Has GMRS Lost Its Welcoming Vibe?

[LeoG]

The only place I see unfriendliness is the use of private repeaters.  Some of the crazy rules they put up seem odd.  But it's their hardware to do so.

Other than that the service is generally used for families talking with themselves, outings of people with a common interest, kids on FRS being kids and businesses that usually keep it formal.

Getting into someone else's conversation isn't really a friendly thing and they might not appreciate you butting in.

On the other hand I see lots of friendly people on repeaters, most of them "the usuals" and if they're having a conversation and you have something to add most of the time they'd love to hear from you as long as you don't just butt in.

 

[AdmiralCochrane]

Don't confuse GMRS with DMR

[WRXB215]

This and the other thread have the longest posts I've ever seen.

[Blaise]

22 hours ago, SeaScholar said:

Lately, I've noticed a shift. Reading through forums and listening on the air, I'm sensing a current of negativity and gatekeeping that feels very out of place in the GMRS world. It feels less like a community of users helping each other and more like a new territory for seasoned hobbyists to stake a claim, bringing with them the same elitism and disdain that many of us sought to avoid in the first place.

Lately?

It was that way when *I* got here...

https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/3842-radio-hatred/

Nerd stuff always draws gatekeepers and jackasses people with deficient social skills.  And since those are the folks who like to run their mouths the most, they're the ones you hear.

[GreggInFL]

On 8/28/2025 at 3:05 PM, UncleYoda said:

You're not being targeted/harassed (yet).  Say (post) something the Jeep crowd doesn't like and report back later.  There are several that should have been banned but they have paid memberships.

LOL.  Okay, fair enough.

[TerriKennedy]

On 8/28/2025 at 5:37 PM, LeoG said:

The only place I see unfriendliness is the use of private repeaters.  Some of the crazy rules they put up seem odd.  But it's their hardware to do so.

I can't speak for others, but my repeater is marked private and I've never denied an access request so far. It's just got unlisted tones (input and output different to make blind searching a bit more difficult). I try to respond to all requests within 2 days maximum.

OTOH, I sent access requests a month in advance to 3 repeaters in another state I was going to visit. One took 2 months to respond and I still haven't heard back from the other two 5+ months later.

Putting up a good, solid repeater can run up considerable expenses, depending on your choice of equipment. So controlling who uses it is reasonable. Particularly since anything going out over mine (at least) gets my license Morsed out after.

On 8/28/2025 at 5:37 PM, LeoG said:

On the other hand I see lots of friendly people on repeaters, most of them "the usuals" and if they're having a conversation and you have something to add most of the time they'd love to hear from you as long as you don't just butt in.

I monitor my repeater's output frequency without tone, so I get to hear my repeater's traffic, other repeaters in the area, and simplex traffic. There's a bunch of afternoon traffic (presumably FRS) from local schools calling for buses to come in and also to alert the office that a parent is waiting to pick up a particular student. In the evening there's often the same two guys on another private repeater using the same channel that I'm on (unavoidable in an urban environment, though they're far enough away that I need to use a roof antenna to hear that repeater). They never ID and the repeater doesn't break in to ID, although it IDs at the end of their conversation. They talk about mundane stuff each evening for a few hours. Tonight it was burgers and Doritos.

I have no interest at all in reaching out to them to discuss rules, etiquette, etc. - they're registered on someone else's private repeater and it's up to that repeater's owner to enforce any rules / etiquette. My average repeater user with a handheld will never hear them - they're too far away. Live and let live...

I'm going to be setting up an open GMRS repeater for a friend in the Mojave Desert either this fall if I'm recovered enough from surgery to do the lifting and hauling, including running 500' of 8/8" Heliax up the side of a mountain in the Nopahs, 1050' AGL, otherwise next spring. The coverage for that should reach from parts of Death Valley to well south of Dumont Dunes (elevation is king!). Just don't get me started on antenna grounding in solid rock in a desert... This should let the duners order pizza well before they make it it to the nearest pizza joint - when I was up on top of the mountain doing site planning last fall, during radio checks with my 8W handheld I had some duners ask me if I could let the pizza place know their order. Out there, GMRS repeaters are a public benefit - the local landline carrier (ATT) has completely abdicated and you can't get phone service, and extended power outages are common - in fact, Southern California Edison just got power back on yesterday after a nearly 4 day outage.