WRPG745

No it wasn’t. The Q codes started in 1912. QSL started in the 1920s. 10-4 was created in the 1930s.

I have been scratching my head over this for a long time now. I understand being cautious about the security of your home, but do you all (those that have this issue with the address on the FCC database) live in an extremely high crime neighborhood? Are you all filthy rich, prominent, and in the newspapers front and center? I have had a Ham license starting off in 1996 with several different addresses over the years and now have GMRS and Ham with my address on there. I know hundreds of Hams out there that have their address on their license and don't know of anyone who has been harmed or robbed. Could it happen? Absolutely. But ask the many radio operators out there. How many have had their house broken into and been robbed or half beaten to death? I think the key thing is to NOT display your equipment online in either a list or pictures. Even then, who is coming to steal it? Probably only another radio operator.

I remember when I got one of my licenses recently, someone sent me a message warning me that my address was online. Yep, it was, just like it had always been. And if people did further searching, you would find that a hundred other sites had my address and probably every address I ever lived at, including every phone number I have ever had. The FCC website is the least of your worries. Try fast people search, been verified, and hundreds of other data mining sites that collect every bit of information on you, place it in a blender, and whip up a mess of info on you that can sometimes make you look really sketchy. Unless you paid a lot of money to the right people to have all of your information scrubbed from the internet, something about you or related to your address is going to pop up. To want to give up on having a radio because you think that someone is going to break into your house just because the FCC has your address up for all to see, is crazy. Best bet is to get a P.O. Box so that your address wont pop up.

The issue is that other websites will still have your address. If you own your own home and I find your name on the FCC website, I can then take that name and then enter into the tax assessors database for your town and find your address that way. Too much is public knowledge these days. It is almost impossible to hide. My thought is that criminals looking to steal to make a quick buck are going to break into your house just because. I highly doubt they will get sophisticated enough to monitor radio traffic to see when you are not around. The best thing is to maybe get cameras installed on your house. Put up signs stating that the property is monitored by camera surveillance.

Hundreds of thousands of members logged off just before you came on, they will be back.
 
While you are waiting watch this video: 
 

I know a few members do emergency volunteer work. Anyone have a legit portable repeater setup?
It's been about a year since I setup my portable "shack". Since the weather was nice today and I have a new repeater to field test, I figured I would do a dry-run at home before I setup in an actual emergency.
It takes about 3 hours to deploy the portable setup with HF, VHF, and UHF amateur radio and GMRS. So, needless to say, unless it's a multi-day drill or real emergency, I'm not going all out, but it was time for that dry-run.
I have a dedicated mast for the homemade 80m/40m/20m/10m OCF dipole, and then an additional mast for the VHF/UHF antenna(s).  In these pictures, there is a Yaesu DR-1X and a Icom IC-7300.
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 
 
 

Hey folks.  I have had a small group of people ask me about tones and GMRS/FRS basics in the past week.  I figured I would take one of the conversations here and share it for people new to the service.  Hopefully it will help you understand Private Lines, Privacy Tones, sub-channels, tones and squelching methods, in general.  I am only covering the two most popular in GMRS and FRS, but there are many others available as you move into different radio services and technology. 
 
Before we get into what all that stuff is, lets talk about why it exists.  Per NOAA and the US Census Bureau, the lower 48 states is approximately 3.1 million square miles.  Also, 83% of Americans live on 10% of the total available square miles and 40% of all US citizens live on the east and west coast in counties touching oceans.
 
Following this logic, about 500,000+ licensed and unlicensed operators (estimated by me) are sharing FRS and GMRS radio space, in roughly 310,000 square miles.  So, how does 500,000 people in close proximity, sharing 22 channels, all use their radios at the same time without interfering with each other?  Motorola brings you PL tones!
 
Lets get this out of the way...  regardless of what the manufacturers may tell you or how they label their products, there is no privacy.  Period.  Private Lines (PL), Privacy Tones, Sub-channels and any other name for the same service, does not stop people from hearing you, it stops you from hearing them.  I know... seems like a day in Opposite World, but that's how it works. 
 
I suppose the first thing to do is explain what the PL tones really are, what the more common types are and what each of them do.  A traditional squelch is a signal level squelch.  Meaning, no audio will come out of the speaker until a strong enough signal is received.  Then there are also user squelch types.  With analog radios, the most common type of user squelch uses encoding called Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS.  This feature is defined as being used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio channel.  So, as mentioned above, its not that you as a person speaking have any type of privacy, but rather you don't have to listen to everyone on the same frequency.  Hopefully the third time is a charm.
 
Many GMRS and FRS radios only have simple CTCSS functions called Tone Squelch, often displayed as TSQL on the screen when enabled.  This means two things.  One is, regardless of what you do with your squelch knob or set your RF squelch to, no audio will come out of the speaker unless the tone you selected is embedded in the signal you are receiving.  The other thing it does is, when you transmit, what ever tone frequency you have programed gets transmitted with/in your signal to unlock or open the squelch of other radios configured the same way.
 
There is another method of CTCSS called "split tone".  This means that you can use one tone when you transmit and another for your receive.  This comes in handy when repeater owners are trying to limit who can access the repeater, as higher cost radios typically have split tone capability, compared to poorly built and inexpensive radios that would be problematic on a repeater do not.  Also, this makes it a bit more difficult to "discover" the input tone by using scanning tools.
 
Another function of split tone CTCSS is that you can also set your radio to transmit a tone to unlock a repeater or other radio, but leave your receive tone set to null (nothing).  When this mode is enabled, there is typically a display on the radio that either reads TN or TONE.  That means you can bring up a repeater or unlock a radio squelch, but also hear everyone else regardless of what tones they are running, if any at all.  This is actually a great feature for GMRS radios since Repeater Channels share FRS frequencies and GMRS simplex frequencies.  So you can tell if the frequency is in use as well as being able to talk to others who many not be using the repeater.
 
CTCSS is an analog squelching system.  There is also a digital squelching system called Digital-Code Squelch or DCS.  It has similar use cases as CTCSS, but it is sending digitally embedded numeric codes instead of a sub-audible tone.
 
I apologize in advance, but this next portion may get a little confusing.  If you have questions, just ask and myself or one of the other knowledgeable members will be able to help.  All of the numbers below are simply random samples I selected for example.  Last I checked, there are 38 standard tones and an additional 13 expanded tones (not available on every radio) for a total possible 51 tones and 83 DCS codes.
 
Along with the use examples above, you can get creative with DCS, because we are dealing with binary numbers instead of a tone.  You can have the numbers used in a bunch of different combinations.  For example, the number 411 (or 4 1 1, three separate numbers) in binary would be transmitted as 100 001 001.  The reverse of this would be 011 110 110.  So we are swapping the meaning of a 1 and a 0.  So the combinations could be as follows:
Normal-Normal = Transmit sends 411 and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in the standard format 100 001 001.
Reverse-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 reversed (or bit swapped) and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 reversed, meaning 011 110 110.
Normal-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 standard binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a reversed binary format.
Reverse-Normal = Transmit sends 411 in a reversed binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a standard format.
Unfortunately, I am unaware of any radio's that have a DCS option to leave your user squelch open while transmitting a DCS code.  If DCS is enabled, you cannot hear anyone else unless they are using the same DCS number and binary combination.
 
CTCSS tones can also be "reversed".  CTCSS tones, since its analog, we have a phase reversal, often called "reverse burst" when it is only reversed at the end of the transmission.  (Something to Google in your spare time.)
 
On some high-end radios, squelching can get really exotic.  You may be able to create your own custom tone instead of using one of the standard tones.  You may also be able to combine CTCSS tones and DCS codes.  For example:
User-CTCSS = Transmit 2600Hz tone, squelch opens with 2600Hz tone. (random number example)
T-DCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 code.
DCS-T = Transmit 411 code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone.
T-rDCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 bit swapped code.
rDCS-T = Transmit 411 bit swapped code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone.
 
Now, here is the kind of disappointing part.  Some manufactures try to make their equipment sound like something its not.  They will use things like there own custom number code to identify a traditional CTCSS code.  For example, Midland uses code number 22 (also known as a sub-channel) to indicate the tone 141.3.  This makes coordination on tone selection a bit cumbersome between some brands.  It also means that if your radio doesn't display the actual CTCSS tone or DCS code, you need to keep your owner's manual handy for reference. 
 
So... I don't know if that explanation made things better or worse.  LOL  Anyway, some companies use verbiage like "Privacy Tones" which adds to the confusion for some people.  If you are using a true full CTCSS, it just means you are limited to whom you can hear, but everyone can still hear you.
 
The examples I provided above for DCS are not what actually gets transmitted, but rather a conceptual process to help understand at a very basic level of what occurs, simply to understand the difference.  DCS adds a 134.4 bps bitstream to the transmitted audio. To move past concept to the weeds, this video does a great job.

Hey folks... one of the big things many new users (and some of us old guys) enjoy doing is figuring out how far their radio can reach.  It's always fun to contact someone from say 80 or 100 miles away on a handheld radio.  In September of 2023, we went as a group up to Reddish Knob and played Radio for the afternoon. Everyone either used their handheld radio, mobile radio, and some extravagant "portable" setups to see what kind of range they could get from the mountain top. With GMRS (and some amateur radio) being a line of site service, its possible to make contacts from as far as 150-180 miles away while we are up there. I personally talked about 162 miles.  We had a great time.   Does anyone have any interest in doing something like this again this Spring? Just bring whatever gear you want to test out... you can try some of my gear, etc. It is paved all the way to the top of the mountain and any vehicle can access it.                              

Akshully - In most (all?) states you cannot simply "look up" info from a license plate.  Whereas anyone can look up someone's full legal name and address in about 3 seconds on the FCC's freely available and widely-known website.
Not saying criminals are going to be searching out people on vacation as the OP suggests (that's stupid), but comparing looking up a vehicle tag to a callsign is not a valid comparison.
..and if i've learned anything from people on this website, it is that minor little pedantic details like this are apparently very... VERY important and worth arguing over for days or even months to prove who thinks they are smarter...

I realize now, that the channels 15-22 are not pre-programmed gmrs repeater channels. When I made my initial post I for some silly reason thought they were repeater channels set with an offset. So essentially this ENTIRE thread is pointless. 

If I were you, I would take look at your question. You can basically use all 22 simplex channels with the appropriate power level setting for communicating with friends or family.  The majority of GMRS radios the no need to go into the settings of the radio. You just pick any channel below channel 23 for those that have been in radios for a while. For those that need clarification channels 23 to 30 are RPT 15 through RPT 22. 

Go to the website or GitHub to get the older releases 

FlDigi is way more than just text messages. It's used by our ARES group for a weekly digital net using MT63-2000L with a 1500 passband, and at the end all the announcements are sent back via the same mode.

Hey Keith:
You are way out of line and the language in your posting was not even necessary and uncalled for.  It was obvious that you did not like his comment, but your language and your response was not justified regardless of the situation with your son since, it was far from being directed to him. 
You're showing your below average class and intelligence levels in your posting. Please show me and the forum where in Randy's posting he was directing his comment specifically to your son, show me and the forum where that occurred. Nor, was his comment derogatory and/or disrespectful to any child in a wheelchair.
Maybe you are not cut-out for this hobby and being in a public discussion group.  Did the Amateur Radio Service group do you wrong or shame you also? You're definitely doing a great job of presenting yourself to the GMRS world? You might want to move on and give the Citizens Band Radio Service group a try now. Although, not all of the Citizens Band Radio Operators act like you, but they are many of them like you and you would no doubt fit in real well.
Maybe it would be best that you stick to FRS, but watch your language because there are a lot of kids using FRS and trying to become good radio operators when they become of age and can afford better radios.

I really don't want to see you leave. I think you're a nice guy and you contribute a lot here. I think you're just taking my comments and the comments of others entirely too serious. Steve and I disagreed on something. We had a conversation about it. Nobody got offended because the other guy had a different opinion. That's just normally how adults do it.

I'll tell you want i think. In the end, no one gives a damn what the rules say, they do what they want or think they can get away with. Even the people who don't publicly admit it due to work, or position in the community, etc., fall into this category. I think the entire conversation is theater, boredom or both.
 
Carry on.

Yes - my thought is that within a few weeks this thread will be 10 pages long with nothing more than a bunch of verbal-masturbation and social-defects trying to prove to everyone how smart they think they are.. and, nothing will come of it.. then, a few months later someone will come and ask the same thing again and it will start all over again.

No, we are unlikely to settle this debate, regardless of how many times the question is asked. But there are lots of other posts about it. Line A is one reason. 12 million people live above Line A and thus are prohibited from using 19.  
Second, GMRS really isn’t used by most people to “call out on”.  It’s primarily for use between people who know each other while pursuing other activities.  It works very well for that.
Don’t worry, you didn’t start the debate.  It just has some dormant periods.
Welcome to the forum!

No.

Oh thank goodness some pioneering spirit came along and thought of this topic. It's about time! I'm shocked. SHOCKED. that no one's ever discussed this before!
 
Now, I have some new and unique thoughts on Linked Repeaters I'd like to share with the class
 
😂

Wait, what AI engine created that post?  Or where did it get copied and pasted from? 
Training ground for engineers, and emergency responders?  The engineers thing is laughable at best, and I have NEVER even heard of ham radio being a contributing factor in someone becoming a cop or fire fighter.  Now I have seen MANY a wacker that couldn't get into public safety for various reasons end up with a ham license.  Never the other way around.  Others are welcome to comment here, if they have ever heard such a thing, but I'm not gonna hold out much hope.
The engineer's thing.  Most new hams are not even good appliance operators.  They care little about the quality of their equipment (Baofengs) and for a long time they were getting their license for other reasons like joining a SAR / CERT group and it was sort of a requirement for those groups. 
The continued push that ham radio is for emergency communications promises the ARRL a new batch of members / license holders every time there is some significant incident that other types of communications fail and the otherwise uninformed general public see the statement that "Ham Radio Saves Lives" and go see about getting licensed.  Some get as far as finding out about the tests and that sends them to GMRS or drives them off all together.  A few go the full route and get licensed, buy a radio and listen to it for a month or so and put it in a closet.  VERY few become anything resembling active in the hobby. 
Fostering innovation?
Gonna ask, what innovative thing that had made a significant contribution to radio communications has come out of ham radio in the last 50 years? 
I just had this 'argument' with a bunch of backwards thinking hams that were certain that StarLink was going to be the end of EMCOMM (emergency communications) with regards to ham radio.  And if they don't figure out how to adopt it and other newer technologies, then yes, it might do just that. 
The whole ad-hoc, no infrastructure, radio to radio communications thing is great if two things are present.  First is the distances are short.  No one is going to be of any assistance with a flood or tornado if they are on the other side of the country.  Those sorts of things are localized.  The communications need to be localized as well.  FEMA and other state EMA agencies have all but completely gotten away form HF as a resource, because it's of limited use.  They bring in trailer mounted towers and VHF/UHF/800 equipment to restore communications for public safety. 
So if you have no infrastructure, the other thing you need is enough people to bridge the gap in coverage between where you are and where the people are you need to communicate with.  That requires operators in specific places to relay traffic from you to the other party.  Ham radio was in the past fairly active most places.  Now that activity is significantly lower.  And even if those people are in the right locations, are they going to be willing to participate and pass traffic. 
 

There are a few websites on this topic, but I just had a fun experience and thought I'd mention here what was involved.
Background: The ISS operates an amateur repeater. The downlink for that repeater is at 437.8000 MHz. What you will hear on that repeater is mostly people trying to make DX contacts through the repeater. As an example, if I can hit the repeater 400 miles away, and someone else can respond back, from 400 miles away, we could have 800 miles between us (not counting the 260 mile trip to space and back). An 800 mile contact over VHF through a single repeater is kind of cool, so amateurs are working this repeater constantly as it passes near enough to reach.
 
Today's pass, the one I heard, was never any closer than Calgary, Canada (I'm in Salt Lake City). The measuring tool on Google Earth put the land distance at about 850 miles. And if you calculate the hypotenuse of 850 miles base plus 260 miles elevation that's about 888 miles. Accounting for the curvature of the earth changes the angle of that 260 mile leg, changing the shape of the triangle, and making the hypotenuse (the distance from me to the ISS) closer to 950 miles.
 
I wasn't trying for contact; I assumed it was too far away, which it probably was for my setup. But I started hearing it before it hit the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, and kept hearing it all the way to New Brunswick. That's well over 2400 miles maximum distance.
 
How do you know you're hearing the ISS repeater? First, you'll hear it starting to show up at the approximate fly-by time here: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking_map.cfm
 
Next, you'll notice that the transmission is coming in off-center from the downlink frequency. This is due to the Doppler effect of the ISS moving 17,000+ miles per hour. Today when I first started hearing it, it was coming in at 437.8065 MHz, and by the time it faded out, I was listening on 437.7935 MHz. That's a 13kHz Doppler shift (+6500Hz to -6500Hz). Sensing that Doppler shift pass from above the center frequency to below the published center frequency is a dead giveaway you're dealing with the ISS moving 17500MPH.
But here's what's cool, in my mind. My setup wasn't extravagant:
RTL-SDRv4 (<$40) with SDR++ software (free). Cheap no-name (<$20) inline linear amplifier powered by the Bias-T setting of the SDR. And the big massive antenna? Hold onto your britches: Comet CA2X4SR-NMO mobile antenna ($80) mounted on a Midland magnetic mount ($30) stuck to an old 16" square steel griddle. Laptop computer to run the SDR and its software. Total cost (excluding laptop): $170, all of which I have cobbled together already. My technique was just to look up the fly-over time, and set the SDR++ software to just a few kHz high, then start watching the waterfall and listening. When I started seeing the FM signal in the waterfall I centered on it and listened. And by watching the waterfall I was able to continually adjust the frequency center through the fly-over until it was out of range. It was amazing to me that I was able to follow it all the way from the west coast of Canada to the east coast, and that I did it with a simple mobile antenna just sitting on the window sill -- not even a yagi. I wasn't expecting to hear anything at this time since it never got closer than about 950 miles.
The pile-up on the frequency was pretty heavy, so I imagine the people getting through are using good, directional antennas to transmit with. I don't expect to be able to get a contact out of it without a directional antenna. But it was impressive to me today to be able to hear it over such a great distance.

Help me out here. On 1 hand, "one must only transmit on type accepted radios OR ELSE!"
But on the other hand, chinese radios suck and are bad and no one should use them
So...what GMRS radios are out there that are type accepted, and not Chinese? Because by your logic (CCRs bad, non-type-accepted bad), it sounds like no one should be using GMRS period.

Give this a watch. It's about an hour, but many people have found it helpful. 
 
https://youtu.be/1rZ_oWdls-E?si=Kjnqac1q3oqPvj0i

Here’s a photo a friend of mine took of the Spaghetti Nebula. She did some processing to make things more visible. I put the details beneath the image :

 
SH2-240, The Spaghetti nebula
The Spaghetti Nebula is a large supernova remnant.  It is 3000 ly away, and spans roughly 160 ly. It is estimated to be about 40,000 years old.
It is believed that the stellar explosion left behind a rapidly spinning neutron star known as pulsar PSR J0538+2817 in the nebula core, emitting a strong radio signal.
WO Pleaides 68
ASI 2600MC DUO
AM3
ASIAIR
EAF
Antlia ALP-T dual narrow band filter
132x 300 sec exposures
11 hour total integration
Processed with Pixinsight and Affinity Photo
 

Well to be fair I was trying to be generic with the answer.

If you are wide they are narrow. You would sound loud to them. They would sound like they are under deviating and need to turn the mic gain up or yell into the mic

Going through the repeater (set to narrow) it would really matter if you were wide banded. The repeater would clip the audio and retransmit as narrow and sound a bit to quiet.

Sound fidelity wise, wide sounds more natural where narrow there is often clipping of the highs and lows.

There is just more bandwidth to play with. Think playing music at 40bits vs 256 bits.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

If you are transmitting wide band, you would probably sound a little loud and maybe scratchy or clipped to the narrow band receivers.
(there you go 2 opposite answers!)🥴