GMRS Trave Frequency?

[WRUB205]

OK, Has any GMRS frequency been nailed down yet as THE Travel frequency?

[BoxCar]

Nope

[WRXL702]

6 minutes ago, WRUB205 said:

OK, Has any GMRS frequency been nailed down yet as THE Travel frequency?

Here We Go....

Before All The Weekend Powers To Be Chime In - Simple Answer Is NO.

There Are No Currently Designated GMRS Frequencies Designated As Travel Channels.

Use The GMRS Frequencies For However You Prefer On Your Travels.......

[OffRoaderX]

All the cool-kids use GMRS Ch19.. 

[WRXL702]

1 minute ago, OffRoaderX said:

All the cool-kids use GMRS Ch19.. 

 

Now That Is Too Funny.....

What "Valley Girls / Guys" Do On The West Coat, Has No Relevance On What GMRS Operators Do & Operate In The Midwest & Eastern Side Of The US.

That's Why I Started My Response Post - "Here We Go." 

[Lscott]

1 minute ago, WRXL702 said:

 

Now That Is Too Funny.....

What "Valley Girls / Guys" Do On The West Coat, Has No Relevance On What GMRS Operators Do & Operate In The Midwest & Eastern Side Of The US.

That's Why I Started My Response Post - "Here We Go." 

Yeah, it’s like one of those vampires in a late night tv show. You put it down, then a short while later it gets back up again.

[Mrsig]

In Florida we use 16 as the off road simplex channel.

19 as the road channel.

20 as the highway channel with the tone of 141.3

[WRUE951]

we use ch 5...  

 

[UncleYoda]

40 minutes ago, Mrsig said:

... the road channel.

... the highway channel

How do you distinguish road from highway?

[OffRoaderX]

30 minutes ago, UncleYoda said:

How do you distinguish road from highway?

A road has intersections, stop signs and stoplights.. A highway, aka a freeway, does not.

[Northcutt114]

3 hours ago, Mrsig said:

In Florida we use 16 as the off road simplex channel.

19 as the road channel.

20 as the highway channel with the tone of 141.3

It's funny you mention this. Just today I was driving around metro Atlanta running some errands. I had my CB on 19 and my GMRS on  Channel 20 with the tone set at 141.3. For a solid 5 minutes, I was getting RX transmissions but I couldn't hear anything. It would light up green, go dark, then light up again and repeat. Over and over. It makes me wonder what was happening? I reckon someone was transmitting on 20 but with different tones? If so, who or what and at 70 mph, I was covering a lot of ground in 5 minutes for simplex to still be working. I didn't have the ability in traffic at speed to take the tones off to see if I could hear them.

 

[Northcutt114]

2 hours ago, UncleYoda said:

How do you distinguish road from highway?

He did say off road. 

[Lscott]

15 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

I reckon someone was transmitting on 20 but with different tones?

That’s why I almost NEVER use RX tones on my radios.

[marcspaz]

The short answer is no, though @OffRoaderX is making a push for 19.  He is probably the most influential and well-known person in the GMRS space.  If any one person has a shot at impacting the culture, it would be him.

 

You are going to hear a lot of people mention channel 20 with tone 141.3... but that is a little misleading.  I'll try to make this painless, but this is the long answer.

The original 'distress' frequency was 462.675, aka channel 20. This was by FCC rule... but that doesn't exist anymore.

After the rule change got rid of the official distress frequency/channel, Popular Wireless and the Personal Radio Association came up with the idea of the Open Repeater Initiative (ORI). It was originally repeater channel 20 with 141.3 for the tone. They called 141.3 the "travel tone"  They spread the word that if you have a repeater on channel 20 and are willing to let people use it with no special permission, as a courtesy to travelers, use the tone 141.3. 

As time went on, people started using the "travel tone" on their repeaters, regardless of what channel the repeater was on, for the same reason.  So, 141.3 became know as the "travel tone" for repeaters, in general.  However, with the fall of Popular Wireless and the Personal Radio Association, the adaptation of 141.3 on any repeater channel for open repeaters, and no central group helping maintain the tradition of a travel/emergency channel, the ORI vanished pretty quickly.

So, there is still an informally recognized "travel tone" for repeaters, but there really isn't any "travel channel" per se.  I feel like you have just about the same likelihood of finding people to chat with or making contact in an emergency on every channel by trying all of the repeater channels with 141.3 as the transmit tone (no receive tone squelch).  I wouldn't use simplex unless I was traveling as part of a group and we all agree to use a specific channel.

 

Hope that wasn't too long. 

[Mrsig]

7 hours ago, Northcutt114 said:

He did say off road. 

Our Jeep & other Off Road clubs use 16 in all State, Fed parks & pay off road courses in Florida.

[WRTC928]

8 hours ago, Northcutt114 said:

It's funny you mention this. Just today I was driving around metro Atlanta running some errands. I had my CB on 19 and my GMRS on  Channel 20 with the tone set at 141.3. For a solid 5 minutes, I was getting RX transmissions but I couldn't hear anything. It would light up green, go dark, then light up again and repeat. Over and over. It makes me wonder what was happening? I reckon someone was transmitting on 20 but with different tones? If so, who or what and at 70 mph, I was covering a lot of ground in 5 minutes for simplex to still be working. I didn't have the ability in traffic at speed to take the tones off to see if I could hear them.

 

Atlanta is a big enough place that I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were in range of two or more repeaters on the same frequency with different tones.

[nokones]

10 hours ago, Northcutt114 said:

It's funny you mention this. Just today I was driving around metro Atlanta running some errands. I had my CB on 19 and my GMRS on  Channel 20 with the tone set at 141.3. For a solid 5 minutes, I was getting RX transmissions but I couldn't hear anything. It would light up green, go dark, then light up again and repeat. Over and over. It makes me wonder what was happening? I reckon someone was transmitting on 20 but with different tones? If so, who or what and at 70 mph, I was covering a lot of ground in 5 minutes for simplex to still be working. I didn't have the ability in traffic at speed to take the tones off to see if I could hear them.

 

With a real radio you can have a programmable button programmed for PL Defeat/Disable and all you have to do is push the button at any speed while you are driving so you can hear all the traffic on that channel.

[Northcutt114]

2 hours ago, WRTC928 said:

Atlanta is a big enough place that I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were in range of two or more repeaters on the same frequency with different tones.

OK, so...new guy with egg on his face, again. I guess I didn't realize that "Channel 20" occupied the same frequency as some local repeaters. You are indeed correct. I was picking up chattering from a repeater in the city but the tones were wrong. So there's that mystery solved.

But leads me to another one. What about people who want to use simplex on Channel 20? I understand offsets and working repeaters. I guess I've just never thought about simplex on the same frequency. And FRS for that matter. Say you're in range of a repeater and you and your friend key up radio to radio, what happens to the TX from the repeater?

[nokones]

10 hours ago, marcspaz said:

The original 'distress' frequency was 462.675, aka channel 20. This was by FCC rule... but that doesn't exist anymore.

After the rule change got rid of the official distress frequency/channel, Popular Wireless and the Personal Radio Association came up with the idea of the Open Repeater Initiative (ORI). It was originally repeater channel 20 with 141.3 for the tone. They called 141.3 the "travel tone"  They spread the word that if you have a repeater on channel 20 and are willing to let people use it with no special permission, as a courtesy to travelers, use the tone 141.3. 

As time went on, people started using the "travel tone" on their repeaters, regardless of what channel the repeater was on, for the same reason.  So, 141.3 became know as the "travel tone" for repeaters, in general.  However, with the fall of Popular Wireless and the Personal Radio Association, the adaptation of 141.3 on any repeater channel for open repeaters, and no central group helping maintain the tradition of a travel/emergency channel, the ORI vanished pretty quickly.

So, there is still an informally recognized "travel tone" for repeaters, but there really isn't any "travel channel" per se.  I feel like you have just about the same d of finding people to chat with or making contact in an emergency on every channel by trying all of the repeater channels with 141.3 as the transmit tone (no receive tone squelch).  I wouldn't use simplex unless I was traveling as part of a group and we all agree to use a specific channel.

That rule existed in the 70s and may have been in existence in the late 60s. Effective February 1999, the FCC allowed all GMRS operate on any main and interstitial channel.

[nokones]

8 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

OK, so...new guy with egg on his face, again. I guess I didn't realize that "Channel 20" occupied the same frequency as some local repeaters. You are indeed correct. I was picking up chattering from a repeater in the city but the tones were wrong. So there's that mystery solved.

But leads me to another one. What about people who want to use simplex on Channel 20? I understand offsets and working repeaters. I guess I've just never thought about simplex on the same frequency. And FRS for that matter. Say you're in range of a repeater and you and your friend key up radio to radio, what happens to the TX from the repeater?

It will depend on the signal level difference between the two signals. It takes about 6 dB or more of a stronger signal level to capture the weaker signal and anything less you will be hearing a bunch of wah wahs and worbles.

[Northcutt114]

31 minutes ago, nokones said:

With a real radio you can have...

Interesting.

I feel as if I have a real radio. It was sitting on the dash of my real Jeep. Attached to a real Bulletpoint Mounting Solutions Rubigrid tray. As I was driving down what I very much perceived to be a real highway.

Your suggestion, then, is that I imagined the whole thing? Because I can't, for the life of me, imagine what else you would be implying.

 

[WRTC928]

22 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

Interesting.

I feel as if I have a real radio. It was sitting on the dash of my real Jeep. Attached to a real Bulletpoint Mounting Solutions Rubigrid tray. As I was driving down what I very much perceived to be a real highway.

Your suggestion, then, is that I imagined the whole thing? Because I can't, for the life of me, imagine what else you would be implying.

 

Ignore him. Anything you paid less than $1,000 for isn't a "real" radio to him. The rest of us actually live in the "real" world.

[WRTC928]

39 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

OK, so...new guy with egg on his face, again. I guess I didn't realize that "Channel 20" occupied the same frequency as some local repeaters. You are indeed correct. I was picking up chattering from a repeater in the city but the tones were wrong. So there's that mystery solved.

But leads me to another one. What about people who want to use simplex on Channel 20? I understand offsets and working repeaters. I guess I've just never thought about simplex on the same frequency. And FRS for that matter. Say you're in range of a repeater and you and your friend key up radio to radio, what happens to the TX from the repeater?

I don't know what radio you have, but I have the upper (50 watt) channels duplicated with CTCSS/DTCS tones for such a contingency. It's not perfect, because when the tone opens your squelch, you still may pick up the other traffic on the frequency. It also requires that your buddy program his radio the same way. Still, it mostly works because if you're traveling with someone in another vehicle, likely you're close enough that your signal will "beat" another signal originating further away.

[UncleYoda]

39 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

I feel as if I have a real radio.

Every radio, or at least every one I've owned/used, that supports tones (my CB doesn't) including the original UV-5R and some 25 year old Cobra GMRS radios, allows you to use the MON button to temporarily open squelch.

[Northcutt114]

47 minutes ago, UncleYoda said:

Every radio, or at least every one I've owned/used, that supports tones (my CB doesn't) including the original UV-5R and some 25 year old Cobra GMRS radios, allows you to use the MON button to temporarily open squelch.

I'm familiar with the button and it is on my radio. It removes tones, too? I thought squelch and tones were different?