73blazer

I fully understand it was from an FCC website. But it's one guys stmt. I even watched the video given in the other thread of him actually saying it, "GMRS should not be linked." But again, ti's ones guys interpretation, one FCC employee in one area of the country, does not make a rule. The Rules, are ambiguous at best. It somewhat leans toward no linking, but it's not clear. As a small business owner who pays a contract lawyer many times a year, in his words, having wording like that is basically unpurpose to create a grey area. If you don't want grey areas, you don't put wording like that and it's pretty easy to avoid grey areas with words. I could really care less if they're linked or not. But rules are rules. Laws are laws. And silly stmts on pages nobody will ever look up because they're not rules or laws, are ....silly stmts. Make it a rule, at least. Better yet, enforce the rule as an agency they way they think it should be enforced. Mabey then people will listen. Until then, new linked GMRS repeaters are coming online every few weeks.

It's not in the actual rules, just some silly mention, which could be a misinterpretation of the actual rule, or a carry over rule from some other service, or even just a plain mistake, on a rogue web general informational page that 95% of people would never see. Your putting up a repeater, you check the rules. Not rogue informational pages. So, I would dispute the "ruled them illegal" . Until it's in the actual rules, it's not a rule. Even then it's just a "rule". Certainly not "illegal". There are so many linked repeaters, they wouldn't just go around and start issuing fines, which is the most they could do anyway They would most likely start sending warning letters. But, again, they can't even do that until it's in the actual rules. CB is supposed to be 4watts. But I've yet to see any of those 1500w jibber jabbers on there fined, sent letters, or have any enforcement whatsoever. So it appears, the FCC, doesn't care. That said, When a new repeater, the 1st one within my access range, came online last weekend, it is linked. I was initially happy. Had some good conversations with some people. But then last night came. The Friday night tomfoolery. Holy cow the idiots on there. It was exactly why I stopped running a CB radio. Yeah I can just turn it off or filter that repeater station out, but..they're broadcasting this stuff across 1/4 of the state. The first actual law we need is to ban any radio from have that stupid emergency/call button!

This isn't a few trees around a suburban house. It's heavy forest for a good few square miles around and I can count the homes on one hand. To make any significant gain, I'd need to get above the forest canopy, at least 80' . That really needs a tower. That ain't happening. The HT with the 771G antenna hits it for now as long as I'm outside. I imagine that will not be the case when foliage returns. More wattage might help, there's a few HT that do 8w now. I know some say that won't make a difference, but that has not been my experience in these woods. The 935G at 5.5w does 1.25 miles or slightly more depending, while a 4w radio barely does 1mile and the 935G at mid power (IIRC 3w?) barely does .5mi, thats all, in the woods here. A base station with 50w would certainly get out better. It won't receive any better though. I just don't see myself as a basestation kind of guy. My wife would certainly say it's just another excuse to talk to somebody, that isn't her.

I was admonished today for using a roger beep on a repeater. "the repeater already has it, please turn that off". I normally have it off as it's not good when hunting, or even just being out in the woods talking with my wife, it's rather annoying. But I thought it was "common" when talking on repeaters. Apparently not.

I was able to figure out the input tone. I can hit this repeater! Barely. They say I sound like dog doo-doo. One guy told me where it is, not surprising it and me sound like crap, it's 20mi away. And I'm in heavy woods. And this is all flat land. I guess it was stood up just yesterday. HT to HT simplex all I can get is about 1.25mi in these woods. Anyway, mystery solved!

I concur! I figured out how to slow it down in audacity and was able to write down the dots and dashes and look them up. Interesting.So some ham guys were using it yesterday or their dual operators and just instinctively used their ham call sign. I heard two call signs this morning, those were GMRS ones. So that means there's a new repeater in town, and it's networked to to others! I doubt I'd be able to hit it with an HT from my heavy woods. It barely comes in.

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.