jimndfw

Corey
 
 Great information. 

Welcome to the group. 

Scott, I could not agree more! Unless you have the $$$'s to rent space on a tall tower (200' or more), then it is an exercise in futility.

I've noticed that, too. It just seems to me that it makes more sense to find a repeater nearby. And if there ain't one nearby, well then tough turds or try to find local traffic on your radio's own power and go from there. Personally, to me, making your own repeater station is a major PITA if you're not knee-deep into this hobby with deep-ish pockets.
 
Just my $.02.
 
Scott
WRJX210

I don't know how many will care about this but I built a box and thought I'd post it.
 
For the woodworkers here, please ignore the joints.  I used the miter corner "tape trick" instead of clamping and the thing blew up on me during glue up and I had to scramble for clamps.  Didn't get my usual, clean corners.  I was also too lazy to route the edges.
 

 

 
 

 

CCR is a common one for "Cheap Chinese Radio" which includes Baofengs, Wouxuns, and such.
 
I think having a list would be good!

Topic locked for the greater good.

Agreed.
I just saw a discussion on another forum where most of the participants are 100 percent convinced that a portable "repeater" consisting of a Chinese dual bander in an ammo can with a battery, crossbanding from GMRS to 2 Meters, and a few Chinese dual band HTs to access it, is an awesome setup that can't possibly have any technical problems. And the illegality of it is just a minor technicality and not worth discussing beyond saying nobody will really notice nor care.
 
To those guys a couple of commercial UHF rigs, a simple controller and a pair of antennas with feedlines is way too complicated to even consider.

handy sites / tools for the hobby I like this one also https://www.ve2dbe.com/rmonline_s.asp

I have use this site with really some good accuracy.
 
You put in your location, antenna height, for the base state, and then use a height of four foot to check your range. 

Happy Thanksgiving! Hopefully everyone's bellies are full and you're spending time with your friends and family.
 
Now that we're heading straight into the holiday season, I wanted to mention that we have launched a new store. Previously we had a Spreadshirt shop which only sold t-shirts and similar apparel. Now, we're expanding into other categories such as radios and radio accessories. Many of our Spreadshirt items are available on this new Shopify store.
 
We're still working on dealer arrangements with some GMRS radio manufacturers, but in the meantime we have a great Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal: 20% Off your order of $50 or more! Just use the discount code BLACKFRIDAY19 at checkout.
 
If you have ideas for products or designs we should carry, please let me know! 
 
https://shop.mygmrs.com/

Corey, yur just mean.
 
Some of the Chinese junk is good junk, and some of it is bad junk.
 
Hmmm, I have some of the good junk and some of the bad (American labeled , you know who I mean) junk.
 
Yup, yur just mean.
 
Thank you for being honest and politically incorrect. !!,
 
Keith T

I owned 2 Baofeng ham radios for a combined total of 2 weeks. I wouldn't give one to someone I don't like, because its too cruel.
 
Do yourself a favor and forget they exist.
 
Just my opinion.

I just have to ask, why would you set up a repeater if you have no idea how to program it or how it works? I highly recommend reading my post here. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/1402-you-just-got-your-gmrs-license-now-you-want-your-own-repeater/

I made this new map live. Still a couple minor things to fix, but I think the ability to filter out the stale stuff is more important.

My repeater is open to all licensed operators who operate according to the laws governing GMRS. Users don't have to email and ask permission; however I appreciate those that do, as it gives me a chance to get to know the users of my machine. It's just a courtesy thing.

Perfectly fine, in fact we use MURS as a back-up and BS channel for when the repeater goes down, [Or for when we want to discuss something without the PD or supervisors hearing] MURS doesn't cover the entire property but we can get a few blocks range, especially when on the beach.

I actually do precisely this whenever our local ham club and local GMRS club conduct "joint emcom nets". Since I am a licensed GMRS station as well as a licensed amateur operator, I handle the 'test message' traffic from one group to the other...
 
I just have to remember which 'hat' I'm wearing whenever I grab for the mic!

Staff Memo:  Please remember that we have a "Private Discussion" area that can not be seen by guests, spybots, search engines or unregistered persons. It is visible to registered forum members and therefore, repeater access data can be shared in that "Private Discussion" area ONLY.

Thank you.

This thread is now closed.

and glad to see every one, been over seas for awhile and got back to the states 

Not this Corey!
 
Now that you have my attention you will get my Opinion.
 
WX over GMRS, annoying to say the least. We have a garage repeater in my area that tells as the time, date, humidity, temp, ID and website every 30 min. As soon as a SAME WX alert comes thru it breaks in with the NWS for 2 full rotations of the message. To make matters worse it adds it to the end of the gibberish info it sends out every 30 min. Under a SAME alert this thing will spit out 5 min of worthless channel blocking information to nobody every 30 min. During this time the repeater is rendered useless and could hinder real emergency communications.
 
In my opinion this is not what GMRS is intended for, if you have a need to monitor a WX radio buy a weather radio and leave GMRS out of it. Last thing we need on our very limited amount of spectrum is GMRS repeaters broadcasting something that is already broadcast to most of our population.

Corey
 
 Great information. 

That's not a mobile repeater in that pic, its a HAM operating HF. As far as a mobile repeater it really is a waste of time. I have done this already and it was a total disappointment.. Unless your car is at a substantial height advantage you will not have any better coverage then simplex. Again you can and will try to explain or reason away my logic without listening to what I and others have been trying to tell you. I have tried the mobile repeater, the setup was a 50W Motorola SLR 5700 with a 4 cavity BP/BR duplexer connected to a 5.5dB gain antenna on the top of my truck. After testing for about month I realized it had no practical use and only offered slightly more range than simplex, best part I ended up needing a jump after a day at the fair. Mind you this was a $2400 repeater, $800 duplexer with an antenna that was tuned using an Anritsu S331D. I promise I nor anybody on this site will try to steer you wrong, I hold a Commercial, Amateur and GMRS license, own and operate several large repeaters and have all the gear for building, testing and maintaining these kinds of systems.

Don't get discourage by the lack of users in your area rather embrace the lack of and if no repeater is available in your area install one. I have learned if you build it they will come. Start a club or group, put up a web page, start a Facebook group for your area etc.. You will be surprised how quickly like minded people  will get licensed to talk with others that share the same interests.

I was licensed for operations on two of the Part 90 frequencies using AM - just above 'CB' and just below 31 MHZ for many years.  It was OK, but during the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle, the frequencies were a bit noisy with other stations from all over the US "skipping" to my location.  That is the primary reason that most Public Safety agencies that were on low band in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, went to VHF.  I still have the commercial EF Johnson Messenger radios and even though they are tube type, they are still type certified and still operate as designed (into a dummy load for testing only).
 
These days, with very few stations using low band - it might be a good place to go for Part 90 licensing if you want to be under the radar for some reason. My equipment was AM and worked better than some, because the AM system did not demodulate skip FM signals very well, so the interference to my system was minimal.  Mobiles with a 5/8 wave base loaded antenna would net roughly 20 to 30 miles mobile to mobile and 40 + miles mobile to a simplex base. Never needed a repeater with that type of local coverage.