UpperBucks

I'm a "practical prepper" - I don't think society is going to abruptly collapse and I'll be forced to shoot and eat my neighbor's goats, rather, I think that being prepared for various natural and man-made disasters keeps me out of the pool of people who need help and keeps me in the pool of people who can help. My focus is on mitigation; then response, then restoration. My radios are a part of that MRR communication plan, without depending on the internet at all. FWIW, I also have a very nice "offline internet" setup that ensures that nothing - not maps, not documents, not contact lists, is "internet dependent." My prepping goal is always to be prepared to restore not "prepared to hunker down" - and communications are a part of it. (aside: read this book and it will change your prepping mentality forever https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Communities/dp/0143118072 ) Unlike many, I also get to think and do this stuff at a larger and more practical scale - I was a municipal emergency management coordinator for local government, I am currently consulting on small-community emergency management (e.g. "How to approach NIMS when you have no resources, no budget, and no people.") and I have been a fire/rescue technician and the resident "radio nerd" at the fire company for 22 years now. I think I got my ham radio license in 1994? Earlier? I personally experienced what it means to have others come save your a$$ when needed, and I've been the one doing the saving. Communications comes in handy when the poop is getting actual. Point is that I do a lot of reality-based "prepping" and - to tie the knot on this - any communications platform you intend to use in emergencies needs minimal complexity and functional fallback. GMRS nets via internet-linked (which may or may not be illegal, depending on which argument you read on the internet today) & uncoordinated repeaters (OMG what a mess, what a mess) is very complex, and fails to have some kind of at least regional fallback that is practical. There is no rational, cost-effective way to create an all-OTA network of autonomous (not dependent on internet-as-a-backbone) GMRS repeaters. Maybe not fully "autonomous", because a repeater site is power-dependent, but you can make and/or store power at a repeater site in about 100 different ways. Anyway, just as GMRS repeaters were getting useful for something more like regional backup-backup communications, it's falling into CB radio territory in some areas. Where I live it's still useful, but when I drive to visit my son in a more densely populated area, it's 300 square miles of gibberish blasting into the repeaters.

I can't stand it, that's what I think. For me, from the first day I ever got a ham ticket, to me the purpose of a repeater was, is, and always will be - for lack of a better word - "tactical" - not "social." Use a repeater for a purpose. If you want to chat with your buddy about the weather and your health problems, call them on the phone or facetime or whatsapp or whatever. I use GMRS locally - no repeater - as much as possible, and for the most part, the only repeater I use with any regularity I use while I'm on a long fire call to check in with my wife because we have some epic cellular dead zones, and even when I'm not in a dead zone, the quick and easy "push-to-talk" does not require me fumbling with a phone while wearing gloves or whatever. It also maybe more useful as we're thinking about banning use of mobile phones on calls for a lot of reasons that start and end with Social Media. GMRS is now starting to get exactly like everything I hate about DMR - when these repeaters start joining up over the internet, all they are doing is making a radio and other equipment into little more than a complex microphone/speaker for an internet chat room. Just use your smartphone and zello if you want to yak. Nobody wants to hear you.

I'm on a Mac, Chrome or Firefox, the streaming audio feeds for the nets do not play at all. They THINK they are playing, but they have no sound. Any troubleshooting ideas?

When I was still doing ham radio, had same basic setup (Diamond discone up top working as a scanner receiver, Yagi down a bit from there for 2M/440. I put a rotator on the whole mast. The Discone didn't notice that it was rotating Moving the Yagi to point the right way for a particular repeater was the only way to do nets and stuff on the far-far away 2M repeaters. This was back when there was any activity on 2M.

Yes, it's the visual clutter that seems to scare people off. "Talkabout" is the level of complexity that seems to be the max. There's zero need for the keypad for "normal" people.

I can see that the nets have activity, but get no audio on Chrome/Mac or Firefox/Mac.

So many excellent answers, but for me, the analogy always comes down to a garden hose nozzle. If you set the nozzle to a wide "Omnidirectional" pattern, you'll spray all the water in a wide area close to your feet. If you set the nozzle to a narrow, directional patters (that's what a Yagi does), you'll spray all the water a long distance, but in a small area. In radio, it's both ways - if you want to have your signal reach (and hear) a distant point, you use a directional antenna (a Yagi) - at the expense of wide area coverage. A good use of a Yagi might be if you have a home-based GMRS radio and you want to reach a distant repeater that's not in range with an omni-directional antenna. You can point the Yagi at the location of the repeater's antenna and you'll be able to connect to that repeater. HOWEVER you might/will no longer be able to reach other repeaters that were more local and in range of an Omnidirectional antenna. In my Ham radio universe, when I was active, I lived in a place where all the 144 Mhz repeaters were too far for an Omni antenna, so I installed a Yagi with an antenna rotator - so I could point at a particular repeater and successfully communicate.

De-sense Likely the problem - this is the price we pay for the cheaper radios, they are less "precise" in their build and more susceptible to all sorts of interference, including the interference from a nearby radio. Really, if you don't NEED the repeater, there's no reason to add that complexity. The only time I use a repeater is if I literally can't do simplex (radio-to-radio direct)

DESENSE: You have a screaming toddler (your radio) in the room and now you can't hear the TV (your other radio).

I have 4 of them. Good: Relatively sturdy - has survived drops that have killed other radios. Good battery life. USB-C Charging Works with repeaters. Very easy to program. Can receive in VHF bands. Bad Not waterproof/water resistant. Not ideal for a "Set the Channel and Talk" type of end-user, too many controls on the keypad can bump you off channel or change a setting you don't want end-users messing with. This is not just a GM-30 issue, BTW - if you have "casual" user you want minimal controls. Channel/Volume/Squelch. Receiver sensitivity can be a bit weird; too sensitive and not sensitive enough. Car-to-Car performance on the highway is surprisingly poor. I prefer my Wouxun KG-905G, but that is much more expensive than the GM-30.

Yes, although your radio is going to Transmit on 467.7000 and the repeater will "hear" that and retransmit it OUT on 462.7000 - so the radios are NOT directly talking to one another.

Yeah, that's the same electronics as bluetooth earbuds stuffed into a physical adapter that fits a Kenwood-style Mic/Speaker jack. I'm taking about something literally built into the radio - a companion app for the hardware - that the device itself has. For example, I have a Brother P-Touch model 610. I can do various label-design things directly on the device, but they also have a phone app that gives me more options for label layouts, more control over the fonts, sizes and so on. the printer pairs with the phone - no cables, no dongles - and you get a bigger screen and keyboard to fine-tune deep settings or bulk edit settings. I guess it would add $2 to the cost of the radio to implement....and with the price competition as it is, that's not gonna happen. At least we have Chirp and clunky cables....well, unless you're on Radio Oddity equipment, in which case you have what looks, feels and works like Chirp, but isn't Chirp.

How Repeaters Work - For Absolute Beginners. First, let me give a tiny lesson in radio stuff. Megahertz does not mean "really painful". If you have an FM radio in your car or home, you already know what "frequencies" are - for example, in the USA, you might have a radio station like "102.3 FM - Dance Hits of the 1780's!" - the "102.3" - that's not just a number, that number is the radio frequency used by that station. In "radio" terms, 102.3 is one-hundred two point three megahertz - we abbreviate "Megahertz" as Mhz because who wants to type "megahertz" all the time? So FM radio stations are 103.3Mhz, or 101.1Mhz and so on. There are lots and lots of different types of radios and they all have their own set of frequencies. For example, your FM radio can tune to 108Mhz....but there's lots of stuff after that. You've got Airplanes and Air Navigation starting just after the FM band - 108Mhz to 137Mhz - there's lots of other stuff higher than that. GMRS radios are in the 462Mhz and 467Mhz band. GMRS is Line-of-Sight. Sort of. Usually. Well, its complicated. Many kinds of radio signals, including GMRS radio, travel in a "line of sight" fashion, which means if there are obstructions that are not completely or somewhat transparent to radio waves between two radios, the signal won't get through. "NOW WAIT A MINUTE.." you're telling me, "I USED MY RADIO IN THE BASEMENT TO TELL MY WIFE UPSTAIRS I WAS USING THE RADIO, AND IT WORKED JUST FINE!!" Well, it's complicated, but think of it this way - there can be small reflections and refraction of the radio waves, and in the same way you can tell that someone left the light on in the kitchen when you're in another room of the house, a radio signal can - and does - reach around (or, since it's not LIGHT) through some objects. But it's important to know that if two radios that are far apart can't "see" one another, they can't "hear" one another. OK now you are a radio expert. Let's move on to Repeaters. Ralph and Joe are out Lake Big in their boats, and they are about 3 miles apart. They both agreed to tune their nice new GMRS radios to "Channel 3" (which is 462.6125Mhz on most radios.) They check in via their radios now and then, and all is well with the world. They go home. The next day, Ralph is out on Lake Big, and Joe is on Lake Small, which is on the other side of a huge hill. They are still only 3 miles apart, but there's this huge hill that blocks their radio signal. Joe, from Lake Small, calls Ralph, on Lake Big, over and over on 462.6125 (called "Channel 3" on their radios), to no avail. Ralph and Joe know a guy named Bob. Bob lives on top of the big hill. From his place on top of the hill, Bob can see both Lake Big and Lake Small. Bob also has a GMRS radio, and he tunes it to 462.6125 (Channel 3) and he hears Joe calling Ralph. Bob radios back to Joe - "Hey, I think Ralph is on Lake Big today" Ralph, from his boat on Lake Big, says, "Hey, Bob, I can hear you! Please tell Joe I'm on Lake Big right now!" Bob repeats what Joe told him, "Joe, Ralph is on Lake Big right now." Joe replies, "Bob, please tell Ralph I will meet him at McStarbucks at 3PM" Bob repeats what Joe said, "Ralph, Joe says meet him at McStarbucks at 3PM" This goes on for a while, until Bob gets tired of listening to them and repeating what they said. Now, let's replace Bob with a "Repeater" and you have the basic idea - a "Repeater" can "hear" (receive) many radios that can't hear one another easily. Repeaters also can "talk" (transmit) back to all the radios that can hear the repeater. This is typically because they are positioned in a place that is high up and has "line of sight" to a wider area than a radio down low on the ground. With a repeater system, your radio is set up with a "Talk" frequency that the repeater is listening to, and a "listen" frequency that the repeater is transmitting on. There are various important reasons why the repeater INPUT is different than the repeater OUTPUT, but basically, a repeater-capable radio means that it can talk on one frequency and listen on another. As an end-user, all you really care about is the "listen" frequency, the radio is programmed with the correct transmit frequency (which is 5Mhz higher than the listen frequency. I'll keep going with more Repeater Basics if anyone cares to learn about "Privacy Codes" (they do not make your conversations private) and how they work.

OK, let's start with - what is the brand and model of your radio? Because there are different ways to program radios, and sadly, some GMRS radios do not have the capability to do more than talk directly to other radios - repeater capability is not in all GMRS radios.

Broken Microphone.

What's amazing to me is that more GMRS radios don't offer a bluetooth-based companion app for the occasional tweaking of settings that are a PITA from a front keypad; stuff like CTCSS/DCS in particular. 462.600 has at least 4 different repeaters in my general area, each with different tone combinations, and there's a 625 repeater that just came up with another CTCSS code. 90% of the time, all I need is PTT and a preconfigured "Channel" - but when that other 10% happens and the laptop is back home, keypad programming for ALL of the GMRS (and Ham) radios out there is an exercise in frustration.

Worth a try. You're getting an email with the subject "XTL 2500 - thanks" - in case it gets spam-trapped.

I have a very nice Motorola XTL-2500 in the correct bandplan that many claim would be a good GMRS radio. It is in excellent condition - it just sat there for years, didn't get much use at all but I learned that it is impossible for me to get programmed the way I want/need so I'm going to get rid of it.

Hello, and welcome to the world of direct person-to-person and place-to-place communications. I've been a licensed amateur radio operator for well over 20 years, I've also been a municipal emergency management coordinator and I have been a volunteer firefighter for over 20 years. I am generally into radio-related stuff, and always have been. The thing I like about GMRS is that it's much closer to CB radio in simplicity for "normal" people who just want to talk from here to there, while retaining a little bit of sophistication for people who want to mess around with antennas, repeaters, networks and so on. There are many good suggestions already in the responses, so I'll only add on a few things. For me GMRS has only 3 uses: 1. An escape from my phone when I'm working out in the yard. I leave one radio in the house and keep one with me. No text messages, no beeps, no boops, no pings, no rings. Merciful silence - unless someone needs me at the house, and they can reach me. If you do nothing else but escape your phone but stay connected with people, that's a good use of GMRS. 2. A never-ending experiment in local to regional alternative/offline communications. My ham radio background comes into play here (not in a good way); way back in 2012, hurricane Sandy's damage to the area I live wiped out the electricity and telecom infrastructure for quite some time, and that was when I learned that maybe Ham radio is not what it used to be, because we were unable to rely on it for...well...anything at all. That's a whole different topic, but the point is that I've been testing GMRS in a variety of scenarios and have found that in some areas it really does work quite well for point-to-point communications over 3 to 5 miles, especially when you have a nice high external antenna, or even a decent mobile antenna (handhelds are intrinsically limited when it comes to distance optimization - height matters). So one of the things that I've done with GMRS is prepared a "Communications Plan" with a few folks, where I work out what channels we use to call and talk (and, to be clear, YOUR channel 1 is not always MY channel 1 - see this site https://www.k0tfu.org/reference/frs-gmrs-privacy-codes-demystified.html ) and try it out now and then from various places. You'll find out all the places you can't reach and eventually develop a "my coverage" map, and you'll wish it was larger. But be careful - this path leads to feeling that you need to buy an install a repeater, even though you should not do that. No really, don't do it. That path leads to madness . 3. Communications at events. The actual, most practical use of hand-held radios of any kind, GMRS or not - is people talking to other people to exchange information, coordinate activities, and so on, is actually the thing I do the least with my GMRS radios, but when I do, they are very useful. Various members of my family are active in festivals of various kinds, and that's when the "dumb" GMRS radios come out (the ones with just "channels"). There's nothing quite so easy to use as a push-to-talk radio that does not require cell service or wifi to operate, and this is especially so at a music festival in some muddy patch of nowhere. Something I've not tried with GMRS, only because I've not really invested the time/money is Data/Short Messages. GMRS hand-held portable units may transmit digital data containing location information, or requesting location information from one or more other GMRS or FRS units, or containing a brief text message to another specific GMRS or FRS unit. ) This radio can do Data https://baofengtech.com/product/gmrs-pro/

That's a shame, honestly, given the simplicity of the GMRS channelized approach, the relatively low cost of equipment, and the range of possibilities for community preparedness and incident management, especially in places/at times where cell service is bad or non-existent.

This is some great conversation. I think that the GMRS license holder = individual is a giant PITA for anyone who is trying to establish some kind of "Minimal infrastructure" (MI) "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) emergency communications system. It really would make so much more sense for a CERT-like organization to hold the licenses for a repeater.

Well, then, I guess I'll just have to become a paid subscriber....this site is VERY useful for me. Now I have a little star on my profile icon. Thanks Rich, this is a site that gets more useful every day.