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I have been involved with GMRS for almost 30 years and have never seen such an abrupt increase in business radio use of the 462 MHz primary channels until the last two years. It has accelerated over the past year to the point where many of us can no longer communicate with more distant repeaters from my base station between 6 AM and about 8 PM, M-F due to co-channel radio traffic. Weekends are increasingly becoming a problem as well. I have also seen an increase in adjacent-channel interference from the 12.5 kHz interstitial channels on the base station, primarily because a large number of these commercial users have FRS radios improperly programmed for wideband (25 kHz) operation. I am located in the suburbs east of San Francisco/Oakland, with 2200' mountains between me and the busy bay region. I can only imagine what the bayside users are experiencing. Anyone else seeing this problem?

Several of us in California (bay area and Sacramento) have become inundated with many unlicensed business users on our repeater outputs. Interestingly, most of these users operate the following: TX/RX 462.600 D455 TX/RX 462.725 D252 While our repeaters can cover them in some cases, there are so many bubblepacks that they are reducing our ability to hear simplex/direct mode traffic or more distant repeaters. None of these users have a callsign, and they are operating wideband (we can tell they are wideband due to their 4-5 kHz deviation and resulting volume; narrowband should be lower volume and 2.5 kHz peak deviation). We reached out to several users who all advised they had "RT15" radios. https://tinyurl.com/tmu48vq A customer posted the frequency listing for this "FRS" radio showing the two DCS codes above (actually the inverted codes; D322 Inverted = D455 Non-Inverted, and D462 Inverted = D252 Non-Inverted). So this confirms the user info. But it has a few problems: Defaulted wideband (essentially creating a GMRS radio) Capable of voice encryption Contains a non-FRS channel (462.825) According to the new rules, radios marketed and Type Certified as FRS cannot operate wideband or have encryption, let alone have a Part 90 channel in them. Of course, when asked, the seller replies that the programming cable is available, and I found the software is downloadable for free. Various violations here: §95.591 Sales of FRS combination radios prohibited. (does wideband make this a GMRS radio??) §95.575 FRS modulation limits (exceeded) §95.587 FRS additional requirements. - (a) Transmit frequency capability. FRS transmitter types must not be capable of transmitting on any frequency or channel other than those listed in §95.563 (462.825??) - (e) Effective September 30, 2019, no person shall manufacture or import hand-held portable radio equipment capable of operating under this subpart (FRS) and other licensed or licensed-by-rule services in this chapter (part 15 unlicensed equipment authorizations are permitted if consistent with part 15 rules). The user manual that was submitted for FCC certification shows 2.5 kHz deviation, no scrambling. The current manual now shows 5 kHz deviation and scrambling. Anyone else getting slammed with these things?