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GMRS licensees that benefited from Riley’s activity in GMRS over the last three or so years ought to take a moment to thank him for his work before he retires. Just a suggestion.
We do not know if the FCC is going to continue assist GMRS with complaints. The only activity the PRA currently involves itself in is the occasional enforcement complaint from members and non-members throughout the USA.
Regardless of how you feel about the FCC Riley has done his best for us. Please let him know. I’d be happy to forward your emails to him. Send them to my email address at editor@popularwireless.com subject line: THANK YOU RILEY! and I will send it on.
I have a low-level repeater on 462.550/467.550 located at Plum Point. The first two CTCSS tones I used are in use somewhere because throughout most of southern Maryland I can bring up another 462.550 repeater (maybe 2.)
Over the last few weeks I’ve tried calling a control operator or repeater owner on this system to no avail and it has no CW ID active when the repeater is active. The repeater I hear is quiet. No users.
Does anyone no where it might be, who the licensee is? I’d like to find unused tones that I can use. In fringe areas I bring up both my repeater and the mystery repeater.
Thanks!
On the Chesapeake Bay one can find the US Army Vessels and the US Merchant Marine using GMRS inputs. Astounding when you think of the regulations radio officers and captains on said vessels must have to follow. Very puzzling indeed. What this means is that our own U.S. Government is confused, not just the FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
The PopularWireless.com Blog is now on a mySQL 5 server at Network Solutions. Hopefully the BBS can be moved as well. Report any strangeness.
I get this email. It says that I am a Network Solutions GOLD VIP Program member. I get special access to Tech Support and huge discounts on service.
Since PopularWireless.com has today been plagued with INTERNAL SERVER ERRORS, INTERMINABLE LOAD TIMES, and in general damned poor service, I decided what the heck I’ll try the special 800 number.
What I get is the PHILIPPINES. Network Solutions is based in the USA but I, a valued GOLD VIP PROGRAM MEMBER get support from a third party company in the Philippines. Nothing has changed. Service as usual. They could CARE LESS, as usual.
There is NO dedicated team to resolve the DAY LONG SITE ISSUES that any reputable company of Network Solution’s size would have detected on its own. There is no priority issue handling as claimed because everybody at Network Solutions is at HOME over the weekend. I did not notice ENHANCED on-line account tools either.
It doesn’t matter how loud you yell, or how strong the language is anymore. American companies just no longer give a damn about about service. The one I work for is of course excluded from that broad brush. Just don’t tell me you work for Network Solutions, because if you do I will HANG UP on your sorry self.
The Internal Server Errors experienced today, the LONG LOAD TIMES are all courtesy of NETWORK SOLUTIONS.
…and PNC Bank is also on my list of financial institutions that could care less about the average Joe.
Apparently when you travel to a foreign country INCLUDING CANADA VIA turns off your ATM card. My wife is currently traveling in Toronto and has NO ACCESS TO HER ACCOUNTS.
When I called my BANK, PNC Bank based in Maryland, and D.C. all they could do was tell me to call a VISA 800 number.
This has been going on for TWO DAYS and she has yet to be able to access an ATM there.
This was NEVER a problem beofre and now it apparently is a VERY BIG problem.
I am POISED to take all of my accounts out of my current bank PnC Bank for their INABILITY and UNWILLINGNESS to help my wife access her funds a few hundred miles outside of the USA.
When you travel to Canada be SURE to call VISA AND TAKE AMERICAN EXPRESS. I am calling American Express Gold Card people next!
I am SO TIRED of being treated like SCUM by so-called American businesses. Damn tired.
Today I heard a GMRS repeater owner shouting at the imaginary. It would be funny except for the obvious impact he’s having across many thousands of square miles. Mild tropospheric ducting is in effect. Weak signals from a good portion of the Eastern United States are being heard at my home as I am sure are everywhere around DelMarVa. I can hear THREE systems ID’ing on the frequency in question and ID’s on other channels from Virginia, D.C., Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Someone somewhere is testing on the same repeater frequency pair used by the repeater owner in Virginia. The person testing is also apparently on the same CTCSS or DCS tone. This is one reason why GMRS licensees that own repeaters should coordinate tones!
Instead of realizing this and just ignoring it or turning his own rarely used repeater off during the tropo event he spends tens of minutes shouting at each and every burst of static announcing the time and date, you’ll never use this repeater, this is my repeater, this is private property go away, ad nauseum. I imagine the greater Eastern US is also listening to him rant.
Other than the obvious silliness of the entire episode from a technical perspective some other points come to mind:
1. GMRS licensees are required to control their repeaters. The other user is bringing up more than one system. The user doing the testing should WAIT and test another day if he detects he is bringing up multiple repeaters. Both repeaters should coordinate tones. The affected Virginia system should shut down.
2. Since the Virginia repeater is rarely used why shouldn’t it be shared and new users encouraged. My repeater in Calvert County, MD is available to any GMRS licensee that wants to use it as long as the GMRS rules are followed. We are going to lose repeaters if don’t stop being so ridiculously territorial and/or restricting allowed users to “members” of an elite service group or club.
3. Based on my personal experience since 1995 the interference could be INPUT interference from commercial pirates or foreign shipping. The latter being more a possibility in DelMarVa. Listen on the input to an affected repeater.
4. GMRS licensees do not own repeater pairs. Our repeater pairs are NOT coordinated so anyone can build a repeater anywhere. We are required by the rules to share and prevent mutual interference. Shouting at ghosts during tropo is interference. Well after the first time anyway.
5. I wish everyone that owned a repeater had a listed telephone number.
6. There is also a repeater on the same channel with very loud INTERMOD. The owner needs to correct that condition.
Shouting at a mystery user in the static makes you appear comical and doing it during tropo rude. We are NOT going to popularize our service and keep it by shouting anyone down. Even ghosts.
Around the 7,000 square mile parish he calls home, he is referred to as Father Leo. To the 185 families in Circle, Richey and Jordan, Montana, where he has served the past ten years he is a spiritual father and guide, celebrating with them weddings, baptisms and funerals. To the United States Air Force, he is Chaplain, Major, Leo McDowell,
(Father Leo rocks! Fr. Leo is the Personal Radio Assn’s honorary chaplain. A GMRS licensee from Montana, he likes gadgets and all things radio. I know Fr. Leo is going to be a big fan of the radio room on base. PRA members are encouraged to offer prayers for Fr. Leo on his mission as well as for all of the American service members deployed worldwide. God bless you Air Force Major Fr. Leo!)
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PopularWireless advertiser RadiosOnline.com (Advantage Communications) sells Comtelco antennas. Comtelco makes UHF marine antennas suitable for GMRS mobile operation. Contact RadiosOnline.com and tell them Clip Leader sent you.
Our web provider Network Solutions has upgraded PHP to version 5 from 4. something. Please if you notice any anomalies with the blog or the UBB community let us know.
Yuri Sushkin is a real Ham 
He’s one of those guys Hams call Elmer. He’s the Elmer of the ultimate DX-pedition. Yuri is taking a few good Hams with him to a an out-of-the-way place in Alaska. They plan to operate Ham radio stations there so other Hams from around the world can say they have talked to another Ham at that rare elusive place - Chuginadak Island.
Hams like Yuri do the things most of us can only dream about. We will share the experience vicariously through Yuri’s visit to the rare island group in the Aleutian Islands. As most of Yuri’s customers here at PopularWireless know - Yuri rocks! That being said PopularWireless asked Yuri to spend his next advertising check toward the big event. Yuri is a dealer of ICOM GMRS and Amateur Radio products. His customer service is second to none.
The DX-pedition is being done as an activity of IOTA, a group of interested Hams sponsoring Amateur Radio trips to out of the way islands groups. Operation on shortwave through six meters begins July 31, 2008 and runs until the departure date July 27th.
PopularWireless wishes Yuri and the Hams on this unique trip a safe voyage to and from not to mention a whole of radio contacts with the rest of us Hams!
Please visit the official expedition home page for more information.
,,,and that is not friendly behavior.
There is no reason for a repeater beacon ID on a GMRS repeater. None.
All these beacon ID’s do is interfere with communications in progress and scream out loud, “This is my channel!” Well it isn’t your channel. It is shared with thousands of other GMRS licensees in your repeater’s footprint. Don’t you think it is about time you killed your beacon ID?
Night and day. Apples and oranges. Each has its place and both are very different.
CB, or the Citizen’s Band is the Personal Radio Service between 26.9 and 27.5 MHz. CB was the first popular American radio service. Its hay-day was in the 60’s and 70’s and its popularity declined the 80’s as a result of wide-spread abuse. The FCC gave up enforcement and declared license-by-rule. Nowadays the service is primarily occupied by the illegal power abusers and hobbyists that destroyed the service. There is the occasional local user who still tries to make use of CB regardless of the skip interference from many hundreds of miles away. Now interference to American CB by hobby stations in the Caribbean and South America is a major problem.
CB is still useful for close-in caravans, traveling by highway, and even for some local communication when the band is quiet. When I traveled across country in September 2001 I had more contacts using my first CB radio than I did using my VHF and UHF Ham radio equipment. There are more truck drivers than Hams. Drivers were an immediate source of traffic information, local news, and restaurant reviews. They made travel a whole lot more fun.
GMRS is a very-local line of sight radio service not beset with the problems in a short-wave radio service like CB. GMRS has been around for almost as many years as CB. It wasn’t until the popularity of GMRS began to increase in the mid-90’s that people started to see its true value.
The major advantages of GMRS over CB are:
1. Shorter antennas.
2. Up to fifty-watts of power.
3. Use of radio repeaters to extend range beyond direct simplex communication.
4. GMRS requires an FCC license and this truly is an advantage. When people have to pay for a license I believe that they tend to value the radio service more. Certainly more than the plethora of unlicensed bubble-packers out there now.
5. GMRS line-of-sight operation is generally not subject to skip like the CB band. UHF radio does experience tropospheric ducting occasionally allowing communication over a hundfred miles or more but you will not hear or be interfered with by stations from many thousands of miles away.
6. Family communication is generally encouraged in GMRS and hobby chats like those of the Amateur radio Service are generally discouraged.
7. Because the FCC has worked with the GMRS community over the last ten years with GMRS to end commercial piracy GMRS is quiet enough to permit families to develop and maintain real communication systems.
8. Like CB, GMRS licensees use the service for personal business and personal communication. The five minute restriction required for CB operation is not a requirement in GMRS.
9. GMRS does not cause RFI in televisions, stereos, and telephones like CB does.
10. GMRS allows voice scrambling for a small degree of greater privacy. The use of tone-coded squelch is possible in GMRS and not in CB. This makes it possible to hear only calls from your family’s radio sets versus everyone else’s.
CB was more attractive for years because the cost of equipment was much less than the commercial grade equipment required for GMRS. That also was a negative because anyone could buy a radio. Behavior on that band is often very child like and sometimes pornographic. The low-cost benefit wore off fast.
The major drawback to CB was also the size of the required antenna. A quarter-wavelength antenna for CB is one-hundred-two inches long while a quarter-wavelength antenna for GMRS is about six inches long.
GMRS still requires a license and the cost of real GMRS radios as opposed to the chew-toy bubble-pack radios is still more expensive than CB. To get on the real GMRS new users need to contact a real commercial radio shop or find GMRS licensees near them that can help find equipment and local repeaters that can be used. It is not as easy as it should be. PopularWireless.com and before PopWireless the Personal Radio Steering Group website have been the lead sources of GMRS information on the Internet.
GMRS sounds clearer and more natural because of the FM modulation used. Your reliable local distance of communication can be greater with GMRS when you choose the right antennas, power levels, and radio equipment. CB communication will suffer where GMRS will get through.
CB always tended to attract abuses. Over the years it was popular for CB users to have their radios modified to operate on unauthorized channels and at illegal power levels. A fishing charter would have their radios modified to avoid being heard by another charter service. The end result was interference to military, Civil Air Patrol, and radio-control communication also in the vicinity of the CB band. GMRS tends not to be plagued with illegal behaviors except in urban areas where some unscrupulous radio shops still put unlicensed systems on GMRS channels.
GMRS has had recent FCC enforcement. The FCC did its best to rid itself of the enforcement responsibility for CB back in the late 90’s. The FCC allows local law enforcement to handle typical problems associated with excessive power use in the CB radio service. Local jurisdictions never did get excited about doing it and few actually do. The FCC has helped GMRS licensees shut down unlicensed commercial users that made it difficult for families to use GMRS.
GMRS is in many ways a better option but it remains the more expensive licensed option.
After I wrote the article on using real GMRS radios on-board vessels in the US I started looking for equipment to recommend. The problem is the retailers and manufacturers see GMRS as a chew-toy bubble-pack market. It is easier to sell a toy GMRS radio for $39.95 than a real repeater capable GMRS radio because repeaters are just not everywhere. Still, you would think someone is making UHF transmitting antennas for marine use since the rest of the world including Asia, Europe, Australia etc all use UHF marine channels which happen to be in part on the same frequencies the same as the United States GMRS!
The one or two watt GMRS bubble-pack radios are convenient and make excellent supplemental portable radios for a complete family GMRS system. The bubble-packs do not do repeaters and are of limited range. Despite what the inflated range claims say a bubble-pack will not talk back home if your home is eight miles inland on the other side of a forest. Use a bubble pack to stay in touch with your real GMRS boat radio while you are in port but don’t get more than a haf mile away for a reliable signal.
I checked the 2008 catalogs of the most likely sources for marine antennas. Both West Marine and Boater’s World have huge selections but not one marine antenna outside of marine VHF and marine SSB or cellular. I’m a big fan of both retailers. Each store is a terrific place to go for marine electronics and twelve-volt accessories.
Australia seems to be the most likely importer of real UHF commercial quality antennas for boats. A company called ZCG makes the ZCG Scalar brand UHF marine antenna. It appears from their website that they offer antennas made for other than the 477 MHz UHF CB radio. Plugging in the lowest GMRS channel 462.55 MHz and the highest 467.550 MHz puts one of their specialty antennas within their manufacturing range.
Please take a minute to email us if you are aware of other retail sources for UHF marine antennas in the United States. Send us photos of your own UHF GMRS installs on your boats and the pictures will be published here. Do a write up the magazine can share about how you did the install and how well it works.
PopularWireless would like to hear from retailers in other parts of the world interested in selling UHF antennas for the US GMRS. Tell us about your products and how US residents can obtain them.
You idiots.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6135389.html?%5E$
In some years April Fools Day is better skipped. When your day is already ruined it really yanks your chain when you find a joke blue-screen-of-death program on your company-wide computer network courtesy of a brain-dead fool at a multi-billion software company. In this day and age it amounts to corporate sponsored terrorism.
MicroSoft and Sysinternals created a JOKE program that simulates the infamous blue screen of death. It was installed on a network I use until we figured out from a McAfee warning and a subsequent Google search what it really was. I solicited an employee confession so the offending program could be removed. I don’t want to be a stick in the mud, but in this day and age this type of joke is really reaching to the bottom of a scummy pond of smelly amoebic slime.
Companies coping with this joke today ought to send MicroSoft the BILL and send McAfee a check.
Microsoft you’re getting my invoice you clueless dopes- not funny.
Does your family own a boat? Does your family own a small charter service? Do you have difficulty calling to shore using your cellular telephone? Are you using marine VHF-FM illegally to call home or contact your business? Let’s look at the various regulations and some of the radio services available to families and then look seriously at the General Mobile Radio Service. When you take the Coast Guard Auxiliary Boating Safety Course as I did this year you attend a session on the various communication options available to boaters and communication regulations that boaters must follow. You learn than under FCC Rules part 80 it is not permitted to use your marine radio on shore. Marine radios are for safety,navigation,and commerce. When you re on the water VHF-FM is intended for the boater to call for help on Channel 16, contact marinas, vessel services, and other boaters. It was never intended to permit boaters to contact their home on shore. Unfortunately people do it anyway. Monitoring VHF marine on the Chesapeake I regularly hear groups of people in vehicle caravans using VHF marine. When I worked in consumer electronics retail I met boaters that purchased cable and connectors to put up base station marine radios knowing it was against the law. (Only the Coast Guard and Auxiliary units, and FCC licensed coast stations engaged in commerce are permitted to operate on land. The typical family boater operating a vessel under a certain size is not required to have a VHF marine radio license but that license-free privilege does not permit land-based operation or violating the FCC Rules.
FCC Part 80.13(c):(c) A ship station is licensed by rule and does not need an individual license issued by the FCC if the ship station is not subject to the radio equipment carriage requirements of any statute, treaty or agreement to which the United States is signatory, the ship station does not travel to foreign ports, and the ship station does not make international communications. A ship station licensed by rule is authorized to transmit radio signals using a marine radio operating in the 156–162 MHz band, any type of AIS, any type of EPIRB, and any type of radar installation. All other transmissions must be authorized under a ship station license. Even though an individual license is not required, a ship station licensed by rule must be operated in accordance with all applicable operating requirements, procedures, and technical specifications found in this part.
Sec. 80.89 Unauthorized transmissions. Stations must not: (a) Engage in superfluous telecommunication. (d) When using telephony, transmit signals or communications not addressed to a particular station or stations. This provision does not apply to the transmission of distress, alarm, urgency, or safety signals or messages, or to test transmissions. (e) Transmit while on board vessels located on land unless authorized under a public coast station license. Vessels in the following situations are not considered to be on land for the purposes of this paragraph: (1) Vessels which are aground due to a distress situation; (2) Vessels in drydock undergoing repairs; and (3) State or local government vessels which are involved in search and rescue operations including related training exercises. (f) Transmit on frequencies or frequency bands not authorized on the current station license.
Given that most family communication might be considered superfluous and directed at a land station marine VHF-FM is not the choice for such communication. Why take the risk of a heavy fine? Years ago many boaters used CB radios. That was before the illegal activity on CB rendered it pretty much useless. The Coast Guard Boating Safety Course warns us against the character of the service and asks us to remember that CB is NOT monitored for safety and distress transmissions. So what’s left? The General Mobile radio Service is what’s left. You are allowed up to fifty watts of transmitting power into a gain antenna on board your boat, in your car, or at your home. There are no restrictions associated with use on the water just the same precautionary note that the Coast guard does not monitor GMRS for distress traffic. A GMRS license covers you and your immediately family, including those not living in your household. When you head out on a boating weekend all of your relatives can use the GMRS mobile station with your call letters in your car, boat, or home. Your usable distance compared to VHF marine may in some cases may be far greater when using GMRS repeaters. In southern Maryland you can probably talk to homes on land from the Chesapeake and the Patuxent, and down in St Mary’s while boating in the Potomac. Does that interest you? Let’s say you own a small charter boat business. You and your family are the employees. You may conduct ship to shore business activity by two-way radio using GMRS where using your cellular telephone doesn’t make sense. GMRS can also be used for boat-to-boat communication. Several fishing boats working together can talk to one another using GMRS in order to avoid the frivolous communication rule. What everyone does have to do on GMRS is share frequencies so you would still not monopolize a GMRS channel with your radio traffic. GMRS is a place to communicate when using marine radio might be illegal, improper, or where cellular does not work. What’s your investment? There is an $85 license fee that covers your family and you for five years. A commercial quality UHF radio used or new from $100 up. A UHF antenna $50 to $100 dollars. Good quality coaxial cable used in marine environments. The base station requirements vary depending on where you are and how you plan to contact the boat either direct or through a repeater station. In some cases all you would need is a low-cost portable radio. Consider using GMRS on board your boat. It is a viable option for any family or family-owned business. The VHF Multi-Use Radio Service is a possibluity for close-in communication. Beach to boat communication within a few miles would be possible. The equipment cost would be smaller. MURS radios are low power but external antennas can be used. Om-board a boat you could use a second marine antenna for your MURS antenna. There are nio repeaters on MURS. Need to know more? Visit our marine forum here at PopularWireless.
“The General Mobile Radio Service is a solution without a problem. ”
As I was doing my best to sell a friend on GMRS repeaters he shared the perspective above. How can one argue with that logic? The real GMRS takes advantage of local repeater stations that improve communication over a wider area in a community. Families have the ability to use commercial-quality radio equipment on a radio system similar to those used by business and public safety. They own it, support it, and generally have no monthly fees to keep it going. How could a terrific opportunity like this be anything but a terrific solution to some communication need? Surely it could solve some communication problems.
Well to some the time for GMRS has come and gone. Those of us with families taking advantage of the service are presented with a daunting challenge when asked to justify using a radio repeater when there are so many unlicensed bubble pack radios out there. The FCC knew this would happen when they approved FRS and the bubble packs. I believe they fully intended to put GMRS as we know it out of its misery. But that’s a another rant.
A GMRS repeater is not a CB radio. CB radio is understood by most folks. It is characterized as a lawless radio service popular in the sixties and seventies. The FCC washed its hands of CB for the most part back in the 90’s. No license is required. Anyone can buy one, turn it on, and talk. It’s so useless now it is actively discouraged as a viable communications medium in Coast guard Boating Safety classes. Interestingly GMRS is not covered at all.
The death of two-way radio was first signaled with the creation of Nextel ’s Direct Connect feature. All of a sudden their SMR based walkie talkie look-alike was the two-way radio of choice. The major difference to businesses was their range could be extended beyond tehir repeater range and they could carry a phone into a building without having to own expensive portable radios. Business also had a to pay a monthly subscription price tied to a contract. Even so people flocked to Nextel. Nowadays people probably don’t even know they can “walkie-talkie” without Nextel. Nextel solved a problem. Range was improved and radios were eliminated.
Then came cellular telephones which did the same thing for the masses.
So how does going backwards in time with a two-way radio repeater technology solve local communication problems? That’s the question in context. Lets’ consider a few problems and justifications and then you tell me whether it’s enough to stimulate real growth in GMRS or should we just let the FCC have its way with GMRS?
There is a consensus among communications people I talk to that the end-of-life is here for GMRS as we know it. I’m perpetually skeptical on this point. I do agree that we as licensees are now in the unique position of having to find a problem that GMRS can solve in order to make it a viable medium for American families.
GMRS repeaters must be shared to be of value. Closed repeaters should be discouraged. GMRS cannot survive as a haven for buff groups and private communication systems for just a few people. Users have to recognize that the service is a shared service subject to periodic review by a government that is not really sensitive to anything but dollars.
There is a major problem setting up a GMRS repeater. The companies that own the towers hold a large monopoly. They make big bucks renting tower space. While GMRS licensees cannot make a profit from users of their repeaters they can charge enough to make a monthly rent payment. GMRS may not take off until tower companies recognize the community value of a local repeater system used in neighborhoods. I’m thinking that many low-level repeaters may be a better value than a few high-level sites. We won’t see that unless tower companies can help us with realistic rents. (You don’t suppose a cellular company would entertain allowing GMRS repeaters on their cellular towers do you?)
GMRS is not dead. It’s just stagnant. It is a radio service looking for a problem that it can solve if given the opportunity. GMRS licensees are going to have to help define the problem and the solution because everyone else is satisfied with their cellular subscription service. GMRS was, like commercial two-way radio , rendered almost obsolete by Nextel/SMR and cellular telephone. There is still value in having a two-way radio service you control especially for communication around the home. Maritime and rural areas and perhaps even areas with high tourism can potentially benefit from this option.
