New Repeater Channels for GMRS in 2024

[WRQI583]

1 hour ago, WRXD372 said:

What I am trying to say is this: You are not the only one who feels "disillusioned" by the current state of ham radio - how do you know that there are no other hams being silenced by the same frustration?

 

I am sure there are others. I would imagine they are doing the same as me. Staying off of Ham Radio. It is hard to find them though, because just like me, they probably dont even want to get on the conversation of radio for fear that it is just going to turn into the same old "you should jump on HF and make contacts" conversation. I've spent the last 20+ years listening to it. I am glad the FCC has GMRS for people like me, ha ha. 

[WRQI583]

1 hour ago, axorlov said:

Ham is exactly a hobby. Some like to compete, some don't. HF bands give you a global reach, it draws people to HF. But many are fine with the local chats on repeaters.

What I have never understood is what the issue is with Hams not wanting to talk to people in their own backyard. I am not kidding when I tell you this, but I have heard hams at least in my own region make pretty rotten comments about having to deal with Hams local to them and talking to them on the air. For some reason, there is this insatiable need to talk around the world and that is the only thing that gets people going. I mean good for them, but that is not me. Never has been. 

 

 

1 hour ago, axorlov said:

What? You got to be kidding. Where I live VHF FM is packed to the brim, while 70cm is empty because military restricted use, to not have an interference for the PAVE PAWS radars.

I have heard this from a lot of Hams. Where I live VHF and UHF are not a big thing. I even heard one time a Ham telling someone new that no one talks on repeaters, and that was just a couple of years ago. I mainly use simplex when I talk. Even that isn't all that active anymore and 2 meters has become pretty cruddy with its interference so I have been sitting on 440 but that band is pretty close to entirely dead in my area with only a couple of people on it here and there. I know in many other areas these bands are alive. 

 

[lougasp61]

HF is much more appealing than 2M or 70CM.

[WRQC527]

I enjoy operating on GMRS. I enjoy operating on 2 meters. I enjoy operating on 70 cm. I enjoy operating on HF. I even enjoy operating on CB radio. I suppose you could say I simply enjoy communicating using RF. I guess you get out of radio what you put into it. There are so many options that seriously, if you can't find something you like, or if you're disillusioned, or if you think there's no one to talk to, or there needs to be more channels or more frequencies or more modes because nothing fits your needs, or if you don't like hams because hams are snobs or you don't like GMRSers because they didn't take a test or you don't like CBers maybe you should consider communicating by writing letters.

[intermod]

If you like animals, carrier pigeons are great, too.

[KAF6045]

1 hour ago, intermod said:

If you like animals, carrier pigeons are great, too.

They were still being used by Lockheed (Sunnyvale) in the early 80s. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/19/us/carrier-pigeons-ferrying-lockheed-microfilm.html

[ULTRA2]

On 5/28/2023 at 6:19 PM, wqnd300 said:

Then stop putting repeaters on top of other repeaters! Simple solution because you don't need more than a few. Here in Southern California we have idiots that need to shut up and allow others to periodically use the frequency. Those are the real issues.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk
 

That's what's going on here in the Nothern California area right now. Once you let them on you will never get a word in, they (DMR USERS) will take over the band and render all analog radios useless.

[jas]

On 5/28/2023 at 6:56 PM, Sshannon said:

DMR channels do not use 7.6 kHz of spectrum; they each use 12.5 kHz but they use time division multiplexing to share that portion of spectrum. In other words each current GMRS channel would only represent two DMR channels. 
Gil is correct that this would impact everyone who has an analog GMRS radio. Use of such a radio requires the entire channel, making it unavailable for DMR.  
Conversely, to those who have analog radios, every DMR transmission sounds like an impact wrench.

“Here in California, CERT, neighborhood or fire watch, militia groups, etc. have implemented GMRS because 80-90% of their members have no direct interest in the technical aspects of amateur radio.”

I don’t know how true that statistic is, but ruining GMRS for the rest of us isn’t the answer. 
 

P.S.  People who have no direct interest in the technical aspects of amateur radio might have a tough go when they have to program a codeplug. DMR codeplugs are extremely technical. I guess you could sell the radio with a basic codeplug that’s simplex DMR on 1-22 and duplex on 23-30, but what do you use for talk groups, time slots, and color codes?

We've had a real problem with "impact wrench" transmission here in Pinellas county FL for years. So much so that I had to stop scanning freqs because it would show up on each scanning revolution.

Then it stopped. It was wonderful! I did not heard it for over 3-months. Now it has started again!

Always on the same freq and channel (462.700 - CH21) and that makes it show up in repeater channel 21, 462.700 / 467.700.  It is at not in My GMRS so it seems an unused repeater freq in this county. And because that dreaded "impact wrench" is L&C county wide I suspect someone is using a repeater in that freq.

Here's a short sound byte recorded 4 days ago of what we're up against down here (the whole thing lasted about 4.5 minutes).

 

[Sshannon]

4 minutes ago, jas said:

We've had a real problem with "impact wrench" transmission here in Pinellas county FL for years. So much so that I had to stop scanning freqs because it would show up on each scanning revolution.

Then it stopped. It was wonderful! I did not heard it for over 3-months. Now it has started again!

Always on the same freq and channel (462.700 - CH21) and that makes it show up in repeater channel 21, 462.700 / 467.700.  It is at not in My GMRS so it seems an unused repeater freq in this county. And because that dreaded "impact wrench" is L&C county wide I suspect someone is using a repeater in that freq.

Here's a short sound byte recorded 4 days ago of what we're up against down here (the whole thing lasted about 4.5 minutes).

 

 

If I were you I would report it to the fcc. 

[Lscott]

I've caught some very sporadic DMR traffic on channel 18 by me. It was a few transmissions during the day lasting a few seconds each. I haven't heard it in many months. I suspect either somebody miss programmed a radio, or did so deliberately. In any case it stopped and I suspect the local FCC might have had a hand in ending it.

[MarkInTampa]

36 minutes ago, jas said:

We've had a real problem with "impact wrench" transmission here in Pinellas county FL for years. So much so that I had to stop scanning freqs because it would show up on each scanning revolution.

Then it stopped. It was wonderful! I did not heard it for over 3-months. Now it has started again!

Always on the same freq and channel (462.700 - CH21) and that makes it show up in repeater channel 21, 462.700 / 467.700.  It is at not in My GMRS so it seems an unused repeater freq in this county. And because that dreaded "impact wrench" is L&C county wide I suspect someone is using a repeater in that freq.

Here's a short sound byte recorded 4 days ago of what we're up against down here (the whole thing lasted about 4.5 minutes).

 

 

Ah the infamous Tampa .700 DMR repeater. Somebody is running encrypted DMR with GPS tracking enabled but can't find much more about it since it's encrypted on my SDR setup. Sometimes very little traffic, other times more than all the other GMRS freqs combined.

The analog .700 repeater had to move to .725 because of the interference from the DMR crap. Then he moved from .725 to .600 (now the Tampa 600 repeater) but sits on the same frequency as the Pinellas .600 repeater and has all but wiped out the Pinellas 600. Gotta love GMRS life.

The DMR station has been reported countless times over the past year to the FCC but it's still there.

[JoCoBrian]

On 5/28/2023 at 6:56 PM, Sshannon said:

“Here in California, CERT, neighborhood or fire watch, militia groups, etc. have implemented GMRS because 80-90% of their members have no direct interest in the technical aspects of amateur radio.”

I don’t know how true that statistic is, but ruining GMRS for the rest of us isn’t the answer. 

Amen to that.  We don't need DMR in GMRS. 

[intermod]

Seems to be many posters that are complaining about digital but do not come up with any viable solutions to the current reality in some areas (congestion due to very large influx of new users in a short amount of time).    Creative solutions welcome. 

[gortex2]

There is no solution. Its not part of the service. There are other services to use if you want to use digital. The service has been around for decades. Many of us have had repeaters for decades for our personal use. I don't know why the huge influx to the service happened but its good and bad. Very few places in the US have issues with congestion so I don't see changing a service because one city or state has an issue. There are threads of arguments over a "travel" channel. Its said we cant use certain channels above Line A and folks say who cars its only one state. So in the end every part of the service has pro's and cons for a particular area. 

JMHO

[AdmiralCochrane]

20 minutes ago, gortex2 said:

I don't know why the huge influx to the service happened but its good and bad.

Duh, #1 Amazon and cheap stuff from China, #2 preppers and offroaders (and off road preppers, LOL).  

[nokones]

The sound does appear that it may be a digital transmission affecting analog receivers most likely without any "PL" decoding. An analog transmission normally won't produce the same affect to a digital receiver. 

If the affected receiver was "PL" protected, my guess is it is just old fashion inter-mod that is experienced in Metropolitan areas on most systems.

I ran a test simulating digital to analog and vice-versa with P25 digital.

[Lscott]

On 7/23/2023 at 9:50 PM, lougasp61 said:

HF is much more appealing than 2M or 70CM.

VHF and UHF is much more challenging to make DX contacts. Most of the digital voice modes are on UHF. Satellite communications is really fun. Particularly when operating the sats with the linear translators for SSB. 
 

I have full privileges for HF. Just haven’t gotten the urge to bother with it in over 20 years. I operate VHF and above, mostly mobile.

[Lscott]

17 hours ago, gortex2 said:

I don't know why the huge influx to the service happened

1. No test required.

2. License fee is now only $35.

3. Licenses good for 10 years.

4. Cheap Chinese radios.

[AdmiralCochrane]

1 hour ago, Lscott said:

Most of the digital voice modes are on UHF. 

Per varying modes maybe, but DMR seems to be extremely popular on VHF 

[Sshannon]

I think all of the DMR repeaters in Montana are 70 cm. Our ham club is planning to replace our analog vhf repeater and we might include DMR. 

[WRYS709]

On 11/22/2023 at 6:24 AM, jas said:

Here's a short sound byte recorded 4 days ago of what we're up against down here (the whole thing lasted about 4.5 minutes).

 

 

I am just curious, from the knowledgable, if this were say an illegal DMR use of the frequency, would a DMR radio capable of receiving/transmitting on this frequency, such as the Radioddity RD-5R, be used to listen and decode this transmission; in an attempt to track down the users?

[MarkInTampa]

13 minutes ago, WRYS709 said:

I am just curious, from the knowledgable, if this were say an illegal DMR use of the frequency, would a DMR radio capable of receiving/transmitting on this frequency, such as the Radioddity RD-5R, be used to listen and decode this transmission; in an attempt to track down the users?

Nope. I've got a MD-380 in promiscuous mode that I can use to monitor most unencrypted DMR transmissions as well as a SDR dongle on the computer but if it's encrypted you are basically out of luck.

[WRYS709]

2 minutes ago, markskjerve said:

Nope. I've got a MD-380 in promiscuous mode that I can use to monitor any unencrypted DMR transmissions as well as a SDR dongle on the computer but if it's encrypted you are basically out of luck.

Do you mean if they turn on "encryption" in addition to it being DMR?

Are they still subject to "fox hunting?"

[MarkInTampa]

8 minutes ago, WRYS709 said:

Do you mean if they turn on "encryption" in addition to it being DMR?

Yes. About half of the DMR traffic on the commercial bands around here are encrypted and can't be received without a encryption key or your radio being authorized on the repeater.

You can still do "fox hunting" as long as there is traffic on the repeater but you can't count on traffic in this case. Folks around here have tried a few times for the repeater he mentioned.

[Sshannon]

14 minutes ago, markskjerve said:

Yes. About half of the DMR traffic on the commercial bands around here are encrypted and can't be received without a encryption key or your radio being authorized on the repeater.

You can still do "fox hunting" as long as there is traffic on the repeater but you can't count on traffic in this case. Folks around here have tried a few times for the repeater he mentioned.

I would think that encrypting a transmission at the transmitter would make it impossible to be received by a repeater in digital mode.