WRQI583

Ah yes, those areas have a big GMRS presence on the radio. Sometimes I think it is more active than Ham.

I have had that happen several times and some times went as far as ripping everything apart and finally ending with the programming in the radio to find out it was a PL tone.

I keep mine going as long as I am in the shack, which is usually in the early morning and evening, There is some activity in the morning but come evening, it is dead. I swear, some evenings I could sit there screaming "emergency" and no one would answer. That is just the nature of the area I live though. I think people go to bed early.

Like I said, in some areas of the country, it is busy, and other areas, it is not. I certainly am not desperate when it comes to wanting to talk to someone on the radio. I would like to have what I used to have with CB and Ham back in the day before cell phones where there were groups that were always known to be on a certain frequency or channel and you sat there and communicated and it was local. That was your means of communications, not cell phones. I think a lot of other people would like that and that is why many are drawn to linked repeater systems and internet linked Ham where everyone seems to be. Personally I dont get into it. I prefer plain radio. I prefer local and simplex or maybe a repeater if need be. I actually don't like the internet linked digital voice modes because it is linked on the internet. Where I live, Hams locally are on the radio at weird times and most of them are off the radio by 7 or 8 pm. Due to my schedule, I am not able to be on the radio at the same time that other Hams are and that applies to joining clubs. I have time most evenings but Ham is usually dead at those times in my area. I come from a time with Ham radio where local Hams were burning up the repeater late into the night just chatting. These days, there isn't much of that going on. Simplex is a no go with me and repeaters are not used often. I know everyone says that I need to sit there and keep putting out my call and say "listening" and keep persistent but I don't have the time. There are plenty of people who sit on the radio all day who can drum up business and they don't. No worries though. I just go in the other room and watch TV. Radio is a fun thing you do for about 10-15 minutes a day. Sadly that is what it has turned into and what it will be until the day modern comms fail. I know this is a wrong thinking but it is the reality of our world. I do not believe it or like it but it is what I have to accept.

What town is that? Maine may have activity, but it is not active like I am used to. I have 11 repeaters with simplex scanning in my radio and it has been since I sat down here at 630 this evening and not a peep has come out of that radio. There are many evenings that are like this. Go farther north and it is worse.

I dont know if that is how all Hams do it in Maine but that is unfortunately how I have to do it. When I am available to be on the radio, most Hams are not on the radio. Hams in Maine seem to go to bed real early from what I have observed. When I first got into Ham, Hams could be heard burning the repeaters up late into the night. Now, the repeaters are dead after 7 or 8 pm.

Oh and believe me, I cant wait until it fails. Maybe then, more people would be on the radio relying on it as a main means of communication rather than a hobby or a contest. Unfortunately, reality is what reality is.

The simple answer? Yes. It sounds stupid and believe me, I hate it more than you know. I didn't get into radio just to use cell phones to figure out where I am going to talk. This is why I always loved CB radio or simplex/repeater on Ham. Everyone gathered there and everyone knew how to reach each other. Today, those means are not active like they used to be. You have the HF bands which have turned into a dumpster fire when trying to find a band to talk on (although it has been getting a bit better as of lately) and when it comes to talking to those out of my area on simplex, thanks to contesting and bands being up and down, there is no set place to meet regularly and besides, no one owns the frequencies. This is the reality that I have tried to show to other Hams when they all wanted me to get on HF. Until Hams stop using cell phones and are forced to rely on radio, cell phones will always rank higher.

It has already been said in here............ It depends on the area. Go to California and I am sure there are busy repeaters. Go somewhere else and GMRS is dead. Just like the VHF/UHF bands on Ham Radio, most places are dead. No one wants to bother with local communication when they have a cell phone. My wife and I both have GMRS and Ham licenses and with the exception of when we go out shopping or a few other activities, we use cell phones to communicate, as long as they work. When they dont, the radios come out. But everyone, and I mean everyone has a cell phone with the ability to have similar apps such as Phone, Texting, Zello, Facebook, etc to name a few. It is organized and guaranteed you will be able to instantly communicate with anther person. Not everyone has GMRS or Ham and even if they do, GMRS is limited and Ham has so much, there is no telling where a person might be monitoring and what mode they are using, so cell phones are a lot easier. Another thing also is that if most people turn the radio on and no one is on, before that person even decides to throw their call sign out, they turn the radio off. I used to have a nice setup going at my home with three different directional antennas hooked to a GMRS radio. Because I live in a hole and there are limited repeaters and no activity near me even though there is a very active group of GMRS operators in my state, I took all the antennas and coax down and unhooked the radio and stuffed it all away in the barn in a box. It was taking up space and doing absolutely nothing. Most people I would need to contact, Hams and GMRS ops included, all have cell phones and before any of us start to communicate, we pick up our cell phones and contact each other and plan what frequency we are going to be on. Very rarely do I contact someone straight away on the radio. It is very sad that communication has come to this, and believe me, I dont like it either, but it is what it is. Until Cell phones are abolished, radio will always take a back seat. There are quite a few factors as to why people are not on the radio and these are reasons I have observed.

In my opinion, if we had a large scale emergency, I do not think that licenses are going to matter. You will be more focused on loved ones and trying to survive and radio will be on the back burner on a list of priorities. On a small scale such as when a weather event devastates an area? It would be advisable for most anyone to possess both a Ham and GMRS license if you want to be of the most use in helping with communications. Please do remember that in a disaster, there is a good chance that repeaters wont work and if there is anyone in the Ham or GMRS world that still has the smarts, emergency repeaters or crossband units would need to be deployed to expand coverage. Either way, having both licenses is good to have. My wife and I have both and haven't used GMRS in quite awhile and rarely use Ham, but they are there if I needed them.

With the exception of countries who do not allow you to "listen" to certain communications, you can receive (listen) to whatever you want and broadcast it wherever on the internet. It is once you begin the act of transmitting (talking, you or something you have is uttering a sound to others, taking from that internet and re-broadcasting onto a radio frequency) that you have an issue. In any sort of radio (at least in the USA) you can listen until the cows come home and then some. The second you transmit, if you are not properly licensed to do so, you are committing a crime. Listening, monitoring, copying, or whatever you want to call it, is one thing. Transmitting, broadcasting, re-broadcasting, sending, putting out some information is another thing. Simply put, the FCC does not want GMRS repeaters tied together by any means. They want your radio to go into the receiver, through to the transmitter and go back out. They do not want it taking a detour and heading out across the internet. If you know how a repeater works (which very few people who operate them do) you will understand the FCC much better. When it comes to SDR's, to the best of my knowledge, there is nothing wrong with broadcasting to the internet, just as long as it ends right there on the internet and does not proceed to head back out onto a FCC licensed and controlled radio frequency.

I'm one of those types of ready operators who like to sit down after a long day and ragchew with other operators on the radio. If I decide to turn my radio on, and want to communicate with someone, I want it to work. If it doesn't work, it gets shut off and I find another means. If nothing works, I shut it all off and go in the other room and watch TV. My TV seems to be on more than my radio this summer. Most of this summer, the solar flares and thunderstorms have shut down my radio operating. I really enjoy checking into the HF activity group in addition to a couple of other nets, but it's got to the point where I can barely hear anyone. For me, hearing only a couple people out of 30-40 people with most of it all static, gives me a literal splitting headache. I understand HF won't work 100% of the time, but this summer has been more than irritating and ridiculous. If my life was an eternal emergency, HF wouldn't bother me so much, but for me, radio is supposed to be a relaxing hobby. It's been anything but that. I am hoping this winter brings some much needed change, at least as far as thunderstorms are concerned. I only have a yaesu ft891 on a doublet antenna about 45 feet in the air, not a kilowatt on a beam like many people. 160-20 are the only bands that work in my area. 17-6 are very hard to receive and 10 and 6 have been dead since late spring, with 6 having nothing at all on it since I started playing with HF. I've tried several other antennas both vertical and horizontal and nothing. For some, a thin wire in a tree with 5 watts gets them around the world year round, round the clock. For me, I need much more.

I have to agree. What many who love HF don't realize is this- if I need to communicate instantly, such as you would with a cell phone, generally, VHF and UHF will do this for you. Sadly, it has limited range. This is where HF comes into play. It has the distance, however, the band conditions have to be good to effectively communicate, and if you want to do short range, you are limited on the bands you can use and also what antenna you are using in order to do short range (NVIS). If the bands are dead due to space Weather, such as has been the case this whole summer, and then add into that all of the thunderstorms, especially ones that pop up for no reason whenever they please, you may as well just unplug your equipment and leave it shut off. I just got into HF this past spring. The beginning was pretty good. Great signals and I got real good distance at most anytime. Summertime rolled around and the highly unstable atmosphere with dangerous lightning, and the constant solar flares, and I have actually disconnected my HF and packed it away. Every time I would jump on, I had to keep plugging everything back just to find out I had thunderstorms threatening my area. When HF works, it works well. But lately, it's been highly unreliable. The only suggestion I could come up with is a linked digital voice mode. Sadly it uses internet, but generally it's more reliable than HF.

Edited

Linking even by internet is illegal. There is a YouTube video where FCC officials were present and part of the meeting and the question of linking over the internet on GMRS came up and the gentleman who asked actually stated that he linked a couple of his repeaters together by internet and was wondering if that was legal or not. Simple answer from the FCC official? NO! I hope this post reaches the ears of GMRS users across the country, because these are my thoughts on it - I don't think linking is a bad thing if done properly and in moderation (not linking every repeater in the USA together). If the linking is kept between repeaters and NOT on the internet. This can be done very easily on microwave frequencies with equipment that is easily obtainable. If you all want linking and think there is nothing wrong with it, how about you take the energy you have here, grasping at straws and debating and speculating, and band together and petition the FCC to allow linking (within reason) on GMRS. State situations where it would be beneficial such as in many of your more rural areas where you could have a repeater out in the middle of nowhere but it doesn't reach into civilization where someone at home could render help over the airwaves by making proper phone calls etc. I am sure that if you showed how it can be done WIRELESSLY (not internet) without causing issues and you showed how it would not get out of control (such as linking over the internet), there is a chance the FCC may allow it to happen and GMRS repeater owners would not have to resort to the internet. Quite honestly, in my opinion, internet linking is garbage because it lags and doesn't always pass the message through. I have listened to a linked over the internet GMRS system and I would hear what sounded like a one way conversation because the connection to the internet at one of the sites was not allowing the audio to go through, but then all of a sudden it all started working. There were times where one link would not allow any audio to go through for 5-10 minutes straight and then all of a sudden it started working but as quickly as it started working, it went back down again. I am not saying this is the case all of the time, but internet in my experience does not work as well as many people say it does. It's cool to watch your webpage take 20-30 seconds to load, but that doesn't fly in the case of real time voice.

Very true, but the policing I see going on in Ham is equivalent to self policing a town. Instead of self policing the areas where drugs and other crime are, they police the nice end of town and ticket people for crossing the street too slowly. Ham Radio is just like that. They will jump all over someone operating a Baofeng correctly, but wont get the guy who records conversations going on and then maliciously playing them back at the guys he just recorded while they are attempting to have a conversation, or how about the guys who swear up a storm right over the air. I understand the need for self policing, but it needs to be done correctly.

Something came to mind when it comes to a lot of people who get into radio. Their view of it and what purpose they have for it and why you find so many playing radio cop when it comes to subjects like this, "Type accepted radios". You find it in GMRS but especially in Ham. These people who get their license and think they are now part of some elite group akin to a special branch of law enforcement. They think that now, because they hold a radio license, they have power and have this need to be overly super strict about what radio they operate, how they operate it, etc. They then act super official and try to police others. I even dealt with it on CB radio many years ago. Many CB operators thought they knew the rules when it came to radio and how if someone threatened them on CB, that person could be charged with a federal crime because it happened on a radio that is governed by the FCC. What was hilarious is when I came along and they found out I had a Ham license. They thought I had a back door I could go through to contact the FCC on their behalf. I was Radio Superman because I held an FCC license. I hate to say it. Radio isn't anything special. Ham Radio, GMRS, it doesn't matter. It is just a radio license. It doesn't make you special. You are not a radio agent. You dont have special favors that you can do for people because you hold a federal license. You don't have the right to run around and police people. You can educate someone nicely, but not police. Ham Radio is a hobby. GMRS is a service that allows you to communicate with higher power and with repeaters, but is meant for the average person. At the end of the day, both are probably the lowest on the totem pole of licenses. If anything, it is a "You know better than to do that" license. If you get caught operating illegally, the FCC is going to slam the book at you harder because you are more familiar with the rules than the average person.

All of my antennas except my HF and 2 meter antennas use "N" connectors at the antenna. The side that plugs into the radio is a PL 259 that I picked up on Ebay because that is what sits on the back of the radio. I have heard that at VHF and UHF frequencies you will lose half of your signal using PL 259 connectors. Well, if that is the case, why do they put an SO-239 on the back of the radio for the PL 259 to plug into? In my experience, if you have good coax and a good properly tuned antenna, you will do fine. You are running under 50 watts or less on GMRS, so the loss is minimal. I had a 45 watt radio with the SO-239 on the back of it in the house at one point on LMR 400 coax running about 60 feet to a element Yagi with an "N" connector mounted about 32 feet up above the ground. I live in a hole compared to the terrain around me at around 310 feet above sea level. I was able to get into the Mt. Washington (NH) UHF repeater on Ham from my place around 102 miles away in Central Maine with a decently strong signal. With that type of setup, the only thing that stops my signals are hills, and even then, I have used hills to bounce or bend my signals in different directions.

HF radio is dead, VHF/UHF, depending on where you are can be dead also but not affected by CME's. Good time to go out and watch the northern lights. I just recently broke down and got into HF. HF is DEAD like the city streets during the height of COVID. Even AM broadcast is dead unless you are close enough to the transmit site. I dont remember it being bad but then again, I was never into anything HF, and since nothing else got affected like they claim all the time, I never noticed. Allegedly my internet is supposed to be down due to this weather. Mine is running strong.

Oh, when it comes to DMR, I WISH all radio operators would whisper. When it comes to analog, unless you have a radio like mine that is hot on the audio, There is no need to whisper. On the same note, you dont need to jam the mic down your throat and scream like you are on CB radio.

Haha, funny you mention the online SDR's. There have been some times when I have checked into a net in the morning and I have to run out of the room and just flip the net on on my phone until I can get back in the room... SHhh.... dont say nothing ha ha. The software and the computer do have make a difference. I tried using SDR++ on my windows laptop with the SDR and the frequency was off and it was receiving all whacked out. When I built the SDR project box that used a Raspberry Pi, SDR++ actually worked very well with no issues. There is a lot of different software and most all of it is free and sometimes has more features built into it than a radio. It is something I would have loved to have had as a kid. Back when I was a kid, direct entry SW radios were the thing and many tube style ones were still many peoples hands. I owned a few tube style SW radios myself.

There is also the option of a Software Defined Radio dongle. Personally, I did go all out and spend close to $500 building a whole box with several SDR's (to monitor everything from 100KHz-6GHz), outlets, and a Raspberry Pi to run it on, but you can just buy the dongle and a converter to drop the SDR Dongle down into the SW bands. The Software Defined Radio world is pretty big when it comes to the different dongles you can buy. The software to run it on is free online and they have quite a few programs out there that will monitor, decode, etc. This is another route you could go. The drawback to it is that, it requires you have a computer with the dongle whereas the radio could be much smaller and portable if that matters to you. For me, I dont do anything HF outside of the house aside from CB in my vehicle so all of my operating HF/SW listening it done at home, so the SDR was a good choice for me. That's not saying that you can take an SDR portable and they do sell actual SDR radios. I figured I add my two cents on this option if it is something that might work for you. The dongles, last I checked, are around $35 or so and the converter is around $70. The prices vary depending on what you want. And to the guy who said to buy a Ham Radio to listen to SW, there is a cheaper option if someone wanted to buy a Ham Radio to listen to SW. I own the Yaesu ft 891 which I got from HRO for $675. While buying a Ham Radio to listen to SW is pretty dumb, there is the chance that you may want to talk on it, especially if you are listening to Ham frequencies. Some people do. But if you are just strictly an SW Listener, take the cheaper route and just purchase a SW radio, or SDR. I of all people realize that radio is a HUGE world and what you like and get into is many times going to be the total opposite of what most others get into. Just because you like SWL doesn't mean you love HF Ham Radio. My first love in radio was AM broadcast at age 10. That led to SWL and then CB Radio. That was over 30 years ago and up until now, I have never had an interest in operating HF. I've actually hated it. However, now I actually enjoy operating HF. But that is how different some people can be when it comes to radio. So, take in all the information on here and do what works for you and enjoy. It's a big world out there. 73 N1YFA Hamilton

I keep 2m/70cm, CB, MURS, and GMRS in my vehicle. I have it mainly to have the ability to communicate with almost anyone, but in the case of emergency, I am pretty well covered.

Oh, thats easy. Round table. You create an order and one person passes it to the next person. I used to participate in that many years ago back when Ham was more active and we could have up to 8 or 9 people all talking on the repeater late into the night. Good times.