WRUD335

Since I am in Douglas County, Washington I will also keep an eye on this thread. I did just find a GMRS repeater in East Wenatchee that is up that I requested to use.

Since I am in Douglas County, Washington I will also keep an eye on this thread. I did just find a GMRS repeater in East Wenatchee that is up that I requested to use.

Since I am in Douglas County, Washington I will also keep an eye on this thread. I did just find a GMRS repeater in East Wenatchee that is up that I requested to use.

You (and everyone) is welcome to join our National Net via Zello, every Thursday night at 7PM (Pacific).. No Facebook, no dues, no fees, no mandatory meetings.  See how here:  https://www.notarubicon.com/zello-gmrs-repeater/

Seattle area has a pretty good amount of repeaters already. I don't know that we need MORE repeaters. Expanding coverage area into the boonies? Sure.
I don't really have a practical usage scenario for GMRS other than talking to Jr when he rides his bicycle over to his friends' houses. GMRS would be nice to use if the power goes out and the generator at the local cell tower runs out of go-juice.
I would love to see city/county/states put up some high quality GMRS repeaters covering major metro areas. I would also like a pony and a fairy godmother.
Repeater hardware isn't cheap. Seems like a possible way forward is to create a GMRS club and get everyone to put in some money to build a club repeater. Let's see, if you have 20 club members, and they each pitch in $200 ...hmmm. Maybe rob a bank?

* Note to the humor impaired: I do not support bank robbery as a way to fund GMRS repeater construction.

I absolutely think we need more repeaters.  I'd have put my own up already, but for the fact that once I got out the topo maps and found the best place within thirty mile,  I discovered that a) the whole hilltop is owned by the water company, b) it has a large water tower on it that's already covered with ham repeaters, c) a local ham group convinced the water company to let them manage all antenna placement, and d) the ham group won't even discuss details like access/rent/maintenance/etc. unless you're a licenced ham who's joined their group.
Instead, I'm trying to convince my wife to let me cut a hole in the tower ceiling of our victorian and place one up there.  It'll likely get a quarter the range, but no one gets to tell me how things are going to work!

As for the "don't be stupid, that's what ham is for" brigade, I'm ignoring them.  My group wants to build reliable emergency comms for our region that *doesn't* require gatekeeper hams to use it.  You'll never get churches, schools, and community centers to fund/maintain personnel to get and stay trained so they've always got a ham on staff, but a $35 license and a $100 HT is completely feasible.  And that's not to mention being able to interoperate with actual community members for the price of $15 walkies from Walmart!  A school or community member can keep a whole box of those things in the basement and just hand them out with ten minutes' instruction in an emergency, and they can even just listen in to repeater outputs to keep track of what's going on locally.

I agree..
I have put one up, and am [partially] responsible for getting a 2nd one up, covering most of Southern California.