dosw

This is at least one of your problems. Imagine sitting next to a window air conditioner while your wife is talking to you at normal speaking voice from another room. Without the AC you would probably hear her. But with the AC, even though her voice is no quieter, the AC is making it very hard to hear her, because it's dominating your hearing. The radio that is transmitting TO the repeater is transmitting at maybe 5 to 15w. That's a very loud window air conditioner, to follow this example. The repeater is the quiet voice in another room. Your receiving radio is sitting next to the window air conditioner, in this example. It cannot "hear" the repeater because there's a very strong signal next to it. This is called de-sensing. The listening radio is desensitized by the overwhelming output of the nearby transmitting radio, preventing it from hearing the very distant radio (the repeater).

You think that's amazing, consider that with a handheld Yagi antenna an amateur can talk through the International Space Station's 2m/70cm (VHF/UHF) crossband repeater using a 5w handheld radio. Five watts, to reach a repeater hundreds, even a thousand miles away. But what's different about the ISS? It's not that the repeater is a ham repeater. It's not that the repeater has some amazing antenna. It's not that it's got a million dollar radio. It's that there's nothing between you on the ground, and the repeater up in space. Line of sight. So if you're able to reach a repeater 75 miles away reliably from an antenna that is 10 feet above the ground, that repeater's antenna must be at about 1050 feet above the ground between the two of you. Otherwise the curvature of the earth gets in the way. As an example, I can easily hit this repeater: But I can hit it because I live at 1600m, the repeater is at 1700m, and everything between us is at 1200m. We have line of sight.

To think that linking, which in many ways was harmful to the objectives of a general mobile radio service. The FCC says the service is for the following: That really doesn't seem like the intent is for cross regional linked repeater networks. And I'm not really the bearer of bad news here; the FCC clarified this position a few months back. There may BE a case for cross-regional linked repeater networks available to people with "pay to play" instead of "test and pay to play" licenses. But that's almost going to have to be a separate service. The FCC has made it rather clear that service is not GMRS. So if there's a strong enough use case for such a thing to exist in the VHF or UHF spectrum, it would probably need to be addressed as its own distinct service. What killed GMRS? I would say that the news of its demise is greatly exaggerated. It's just not as interesting to repeater linking people. But there are somewhere around 1000 new licenses granted every month, and that number is growing, not shrinking. Discontinuation of linking, to me, seems like it would make GMRS more friendly as it becomes more dedicated to neighborly regions, less about if someone in KY can talk to someone in VA and someone else in MA. But that's just speculation on my part. As for forum friendliness, we seem to have gotten the most abusive forum contributor sorted out. The rest of us are just typical grumps, not blatantly abusive grumps. Within individual repeaters where people talk amongst themselves, and where weekly nets often get held, I haven't seen any change in my area recently, other than a few repeaters becoming more active over time. In my area, for example the "West 1" repeater used to be a lot more quiet, and now seems to host nets and have more chatting going on than it used to. But again, the real purpose the FCC envisions for GMRS doesn't seem to be weekly nets and idle repeater rag chewing with other strangers. It's short-distance two-way voice communications ... to facilitate the activities of licensees and their immediate family members. The word "activities" is useful here. While rag chewing might be considered an "activity", I suspect they used the word thinking more of family outings, friends out doing things, and so on. Hiking, caravaning, RVing, offroading, skiing, small-craft boating, going to amusement parks, shopping, being tourists, camping, cycling, road-rallying, motorcycling, family reunioning, facilitating events... sorry to disappoint but radio as a hobby in and of itself is more in the domain of ham radio.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-95/subpart-E/section-95.1751 So if the repeater is only retransmitting communications for people operating under the authority of the same license, and they properly identify themselves, the repeater doesn't need to identify itself. But if anyone else is using it under a different license, or if anyone using it doesn't identify, the repeater is supposed to. Of course we know there's really virtually no enforcement in this area, but nevertheless, people often like to try to do the right thing. Why Morse, I can see two reasons: First because many repeaters can do that automatically. Second, because cognitively, Morse is out of band from human speech, and therefore less intrusive, less confusing than a spoken voice coming through at 15 minute intervals interlaced between the primary voice communications taking place on the repeater. This concept derives from the Gestalt Psychology's Law of Similarity which suggests that visual processing benefits by grouping similar things to have similar appearance, and different things to have different appearance. Software developers try to make similar concepts in code look the same in code, and different concepts in code look different, as that helps developers spot things that might be incorrect, missing, or out of place. And user interface designers attempt the same thing; browser buttons on a website should have visual similarity when they do similar things, and other elements should be visually distinct or dissimilar when they do different things. It helps end users grok a user interface more readily. Our brain processing language and sound benefits from the same considerations, so it makes perfect sense to keep rule compliance interruptions out of the cognitive load of the actual primary conversation.

It's the repeater identifying the license under which it operates. At least that's by far the most common reason you would hear Morse code on a GMRS repeater, and the only Morse I've ever heard on a GMRS repeater. In Amateur radio you may hear CW (Morse) beacons which send out a call sign plus location and power information; CW for realtime communications; Morse identifiers on 2m or 70cm repeaters, so many other use cases. But for GMRS is nearly always just a repeater identifying by the license of its owner. Here's how you can know, though: Record the transmission: Use a VOX recorder plugged into your radio, or plug your radio into your computer and record with Audacity or some other recording software, or use an SDR and SDR software with recording capabilities. Trim down to the relevant section of the recording using Audacity or some other software. Reduce noise using Audacity or some other software. Upload to one of many websites that will transform audio samples of Morse code into plain text. Once you see that it's a call-sign, use the FCC tool to look up the call sign's owner, if interested. The whole process takes just a few minutes and can be kind of fun to work through once or twice.

Utah VHF Society (band plan manager for Utah; utvhfs.org) lists 429 repeaters. Of those, 292 use tones, and 137 do not. There are, from what I can tell, 29 tones used by those 292 repeaters, with the most common being a simple 100.0. There doesn't seem to be any specific rhyme or reason other than obvious things like most (but not all) of the Intermountain Intertie linked repeaters using the same tone. There's no pattern other than the sometimes-used concept of "similar things should be [conveniently] similar", as in the example of the Intertie network. There's a pretty good explanation for why you might see a pattern. Humans seek patterns in random events due to apophenia, a common cognitive tendency to find meaning and order in randomness, which is rooted in an evolutionary advantage for survival. For our ancestors, a false positive in pattern recognition (seeing a predator in random leaves) was safer than a false negative (failing to see a real predator). This brain mechanism makes it easier to process information and make quick inferences, though it can lead to errors like misinterpreting data or believing in conspiracy theories. (Explanation came from AI, which is probably ironic)

While the choice of CTCSS tones is not entirely random, it may as well be. There are common conventions, like avoiding adjacent tones in a given overlapping area, avoiding tones that are harmonics of power lines, that sort of thing. I think in some cases it's more about "legacy conventional wisdom" than about "real world issues in 2025." But as far as repeaters following a pattern, what you might be seeing is either a freak coincidence, or regional conventions that may have some historical rationale. Not any broadly adopted pattern.

Unless you're a superbowl-er. Their AM transmissions require the bandwidth of three CB channels.

President's agenda today: Zoom call with Putin Zoom call with Zalenski Status update on painting the fence black Hurricane hitting the eastern seaboard Tanning spray Touch up the quaffe Redistrict Texas and California voting. Say something to offend the vocal minority. (800 other things) (200 more things) Listen to an update on what letters to the president rose to the level of making it into the report (he's on the treadmill at the same time though) This letter didn't make honorable mention

You're probably accurate on that, but Wikipedia doesn't make it entirely clear that GMRS existed before '87: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mobile_Radio_Service#History

Your radio, your choice, unless your radio is using their radio to retransmit (ie, you're hitting their repeater). When you use someone else's repeater, even one that is almost never used, you should attempt to comply with the repeater owner's requests for how their repeater is used. And if you misstep, just take it in stride when someone helps you to fit in better. It's a silly thing to get hung up on, either way, though. But when you enter a room, you look around to see how people are interacting in that room. A repeater is similar; you read the room first. If the room has largely agreed to not use roger beeps, why be *that guy*?

Oh I've listened across the CB range using an SDR where it's easy to see the spectrum use. And wow, not just channel 6, but a few others are totally overrun with people who have to be causing brown-outs in their towns when they key up. The funny ones are where you see a big swoop across several channels every time they key up, finally landing on their desired channel, which they fill so broadly that they spill over into adjacent channels. The swoop is wild though. What kind of crazy equipment is sweeping through several channels on its way to landing where it is supposed to be?

GMRS came into being in 1987. The FCC officially recommended GMRS channel 20 (462.675 MHz) with a 141.3 Hz tone as a travel channel in 1988. This recommendation was removed in 1999. That means that there has not been an official "the" travel channel in 26 years. Given that's the case -- that the FCC *removed* the recommendation for a travel channel 26 years ago -- "nailed down yet" seems to be wishful thinking. There isn't an official travel channel. There isn't any de facto travel channel. There is the suggestion, from some, that 19 be the travel channel. Its adoption has not reached a critical mass sufficient to make it matter what people suggest and recommend. And north of "Line A", would be irrelevant anyway. In every area I've used GMRS in, there is not much rhyme nor reason to how the channels are used. People turn on their radios, pick a channel, and go. And on almost every paved road in the US where there's any hope that one of the 300k GMRS licensees in the country will happen to be listening within range and willing/able to respond, there is much more likelihood that cell phone service could summon AAA, a tow truck, police, an ambulance, or some other quick-responder in shorter time, with less confusion, and using established and tested infrastructure (cell towers, dispatch systems). The technological climate that existed when a designated travel channel was recommended does not exist today. The only areas lacking cell coverage today are areas with populations so sparse that it's also highly unlikely you'll find someone monitoring 19 within propagation range. If you are in a group, agree to a channel to use.

Amateur radio skews toward being an "old man's hobby." GMRS as a tool in support of family activities skews toward younger, family-activity aged people. But GMRS as a hobby is going to skew toward amateur radio age. Old men talking to random old about the radios they have and antennas they run, as a hobby. If you're using GMRS for skiing, boating, camping, hiking, offroading, that sort of thing, you're "keeping it young." If you're using GMRS to kibitz on forums, run neighborhood nets, talk to people you met through GMRS, you're raising the average age. I'm clearly guilty of kibitzing on GMRS forums. I don't get involved in nets or socializing over the air, I do ski, camp, hike... and I'm younger than some here, and older than others. I'm probably in the middle of the age range on this forum, on the older side of the "activity-oriented" users, and haven't reached the "socializing on 2 way radios" age yet.

Just wait until you try to find one antenna that works on that mount, that covers 2m, 70cm, and GMRS. You'll be quite happy with anything <2.0:1. And yes, it'll work fine.