Un-official GMRS travel channel?

[SteveShannon]

3 hours ago, marcspaz said:

 

No, I am not saying that 79 million people live above Line A.  They would be packed ridiculously tight. 

What I am saying is, the total population of the northern states that Line A is present in, per the Census Bureau, is about 79,633,000+.  That is enough people whom driving to or north of Line A is a distinct possibility, that they should be considered in a standardization proposal.

All of the city of Seattle and north of it are above Line A.  That may be about 4 million people or more.  Metro Detroit is also above it.  That's another 4 million. Lansing Michigan is also. It's metro population is about half a million.  So, probably 10 million people live above Line A.  That's probably 100 GMRS licenses.

Edited to add more cities that lie above Line A:

Ann Arbor, MI,  Flint, MI,  Duluth, MN,  Cleveland, OH,  Toledo, OH,  Erie, PA,  Syracuse, NY,  Buffalo, NY,  and Rochester, NY.

[mbrun]

If the FCC would open up channels 1-7 to 50 watts, it would be logical for folks to use one of those channels for a travel channel. That way you aren't wiping out the repeater channels with simplex traffic, and you aren't limited on HT power in your mobile unit. Let's face it, how much range can you expect from a mobile unit while traveling anyway? Exclude those who have gone full retard and have 5 antennas and the corresponding radios in their vehicle, talking on all kinds of bands. 
 

The problem with allowing 50 watts on 1-7 is that each of these interstitial frequencies actually overlaps and shares bandwidth with two adjacent main GMRS frequencies. If you start operating 50 watts on these you are going to interfere with the two adjacent main frequencies, so now you adversely affect two frequencies instead of just one. If we did go down that route it would then become mandatory that we switch from wide-band to narrowband. Current usable distances and audio quality would suffer as a result…but also inevitable.


Michael
WRHS965
KE8PLM

[marcspaz]

46 minutes ago, Sshannon said:

All of the city of Seattle and north of it are above Line A.  That may be about 4 million people or more.  Metro Detroit is also above it.  That's another 4 million. Lansing Michigan is also. It's metro population is about half a million.  So, probably 10 million people live above Line A.  That's probably 100 GMRS licenses.

Edited to add more cities that lie above Line A:

Ann Arbor, Michigan,  Flint, Michigan,  Duluth, Minnesota,  Cleveland, Ohio,  Syracuse, NY,  and Rochester, NY.

 

 

 LOL...  Point taken.  The total population in and around the Line A is significant, for sure.

I don't know if call signs start with any other letter than W, but per the FCC there are only 126,153 GMRS licenses that start with W.  Seems about right since there are 842,408 actively licensed Amateurs, and ham radio is much more popular. 

[MichaelLAX]

35 minutes ago, marcspaz said:

... per the FCC there are only 126,153 GMRS licenses that start with W.  Seems about right since there are 842,408 actively licensed Amateurs, and ham radio is much more popular. 

Or much more FREE, historically speaking: (no license fee... YET!) 

[DanW]

3 hours ago, marcspaz said:

 

No, I am not saying that 79 million people live above Line A.  They would be packed ridiculously tight. 

What I am saying is, the total population of the northern states that Line A is present in, per the Census Bureau, is about 79,633,000+.  That is enough people whom driving to or north of Line A is a distinct possibility, that they should be considered in a standardization proposal.

Ahhh, ok.  That makes more sense.  

I certainly respect that point of view but still believe 20 will never get off the ground.  It's had decades to do that already and has nothing to show for it.  But who knows, maybe if GMRS really takes off then that might change.

[marcspaz]

@DanW  Yeah, like I mentioned earlier (today?  don't remember.  LOL) I don't think 20 is the right answer either.  I really hope it gets more popular, though.

[WyoJoe]

13 hours ago, Lscott said:

Some have even suggested using channel 16, 4 x 4 = 16 because you're driving a 4-wheel drive, as a logical reason. By the way 16 is the VHF marine emergency call channel too. I'm sure others can cook up other "logical" reasons to pick a different channel.

How about channel 2 for motorcycles; 4 for cars, SUVs, and pickups (or what the truckers call "4 wheelers"); 10 for three-axle box vans; and 18 for your typical 18-wheeler? Perhaps even channel 1 for unicycles...

[Over2U]

The ‘saving grace’ for GMRS highway use is that there are only 15 frequencies to scan for activity.

[WyoJoe]

22 hours ago, Over2U said:

The ‘saving grace’ for GMRS highway use is that there are only 15 frequencies to scan for activity.

Many of the newer GMRS radios have scan functions built in, so it's pretty easy to scan the channels for activity.

Some older bubble-pack type radios don't have a scan function as far as I know. It would be a lot harder with one of them...

[marcspaz]

42 minutes ago, WyoJoe said:

Many of the newer GMRS radios have scan functions built in, so it's pretty easy to scan the channels for activity.

Some older bubble-pack type radios don't have a scan function as far as I know. It would be a lot harder with one of them...

 

You're not talking to anyone with a bubble pack radio from car to car unless you can see them anyway.  Not sure a $10-$20 radio not having a scan function is a real concern in this situation.

[n4gix]

On 1/20/2022 at 5:05 PM, marcspaz said:

I don't know if call signs start with any other letter than W, but per the FCC there are only 126,153 GMRS licenses that start with W.

Legacy GMRS licenses have "K" as their first letter, from KAA to KZZ. Of course, that range of "K" calls includes business band, police, fire, and other first responders.

Addendum: Legacy GMRS licenses also used four numbers rather than the current three number scheme. For example: KAE8172

[gf66]

On 12/10/2021 at 3:48 AM, WyoJoe said:

Something to possibly consider for those living in or near small towns, would be to designate a channel that would be monitored by a local radio club or the like. You might even get the town council on board to designate such a channel for that area as an official act.

For the benefit of travelers, you could post signs along the roadways as you enter the town, stating which channel is monitored. This could be very similar to what is done in some national parks where they post a radio frequency to tune to for park information, except in the case of FRS and GMRS, it would allow for two-way communication. The sign could read "FRS/GMRS Channel 4 is designated for local radio traffic" or something similar. It could also be used by both the FRS and GMRS services, however with GMRS, of course higher power output would be possible.

If there was a nearby repeater and the owner were to allow it, you could even (instead or in addition) designate a repeater channel to be used for this purpose.

The biggest drawback I see to such a designation, is that you'd want to be sure some locals stayed tuned to that channel in case anyone traveling through chimed in with a question about the area, traffic, etc., because, if it is posted, I think they might likely expect a response if they asked a question on the air.

This would also result in a fairly small area where that channel would be officially designated for this purpose. You could, however, reach out to other adjacent communities and pitch the idea there, too. If you had an area with five or six small towns, and all of them designated the same "local" channel, you could conceivably establish a travel channel for your region.

I like your idea.

[gf66]

On 1/7/2022 at 9:49 AM, DownEastNC said:

Proclaiming something on a YouTube channel is adoring. If you were truly interested in the travel channel initiative then you would form a nationwide commission and reach out to the thousands of GMRS operators for a consensus. That's a lot of work and effort. Are you willing to do that? I'm afraid that no one has heard you outside of your YouTube fiefdom. So crow about it all you want. It accomplishes nothing. Oh by the way, take a minute to use your favorite web browser to look up the term "GMRS Travel Channel". Outside this discussion, the preponderance of results will point you towards this --->

Ignore it all you want, I'm sure you will.

this is page 5 of 9 with a handful of contributors, so far...lol Thousands contributing, I don't think a life time would answer the question. Then again following your instructions to search, could be thousands are trying to come to a consensus. Some good idea's here.

[Ian]

On 1/8/2022 at 1:44 PM, DanW said:

And some of you folks going with channel 20 love it because you've got your little ctss code to keep the hoards and unwashed masses from joining the party.

This might surprise you:  I 100% support you in doing exactly that.

I'll be on simplex channel 19 and I think we'll both be happy.  Win/Win!  

I'm certainly not doing it to be exclusionary, just to be able to toggle from opportunistic use of ORI repeaters to simplex without changing parameters on the radio.  If I could get a MXT275 to scan just 20/22 and 19/xx, that's what I'd have as a priority scan list.  I suspect this sort of thing is what dual-watch and dual-ptt was always intended for…

[Ian]

On 1/20/2022 at 11:21 AM, marcspaz said:

Something I was thinking about with regard to Line A... 90% of the US population lives on the the US borders and coast lines.  ~79,633,000 people live on the northern border.  That means that Line A has the potential to impact communications for more than 24% of the people in the lower 48 states.

 

As much as I like the idea of picking a channel, a channel other than 20 to avoid conflict with potential ORI type repeaters, a solution that potentially excludes almost one quarter of the population doesn't seem like a solution at all, IMHO.  In fact, I would be more prone to encourage people to use 20 over 19, since many repeaters have light traffic and operators are supposed to be mindful of not causing interference as part of their license agreement, anyway.

 

I don't know the right answer.  Just thinking.

I thought the point of ORI stuff was to allow opportunistic use by people who are in the region briefly to contact anyone physically nearby?

[marcspaz]

1 hour ago, Ian said:

I thought the point of ORI stuff was to allow opportunistic use by people who are in the region briefly to contact anyone physically nearby?

 

It was... it was intended to establish the repeater travel channel and tone.  But don't confuse people still somewhat honoring the ORI principles with "simplex" over the road use. Two distinctly different conversations.