GMRS Repeater Coordination

[WRQF488]

Are GMRS repeaters coordinated and who coordinates them?

 

umj

[OffRoaderX]

No.

We all have to get along like grownups, which not-surprisingly, can sometimes be difficult so usually the bigger repeater wins.

[WRKC935]

6 hours ago, OffRoaderX said:

No.

We all have to get along like grownups, which not-surprisingly, can sometimes be difficult so usually the bigger repeater wins.

Only if the guy with the bigger repeater is an a-hole.  Because real men will accept that someone else was there first and chance frequency.  Like the Johnstown625 repeater becoming the Johnstown 600 repeater. 

To the actual question.  There isn't a coordinating body like there is for commercial and amateur radio.  The individual repeater owners are expected to work together to coordinate their repeater pairs to minimize interference with other users.  This can be difficult as there is no standing database that has ALL the GMRS repeaters in it. There are a number of them on here, and quite a few on RepeaterBook.com but neither database has everything. 

My advice is to listen with an outdoor antenna with a radio or scanner programmed with NO PL or DCS in it so you will hear ANY transmissions.  If you find a busy repeater, then that's not the pair to be using.  If you hear some traffic but it seems to be off in the distance it might work if you are going to setup a limited coverage system.  But you are going to need a quiet frequency if you are putting up a repeater with a large coverage footprint. 

When putting up a big system, and there are no quite pairs, try locating the owner of one of the small systems and see if they are willing to forgo having a repeater and instead just use yours.  And if you are putting up a large coverage repeater, make it OPEN for all users.  You are 'consuming' a resource when you put up a repeater.  That being one of the 8 pairs that we have available to put repeaters on.  If you are locking down 100 square miles with your repeater, no one else can use it, so don't be 'that guy' and not share the repeater.

 

[Lscott]

1 hour ago, WRKC935 said:

And if you are putting up a large coverage repeater, make it OPEN for all users.  You are 'consuming' a resource when you put up a repeater.  That being one of the 8 pairs that we have available to put repeaters on.  If you are locking down 100 square miles with your repeater, no one else can use it, so don't be 'that guy' and not share the repeater.

 

That's an interesting point. If I remember right some time ago a guy wanted to setup several GMRS repeaters around his area and CHARGE access fees to use them. Being there are only 8 repeater pair frequencies that consumed a lot of "public resources" for his personnel monetary benefit at every one else's expense.    

[WROZ250]

10 hours ago, WRQF488 said:

Are GMRS repeaters coordinated and who coordinates them?

 

umj

Same reaction for suggesting GMRS coordination..  (LOL!)

 

[WRKC935]

8 hours ago, Lscott said:

That's an interesting point. If I remember right some time ago a guy wanted to setup several GMRS repeaters around his area and CHARGE access fees to use them. Being there are only 8 repeater pair frequencies that consumed a lot of "public resources" for his personnel monetary benefit at every one else's expense.    

Yeah, we have that here in central and southern Ohio.  He has a number of sites registered on here that I can promise he's not on.  When I put him call in google to do a bit of research I found his commercial for profit business license.  If you do a search in Ohio for repeaters and turn on the dead and old repeaters you will see the state littered with his 'dream system'.  The one tower he has listed near me is a State of Ohio site.  I have been in the site numerous times and even moved the gear out of the old structure and into the new building when they brought it in.  No GMRS repeaters and have never been in the last 14 years.  I truly believe that he sat down on AntennaSearch.com and found tower and then got on here and listed a bunch of repeaters that were never installed.  Not sure what the guys deal is, and really don't care.  I would LOVE for him to file against me with the FCC for interference though.  Figure I will send them PDF's of his business license and his dream tower map and see what they think of someone trying to run a business selling GMRS access and having every pair supposedly tied up in half the state. 

 

But yes, I fully believe that if you are gonna tie up a pair with a 30 mile radius of coverage footprint, you need to allow ANYONE that has a license to use your gear.  Now I will FULLY admit that I do have a 30 mile radius (60miles across) coverage footprint, and that's with a bad antenna and only running 6 watts up the transmit line. And I do have 3 pairs tied up, not just one.  I am on 725 675 and 600.  I was on 625, but I found that there were two repeaters in my footprint and I immediately moved off to 600. And if that one don't work out I will move again.  But my stuff is open.  And I encourage folks to use my gear.  I don't want it to just sit there and ID once in a while and do nothing else.  If I wanted that I would have put up ham repeaters.  No one seems to use them any more.  And in truth, I have one VHF ham repeater on the air and a UHF repeater waiting in the wings to be turned up once I have the rack swap complete at the site. And it's gonna be on the same antenna system as the GMRS repeaters so it's coverage will be decent.