Where have all the GMRS Repeaters gone?

[TNFrank]

There use to be 4 or 5 repeaters that were in the Phoenix area that I could hit, now I only see one, Phoenix 650 as being up and running. What's happened to all the GMRS Repeaters? 

Here's a list off of RepeaterBook. There's only 20 Repeaters and 3 of them are down so that leaves 17 for the entire State of Arizona. 

[wayoverthere]

For your Phoenix batch, are they offline as in tried using them and no luck? Or not showing up in the listings?

  The listings here will drop a repeater to "stale" if it hasn't been updated in awhile (1 year, I believe), and you have to turn on the "show stale repeaters" option in the list/map to see they're still there.

[MarkInTampa]

Try looking at the MyGMRS listings instead of RepeaterBook. AZ shows 59 without stale or offline option enabled in the state and 125 with stale and offline enabled.

 

[TNFrank]

I've tried to hit 725/Shaw Butte which I normally would hit easily but lately I've had no luck with it. 

Even on our list there's only a couple repeaters in the Metro Phoenix area.

[wayoverthere]

6 hours ago, TNFrank said:

I've tried to hit 725/Shaw Butte which I normally would hit easily but lately I've had no luck with it. 

Even on our list there's only a couple repeaters in the Metro Phoenix area.

Pulled up the repeater page for 725SHAWBUTE, and there's a comment there from another user a month or so ago about the repeater being down. Looks like they've had interference issues with a business repeater in the past, and someone causing issues as well, between the comments and the thread below. 

https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/7946-soooo-rip-shawbute-i-guess/

Edit: saw him weigh in on the other thread, so maybe @nokones has some more recent info on status of the local repeaters?

Edited September 3, 2025 by wayoverthere
tagging a local user

[nokones]

Shaw Butte is still on the air, at least it is IDing. Either the Station is not repeating or the input tone has changed. The input tone Towers 600 has also changed. Towers 575 appears to be back on the air for now.

[TNFrank]

Shaw was 100.0 TX only. Is it different now?

[nokones]

6 hours ago, TNFrank said:

Shaw was 100.0 TX only. Is it different now?

At this time, it is unknown if the Repeat function is disabled or if there was an input tone change. We just need to exercise patience to see what the repeater owner is going to do.

[TNFrank]

Another good reason to get a HAM license.  We're covered up in 2M and 70cm repeaters in my area and there's quite a few 1.25M repeaters as well. 

[WRZC812]

We are cut off over here on the east side of Mesa. You would be lucky to make contact with a HT. 700, 650 & 725 seam to be down, unless I'm doing something wrong and that is possibility. 

[TNFrank]

23 hours ago, WRZC812 said:

We are cut off over here on the east side of Mesa. You would be lucky to make contact with a HT. 700, 650 & 725 seam to be down, unless I'm doing something wrong and that is possibility. 

The crazy thing is that I was hitting Shaw Butte without issues then it just "went away" and I don't get any feedback from any of the other Repeaters either and I know I've got the listed PL codes set right. Unless they've changed the codes I can't figure out what's going on.  I have a buddy that wants to get his GMRS license that's 3 miles away and we can't talk Simplex, we'd need to use a Repeater but none seem to be working. I did do a test on a HAM Repeater(Chase Tower in Phoenix)that I can hit easily and he could hear me on the radio I set up for him. Once he gets his GMRS license he needs to work on getting his HAM Technician License so he'll have reliable Repeaters available so we can communicate with each other. 

[SteveShannon]

58 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

The crazy thing is that I was hitting Shaw Butte without issues then it just "went away" and I don't get any feedback from any of the other Repeaters either and I know I've got the listed PL codes set right. Unless they've changed the codes I can't figure out what's going on.  I have a buddy that wants to get his GMRS license that's 3 miles away and we can't talk Simplex, we'd need to use a Repeater but none seem to be working. I did do a test on a HAM Repeater(Chase Tower in Phoenix)that I can hit easily and he could hear me on the radio I set up for him. Once he gets his GMRS license he needs to work on getting his HAM Technician License so he'll have reliable Repeaters available so we can communicate with each other. 

When you’re testing to see if you’re hitting the repeater, program a channel with the correct transmitter frequency and tone/DPL but leave the receive channel free of any form of squelch. That way you’ll hear all traffic. 

[TNFrank]

Shaw Butte doesn't have a PL RX tone, it's just 100.0 TX. 

[WRUE951]

On 9/1/2025 at 10:25 PM, TNFrank said:

There use to be 4 or 5 repeaters that were in the Phoenix area that I could hit, now I only see one, Phoenix 650 as being up and running. What's happened to all the GMRS Repeaters? 

Here's a list off of RepeaterBook. There's only 20 Repeaters and 3 of them are down so that leaves 17 for the entire State of Arizona. 

The entire state of AZ is more like 152 Active..  If you are going by RepeaterBook only, that's not good. 

[TNFrank]

20 hours ago, WRUE951 said:

The entire state of AZ is more like 152 Active..  If you are going by RepeaterBook only, that's not good. 

Where do you go to find all of these Repeaters? Here and Repeater Book are the only places I know of to look them up. 

[gortex2]

This website lists 129 of them on the repeater page. 

[WRUE951]

40 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

Where do you go to find all of these Repeaters? Here and Repeater Book are the only places I know of to look them up. 

go to the MyGMRS database and sort AZ..  

[TNFrank]

2 hours ago, WRUE951 said:

go to the MyGMRS database and sort AZ..  

Even less than on Repeater Book and many of them don't reach far enough for me to use them.

 

[SteveShannon]

1 hour ago, TNFrank said:

Even less than on Repeater Book and many of them don't reach far enough for me to use them.

 

Frank, turn on “Show Stale Repeaters”.  We’ve mentioned that to you before. It doesn’t mean that those repeaters don’t exist, just that the data hasn’t been updated in the past year.

[WRUE951]

5 hours ago, WRUE951 said:

go to the MyGMRS database and sort AZ..  

what Steve pointed out....  

[TNFrank]

None of those are even close to where I live so they do me zero good. Look up Repeaters that'll cover the Tolleson/Avondale area and then we can talk.

Also I did turn on "Stale Repeaters" and the pic I posted was it.

[SteveShannon]

1 hour ago, TNFrank said:

None of those are even close to where I live so they do me zero good. Look up Repeaters that'll cover the Tolleson/Avondale area and then we can talk.

Also I did turn on "Stale Repeaters" and the pic I posted was it.

The nearest two repeaters in the MyGMRS map to that are are illustrated in this screenshot:

 

[TNFrank]

Glendale is out of my range and I don't see Peoria 700 in my list. I do see Gorilla 700 in Phoenix and it's within range. I'll have to give it a try.

[gortex2]

15 hours ago, TNFrank said:

Even less than on Repeater Book and many of them don't reach far enough for me to use them.

Im not sure why so many folks go to repeater book to look for repeaters. That site was primarily used for amateur radio. For some stupid reason the decided to list GMRS most likely casue some ham cried about it but its not near accruate. I would focus on mygmrs for gmrs stuff and repeaterbook for ham stuff.

Just in the 2M and 440 arena Repeater Book lists 3 repeaters near me. None of them are on the air and have not been in years but folks wont release the channels. 

[nokones]

On 11/24/2025 at 12:10 PM, TNFrank said:

Shaw Butte doesn't have a PL RX tone, it's just 100.0 TX. 

Shaw Butte stopped using 100.0 Hz CTCSS several months ago. Shaw Butte is using a non-standard tone/code now.