Linking GMRS Repeaters

[WRKC935]

On 10/8/2024 at 5:27 PM, WRQD922 said:

You have the power to change that. Getting a ham ticket is easier now then ever. Take the plunge you’ll be happy you did. 

That ship sailed in 1994 when I got my Tech ticket.  KB8VUL

I have actively tried, and continue to try to bring old hams back and convince interested folks to become new hams.

But you have to want to get into ham for the right reasons.  If you aren't looking to expand your technical knowledge, and use ham radio as it was meant to be, then why bother.

 

[WRKC935]

On 10/7/2024 at 10:44 AM, SteveShannon said:

I agree that’s based on location.  In my area we don’t even have a GMRS repeater yet.  There are ham repeaters in almost every town bigger than 10,000 people.  Looking at repeaterbook there are 160 amateur repeaters in Montana and only 8 GMRS repeaters.  MyGMRS lists 10 repeaters for Montana, but that’s still 16 times as many amateur repeaters.  I realize wrkc935 was comparing traffic, rather than numbers of repeaters, but without repeaters, there is no traffic.

Oh no,,,, not number of ham repeaters.  Here we have a FULL dance card.  I got the LAST available 2 meter pair for my P25 repeater and lucked into a UHF pair that a friend had and was abandoning that the repeater council transferred to me because the site I have has such good coverage. 

My UHF repeater see's some use.  More than most but less than a few.  The VHF repeater, as well as all the rest of the VHF repeaters in this area are stone silent. 

The VHF repeater does see some traffic from a south eastern ham net that is P25 and other digital modes I have that repeater linked to.  But I haven't seen any local activity on that repeater at all on analog or P25.

 

[cfa]

Normally I wouldn't care what people do. But down in NYC/LI there are a few competing closed GMRS networks that have every pair tied up and because of the geography they all blast in to CT. Which means to use GMRS around here you basically have to run high power and PL, or deal with listening to the frequent jammers/trolls on their network or some multistate check in net.