WQQL573

In my area we had an issue with a major chain Hotel using 462.725 (one of our repeater pairs) for their business comms on commercial radios. After we researched and verified that there was no possibility of them having an ancient license for Non-Individual on GMRS, I politely contacted them on their frequency in an attempt to explain the situation. The Manager got on the radio telling me she was going to "Call the Cops" because I was not allowed to use their "channel". So I stopped at the hotel and again, politely, attempted to show them the FCC regulations and offer them a solution when the manager freaked out and called the police. Because I was on their property I simply left shaking my head. Needless to say I made sure they got a letter from our northwest FCC Representative Binh Mtuyem out of the Portland, Oregon area. We've had a few other businesses pop up on GMRS and most are polite and will move to FRS once it's politely explained to them, but there are still geniuses at gas stations and hotels that love to wander into GMRS then cuss and threaten anyone who tries to help them follow the law. Oh well! On a trip through Sisters, Oregon we had a Hotel/Resort employee on a MURS frequency we were using for travel comms tell us they "Owned" this channel and we needed to immediately get off of "his" channel or he was going to call the "FBI". That was a fun conversation! LOL

I like the idea of keeping all routine dispatching and traffic unencrypted with the option of having their tac or secondary frequencies encrypted for obvious reasons. Oregon State Police does this in Southern Oregon. They are still using analog FM VHF through their repeater system, but utilize their simplex tac frequencies in P25 Encrypted so that they can maintain officer safety when necessary. Southern Oregon has recently become a scanner fest with "scanner" based Facebook pages and people aren't very intelligent about what they share or who they accept into these groups, so again I'm 100% for LE and even Fire having the option to go to a secure talk group or frequency when necessary.

I think this is a really important topic. I'm not sure how to address this with either local Law Enforcement, or 911 Dispatch centers. I'm thinking it would be a good topic to bring up with state and county emergency coordinators.