cfa

The DR1 did have lockup issues, but we have a DR-2X with the voice card for our club repeater and it has been solid. Most of it's use is in analog but its in AMS mode and does get some digital use. It takes normal AC as well as DC so you can easily set it up for emergency power. We have a few group 24 deep cycle batteries on ours for when the power goes out. Yaesu runs 50% off specials for clubs who leave it in AMS mode for at least a year, so we rolled the dice. $900 for a brand new repeater with a 3yr warranty is hard to beat. It has a hot receiver so make sure your duplexer is up to snuff.

Program a simplex channel with the same tones as the output of your repeater. Call it "talk around" or a "direct" channel. Example. Your on 462.700/467.700 repeater pair with PL 77 in and out tones. Your group drives out of range the repeater, or it dies. You notice so you flip over to your "talk around" channel and simplex on 462.700 with a PL 77 tone and tell your friends to all go direct. Since everyone is already listening for 462.700/pl77 for the repeater they are all going to hear your message to go direct or to another simplex channel.

Normally I wouldn't care what people do. But down in NYC/LI there are a few competing closed GMRS networks that have every pair tied up and because of the geography they all blast in to CT. Which means to use GMRS around here you basically have to run high power and PL, or deal with listening to the frequent jammers/trolls on their network or some multistate check in net.

CT and MA both have special class of plates for amature. They have a little lighting bolt instead of a dash. Really the only advantage they gave you was it made it legal to have a scanner in your car. Now with scanner apps on your phone getting the plates seems somewhat pointless. I don't need some wacko being able to google my plate and have it come back to my name and home address. Back in the day he would have to have known it was a ham call sign and then track down a printed directory.

If there are 2 groups that are like minded then the cost of a real good repeater on a LMR pair can be split by using DMR or NXDN. 1 group uses one time slot the other uses the other time slot. IMO there just isn't enough room on GMRS for digital and FM to live side by side. If you think the interference issues are bad now on GMRS just imagine what would happen to the FM users if everyone started putting up DMR repeaters all over and a few guys start running chatty things like automatic GPS telemetry. It will happen because data features like that are cool and useful.

dupe

By communicating and working with each other. Hams set up groups for handling the coordination of repeater pairs. See https://w2xq.com/bm-repeaters.html If the groups wont work with each other then another option would be for a group to license their own LMR frequency from the FCC. Then the frequency, location, and power will be somewhat coordinated. And a third option would be to just get the members to get their Tech license. The test isn't that hard and then you will be using ham repeaters that are already coordinated. The FCC isn't going to give away any spectrum to GMRS. There is none to give away in UHF anyways.

B&H photo also has it on sale but with free shipping if you spend 10 extra bux. Midland's website wanted $11 to ship it to my zipcode. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1542037-REG/midland_micromobile_mxta26_6db_gain.html