WRQC527

I scan all the GMRS frequencies here in Orange County, CA every day on my way to and from work. There appears to be a lot of radio traffic. The issue for me is that I don't know Spanish.

Let's back up. Try your question again. This time, try to be very clear. Most of us, (although not all, as you've seen), are more than willing to help. But that's only if we understand the question. Hopefully you're still reading responses and the ass hats haven't discouraged you, as so often happens here.

It works for me. It sounds just like a lot of repeater courtesy tones I hear. It's loud enough to work as a courtesy tone. On the Baofeng, I can set the duration of the tone as well.

Are you sure your radio is set to the correct channel for the repeater you are trying to reach?

For what it's worth, the much-maligned, but still world-famous Baofeng UV-5R (and perhaps its variants) can be set up to transmit a customizable DTMF series of tones of up to 5 "digits" either on key-up, (BOT), after PTT release (EOT), or both. It can be set up by channel. It's much less annoying than the standard roger beep. I have two radios set up this way with EOT transmissions.

Lots of evacuations from this one, probably over 10,000 acres burned. We have 3 big fires going here now, the Airport Fire, the Line Fire, and the Bridge Fire. Our repeater site is down for the foreseeable future because the power is out. Fortunately no fatalities that I know of.

Almost lost ours to the Airport Fire last night.

Ahhh. In that case, !

Ours came from other clubs that were taking them out of service years ago, so our trustee at the time knew them. At one time we had a 440, we now have two 2-meter units. They're all over Ebay if you want to roll the dice, but I also see them on Haloid Radio and Used-Radios.com. I'd be inclined to get one from one of those two or some other actual business since they have some sort of support. Ebay is, well, Ebay.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to start an argument, but how do you figure?

The issue is that people keep responding to him instead of putting him on their Ignored User list. That just exacerbates the problem.

This is for Part 90. GMRS is Part 95. The rules and definitions of terms from one to the next vary, since Part 90 regulates things like public safety and business radio while Part 95 regulates personal radio services.

I see two open repeaters in Pittsburg. Observatory Hill 575 and Echo1. I would be telling tall tales if I said I know anything about the Pittsburg area or what other repeaters are near you, but don't give up and assume everything is disabled. Try them first. If the tones are listed on the MyGMRS website, set up your radio for the various repeaters, go outside where you can get a better signal, try talking on them, and if they work, all good. You may need to request access, but at least you'll know which ones work. GMRS is not all just about repeaters. In fact, a lot of people use GMRS for simplex. And by the way, you won't go to jail or anything if you make a quick call using your call sign on a repeater to see if it works. Just make sure you say your call sign so you're not just kerchunking the repeater without identifying yourself. That's bad radio manners.

We've been running a Motorola Quantar for many years. It's a solid repeater. We only recently put in a DR-2X running in analog. It's been running fine since May. I wouldn't count it out. Our Quantar may have developed a spur that supposedly interferes with a local ham's EME activity, so we'll only use it as a backup now once we get it serviced. That's something to think about with older equipment. Motorolas are bullet proof, but the Quantar is no longer supported by Motorola. Still, a good one will serve you well. Controlling it is tricky unless you have internet at the site. That was one of our issues. I have Motorola's RSS software on a Windows 10 laptop which makes it easy to program if I'm at the repeater. I found it free online.

Don't encourage him. He'll just keep insulting everyone until people stop responding. Seriously. The Ignore User list is your friend.

Never gets old.

This reminds me of the old saying that goes something like this: The most often-told lie in history is when you check the box that says "I have read these terms and conditions."

I'm pretty sure you know that FRS and GMRS share the same frequencies, which makes me pretty sure that you know that at least some of the people you mention, such as lawn mowing, restaurant and car dealer staff may very well be using FRS radios, which I'm fairly certain you know don't require a license. So that may explain some of what you hear. As for tow companies using GMRS repeaters without a GMRS license, you would need to ask them. They appear to be the kind of folks who break the rules for as long as they can get away with it. The woods are full of them. As for why you bothered getting a license, it's because you are a law-abiding citizen with respect for the rules and regulations that govern a civilized society. You have chosen to take the high road. That is to be commended.

Get the Extra first. It's much faster to achieve, and it's much more useful than knowing CW. You never have to worry about what portion of a band you can use, and once you have it, you never need to test again. CW is more of a novelty that takes much longer to learn and has limited usefulness in the real world of amateur radio*. *The opinion expressed here is strictly my own and does not represent that of a dwindling subset of octogenarian amateur radio operators who believe only real amateur radio operators know CW.

This is the only one I am aware of. It's not an HT exactly, it's more of a fancy FRS radio. https://midlandusa.com/collections/portable-base-stations/products/xt511-base-camp

So I thought this might be an interesting topic. Maybe it will die on the vine, maybe not. I see a lot of chatter here about SHTF comms, both GMRS and amateur radio. I'm curious what a SHTF scenario looks like to different folks, and how they think GMRS and other radio services may be incorporated. For me, a SHTF scenario doesn't look like a nationwide "someone hit the EMP switch and knocked the whole country back to the 1700s", it looks more like a local disaster like a major earthquake, where radios could help like they did a couple of weeks ago here when we had a 4.3 and I purposely tried to make a cell call just to see if it would work, (it didn't), but my repeater at 6,000 feet worked just fine and lots of us were communicating over a wide area.

Take a look at this excerpt from the Part 95 rules governing GMRS. It tells you specifically what frequencies can be used for transmitting, based on what device is doing the transmitting. Your repeater is limited to transmitting on one of the 8 frequencies listed under subsection A. To my knowledge, there is no rule that says the offset must be 5 Mhz. But, the biggest offset you can acheive with rules-accepted GMRS frequencies is (if my math is correct) 5.175 Mhz. Using an offset greater than that will put you out-of-band, either on your repeater's transmit frequency or its receive frequency, (or both) and therefore in violation of FCC rules. § 95.1763 GMRS channels. The GMRS is allotted 30 channels—16 main channels and 14 interstitial channels. GMRS stations may transmit on any of the channels as indicated below. (a) 462 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, repeater, base and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5500, 462.5750, 462.6000, 462.6250, 462.6500, 462.6750, 462.7000, and 462.7250 MHz. (b) 462 MHz interstitial channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable and base stations may transmit on these 7 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 462.5625, 462.5875, 462.6125, 462.6375, 462.6625, 462.6875, and 462.7125 MHz. (c) 467 MHz main channels. Only mobile, hand-held portable, control and fixed stations may transmit on these 8 channels. Mobile, hand-held portable and control stations may transmit on these channels only when communicating through a repeater station or making brief test transmissions in accordance with § 95.319(c). The channel center frequencies are: 467.5500, 467.5750, 467.6000, 467.6250, 467.6500, 467.6750, 467.7000, and 467.7250 MHz. (d) 467 MHz interstitial channels. Only hand-held portable units may transmit on these 7 channels. The channel center frequencies are: 467.5625, 467.5875, 467.6125, 467.6375, 467.6625, 467.6875, and 467.7125 MHz.

I have an old Juentai JT-6188 Plus version of this radio. It was also marketed as a QYT KT-8900, which is what I had to select in CHIRP to program it. Mine was not restricted from the factory to amateur radio frequencies, but that doesn't mean yours isn't. That said, and this is only one suggestion, you can possibly check in CHIRP all the parameters set up in the software to make sure the radio is enabled to transmit in the VHF and UHF ranges you want. In CHIRP, for my version, it's under Settings>Other. Mine is set for 137 - 174 Mhz VHF and 400 - 480 Mhz UHF. Like WRYS709 said, it may not be possible to transmit out of amataur radio frequencies with this radio without unlocking it (if that can be done), but at least check the settings first. I did a quick search for unlocking this radio, but I didn't find anything. You might, though.

Keep trying. If you're hearing the squelch tail from the repeater, that means at least you're activating it. Could be that there's just not much activity. Monitor it as much as you can and if you hear someone, jump in and announce yourself. Politely, of course.

When you press the push-to-talk, what do you say?