GMRS and RADIO CLUBS

[Doctnj]

A couple years ago, we all know when, I was realizing that my family was not getting any information that was not being filtered by big tech one way or another.  I looked into HAM right then but I knew that would take time and I didnt know how much time that was.  Then came across GMRS and between a small group of dedicated radio folks we started pushing GMRS to its limits to see what we had at our disposal.  In many ways it was much better than expected. A few months ago I was discussing gmrs with a ham in my area and he saw the benefit of that type of service and by the end of that day he had put in for his GMRS license.  In and around our location we are putting in repeaters in an orderly fashion creating a larger area of coverage and realizing this will be our rally point in a grid down situation.  The best part is anyone can get in for a small $$.  

Our gmrs group was invited to speak at upcoming HAM club meeting to introduce it to the rest of the group.  Since this meeting we regularly talk with several of them on gmrs keeping it alive and well and participate in state wide net meeting.  So they created a RADIO CLUB that evening including our form of communication in the club with out discrimination.  Just as some of original Hams joined GMRS, some original GMRS got their ham licenses.  I for one am studying for my general :).  

I hope you find in your area, radio folks with open minded thinking.  A couple of these guys have been in radio longer than most have been alive.  The technology is the same in both HAM AND GMRS.  UHF is UHF after all.  I would encourage groups in this format to reach out to their local ham clubs and simply explain to them what you are doing and what its about and let it go from there.   But please do gmrs a favor and get a little organized before reaching out if possible .    Heck we had a power point the evening we spoke at their meeting so we got 30 points just for that alone!

WRMK691/KI5UCM

[WRPQ991]

I used to belong to a CB club many many years ago in Colorado Springs, I just got my GMRS license, don't have a radio yet. Over the years I've looked at ham radio, but the cost of equipment kinda kept me away, gone are the days of build it yourself Tandy kits. I'll have to see if there is much activity near me, I'm between Waco and Austin here in central Texas, there are a few low power repeaters in and around Austin, and a big on near Waco. Used to be a sideband group in Salisaw Oklahoma I could reach on 10M. with an Antron 99 at 30 ft. Will have to wait & see how the GMRS plays out down here

[Doctnj]

I typed up a fairly wordy reply and it didnt post.  So just incase it does I wont repeat much except to say your situation in gmrs depends on yourself actually.  The guy that was the very beginning of it up where I live said he was alone with his repeater for quite a long time.  Now I have my own repeater on a mountain outside town and we are linking his to mine so I can also link to another and lots of folks will then be able to participate in the weekly net in our state.  A year ago it was just an idea having repeaters in the state linked up together and now its growing very fast.

[Doctnj]

And now with tech license I talk on some ham bands but I'm comfortable on gmrs.  And we have a pretty good group of regulars who talk nearly every day.  We can choose to link when needed or remain separated and then it's a local discussion. 

Where you live I'm very familiar.  I was in military a ways south of your location and came threw there a lot.  With it being pretty flat you should get very good coverage. A good amount of the guys I talk to on gmrs are the same as on ham bands. The companies are starting to pay attention and making a lot more gmrs radios. I gave my old HTs to a good friend that wanted to get into GMRS and now he is in my old shoes.  Good luck. 

[WRPR990]

I'm an extra class ham and the president of the Marshall County Amateur Radio Association in Marshall County, Kentucky. As far as I know I'm the only one in the club that also has a GMRS license. I would like to introduce GMRS to the club but I'm not quite sure how to go about it. I do know there's others in my area with GMRS licenses, and there's a GMRS repeater just a couple of miles from me. Any suggestions? 

Here's the QR code for the club's Facebook group.

 

 

[Doctnj]

 One part of the club here is prepping.  We have people sign up ahead of time to present a topic to the club in radio or prepping topics.  The first ham we met asked us to do the presentation.  I passed it on to the guy that had the very first gmrs repeater in the area but all of us went and spoke a bit but he did a great job with a power point. By the time of presentation we already had at least 3 hams on our repeater plus family members.  That alone is the selling point. They want to be prepared for grid down well they need family on radio also.  Gmrs fits perfectly into that role. One family license and they are all on for 10 years. And it's stepping stone to ham or was with us anyhow. Your gmrs "network" can be as small or large as you want.  We have folks drive through and hit the repeaters. I'm currently in St. Louis and pulled up ham repeater page and talked to local guy last night with my HT. It's nice to get local info or just talk with new people.  One more thing about our club and prepping. Many people in town are not from here. I'm not either. Something brings them here and either they stay or come back. Getting away from the larger cities to more simple life. Not simple people. 

[Doctnj]

Now that I as well as three original gmrs guys are hams we still talk on gmrs daily and monitor it as much as possible to keep it alive and well. Just because it indeed is our families last line of coms. It helps to have a good quality repeater in a thoughtful spot that has good coverage to benefit more people. I never think about the cost to get equipment.  I think about value if the grid was indeed down.  Every day it looks more and more that it could happen. 

[SDK]

GMRS is staring to gain interest in Central Maine. I expect it will grow even faster after April 19, 2022 when the license fee is reduced to $35.

Auburn700 GMRS Node
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3795863640461777
Maine GMRS
https://www.facebook.com/groups/474386201046836

WQYC747 / KC1LGL

[trafficcop]

I have been a licensed Ham and GMRS operator for over 20 years. I come from a career in Law Enforcement in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Back in the late 90s most of the GMRS users on one of the high profile repeaters were mostly police and fire personnel. We all had fun playing radio, seeing how much we could reverse engineer our favorite batwing gear and respected each other. 

 

The repeater owner for that system had passed away so the repeater had went off of the air. Sure there were others but life, kids and other obligations were calling. So I took a break from GMRS and still played on digital in Ham. About two years ago I found a radio, dropped it in the charger and found that one of the local repeaters was still on the air. I immediately connected up with one of the members from our group in the 90s. He filled me in on the current condition and how much activity was taking place on the several GMRS repeaters in the city. So I listened for a few weeks......Wow was I disgusted! The lack of respect and decorum that these people have is appalling. The sad thing is most of them are hams (have been ran off of repeaters there) and are not even repeater owners...It's basically, I bought my $20 piece of crap radio and I'm going to do anything I want and no one can stop me....With all of this has came with profanity, music over the radio, keying up on top of others and other nefarious behaviors that some may relate to CB but I'm pretty sure its not legal there either. Plus being the son of a retired union truck driver, I used the CB when I was little and did not treat the service with that outlook. 

 

So I called the "flagship" or high profile repeater owners and said we have to do something. Hell, one of the repeater owners was even called and exploitive word that is not appropriate for this site, while he wasn't on the air and on the repeater that he pays for a nd supports on his own. We had operators telling the repeater owners they did not have any rights to restrict their use and that all GMRS repeaters are there for free use of the service and there are magical unicorns in the air farting dollar bills,,, ok so I made up the last. 

 

At the beginning of this year I began to draft an initiative to change things and bring class and decorum back to the service. The GMRS community in the city consists of about 140 operators. The majority of which are good, rule and law following individuals and do not wish to "freeload" as the small amount of individuals that have no skin in the game wish to do. Since forming, the Association has Incorporated, elected board members with the five founding members, adopted by laws, obtained a EIN number and received our 501c3 determination from the IRS which is huge. The Association has adopted a Operational Policy and Code of Conduct that all members must accept when petitioning for membership. The membership fee will be $40.00 per year. We have also registered as a charitable organization with the Kroger Company and Amazon. Our activities are described as expanding the education and technical abilities of the GMRS radio service while available to assist any public service agency in the event of a declared disaster with Emergency Communications. 

 

So that is where we are now. The applications will go out this week. The dues program will go live on June 1st, 2022 with a two week grace period for payment. Long story short; if you are not a paying member in good standing your repeater access will be revoked by the repeater owner as described in 95.1705. The relationship between the Association and the repeater owner is clearly explained in a executed memorandum of understanding for each repeater. We currently now have nine repeaters involved. The Association also has within it's powers to create a committee to evaluate any repair/maintenance reimbursement from a repeater owner. 

 

Within our operational guidelines, we have also restricted the use of the service to being another Ham repeater to talk about Ham Radio topics. If you want to talk about ham radio, there are a plethora of 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 40cm and 33cm repeaters in our area that sit silent in idle at all hours... Go there.... We also have operators passing GMRS callsigns around like they are ham radio operators, 15 minutes! use your unit number, you are taking up Airtime and hogging the repeaters. Another bad habit from the hams is not thinking about what to say before you key the mic. Operators will key up and uh uh uh and oh wow plus others. I understand my public safety background broke me of it, think about what you are going to say before you key the mic, say it and listen... You cannot hear someone else while you are yappin...We have also instructed our members to stop the Q codes and 73s, GMRS is a totally different service from Ham... If you want to talk ham radio, use one of those many repeaters that sit silent 

 

Now you are probably reading this and thinking, wow, pretty drastic......

 

No, absolutely not, the repeaters we have here are all owned by individuals. That means they are PRIVATE property, if you do not want someone to be at your property or to use your property you have the right to say that. That up to this point has not been respected. Imagine this, you are sitting on your couch, your door swings open, some guy from down the street kicks in your door, starts bashing your house apart and leaves.. What is the difference when people are doing what was described in the above, or stay keyed up for long transmit times, just resetting the TOT and not letting the repeater come up for air.

 

Our organization has been received by the masses very well. A repeater is a complex and expensive piece of equipment. 80% of our repeater equipment is equipped with the capability to restrict access on the analog system. We will evaluate if we decide to use this as it will keep anyone who does not have the correct access information into that repeater with MDC technology. Other than that we are looking forward to getting our membership trained with the ICS modules and becoming more involved with our communities in any way we may serve.

 

Just my story and my two pennies on radio clubs in GMRS. I have said from the beginning of our endeavor, we must do this right and thorough. I believe we have built the foundation.

 

Take care,

Jamie

[WRPR990]

Since I posted on here back in late March, the vice president of the ham club that I'm the president of got his GMRS license. He waited for the price to come down to get his GMRS license. So far as I know that's two of us in the ham club that are also GMRS'ers. I would like to see more hams in the club, and more hams in general get GMRS licenses. The vice president and I are both extra class hams. I also talk on the CB radio, but that's another story for another time. Also, I'm not the only CB'er in the club.  

[Sshannon]

5 hours ago, trafficcop said:

I have been a licensed Ham and GMRS operator for over 20 years. I come from a career in Law Enforcement in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Back in the late 90s most of the GMRS users on one of the high profile repeaters were mostly police and fire personnel. We all had fun playing radio, seeing how much we could reverse engineer our favorite batwing gear and respected each other. 

 

The repeater owner for that system had passed away so the repeater had went off of the air. Sure there were others but life, kids and other obligations were calling. So I took a break from GMRS and still played on digital in Ham. About two years ago I found a radio, dropped it in the charger and found that one of the local repeaters was still on the air. I immediately connected up with one of the members from our group in the 90s. He filled me in on the current condition and how much activity was taking place on the several GMRS repeaters in the city. So I listened for a few weeks......Wow was I disgusted! The lack of respect and decorum that these people have is appalling. The sad thing is most of them are hams (have been ran off of repeaters there) and are not even repeater owners...It's basically, I bought my $20 piece of crap radio and I'm going to do anything I want and no one can stop me....With all of this has came with profanity, music over the radio, keying up on top of others and other nefarious behaviors that some may relate to CB but I'm pretty sure its not legal there either. Plus being the son of a retired union truck driver, I used the CB when I was little and did not treat the service with that outlook. 

 

So I called the "flagship" or high profile repeater owners and said we have to do something. Hell, one of the repeater owners was even called and exploitive word that is not appropriate for this site, while he wasn't on the air and on the repeater that he pays for a nd supports on his own. We had operators telling the repeater owners they did not have any rights to restrict their use and that all GMRS repeaters are there for free use of the service and there are magical unicorns in the air farting dollar bills,,, ok so I made up the last. 

 

At the beginning of this year I began to draft an initiative to change things and bring class and decorum back to the service. The GMRS community in the city consists of about 140 operators. The majority of which are good, rule and law following individuals and do not wish to "freeload" as the small amount of individuals that have no skin in the game wish to do. Since forming, the Association has Incorporated, elected board members with the five founding members, adopted by laws, obtained a EIN number and received our 501c3 determination from the IRS which is huge. The Association has adopted a Operational Policy and Code of Conduct that all members must accept when petitioning for membership. The membership fee will be $40.00 per year. We have also registered as a charitable organization with the Kroger Company and Amazon. Our activities are described as expanding the education and technical abilities of the GMRS radio service while available to assist any public service agency in the event of a declared disaster with Emergency Communications. 

 

So that is where we are now. The applications will go out this week. The dues program will go live on June 1st, 2022 with a two week grace period for payment. Long story short; if you are not a paying member in good standing your repeater access will be revoked by the repeater owner as described in 95.1705. The relationship between the Association and the repeater owner is clearly explained in a executed memorandum of understanding for each repeater. We currently now have nine repeaters involved. The Association also has within it's powers to create a committee to evaluate any repair/maintenance reimbursement from a repeater owner. 

 

Within our operational guidelines, we have also restricted the use of the service to being another Ham repeater to talk about Ham Radio topics. If you want to talk about ham radio, there are a plethora of 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 40cm and 33cm repeaters in our area that sit silent in idle at all hours... Go there.... We also have operators passing GMRS callsigns around like they are ham radio operators, 15 minutes! use your unit number, you are taking up Airtime and hogging the repeaters. Another bad habit from the hams is not thinking about what to say before you key the mic. Operators will key up and uh uh uh and oh wow plus others. I understand my public safety background broke me of it, think about what you are going to say before you key the mic, say it and listen... You cannot hear someone else while you are yappin...We have also instructed our members to stop the Q codes and 73s, GMRS is a totally different service from Ham... If you want to talk ham radio, use one of those many repeaters that sit silent 

 

Now you are probably reading this and thinking, wow, pretty drastic......

 

No, absolutely not, the repeaters we have here are all owned by individuals. That means they are PRIVATE property, if you do not want someone to be at your property or to use your property you have the right to say that. That up to this point has not been respected. Imagine this, you are sitting on your couch, your door swings open, some guy from down the street kicks in your door, starts bashing your house apart and leaves.. What is the difference when people are doing what was described in the above, or stay keyed up for long transmit times, just resetting the TOT and not letting the repeater come up for air.

 

Our organization has been received by the masses very well. A repeater is a complex and expensive piece of equipment. 80% of our repeater equipment is equipped with the capability to restrict access on the analog system. We will evaluate if we decide to use this as it will keep anyone who does not have the correct access information into that repeater with MDC technology. Other than that we are looking forward to getting our membership trained with the ICS modules and becoming more involved with our communities in any way we may serve.

 

Just my story and my two pennies on radio clubs in GMRS. I have said from the beginning of our endeavor, we must do this right and thorough. I believe we have built the foundation.

 

Take care,

Jamie

That sounds very orderly, and it sounds like that’s what your Association needed.  May I ask how you restrict access to an analog system?  Obviously, if you have the ability to block access to someone who has had it, it must be something more than CTCSS or DCS.  

Edit: It appears you’re using MDC.  Does that simply work with any radio that uses PTT ID or ANI or are your users limited to specific radios?

 

[trafficcop]

The majority of the repeaters are Motorola Quantars.. There are two ways to restrict access; the first is a singletone Repeater Access Code. The second solution is a Motorola MDC Repeater Access Code. Both of these are in addition to the CTCSS tones. We have also outfitted the systems with controllers to allow parameter changes remotely and the ability to shut off the transmitter remotely. About half have been fitted with smart plugs that allow a timing routine, this allows us to shut the repeater down at 2330 and turn it back on at 0630, but can be remotely turned on if the repeater is needed. A lot of our problems is when the derelicts know that system owners and operators are in bed. These are the times when the amplified microphones, echo mics and other nefarious activities come into play. Starting back in September of last year we also added real time recording of each system. The recordings are retained for 120 days per the policy within our by laws.  

[WRPC505]

On 3/25/2022 at 8:21 PM, WRPQ991 said:

I used to belong to a CB club many many years ago in Colorado Springs, I just got my GMRS license, don't have a radio yet. Over the years I've looked at ham radio, but the cost of equipment kinda kept me away, gone are the days of build it yourself Tandy kits. I'll have to see if there is much activity near me, I'm between Waco and Austin here in central Texas, there are a few low power repeaters in and around Austin, and a big on near Waco. Used to be a sideband group in Salisaw Oklahoma I could reach on 10M. with an Antron 99 at 30 ft. Will have to wait & see how the GMRS plays out down here

I've had my ham license for 31 years now but only early this year I've gotten into GMRS. I would like to see GMRS pick up some more here in Central Texas, especially in the Killeen / Fort Hood / Copperas Cove / Kempner area. I know there is a repeater in Troy but that's pretty far away from my area south of Copperas Cove.

Warren, WRPC505 / WQ1C 

[WRPC505]

On 5/26/2022 at 12:16 AM, trafficcop said:

I have been a licensed Ham and GMRS operator for over 20 years. I come from a career in Law Enforcement in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Back in the late 90s most of the GMRS users on one of the high profile repeaters were mostly police and fire personnel. We all had fun playing radio, seeing how much we could reverse engineer our favorite batwing gear and respected each other. 

 

The repeater owner for that system had passed away so the repeater had went off of the air. Sure there were others but life, kids and other obligations were calling. So I took a break from GMRS and still played on digital in Ham. About two years ago I found a radio, dropped it in the charger and found that one of the local repeaters was still on the air. I immediately connected up with one of the members from our group in the 90s. He filled me in on the current condition and how much activity was taking place on the several GMRS repeaters in the city. So I listened for a few weeks......Wow was I disgusted! The lack of respect and decorum that these people have is appalling. The sad thing is most of them are hams (have been ran off of repeaters there) and are not even repeater owners...It's basically, I bought my $20 piece of crap radio and I'm going to do anything I want and no one can stop me....With all of this has came with profanity, music over the radio, keying up on top of others and other nefarious behaviors that some may relate to CB but I'm pretty sure its not legal there either. Plus being the son of a retired union truck driver, I used the CB when I was little and did not treat the service with that outlook. 

 

So I called the "flagship" or high profile repeater owners and said we have to do something. Hell, one of the repeater owners was even called and exploitive word that is not appropriate for this site, while he wasn't on the air and on the repeater that he pays for a nd supports on his own. We had operators telling the repeater owners they did not have any rights to restrict their use and that all GMRS repeaters are there for free use of the service and there are magical unicorns in the air farting dollar bills,,, ok so I made up the last. 

 

At the beginning of this year I began to draft an initiative to change things and bring class and decorum back to the service. The GMRS community in the city consists of about 140 operators. The majority of which are good, rule and law following individuals and do not wish to "freeload" as the small amount of individuals that have no skin in the game wish to do. Since forming, the Association has Incorporated, elected board members with the five founding members, adopted by laws, obtained a EIN number and received our 501c3 determination from the IRS which is huge. The Association has adopted a Operational Policy and Code of Conduct that all members must accept when petitioning for membership. The membership fee will be $40.00 per year. We have also registered as a charitable organization with the Kroger Company and Amazon. Our activities are described as expanding the education and technical abilities of the GMRS radio service while available to assist any public service agency in the event of a declared disaster with Emergency Communications. 

 

So that is where we are now. The applications will go out this week. The dues program will go live on June 1st, 2022 with a two week grace period for payment. Long story short; if you are not a paying member in good standing your repeater access will be revoked by the repeater owner as described in 95.1705. The relationship between the Association and the repeater owner is clearly explained in a executed memorandum of understanding for each repeater. We currently now have nine repeaters involved. The Association also has within it's powers to create a committee to evaluate any repair/maintenance reimbursement from a repeater owner. 

 

Within our operational guidelines, we have also restricted the use of the service to being another Ham repeater to talk about Ham Radio topics. If you want to talk about ham radio, there are a plethora of 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 40cm and 33cm repeaters in our area that sit silent in idle at all hours... Go there.... We also have operators passing GMRS callsigns around like they are ham radio operators, 15 minutes! use your unit number, you are taking up Airtime and hogging the repeaters. Another bad habit from the hams is not thinking about what to say before you key the mic. Operators will key up and uh uh uh and oh wow plus others. I understand my public safety background broke me of it, think about what you are going to say before you key the mic, say it and listen... You cannot hear someone else while you are yappin...We have also instructed our members to stop the Q codes and 73s, GMRS is a totally different service from Ham... If you want to talk ham radio, use one of those many repeaters that sit silent 

 

Now you are probably reading this and thinking, wow, pretty drastic......

 

No, absolutely not, the repeaters we have here are all owned by individuals. That means they are PRIVATE property, if you do not want someone to be at your property or to use your property you have the right to say that. That up to this point has not been respected. Imagine this, you are sitting on your couch, your door swings open, some guy from down the street kicks in your door, starts bashing your house apart and leaves.. What is the difference when people are doing what was described in the above, or stay keyed up for long transmit times, just resetting the TOT and not letting the repeater come up for air.

 

Our organization has been received by the masses very well. A repeater is a complex and expensive piece of equipment. 80% of our repeater equipment is equipped with the capability to restrict access on the analog system. We will evaluate if we decide to use this as it will keep anyone who does not have the correct access information into that repeater with MDC technology. Other than that we are looking forward to getting our membership trained with the ICS modules and becoming more involved with our communities in any way we may serve.

 

Just my story and my two pennies on radio clubs in GMRS. I have said from the beginning of our endeavor, we must do this right and thorough. I believe we have built the foundation.

 

Take care,

Jamie

Now that's the right way to run a radio service-styled organization; I would enjoy and support being a member if one was located in my area.

Warren, WRPC505 / WQ1C 

[trafficcop]

On 6/4/2022 at 10:08 PM, WRPC505 said:

Now that's the right way to run a radio service-styled organization; I would enjoy and support being a member if one was located in my area.

Warren, WRPC505 / WQ1C 

Thank you, we are trying to bring Classy GMRS back! lol

[kmcdonaugh]

On 6/4/2022 at 8:59 PM, WRPC505 said:

I've had my ham license for 31 years now but only early this year I've gotten into GMRS. I would like to see GMRS pick up some more here in Central Texas, especially in the Killeen / Fort Hood / Copperas Cove / Kempner area. I know there is a repeater in Troy but that's pretty far away from my area south of Copperas Cove.

Warren, WRPC505 / WQ1C 

You would be surprised. I can hit that Troy Repeater with good signal all the way down in Briggs, TX. So your location should be fine

[WQWX838]

On 5/26/2022 at 1:16 AM, trafficcop said:

I have been a licensed Ham and GMRS operator for over 20 years. I come from a career in Law Enforcement in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Back in the late 90s most of the GMRS users on one of the high profile repeaters were mostly police and fire personnel. We all had fun playing radio, seeing how much we could reverse engineer our favorite batwing gear and respected each other. 

 

The repeater owner for that system had passed away so the repeater had went off of the air. Sure there were others but life, kids and other obligations were calling. So I took a break from GMRS and still played on digital in Ham. About two years ago I found a radio, dropped it in the charger and found that one of the local repeaters was still on the air. I immediately connected up with one of the members from our group in the 90s. He filled me in on the current condition and how much activity was taking place on the several GMRS repeaters in the city. So I listened for a few weeks......Wow was I disgusted! The lack of respect and decorum that these people have is appalling. The sad thing is most of them are hams (have been ran off of repeaters there) and are not even repeater owners...It's basically, I bought my $20 piece of crap radio and I'm going to do anything I want and no one can stop me....With all of this has came with profanity, music over the radio, keying up on top of others and other nefarious behaviors that some may relate to CB but I'm pretty sure its not legal there either. Plus being the son of a retired union truck driver, I used the CB when I was little and did not treat the service with that outlook. 

 

So I called the "flagship" or high profile repeater owners and said we have to do something. Hell, one of the repeater owners was even called and exploitive word that is not appropriate for this site, while he wasn't on the air and on the repeater that he pays for a nd supports on his own. We had operators telling the repeater owners they did not have any rights to restrict their use and that all GMRS repeaters are there for free use of the service and there are magical unicorns in the air farting dollar bills,,, ok so I made up the last. 

 

At the beginning of this year I began to draft an initiative to change things and bring class and decorum back to the service. The GMRS community in the city consists of about 140 operators. The majority of which are good, rule and law following individuals and do not wish to "freeload" as the small amount of individuals that have no skin in the game wish to do. Since forming, the Association has Incorporated, elected board members with the five founding members, adopted by laws, obtained a EIN number and received our 501c3 determination from the IRS which is huge. The Association has adopted a Operational Policy and Code of Conduct that all members must accept when petitioning for membership. The membership fee will be $40.00 per year. We have also registered as a charitable organization with the Kroger Company and Amazon. Our activities are described as expanding the education and technical abilities of the GMRS radio service while available to assist any public service agency in the event of a declared disaster with Emergency Communications. 

 

So that is where we are now. The applications will go out this week. The dues program will go live on June 1st, 2022 with a two week grace period for payment. Long story short; if you are not a paying member in good standing your repeater access will be revoked by the repeater owner as described in 95.1705. The relationship between the Association and the repeater owner is clearly explained in a executed memorandum of understanding for each repeater. We currently now have nine repeaters involved. The Association also has within it's powers to create a committee to evaluate any repair/maintenance reimbursement from a repeater owner. 

 

Within our operational guidelines, we have also restricted the use of the service to being another Ham repeater to talk about Ham Radio topics. If you want to talk about ham radio, there are a plethora of 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 40cm and 33cm repeaters in our area that sit silent in idle at all hours... Go there.... We also have operators passing GMRS callsigns around like they are ham radio operators, 15 minutes! use your unit number, you are taking up Airtime and hogging the repeaters. Another bad habit from the hams is not thinking about what to say before you key the mic. Operators will key up and uh uh uh and oh wow plus others. I understand my public safety background broke me of it, think about what you are going to say before you key the mic, say it and listen... You cannot hear someone else while you are yappin...We have also instructed our members to stop the Q codes and 73s, GMRS is a totally different service from Ham... If you want to talk ham radio, use one of those many repeaters that sit silent 

 

Now you are probably reading this and thinking, wow, pretty drastic......

 

No, absolutely not, the repeaters we have here are all owned by individuals. That means they are PRIVATE property, if you do not want someone to be at your property or to use your property you have the right to say that. That up to this point has not been respected. Imagine this, you are sitting on your couch, your door swings open, some guy from down the street kicks in your door, starts bashing your house apart and leaves.. What is the difference when people are doing what was described in the above, or stay keyed up for long transmit times, just resetting the TOT and not letting the repeater come up for air.

 

Our organization has been received by the masses very well. A repeater is a complex and expensive piece of equipment. 80% of our repeater equipment is equipped with the capability to restrict access on the analog system. We will evaluate if we decide to use this as it will keep anyone who does not have the correct access information into that repeater with MDC technology. Other than that we are looking forward to getting our membership trained with the ICS modules and becoming more involved with our communities in any way we may serve.

 

Just my story and my two pennies on radio clubs in GMRS. I have said from the beginning of our endeavor, we must do this right and thorough. I believe we have built the foundation.

 

Take care,

Jamie

hello, I sure would like to know the status of this overhaul in your area. Trends in user numbers? Of course its too soon for certain conclusions, yet this disciplined strategy sounds well thought out. 

[WRKC935]

On 5/26/2022 at 11:36 AM, trafficcop said:

The majority of the repeaters are Motorola Quantars.. There are two ways to restrict access; the first is a singletone Repeater Access Code. The second solution is a Motorola MDC Repeater Access Code. Both of these are in addition to the CTCSS tones. We have also outfitted the systems with controllers to allow parameter changes remotely and the ability to shut off the transmitter remotely. About half have been fitted with smart plugs that allow a timing routine, this allows us to shut the repeater down at 2330 and turn it back on at 0630, but can be remotely turned on if the repeater is needed. A lot of our problems is when the derelicts know that system owners and operators are in bed. These are the times when the amplified microphones, echo mics and other nefarious activities come into play. Starting back in September of last year we also added real time recording of each system. The recordings are retained for 120 days per the policy within our by laws.  

Of course using RAC will require your users to have specific radios and not just anything that will program UHF frequencies.  Same thing with MDC.  It's of course a bit more supported but still not available on many radios that don't carry a Motorola label on them. 

Putting them on a logging recorder (do this myself on the non-linked repeaters I have) seems to be a good idea, but can you get an enforcement effort to proceed even with recordings?

Lastly, how has all this effected new repeater owners joining your group?  Are you requiring repeater owners to pay for access when they bring infrastructure into the fold?  How do they feel about the rules? 

Are you linking your repeaters together to enhance coverage with significant overlap?  Or are you limiting overlap and being good stewards of the repeater pairs by either not linking or ensuring that linked repeaters don't have a ton of overlap?