marcspaz

Im not sure you can determine someone doesn't hold a license using this method. I only have two licenses under the FRN that my Amateur and GMRS licenses are under, but I have multiple FRNs. And unless you know what names are associated with my other FRNs, you're not finding them.

I think the stuff that he gets right is either because he got lucky and said the right thing by mistake, or he researched the hell out of it and somewhat properly regurgitate what he read, but doesn't actually "know" what he is talking about. I think this, because right after he says something correct, he will follow-up with an explanation of why he right, but that explanation defies physics. Imagine if I said that during certain conditions, if we shoot a GMRS single dang near straight up in the air, it comes back to earth and covers hundreds of miles in every direction. But then, instead of saying that it happens because signals can bounce off of planes, meteor showers, the moon or (more often than not) random weather anomalies... I say it's because the radio signal is so heavy, it's like launching a watermelon out of a giant slingshot. Its kind of like that.

What I don't get from SoCal is, he either says or has strongly implied that pretty much none of us know what we are talking about, always wrong, and a bunch of NotARubicon nut huggers (sorry, Randy. You know I love you).... and, he seems like he's always mad at us. So why the heck is he wasting his time and talent on this forum? I've asked him... but no response. Maybe it's like watching a car crash. Its so horrific that you can't look away. Anyway Guest PG3, just ignore the stupid stuff he says and try to pull something useful out of it. Honestly, recording the experience if it continues to happen and then filing a police report with local PD isn't a terrible idea. You just need some proof it's happening and you may get some traction.

You definitely got lied to. Every channel is free to use. No one owns a channel or has a channel allocated to them. Law enforcement almost never uses these channels for official business and when they do, you still have as much right to use the frequency as they do. Most of the time, when FRS/GMRS is used by the government, it's not police. Its typically a civilian liaison acting as a go-between for U/SAR volunteers or volunteers working in support of some type of remote response to things like mass casualty incidents. I'm pretty sure you would know if there was a mass casualty incident close enough that you can hear another user directly.

I agree for sure. Anything under 20m is very hard to get communications out of while mobile. 80m and 100% equal to QRP, for sure. 100w in for less than 2w out. If you are actually moving, that makes it even harder. I have seen some guys spend $2,500 or more for some of these high-power screwdriver antennas, but it's pointless unless they have a mobile 1,000w amp. Even then, the 1,000w to the antenna on 80m would be like 150w-180w to a proper vertical antenna (not even a dipole). That antenna would be hot enough to cook on. LOL

@Lscott I tested my screwdriver with a field strength meter and compared it to my dipole and my dedicated whips. On 80m, I only had a 1.8% efficiency rate. On 40m, it was about 30%, and on 20m it was about 50%. I switched over to Diamond mono band 86.6" whips and retested. The dedicated whip was still less that 2% efficiency rate on 80m. However, on 40m, it was 50%+ and 20m was almost 90%.

I guess not. Jack is the guy who submitted the Petition for Rule Making. Some of your posts lead me to ask the question.

That actually makes a lot of sense for those situations. We had something similar to that here in some localities, but with waste management. The counties that take a high volume of commercial waste have installed CB Base stations at the office and mobiles on some of the rigs on the landfill so they can talk to the commercial drivers and provide directions as they approach and move around the landfill. Those facilities that I am aware of did it on their own (per location) without getting the county government involved. It was just local managers that implemented it.

These are both wrong. REACT stopped monitoring 9 in the very early '90s. State troopers haven't had a tunable HF radio since Smoky and The Bandit was in theaters.

@Jaay are you working on this with Jack?

Generally speaking, if a repeater accepts a tone of 141.3 MHz, it's considered an open repeater. It was the "travel tone" Popular Wireless and the Personal Radio Association came up with when they came up with the idea of the Open Repeater Initiative (ORI). It was originally repeater channel 20 with 141.3 for the tone.

Make sure the meter is on and on the 200w scale. (Yes, it has an off button) Also be very sure you did not mix up the antenna connection and Transmit connection. If you get them backwards, the meter doesn't move. As mentioned above, make sure it's set to AVG and not PEP. If the meter is set correctly, the next thing I would question is the coax between the radio and meter having a short.

@Socalgmrs why are you still here?

Yeah, we have had that happen around here a few times when a new machine was stood up. It sounds weird when its understandable.

If the tones are the same, both repeaters would come up and 'repeat' your transmission at the same time. No loop could be created. If you set it to different tones, then the only issue to watch for is mistakenly causing interference. The users of each repeater would probably need to just transmitting a tone, but not using tone squelch. This way they can tell if the frequency is in use. Either that or they would need to 'monitor before transmit' if they have a monitor button on their radio.