UncleYoda

Yea obviously, but how do you know a neighbor is calling from his house versus his car? (You have to respond to even ask.) All this rationalizing is useless. therefore.... (wait for it).

May have an official answer soon. (or it might be another meaningless exercise, never know with these folks)

Anybody can come up with scenarios where any use could be helpful. The issue is, is GMRS as specified in the regs, the right service for your usage scenario. If not, and you want FCC to make a change, then propose that. Just going rogue because it suits your purpose makes you a radio outlaw. Part of the the issue is just the precise meaning of what "illegal" means in this context. We should refer to violation rather than illegal since it is about regulations. But I think it is generally understood that illegal in the radio context means violating FCC regs. Linking over RF is not explicitly prohibited in the wording of the regs. But it is at least discouraged in the rule clarification where it explains any linking is bad. As far as I have ever heard or read, starting with ham, mixing radio services is prohibited by regulation. There are no other frequencies that I know of that can legally (haha) carry GMRS conversations. If you know of some, can you list the frequency and/or the service? Sounds a lot like "our country, love it or leave it". Leaving if you don't like how it is used would be fine IF EVERYONE WAS FOLLOWING THE RULES. Leaving because some people want to break the rules is just running away rather than fighting.

It's outside the local area, but some may be in RX range. I don't know much but I'll send a PM.

Overheard: more repeaters being linked up again.

Kenmore is a washing machine or refrigerator; Kenwood makes radios (and made stereos back in the day).

I think some of us do know the relevant regs (ham and gmrs for me) and understand them fully to the point the wording is clear. We obviously can't know what isn't there. But that is not due to not reading or not understanding the language. Courts interpret any ambiguity in contracts against the author. Applying the same logic to regs, it's the agency responsible that has to make the regs clear, not for us to use a crystal ball. Socal may come across abrasive to sensitive folks, but he is right that not enough newbies bother to learn before bugging eveeryone one else with questions that would be answered just by studying the rules. And RTFM (reading the fine manual) for their radios.

Yea, it's one of my 2 major pet peeves with GMRS and the two are linked by those who claim to understand but don't really know any more than the rest of us. There are some differences in equipment. Handhelds are even defined by equipment, and per FCC as Steve also suggested, handheld is a sub-type of mobile where regulations don't specify separate rules, Base stations have an antenna in a fixed position. Mobile is normally straight forward but can get a little fuzzy in some circumstances. To me, their clarification indicates it's the linking itself that is not intended, not just use of phone or internet. Linking by any technology has a lot of the same drawbacks (tying up channels, potential for interference, etc.). It's not just PSTN or internet but the linking itself that is a concern. True that they didn't update the regs, but interpretation by FCC is a lot better IMO than interpretation by Billy Joe and Bobby on the internet. For those who want to challenge it because the clarification wasn't incorporated into the wording in the regs, y'all go ahead and see what happens.

"Many trials occur because of differences in interpretations." - SteveShannon, Feb 16, 2024 Here's a bit more that follows what you posted (with the underlined sentence) above (there may be more too): from https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/general-mobile-radio-service-gmrs

Yes in part - the underlined sentence is enough by itself IMO. But there was more explanation that covering large areas was not the intent and there's no way to know what is going on at another repeaters location (like maybe 50-75 miles away), either another repeater that overlaps or a simplex conversation, and wide area coverage is a problem with the limited channels available..

Some folks need to go back and read it again. I could probably find it and quote it but I'm not interested in the argument anymore since it was clear to me.

Contrare is all people do on this forum and the whole internet - I don't want any amateur speculative interpretations. I want the officials responsible to clarify. Everything else is BS. As far as EXTRAPOLATION, the regs should be written so we don't need to make up our own ideas of what we believe they mean. That is exact;y the problem we have right now. I wish I had a list of every BS explanation I've heard from people on this topic.

No, there was another part to their clarification - we can't link by RF either because it can cover a wide area which was not the intent for GMRS.

And that tells us exactly nothing about what a fixed station is. Total bull. They have already said repeaters aren't allowed to be linked. Everybody wants to make up their own BS interpretation and none of it is official.

Equally important IMO is we need some antibiotics available w/o Rx. The government has no constitutional authority to control our access to medicine anyway.