What have you heard, and why did you listen?

[Davichko5650]

Attention grabbing Title, lifted from Tolkien!

 

But driving around town with the new RA-87, I have it set to scan the FRS/GMRS channels. Making occasional contacts on a couple repeaters and via simplex with a few friends as well as the Wife and Son.  But mostly I'm hearing a few stations on the same channels during weekdays with some regularity. Located in St. Paul, MN for those who care.  Here's where and what I hear very often.

Ch 1 - local kids teaching each other "radio etiquette" and otherwise chatting  ("You have to remember to say over, over...")

Ch 2. - Dispatch and mobile for a DT hotel shuttle bus service

Ch 3 - Local restaurant, mostly in Hmong, with occasional bursts of English.

Ch 4 - Charter School, bus lady looking for buses and other such traffic. Also an occasional group of construction workers in the DT area.

Ch 5 - Local School bus yard office to yard workers.

Ch 7 - Factory workers of some sort. Foreman barking out orders with more than occasional profanity.

Ch 14 - Flagger Crew for the many street construction projects.

As you can see, most of the traffic is in the shared channels 1-7, but I seriously doubt these people are using GMRS radios!

What kind of consistent radio chatter are y'all hearing, assuming you're scanning around the channels?

[WRYS709]

A very representative sample.

I would add that if you go to your local Walmart's parking lot, you will hear much employee traffic on MURS, especially Blue Dot and Green Dot (MURS channels 4 and 5).

[Davichko5650]

Just now, WRYS709 said:

A very representative sample.

I would add that if you go to your local Walmart's parking lot, you will hear much employee traffic on MURS, especially Blue Dot and Green Dot (MURS channels 4 and 5).

Actually driving by one over the weekend had a few WallyWorlder's on the lower channels, but that was a drive by, so not included... My son's work uses MURS but I generally don't listen there much.

[amaff]

9 hours ago, Davichko5650 said:

I seriously doubt these people are using GMRS radios!

You should do a quick web search on what frequencies FRS blister pack radios use...

[Davichko5650]

8 hours ago, amaff said:

You should do a quick web search on what frequencies FRS blister pack radios use...

Know these already, thanks!

[amaff]

5 minutes ago, Davichko5650 said:

Know these already, thanks!

So then what's the issue if they're not using GMRS radios but more than likely using FRS radios legally?

[Davichko5650]

10 minutes ago, amaff said:

So then what's the issue if they're not using GMRS radios but more than likely using FRS radios legally?

 

Wasn't trying to be snarky, btw, my fingers managed to hit the "send" button before the below comments:

No issue, just surmising their higher ups got them some cheapo FRS bubble Packers. easy to replace when (not if) they bust them. They're getting about 1 - 2 miles of range from where I'm hearing them, as the Bus Co's and the schools are at known locations. That and the lack of callsigns being used.  Haven't bothered to do a ULS search to see if any of the users have a grandfathered Business license. Don't really care, just interesting to hear what's out there besides my own small group.

Actually had a decent conversation on one of the local repeaters this morning. Guy called out his callsign and "radio check", so I replied and we chatted for about 10 minutes. We tried Simplex, but he was on an HT with a mag-mount and about 20 miles out, so no joy.

[JoCoBrian]

Local school system maintenance guys use MURS.  I monitor for the sheer humor factor.  They tell dirty jokes, make hilarious comments about students, teachers, admins...

[WRQW589]

• Event coordination -- not big professional events, just school and summer camp kinds of events.
• Lots of road construction: "The last car through will be the red Nissan. Ok clear to send."
• Lots of building construction: Pasame el martillo cuando termines, por favor. or Drop that load of lumber along the side of the property.
• A local flower nursery: Can you unpack the pallet? We have someone here who needs potting soil.
• Some local go-kart raceway.
• Lots of kids playing walkie-talkie. Roger beeps, call beeps and chirps, talking over each other, shrieking, feedback.
• Some guy on 18 doing a Tarzan call followed by "Good morning everyone!" every morning around 8am, with no response.
• A guy going hour after hour on one of the local repeaters. Nothing wrong with that -- if people are engaging and communicating with him, it must be interesting to them. But it tends to tie up the repeater between two people talking almost back to back without pause for a half hour or an hour at a time. Nobody knows the repeater's owner, from what I've heard. But it is extremely well placed, with a strong, high quality signal that covers the entire metro area.
• Radio checks and signal reports.
• Repeater nets, and simplex nets. The simplex nets are local neighborhoods doing a sort of emergency preparedness drill every week.
• DXing repeaters -- Last week there was a guy who went way out onto a mountain in the "west desert" to do some HF DX-ing, but also checked in with a local repeater to run a net just because it was interesting to see how it would work out.

But the overwhelming majority of what I hear is kids playing with radios, and construction of some form.

 

Why do I listen? More interesting, while driving around, than listening to the FM stereo radio in my car. And somewhat mind-numbing background noise as I work from home as a programmer.

[Davichko5650]

58 minutes ago, WRQW589 said:

•  
• A guy going hour after hour on one of the local repeaters. Nothing wrong with that -- if people are engaging and communicating with him, it must be interesting to them. But it tends to tie up the repeater between two people talking almost back to back without pause for a half hour or an hour at a time. Nobody know's the repeater's owner, from what I've heard. But it is extremely well placed, with a strong, high quality signal that covers the entire metro area.
• Radio checks and signal reports.
• Repeater nets, and simplex nets. The simplex nets are local neighborhoods doing a sort of emergency preparedness drill every week.
•  

But the overwhelming majority of what I hear is kids playing with radios, and construction of some form.

 

Why do I listen? More interesting, while driving around, than listening to the FM stereo radio in my car. And somewhat mind-numbing background noise as I work from home as a programmer.

Good mix of users there!  There's a clown on one of the local repeaters here who transmits, on weekends only so far, some sort of alarm protocol. "The loading dock doors are open." "The pool doors are unarmed." Etc.  Another person likes to retransmit the local SPFD Computer dispatch info.  Don't hear much feedback as there's not a lot of people using the repeaters.  Have two nets we get here. The Family Fun Net, Saturday's at 6 pm local, and a couple nets on Sunday that trade off.

Definately more activity on the simplex channels, and channels 1-7 at that. But since I got into GMRS to talk pretty much to my wife and son, I' don't much use it to reach out to others. The occasional conversation with a random stranger, but I've got the amateur bands for those, LOL...

[amaff]

10 hours ago, WRQW589 said:

• A guy going hour after hour on one of the local repeaters. Nothing wrong with that -- if people are engaging and communicating with him, it must be interesting to them. But it tends to tie up the repeater between two people talking almost back to back without pause for a half hour or an hour at a time. Nobody know's the repeater's owner, from what I've heard. But it is extremely well placed, with a strong, high quality signal that covers the entire metro area.

I think we "know" the same guy

[amaff]

Yellowstone was interesting. A whole lot of nothing (other than occasional traffic between us and the rest of our family in another vehicle), until we got stuck in a multi-hour Bison-fueled traffic jam. Then there was traffic all over. Mostly from a few folks near the front talking about what they saw. Tried to reach out but they were using PL tones so I didn't try and chase that down.

Then listening in on the repeaters that the Rangers use. A few bear sightings, a few tickets and an arrest. But it was useful to hear where traffic was building up because of wildlife sightings.

[WRQC527]

I would hear the drive-through covid test clinic down the street back in 2020-2021 doing comms between the front office and the nice ladies shoving sticks up folk's noses through the car windows. I also hear daycare centers coordinating drop offs and pickups, as well as restaurant staff.

[WRUE951]

During a huge enduro motorcycle race in town, heard some gal  on the CH 6 get on the radio to tell her lover her husband passed out and she was sneaking over to his camp....  

[MarkInTampa]

I've heard a bunch on FRS and simplex GMRS. A bunch of it has already been listed here... School pickup lines, traffic flagmen, 5 year old kids screaming and holding the call button for minutes on end, tree services, crane operators, the nursery next door to me, etc but these are the ones that stand out so far....

Guy called out to his wife while on the stool - "Next commercial break can you bring me some TP? I'm waiting".

A local Gym was using FRS for a bit - until somebody started messing with them. Every time they transmitted, somebody else keyed up with a recording of Cheech and Chong's "Dave's not here" skit

Last night was a winner though - a man and woman talking on FRS that thought FRS was wonderful. It couldn't be traced like their cell phone and the guy with the ankle monitor was far enough away as not to violate the terms of the personal protection order and still be able to communicate.

[amaff]

5 minutes ago, MarkInTampa said:

Last night was a winner though - a man and woman talking on FRS that thought FRS was wonderful. It couldn't be traced like their cell phone and the guy with the ankle monitor was far enough away as not to violate the terms of the personal protection order and still be able to communicate.

Did you start participating in their conversation? I'd love to hear that freak out

[MarkInTampa]

3 minutes ago, amaff said:

Did you start participating in their conversation? I'd love to hear that freak out

I thought about it but was on one of my radios that doesn't do tone scan to find what tone there were on.

[WRQW589]

16 minutes ago, MarkInTampa said:

I've heard a bunch on FRS and simplex GMRS. A bunch of it has already been listed here... School pickup lines, traffic flagmen, 5 year old kids screaming and holding the call button for minutes on end, tree services, crane operators, the nursery next door to me, etc but these are the ones that stand out so far....

Guy called out to his wife while on the stool - "Next commercial break can you bring me some TP? I'm waiting".

A local Gym was using FRS for a bit - until somebody started messing with them. Every time they transmitted, somebody else keyed up with a recording of Cheech and Chong's "Dave's not here" skit

Last night was a winner though - a man and woman talking on FRS that thought FRS was wonderful. It couldn't be traced like their cell phone and the guy with the ankle monitor was far enough away as not to violate the terms of the personal protection order and still be able to communicate.

You got some winners, there.

 

Last night on a 70cm repeater I overheard a net that was mostly mapped over to VHF, with people checking in from Vegas/Nevada, Montana, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. The strange thing was that the repeater I was receiving this net on was based at Brighton, Utah, which is a ski resort; not one of the "big" repeaters near the city. They must have a very well placed antenna to be able to tie into a relatively spread-out network of repeaters from 19 miles up the canyon in the mountains.

 

The "tarzan call" guy is pretty annoying. Every morning from about 7:50 through 8:00am he shouts sort of singing war cries on GMRS 18. They're mostly impossible to understand, though they mention the time. I think today I heard him say "Ashton it's almost 8AM!!!" (in a singing / shouting tone of voice). And then a little later, "It's 8:00am, Ashton!!!" (along with more chanting and singing). I think he is his son's alarm clock, and GMRS or FRS is his tool. But the signal is strong for several miles. I'm often driving my kids to an activity they participate in daily at this time, and I hear him equally well whether I'm a few miles to the north of my home, or a few miles to the south -- stronger than I would expect FRS to carry.

 

If you're this guy, and you're reading this, please switch to channel 12; that sort of thing doesn't need to be transmitted at more than 500mw.

[amaff]

8 minutes ago, WRQW589 said:

Last night on a 70cm repeater I overheard a net that was mostly mapped over to VHF, with people checking in from Vegas/Nevada, Montana, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. The strange thing was that the repeater I was receiving this net on was based at Brighton, Utah, which is a ski resort; not one of the "big" repeaters near the city. They must have a very well placed antenna to be able to tie into a relatively spread-out network of repeaters from 19 miles up the canyon in the mountains.

That's likely the Intermountain Intertie repeater network.

https://www.k0tfu.org/intertie/

Scroll down for the map. I have several of those repeaters in my backpacking radio for just-in-casies.

[WRQW589]

1 minute ago, amaff said:

That's likely the Intermountain Intertie repeater network. I'm guessing the Snowbird antenna?

https://www.k0tfu.org/intertie/

Scroll down for the map. I have several of those repeaters in my backpacking radio for just-in-casies.

I picked up this one:

https://utahvhfs.org/cgi-bin/rptdtl.cgi?Nr=366

It's listed as "Scott's Peak", which I think is actually Scott's Hill, northeast of Brighton, west of Park City. But the repeater list calls its location "Brighton."

 

Snowbird is different: https://utahvhfs.org/cgi-bin/rptdtl.cgi?Nr=124 -- A 2m repeater on Hidden Peak.

[amaff]

Yeah I edited my post when I realized there was a Brighton location right by snowbird haha

[WRQW589]

7 minutes ago, amaff said:

Yeah I edited my post when I realized there was a Brighton location right by snowbird haha

Anyway, that's not GMRS. On GMRS I enjoy when I hear traffic on the Promontory repeater, because I believe that's 63 miles from my house, and with the right $60 antenna, sounds like it's next door. That's on 462.700 / 21R. I've hit it with a UV5G with an external antenna, though I get a lot better signal report when I hit it with a mobile at a little higher power.

[amaff]

7 minutes ago, WRQW589 said:

Anyway, that's not GMRS. On GMRS I enjoy when I hear traffic on the Promontory repeater, because I believe that's 63 miles from my house, and with the right $60 antenna, sounds like it's next door. That's on 462.700 / 21R. I've hit it with a UV5G with an external antenna, though I get a lot better signal report when I hit it with a mobile at a little higher power.

Nice. I have the mountains above Magna between me and Promontory.

But the Capital and Ogden repeaters I can get to easily with a handheld, along with all the other ones here locally in the valley.

[WRQW589]

2 minutes ago, amaff said:

Nice. I have the mountains above Magna between me and Promontory.

But the Capital and Ogden repeaters I can get to easily with a handheld, along with all the other ones here locally in the valley.

Capital (15 miles) and Ogden (43 miles) are no problem for me. I'm a mile west of Wasatch near Little Cottonwood Road (near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon) at 5080 feet elevation. The Capital repeater is on Ensign Peak, so good elevation, and the Ogden repeater is on Mount Ogden -- also good elevation.

[WSDD519]

3 hours ago, MarkInTampa said:

Last night was a winner though - a man and woman talking on FRS that thought FRS was wonderful. It couldn't be traced like their cell phone and the guy with the ankle monitor was far enough away as not to violate the terms of the personal protection order and still be able to communicate.

Good one!  I wonder if the woman he's talking to took the protection order out on him?  As a police dispatcher, I see that kind of stuff from time to time.  Woman takes out a PFA (protection from abuse order) against "her man" and then continues contact with him by letting him visit.