73blazer

If it's a GMRS repeater, then the three people talking yesterday identified with HAM call signs, I had looked them up. I'll see if I can catch some more call signs today.

Sounds alot more interesting than the talk I hear around here! Not trying to ruffle feathers. It was just an observation. You can talk about anything you want to talk about, well, I might have to report you if I start hearing any talk about Taylor Swift.

Here's a recording of the morse. I tried some online decoders, no luck with them. It sounds like crap, lots of background noise. The HAM sites around here all come in clear as a bell on that radio. This sounds like total garbage. But the morse is fairly clear. The online decoders I could find both said: I Ð <AS> H ' <SOS> ? recording.mp3

Where I live, there is basically 0 GMRS traffic. When I'm out and about in the back 40 I usually carry a radio so my wife can get me when she wants as there is sparse cell coverage here as well. Usually set to channel 16. There are no "listed" GMRS repeaters anywhere close to being in range. There used to be one, but it's long gone. I havn't had a radio on in a few weeks, so it started sometime in the last two weeks, but yesterday when I turned mine on, I'm hearing a linked HAM repeater on GMRS 16, the channel I usually use. I scanned the usual HAM bands I know operate around here and it's none of them. Different people as well. They're jabbering away on it again this morning. I've no way to identify this repeater aside from trying to record the morse beeps when someone hits it. Or I need a Marconi operator from the 1915 to identify them for me. The people talking on it are from hundreds of miles away in different directions, so I know it's some linked network. I have a few of their call signs , all HAM, but I think rather pointless to contact them. Either it's bleeding over or someone misconfigured a repeater somewhere, or someone purposely linked HAM to a GMRS channel? I don't think that would be kosher. I guess I need to set a radio to scan all HAM bands to see at least what HAM frequency it's coming in as, if any? Any suggestions how to identify this channel 16 bleeder? And why is it that every HAM operator seems to only talk about HAM equipment, radios, antennas, setups...that's all they ever talk about!

Who's using GMRS on the road to make random contacts? except to talk to another vehicle in their own convoy or party. I put mine on scan in my car while traveling OH, MI and WI and never heard one person on any GMRS frequency even in Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee. Not one. Well, except when I hit a repeater or two and someone was monitoring and talked back. I don't think there are many people driving around with a GMRS radio in their car, or even using GMRS to begin with. It's primary use by far is still among a group of people on an outing somewhere, overlanding, hunting groups etcc....or kids playing with FRS radios. Making a contact or raising anyone for info or help on channel 19 or any GMRS frequency on the road seems, all but a futile effort anywhere near me.

Amazon is by far the worst. In my rural area their delivery is new and alot of it still goes thru UPS/FedEX/USPS, but for some stuff they do deliver directly, they've hired "local contractors" (basically anyone with a car). So you get a meth head with missing teeth showing up in flip flops and a torn shirt and jean shorts, in their personal rusted out 1990 Ford Econoline van with bald tires all with no markings, visible id badges, labels, signs, nothing, delivering your package and scoping out your house for later thefts. Zero vetting going on there whatsoever. I've rarely ever ordered from them because you have no shipping choices, but my wife did, until they started sending these meth heads to our house.

The notice doesn't say that though and they're usually pretty specific and accurate about their actions and words. It says they just monitored the transmissions

They cited him among the main offenses, for use of a non-certified GMRS radio on GMRS frequencies. That, is very interesting. How'd they know that?

I've used a Yeasu FT-65 HAM radio for this. Great quality little radio. OOB it can only transmit on HAM bands, but you can easily find the unlock code online, type it in on the keypad (no computer required), and that allows it to transmit on GMRS, MURS (or any band it's capable of). I'm not a HAM, but sometimes while going walk-about by myself in no cell areas, areas I know there's a HAM repeater or two, which I have programmed in and in case of some emergency, it's nice to know I can hit a HAM repeater and perhaps get some help and since it can do GMRS with the unlock code I use it as a spare to give to extras in our larger overlanding trips.

Spying is real and does happen. But you need to think about what targets they would get the most data from. A radio designed for recreational use that sits ina box in the basement 99.999% of the time and that transmits openly without encryption is not a device that would be targeted. You can monitor said devices with a simple spy balloon, it's much easier. I had a 2015 Lenovo business laptop (mobile workstation really) I bought new and did notice while it's turned off, a spurious MAC that wasn't the normal network cards MAC would connect to my open wifi guest network for a few seconds every few hours. I could remove the battery and those connections wouldn't happen. Bloomberg then published an explosive story about embedded spy chips in many laptops, desktops and servers whose boards had pre-assembled parts by one company for various computer manufacturers, Lenovo included. Lenovo quickly issued a bios update to stop said "spying" . I I would consider it a direct attack on 'merican companies. But the point is, it does happen.

Note that the first 3 or 5 chars of the FCCID are the manufacturer code, and everything past that is manufactuer specified, some use the radio model number like Retivus, some just number their grants, like Wouxun does just WOUXUN19,WOUXUN20,WOUXUN21 etc, the 935G is WOUXUN26 so your gonna have to look at the actual grant document (change results to html and you'll get clickable links to the related docs) to find any model number it relates to. You also may get additional results by changing the application purpose to one of the permissive change ones as they tend to get a change grant and not original grant on an existing radio if it's really not much different, like a 935G plus.

Put in a date range (I put 01/01/2000 to 04/05/2023), application purpose of original grant and frequency range 462 to 468 uncheck exact, and rule part 95e and it comes up with a list of 239 radios

If you use too broad of search terms, it's usually times out. Like if you just fill in part95e and hit search. Eventually you will get lucky though and it'll come thru. If you refine the search a bit more it usually works better.

With 175' of elevation difference and no major obstacles like other 200' hills in between, I would think 2miles would be pretty easy. I can hit a repeater about 6miles away on what I believe is about 150' tower in flatlands where I'm at from my house in fairly heavy woods, without any issue. Well, until the repeater went offline a few weeks ago?

Elevation difference between radios of that magnitude (715') will change the game completely. Now your talking 10's of miles of range pretty easily. But yes, every terrain is different and you never really know what your gonna get.

If you have a choice, as in have enough GMRS radios, I personally would certainly ditch the FRS radios. We used to use them for years in a hunting area, heavily forested, and you could never get more than 1/2mi from them, or less. The choked off transmission wattage is one thing, the irremovable usually very short crappy antenna is another reason. 6 miles sounds pretty good to me in the woods. I've never gotten anywhere near that. I think sometimes peoples definition of "woods" differs. I've seen videos of people testing radios in the "woods" and their standing in an a field with a patch of woods 50 yards away talking to someone else in open park on the other side of said "woods". When I say woods, I mean, woods,100% 50-80' oaks maples hickories birch popples & pines with alot of ground scrub as well, no homes, no fields,no yards, no open areas at all, dead of summer full foliage, and your transmitting from under canopy of said woods to another person under canopy in said woods and nobody is at any significant elevation change and there may be some small 50-70' ridges/hills in between people. Even the GIS picture in the 1st post shows homes, and I would consider that alot more open (aka probably get more range) than what I listed and tested. If you used to be able to get it, and now don't, something changed. Day to day experience can differ somewhat , temperatures, rain, humidity etc can all affect, but not usually to a point of we were talking no issues and now we can't at all. I have seen foiliage do that if you were on the edge already then the leaves grow in, it can block you entirely. I would say somebodies radio suddenly stopped puttin out, (did the radios get married by chance? ?)

If you have true FRS radios in the mix, their power on the 15-22 channels (usually only newer frs radios have those) is 2w, that will reduce their transmission range in heavy forest, coupled with their usually crappy antennas, the transmission range may be reduced significantly with an FRS. FRS radios are narrowband on all channels so yes, your GMRS radio should be set to narrow on those channels if communicating with them because there is some quality issues with narrow to wide etc.

I have only tried narrowband one time for fun and it was slightly worse but not too bad, where I tried IIRC I was about 1.1-1.2mi away in the woods I didn't try it on all radios and it wasn't included in my testing, I just always used wideband. Mostly because from what I read about it, it's not gonna make much difference unless your in a radio congested area and where we use them, there is literally nothing else and the more frequencies (wideband) to carry my signal the better chance it has. In case you didn't know because GMRS channels 8-14 are shared with FRS (among others) and required by part 95e (gmrs) radios to be narrow band.They also can only transmit 0.5w on those channels. I always use the GMRS channels 15-22 in wideband.

Last summer i did extensive testing in heavily forested areas with some mild hills. The KG-935G at 5.5w and a Nagoya 771G antenna was by far the best setup for penetrating heavy foliage. I found we could get 1.25mi-1.5mi reliably (or farther in some conditions or if you don't mind some hearing every other word). I also tried some Boeganf uv5r (rated 5, puts out 3.8-4w) and a Retivis 4w and a KG-905G (5w) and a MURS radio and a Yeasue FT-65R ham (4w) . I had high hopes for MURS in the lower frequency, but MURS sucked. 1/2mi at most in the forest. The Retivus and ham radio (in a UHF range ahhem near a GMRS frequency) got near a mile and then was unreliable past that. The 905 was reliable to 1.25mi but never got to the 1.5mi mark without some interferance . All were tried with their included rubber ducks and again with a 771G (except the MURS). The 771G added about .1-.25mi of reliability in the forest. Alot of people will say a 2w radio will do the same as a 5w radio, and out in the open or atop a mountain to someone in a valley that's likely true. For for penetrating heavy foliage while your standing under canopy.... my testing has shown that wattage is a factor. The 935g by far sounds the best and gets the best range and the 771G antenna is a great investment for heavy foliage use.

I'm not positive but it looked to me like that was on a 150'+ commercial tower. That's a loss for this area, it covered 50-60mile+ area on the flatland Saginaw valley here.

The Saginaw 625 Repeater seems to have gone offline about three weeks ago. Anyone have any idea what happened to it?

It'll work. If you want the best GMRS only HT antenna though, in my book, it's tough to beat the Nagoya 771G antenna. I can personally say it increases our range in full 100% heavy dense woods from 1-1.25mi to 1.5-1.75mi and increases clarity alot on the edges.

I would respectfully disagree with this. I'm not quite sure how this VPN thing became a thing. It provides zero extra security. Your just changing your endpoint from IP x.x.x.x to different endpoint ip y.y.y.y. All while adding latency (read performance) . As stated before pinpoint accuracy from an IP is kinda dead since the dial up days, all they can usually discern is a general location or area or city or state or in the case of stralink all they can tell is what continent your in. If you want proof of this clear your cookies log off of everything and deny google access to your gps if your devices has it (or mabey just pull up a different browser) and pull up maps.google.com. See where it shows you, they attempt to put the initial map on the place where they think you are and they spent alot of time and money to try to figure it out. If they can discern your address that map will be over your house. If your logged off of everything and cleared your cache and cookies they have nothing else to go by and will attempt to discern from just your IP. Usually it shows me a place about 200mi froim my house, the address of my ISP's main office where the IP's are registered. When I'm on starlink in a different spot it shows me the north american continent us and canada. And I would argue a VPN service makes you less secure. When you use a VPN your now letting yet another third party view all your activity since it has to be routed through it ... and lets not forget about all their third party developers,admins etc, likely in Singapore and korea and india access to everything you do on the interweb. In addition to that these services require an application to be downloaded and installed on your device, that application will have alot more access to your devices innards than a web browser will let you have. And while you may think your activity is "encrypted" from them, if they're providing the encryption for the tunnel then they're providing the decryption cert at the endpoint where your traffic has to be given to the general interweb...so that provides nothing to shield from them. Your just literally giving all your info activity, searches, etc... to yet another party. About the only valid reason I could see for using a VPN is to get your endpoint in another country where the netflix or whatever streaming service you use will allow you to access programs available only in those places.

So, am I crazy here or something. When set one of the "areas" on the KG-935G, lets say Area A the upper to scan mode, and Area B is set to a single channel, lets say GMRS22, the Area B will not ever pick up a transmission from another radio on channel 22. Only Area A once the scan gets around to GMRS22 will pick it up. If both Areas are set to a single channel they will both receive what they are supposed to, but if you put an area into scan mode the other area won't receive anything. Is that supposed to be that way?

The 905 software works, of course. But the windows xp derived GUI is very clunky. Can't do any row ops (cut, paste, move up..etc), can't do any multi-selected ops to change multiple rows at once ie like add to scan or remove from scan etc. It works, but pretty bad. I'd like to see that one supported by CHIRP.