WRQW589

Could be transmitting location information. A screech sounds like there must be a data modulation upon unkey. If it's transmitting location information, that could be a Garmin.

That's really the why: I don't have a way of identifying what frequency the scanner was on when the recorder captured some output unattended. So it's just easier in my case to focus on one frequency at a time, and let it take however long I feel like leaving it running unattended.

One way that I've found repeaters is by setting a GMRS radio listening on one repeater output frequency for a few days with a VOX activated recorder plugged into it. After a day or so I'll listen to the recording. When I hear morse code, I'll take that segment of the recording and either look at it in an audio application (you can pretty easily spot the dots and dashes in the waveform graph) or upload that segment into a morse code translator. That gives me a call sign, which maps back to an individual, and in some cases can help me find the repeater's listing in mygmrs.com. After a day on one frequency, I'll move on to the next. After a week I'm almost done. With this method I've found three repeaters that I hadn't noticed before. You might try that; record each repeater output channel for awhile and listen for morse code identifying the callsign of repeater owners.

Temporary. So while your transmitting radio is transmitting on the repeater input frequency, the amount of RF energy in close proximity to the receiving radio makes it so it cannot detect the distant repeater's output even though it's on a different frequency. When you stop transmitting, the nearby receiver can hear again, but by that time the repeater is done transmitting too. You may hear a kerchunk, though. When you are vacuuming you can't hear another person 20 feet away talking at normal conversation level either, even though the vacuum may be producing noise at a different frequency than the person speaking. When you shut off the vacuum, you can hear the person speaking again, assuming your hearing was ok to begin with. The issue right now seems to be that we don't really know whether you have a bad radio, or a good radio with incorrect usage. By separating the transmitter and receiver, and having a friend listen on the receiving radio a block away (or recording the receiving radio, as I do), you can eliminate one of the possible issues. Remember, other issues could be squelch tones set wrong, or even a bad transmitter or bad receiver. But we have to strip away all the "what ifs" that we can control so that we're only left with the ones that lead to the conclusion that the radios are, or are not working at all.

Bingo. There is a reason I said you need to be spaced at a greater distance. If you transmit to a repeater, and hope to hear it on a receiving radio, you may not hear anything on the receiving radio at close proximity. WHY? The transmission in close proximity overloads the receiving radio such that it is essentially deaf. Imagine you're at a Rolling Stones concert. You shout to your friend who is also at the concert. He won't hear you. Your radio transmits on some 467 frequency. The repeater 20 miles away receives that and retransmits it on a 462 frequency. The receiving radio, five feet away from the transmitting radio is totally overwhelmed by the transmission that is occuring on 467.xxxx, and cannot hear the transmission coming from 20 miles away on 462.xxxx This phenomenon is called desensing. The output of the radio in close proximity is overloading or desensitizing the receiver in the radio that you hope to hear the distant repeater on. You need to get someone to listen on the receiving radio while you go a block away with the transmitting radio. Or do what I do; set up a VOX digital recorder plugged into the audio output of your receiving radio. Then you can walk a block away, test, and when you get back home you can listen to the results. It is entirely possible that this close proximity is not your issue. But it's such an easy thing to eliminate, and until you do, you don't really know, and we're all just chasing suggestions because diagnostic steps were skipped.

Does your home have a TV aerial that is no longer in use? It probably is grounded. And it may be in the optimal roof-mount location for your GMRS antenna.

Start simple: If in simplex, someone transmits within a half mile of you with no squelch tones set in your radio, do you hear them? If in simplex, someone transmits using a squelch tone, and you have the same programmed into your receiver, do you hear them? If in duplex at a repeater output frequency, with no squelch tone set, do you ever hear anyone hitting the repeater? If in duplex at a repeater output frequency, with no squelch tone set, plug your receiver into a digital recorder (your phone, your computer, or a handheld digital recorder), or set a digital recorder next to its speaker. Use VOX mode. Take another radio 150 feet away and transmit to that repeater using the correct squelch tone to open the repeater. Does your receiver receive it? (do you hear a recording when you get back to listen to your recorder?) Now swap the radios and do the same. Did it still work? ...again, with the transmitting radio set with appropriate squelch tones to open the repeater. Now program squelch tones for the output frequency on the receiving radio and record. Again go 150 feet away with the transmitter. Do you record anything? Notice how at each step we're trying to add only one additional thing that could go wrong. By the time we arrive at the final test, we're fully configured for typical repeater use. If you find it fails at one of those stages, you at least have eliminated the other layers as an issue. It's unlikely though possible that your radio doesn't transmit at all, or doesn't receive at all. I once had a Motorola T355R that, for whatever reason, lost its ability to transmit. So while it's unlikely, it's possible.

Start by simplifying: Transmit tone, but no squelch tone on the receiver. Transmitter and receiver should be different devices. Transmitter should be a tenth of a mile away from the receiver (just to eliminate desensing of the receiver as a possibility). One person should be listening on the receiver while you transmit hitting the repeater. If the listening person isn't hearing you, then you're either transmitting with the wrong tone (the repeater isn't using the tone you think it is, or your transmitter is set wrong), or the repeater isn't operating on that frequency, OR you're just too far to hit it, or there are too many obstructions between. If you suspect you might be using the wrong tone, get a radio scanner (borrow, buy an old one on ebay, whatever) and set it to display the PL/CTCSS tone of any signal it receives. Then set it to just the frequency of that repeater, and wait for someone else to open the repeater. Could be a long wait. Or get in touch with the owner. Many scanners will continue to display the most recently received PL tone even after the transmission has ended, so you may not have to be sitting there watching it ALL the time, but that result could be nullified by someone else coming along and transmitting on the output channel in simplex.

First GMRS was the Motorola MT355R. It was a blister pack GMRS / FRS radio that was compatible with repeaters. I didn't have a GMRS license, so would just listen on the upper channels and would transmit in low power on the first 14 channels. Second was after the MT355Rs stopped working; got some GTX1000 radios, and a license (that was earlier this year). Third was the MXT275, which I have mounted in my Bronco with the Midland 6db antenna using a hood lip mount. Fourth is a pair of Baofeng UV-5G radios. They're fun, but really the Midlands sound better. I intend to pick up either a KG905G or KG935G in the next few weeks. So, first: MT355R. Current: GTX1000, MXT275, an UV-5G; I use all three models now. I usually give the Midland GTX1000 radios to the kids because they're the simplest. Just set them to the channel and code, and lock them.

I got mine in June. $35 for ten years. Yes, the FCC website is everything I would expect of a bloated government website designed to work equally poorly for all apparent use-cases. It took 30-45 minutes to navigate through it for the first time, to figure out what the flow is supposed to be, and so on. The emailed license came a couple of days later. The price; $3.50 per year, $0.29 per month, $0.01 per day (using reduction to the ridiculous) shouldn't be prohibitive for anyone who can buy a set of radios for $50. I imagine the biggest deterrents for people are (1) Not being aware that the requirement applies to everyone, and that the radio purchased IS a GMRS radio. (2) Lack of simplicity in working with the FCC site. (3) Various viewpoints on not wanting to give the government anything. I'd say #1 and #2 are really it. If each radio came with a QR code that took people to a name, address, credit card number form, I think adoption would be a lot better. In other words, make it more obvious that it's needed, and make it really simple to acquire. You can't change attitudes easily, but you can help those who are willing to be helped. For me it's worthwhile getting licensed. I want to feel comfortable in using GMRS around town, up at the ski resorts, out camping, on road trips, and so on. I know that enforcement is almost non-existent, but I do gain some comfort in knowing that I'm doing the right thing.

I think the reason people care is because they paid and someone else didn't. It's just a matter of them feeling that if they are keeping the rules, why is nobody else? Yes, hall monitor mentality. I've thought about it. I paid my $35. I hear no call signs being uttered except for when there is a net in operation, or people working a repeater. And I do mean none. Nobody. Never. I never hear another person using a call sign on the GMRS / FRS frequencies except in formal nets or repeater use. Even some nets aren't identifying with call signs. There's nothing that can be accomplished by being grumpy about it. There are tens of thousands of GMRS or FRS radios that have been sold in the past few years within a 25 mile radius of me... of any of us. Maybe more than tens of thousands. One or two grumps are not going to stem the tide. Not even a few hundred. Remember the Internet around 1993-1994? It was well behaved (or at least conformed to a consensus standard). Spam was almost unheard of. Then ever fall a new set of students would get their school-issued accounts, and Usenet would blow up with stupidity for awhile until they were flamed into submission or departure from the medium. And then everything changed: The Internet became popular. AOL started sending out hundreds of million of CDs. There were news stories on the Internet. Books. Magazines. Globally the world was racing to get online. And these newcomers had no idea about, or no interest in stodgy convention. The net-police could flame all they wanted, but there was no stemming the tide of dumbing-down of the Net. All was not lost. It turns out that the Internet became a whole lot more useful when there were droves of people using it. It expanded into use-cases none of the old guard could have dreamed of. And of the unwashed masses? They're fine, it turns out. The real issue is the fraudsters, scammers, and hackers. So enforcement focuses in those areas. All this to say, there's really no point for an end user trying to enforce a policy that not even those who made the policy have any interest in enforcing. Let the FCC spend its time dealing with truly awful abuses, and leave the blister-pack kiddies and hard working businesses alone unless they're really, really causing harm.

Don't forget about the long tail. Any future where digital signals supporting 65k or 1M users on a frequency can be stomped on by bubble pack radios from Walmart transmitting on those same frequencies in analog, just won't work out. People are going to pull a set of FRS or GMRS radios out of their sock drawer five, ten, fifteen years from now and push "TALK" on the things, potentially disrupting a lot of people using a frequency for digital. It will take a long time to phase out existing FRS and GMRS radios. Case in point: I've owned a few sets of FRS radios over the years. One set got lost by an airline losing a suitcase. Another set had one of the two handheld units stop working, and for some reason I tossed them both. But sitting in a drawer three feet from me right now is a Motorola T6300 FRS radio. It supports 14 channels, has 38 CTCSS tones, and has some scramble mode. Using that scramble setting is not legal under current FCC rules, but when the T6300 was marketed (twenty two years ago), it must have been ok. My T6300 was manufactured November 2000. The point is that I have GMRS radios I bought within the past 30 days, but also a radio that is mostly compatible with my GMRS radios that is 22 years old. Let's say five years from now the FCC legitimizes digital transmission for voice over GMRS frequencies. I'll probably still have my 22 year old FRS radio, which will be 27 years old. And I'll probably still have the GMRS radios I currently own. But not just me. People all over the US have sets of these radios, and don't use them often enough to bother replacing them. This is to suggest, if the FCC were to introduce a version of GMRS that allows for digital transmission, it's probably going to have to be on a different set of frequencies from traditional GMRS. Even if the FCC were to eliminate GMRS today, those radios are still going to be keying up for years to come.

They're fun, inexpensive radios (well, my experience is with the UV5G, but practically the same). However, true scanners they are not. Even a 22 year old Radio Shack scanner will breeze through 22 GMRS frequencies in the time it takes a UV5G to get through five to seven. Modern ones are even faster. One of the key elements to scanning is covering the scanned frequencies quickly enough that you don't miss a lot. Dedicated scanners are good at that. They also often allow for easily turning on or off scan banks, quickly.

Radios that are set to output 50w are designed to do so when supplied with 13.6 or 13.8v, and at that voltage might draw 13A while transmitting. When the vehicle is shut off, the battery is going to supply closer to 12.6v when fully charged, and at that voltage, the radio will draw fewer amps; maybe 10-12A. And that means you will probably be transmitting at a little under 50w. You would have to measure to find out more precisely. The FCC won't approve a GMRS radio manufactured with the capability to transmit more than 50w at 13.8v. That means manufacturers aren't going to risk producing one that outputs 50w at 12.6v, because it might exceed the FCC limit when being run in a vehicle with an alternator putting out 13.8v. That means, if you want full power output from your radio, it needs to have a power supply that produces the correct voltage, and that can meet the amperage needs of the radio. For your 50W radio, you would want a power supply that can produce that full 13.8v, AND that can provide 15A current (which is probably what the radio is fused at).

I used a label maker to stick one to my dash adjacent to the mobile handset, and one on the bottom of each of my handheld radios. A few days later I found that I had committed it to memory anyway. After you've hit a repeater a few times and done a few radio checks you'll commit it to memory, too.

ALL is not lost. Conventional scanners are still pretty useful, in that they can iterate through scanned frequencies at lightning speed. Scanning with a typical GMRS radio is very slow by comparison. So even if you're not picking up law enforcement, you can still put them to practical use. Even without digital trunking, scanners are pretty useful for: Normal GMRS scanning at very high speed Repeater input scanning High-speed acquisition of CTCSS or DCS tones/codes HAM bands MURS Marine VHF Air traffic / control Event scanning (race scanning, for example, if that's your thing). It's maybe not as fun as listening to the police operating, but still pretty useful. Do you happen to know... did all Michigan encrypt such that even current P25 scanners aren't able to listen? Just curious. I've been considering upgrading from my really old scanner to a newer digital scanner, but I'm holding off because Salt Lake City / County are going to be transitioning to Digital P25 Phase2 trunking sometime in the next 12 months, and I kind of want to wait and see before spending the money to upgrade.

I was in my vehicle the other day when my daughter reached out to me over GMRS (simplex). I was in a parking lot adjacent to some sort of construction business; they had some heavy machinery on-site. When I keyed up the MXT275 with MXTA26 antenna to respond, a tractor with an alarm in it started sounding off. When I released the PTT, the tractor quieted down. Keyed up again, and again the alarm started sounding. I was about 20 feet away from the tractor when this happened. Because I'm curious and can't leave things alone, I tried a frequency at the other end of the GMRS band, and the same thing happened. Is this common? Was something wrong with the tractor alarm system's wiring? Really, it's just curiosity getting me. I'm not likely to be hanging out in that particular parking lot... probably ever.

Are you experiencing receiver desensing? If I transmit to a repeater, with another radio in the same house receiving that repeater, it won't "hear" the repeater because of the desensing caused by the transmitting radio in close proximity. If I walk 50 yards away and try again, the receiving radio hears the repeater just fine. This can be a fairly common issue. If you eliminate CTCSS on the output (receiving) radio and it doesn't change anything, then it's most likely desensing.

It does seem like a security leak. As a software engineer we work really hard to avoid leaking information that could be used to compromise other users. In radio communications, with our call signs linked to our addresses, publically viewable, the FCC is leaking information. The act of identifying with a call sign gives "bad guys" two pieces of information: (1) our current general location; (2) our specific home address. A bad actor could determine that someone is identifying in Park City, and knowing that skiing typically takes all day, will know that person is not going to be home, in Salt Lake for a number of hours. The home may become a target. Fortunately for me I have someone who stays at my place when I'm away, and my neighbors are watchful. And I have other "precautions" and monitoring in place. But it would be better if we weren't giving out so much information.

It's pretty common to do one or more of the following: Upgrade your HT antenna to another, more adequate HT antenna such as a Nagoya NA-771G. This is a 15" antenna, and claims to produce 4.71 dBi gain. Still portable, but also long enough that you can't exactly be inconspicuous when using it. Get an adapter (so239 to sma-f or so239 to sma-m depending on your radio), and then connect the HT to a mobile or base-station antenna. As an example, I can connect my UV-5G via an adapter to an NMO magnetic mount, and then screw in whatever antenna I want, so long as it matches to NMO. I own a couple of options, the Midland 3db Ghost antenna and the Midland 6db 31" whip antenna. But with an adapter you can really mate it up to any GMRS antenna as long as one end is SO239. The second approach is far less convenient for "handheld" use. It would be practical for using the handheld as a base-station radio, or in a vehicle. Not as practical for walking around on a hike.

If it will run on a PI zero, in fact, that would be a great choice in a solar powered setup, since that little Pi-0 draws so little.

If you figure the conversion to RF output is only 33% efficient, then a 30w radio would consume 7A. If it's 25% efficient, it would draw 9.2A. From what I read, you should expect a lot better than 25%, probably closer to 33% efficiency. So even at 30W, your 10A plug should be adequate. My 28 year old Bronco (1995 Bronco XLT 5.8L), which is my camping / outdoorsing vehicle has one 12v plug designed for 20A, and one 12v plug designed for 10A. The fuses are in those ranges, too. So it's not necessarily a foregone conclusion that your plug is limited to 10A. Check the fuse. And check the owner's manual. Maybe you have a lot more room than you think.

I mostly hear net check-ins Sunday afternoons and evenings. That is a lower-traffic time, anyway, I think. If they're going to do their check-ins and verify their equipment and skills are up to date, I see no reason to discourage that use. It is neither an improper use, nor something I have any reason to be annoyed about. Net check-ins are certainly less annoying than the after-school blister-pack kiddies filling up a channel with screeches, feedback, and relentless roger beeps. Can't do anything about them either, and again, it's not my place to issue edicts from atop my high horse. It would be great if the blister-pack kiddies could stick to 500mw channels, but there's no restriction or governing authority guidance that says they must do so. The nets are a welcome bit of sanity. I don't mind listening in and trying to figure out where they're transmitting from.

Usually the repeater published range is just a number as a radius from the antenna. In real world RF propagation it's not that simple. I can pretty easily hit a repeater 22 miles away from me with a 40 mile published range. There is another repeater five miles away that I usually cannot hit from home, and it has a published range of 20 miles. The difference, really, is that I have almost perfect line of sight to the repeater 40 miles away. The one 20 miles away has a mountain between us. It doesn't matter if you're only five miles apart if there's several miles of dirt and rock between. In your case, you may be hearing a repeater over 45 miles away because the conditions are such that you can pick it up. Those favorable conditions may include one or more of the following: Most importantly, line of sight. After that, a good receiving antenna and good receiver. And of course factors such as minimal interference on the frequency, a good transmitter and good transmission antenna.

Midland's GTX1000 handhelds are sold this way: 50 channels. Of those 50, 22 are frequencies corresponding with GMRS 1 through 22. And then 23 through 50 are those same frequencies preprogrammed with either CTCSS or DCS codes. Those codes are squelch codes. This means that they are codes someone must transmit for your receiver to open squelch and listen to the transmission. Or that your transmitter must send so that receivers programmed with the same codes will open their squelch and listen. Any receiver that is not programmed to require a squelch code to open squelch will default to receiving all transmissions on a given frequency. And those transmissions are in no way encrypted (GMRS doesn't allow for scrambling). So conversations held between transceivers operating with squelch codes are openly available to transceivers or scanners that are not set to limit by squelch code. There is no privacy. At any rate, channel 50 in a Midland radio, for example, is going to be one of the 22 GMRS frequencies, and one of the conventional CTCSS or DCS codes. If you transmit on channel 50 at the same time someone is transmitting on the equivalent standard GMRS channel, you'll be stomping on each other, because they're analog transmissions on the same frequency. There are only 22 real channels. Everything else is just a preset code on top of one of those 22.