your radio will send a tone, but not require one coming back. That's the same as leaving the receive tone empty as described above. TSQL means that your radio will remain squelched (silent) until the correct tone is received. If you have the wrong tone, you'll hear nothing if you turn on TSQL. Good luck!

They do different things for different brands of radios. Typically the functions must be enabled in order to work. Both are holdovers from commercial radios. These functions allow someone who knows the code for your radio to send either a stun or kill message. That can be helpful for a company that loses one of their radios. When your radio receives a stun message it usually is disabled from transmitting until it receives another stun message. When it receives a kill message it usually stops working altogether and must be returned to the shop that configured it to be resurrected.

LMR 400 loses about 2.7 dB over 100 feet at GMRS frequencies. So 40 feet would be 40% of 2.7 dB or 1.08 dB so you lose 20.6% of the power your radio inserts into the cable. That’s just the cable loss. That’s really not terrible; it’s just something to be aware of.

And, when the repeater is transmitting on the same frequency the home station won’t even receive that.

You probably doomed yourself and your loved ones by placing an artificial and unrealistic constraint on your communications when you adopted the constraint that “the only source of communications is GMRS”. Like the others, I don’t understand why you’re packing around a repeater. What your scenario is missing is realistic planning. Instead of deliberately constraining yourself to GMRS you should ask what communications could help you in such a disaster. You should have a plan set up in advance that include near and distance communications, at least the ability to listen to outside communications to discover the nature and size of the disaster. You should at the very least be prepared to receive news via broadcast and shortwave radio. That means knowing where to tune and when. A huge step up from that would be the ability to respond on a variety of frequencies. Ideally, the communications gear you choose uses very low power while listening and capable of listening across a very wide range of frequencies. An example of a poor choice would be my FTDX10 ham radio transceiver. Yeah, it’s 100 watts output, but when receiving it uses amps. A better choice would be the Icom IC-705. Its receiver is plenty good and capable of receiving most frequencies from broadcast AM up to 470 MHz and all modes, so capable of receiving GMRS and its current consumption is only a fraction of that of my full size transceiver. With the right antenna you can listen to stations that are thousands of miles away. I don’t know if a MARS/CAP mod on the IC-705 allows it to transmit on the GMRS channels in an emergency, but honestly, GMRS is very limited as a true emergency band. Don’t get me wrong, having a bunch of people who have GMRS radios is infinitely better than tin cans and a piece of wire, but its reach is vastly more limited than other bands used by people who know exactly where to tune in an emergency. At least as important as the radio is the need to have a good antenna(s). Again, simply having an antenna isn’t enough. You must know its strengths and its limitations and how to get the most out of it. Many people think it’s silly, but those hams who take their wire antennas and throw them over a tree for Parks on the Air know exactly how to reach someone five hundred miles away with 10 watts of RF.

I agree, the wording doesn’t make it sound like he was frantically hollering for help. He appears to have been asking if anyone needed help, or asking if anyone needed help with GMRS. The wording makes it unclear. If he was falsely calling for help I suspect that would be a violation of the regulations prohibiting transmitting a false or deceptive message that appear both generally for all private radio services in 95.333(f) and specifically for GMRS in 95.1733(a)(2)..

This is probably the issue. UHF just doesn’t pass through moisture bearing vegetation.

Great point and one I should have mentioned.

RG58 is lossy at GMRS frequencies, 10.6 dB per 100 feet compared to 2.7 dB per 100 feet for LMR-400, so you definitely don’t want to use it for any long runs, but the practical difference between 5 watts and 4 watts is indistinguishable. Cutting off a couple feet won’t make a difference. If you cannot reliably reach a repeater with four watts, you won’t be able to with five watts.

Here are the general rules for RF amplifiers: § 2.815 External radio frequency power amplifiers. (a) As used in this part, an external radio frequency power amplifier is any device which, (1) when used in conjunction with a radio transmitter as a signal source is capable of amplification of that signal, and (2) is not an integral part of a radio transmitter as manufactured. (b) No person shall manufacture, sell or lease, offer for sale or lease (including advertising for sale or lease) or import, ship or distribute for the purpose of selling or leasing or offering for sale or lease, any external radio frequency power amplifier capable of operation on any frequency or frequencies below 144 MHz unless the amplifier has received a grant of certification in accordance with subpart J of this part and other relevant parts of this chapter. These amplifiers shall comply with the following: (1) The external radio frequency power amplifier shall not be capable of amplification in the frequency band 26–28 MHz. (2) The amplifier shall not be capable of easy modification to permit its use as an amplifier in the frequency band 26–28 MHz. (3) No more than 10 external radio frequency power amplifiers may be constructed for evaluation purposes in preparation for the submission of an application for a grant of certification. (4) If the external radio frequency power amplifier is intended for operation in the Amateur Radio Service under part 97 of this chapter, the requirements of §§ 97.315 and 97.317 of this chapter shall be met.

Except that’s not how it’s implemented everywhere. Our repeater has a tone of 100 Hz on transmit and receive. My radio is set the same. As long as my radio is receiving from the repeater if I try to transmit I get a “Channel Busy” notice on the display and my radio will not transmit. Which is usually fine because it keeps me from transmitting over someone who was on first. But to have to wait six seconds after they stop transmitting is excessive.

It doesn’t matter but the regulations specifically say that you are allowed to include unit designators.

I would argue that it doesn’t allow another person to quickly respond. In fact anybody who has “busy channel lockout” set cannot transmit during that very long six seconds. It does have value in preventing the repeater from quickly cycling between transmit and receive for a signal that’s going in and out.

You must refer to your manual to determine which channel is assigned to which frequency. Part of the problem is that even though the FCC specifies the channels, they didn’t assign numbers to them. A specific combination of a frequency, power limit, and bandwidth programmed into a radio is a channel. There are at least two different naming schemes. Some manufacturers number channels sequentially so the repeater channels simply extend the repeater channels to 23-30. Some number them RP15-RP22. That’s because they receive on the same frequencies as simplex 15-22. The manual of each GMRS radio should include a table that shows the repeater frequencies and the channel numbers for each frequency. Any of the repeaters that advertise frequencies in the 467 MHz range or channels designated as RP15-RP22 or 23-30 are duplex repeaters. The repeater receives at 467.xxx MHz and transmits at 462.xxx MHz where the xxx portion is often used to refer to the repeater, such as “the 550 repeater “. Unless they specify otherwise they follow the convention of exactly a 5 MHz offset for GMRS. There are some people who deliberately choose to setup their repeaters with an offset that deviates from 5 MHz, but as far as I know there are no current retail 95E certified GMRS radios that are capable of being programmed with that deviation.

See, this is how rumors start. One “statement from 2017” hardly counts as “ARRL has been barking about it.” 2017 was when the FCC overhauled the regulations for GMRS. Whenever a large rule change like that is made comments are requested as part of the proposed rule making. It may be that the “statement from 2017” was in response to that.

No, I haven’t heard that. Where did you hear that?

You’re sure welcome. I was afraid I might not have provided enough information, but sometimes saying more makes things more confusing and I didn’t want that.

It sounds like you really want your display to show the name of the A channel as you scroll through the A channels. Is that correct?

1. You now have a directional antenna. Track the interference to learn what it is. 2. You already have a 9 element antenna. Adding more elements follows the law of diminishing returns. Assuming you built the antenna correctly, raising the antenna is probably the next thing to try. But check to see if you’re transmitting on wide rather than narrow. 3. Raise the antenna? Not sure. A lady gets on our 2 meter net from about 80 miles away using a handheld Yagi and a Yaesu Vx6 5 watt radio. It’s amazing how clearly we hear her. I thought she must have a 80 watt mobile but she just has 5, so it’s possible.