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?

1. Cellular is expensive and contract based. Two phones on a family plan typically runs about $75 a month for service. I pay $900 per year for the privilege. Again the advantage is I can take cellular anywhere, it’s a phone and not a walkie talkie that might annoy others, (Ooh like Nextel!) it’s small, vibrates when I want it to, and even the kids can carry one. So I guess the cost is worth it? OK not a good problem. A repeater system doesn’t have the coverage in all areas of the US. In California where I used to live I could carry a hand-held radio from Fresno, to San Francisco, to Sacramento and be in touch with a family base station at home. Here in Maryland the range of our repeater system is considerably reduced and often limited to the more powerful mobile radio and home base station. Hand-held use is limited to within a finite range around the repeater tower. It’s great for neighborhoods close to the radio tower.
2. OK, here’s a problem. I said neighborhoods above. Is there a need to have great local communication in a neighborhood? We have our cellular telephones remember. But what happens when cellular goes dead in an emergency situation? When the cellular system fails your family communication is dark. You wait for the cellular system to come back up, just like power, and cable TV. Hmmm, is your VOIP going to work? When the TV cable goes so goes their telephone service. Your GMRS radio system works with the emergency batteries you keep at home and the batteries in your car, or the batteries in your hand-held radios. This might just be a situation where having a communication system you control makes sense. It’s available when everything else fails.
3. Another issue for me is going places where cellular doesn’t work well. I like toi use GMRS or MURS. Person to person communication is supported by the bubble packs but in some areas repeaters are available. What if repeaters were more available in rural areas, large parks, or cities? Families could communicate out of bubble pack range on their own system or sharing a repeater belonging to someone else. Oh but we do have cellular I keep forgetting. The other big benefit to cellular now is GPS. When you use a cellular telephone emergency services know approximately where you are when you use your phone. That isn’t true on GMRS repeaters. GPS only works on low-power simplex only GMRS radios.
4. We’re not having much luck here. Well what about CERT? These volunteers need to communicate back to a headquarters as they provide that first look at the neighborhoods after a wide-spread emergency. Many jurisdictions are not about to put hundreds of volunteers on a public safety radio system. That costs big money and the training required to observe protocol is time consuming and difficult. There is a system families can license to use and repeaters are possible if not available. That system is GMRS. Volunteers can buy their own portable, mobile and base radios. GMRS licensees staffing the county EOC can communicate with CERT families on GMRS in time of disaster. This justification might have some merit, but I still suspect cellular is the way to go if cellular and land-line service is available.
5. Now there are families in groups. Americans volunteer to do a lot of great things. We have CERT, CGAUX, and other public service groups. Groups cannot license in GMRS by rule but tehir members can. SO it is possible that groups with lot sof members that need to stay in touch could do so with GMRS repeaters.
6. OK here’s one. We all know that it is against FCC rules to use a marine VHF-FM radio on land. A family cannot legally use a marine base station to talk to family members on the water. You CAN use a GMRS system. Oh yes in many areas you can also use a cellular telephone, but if you could use another two-way radio wouldn’t you? GMRS is not generally plagued with the same kind of interference CB is plagued with. Thanks however to our own FCC’s approval of the 22 channel bubble packs there are many unlicensed folks using GMRS as toys but even in my area interference from bubble packs is seasonal. A fifty-watt boat based mobile radio on GMRS is going to go as far as a VHF radio especially through a repeater located near the water. The problem a water based GMRS repeater solves is allowing radio communication from ship to land. It does not take the place of marine VHF as a safety radio on your boat. GMRS allows reliable family communication or in some places reliable family business communication from ship to shore when the business has no shore license for marine VHF. This is an as yet unexplored solution.

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.

The license terms for the company’s Safari Web browser on Windows include a curious restriction: “The software allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.”

(Smarmy marketing behavior 101: This ALL got started when Apple sent an install of Safari through the Itunes automatic update. Many of us didn’t really get it until it was done. I thought Safari was part of Itunes. Silly me. Safari is Apple’s browser! Itunes users everywhere were tricked into installing a new piece of software. Couldn’t Apple think of a better way to encourage others to use their browser using polite competitive marketing technique instead of trickery and deceit?

Interestingly the smarmy marketing people FORGOT to update the product eula that said Safari could be installed on Apple products only. Ooops they were caught! They changed the eula within hours of the world noticing the discrepancy. What was noticed was the trickery. Why does a big company marketing group behave in a smarmy way? Are there smarmy universities that teach smarmy? The world would be a much better place without smarmy.)
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The PopularWireless blog was upgraded to WordPress 2.5 today. This version was six months or more in development and released just hours ago on 3/29/08.

Let us know if you encounter any issues.

Intermodulation: What’s All This Then is an article at the UK’s Wireless Waffle. (Wireless Waffle – A whole spectrum of radio related rubbish) It’s an interesting and unique UK-based radio-blog site for the wireless hobbyist. The article reduced the subject of intermodulation distortion to something even I could understand. Visit the article at Wireless Waffle and then bookmark the site to visit again How does one equate a waffle to wireless?

Hopes for Wireless Cities Are Fading By IAN URBINA PHILADELPHIA — It was hailed as Internet for the masses when Philadelphia officials announced plans in 2005 to erect the largest municipal Wi-Fi grid in the country, stretching wireless access over 135 square miles with the hope of bringing free or low-cost service to all residents

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The long overdue 802.11n version of the Airport Express should be landing soon, possibly as early as this Tuesday.

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report yesterday that says that while the FCC processes about 95% of the complaints that come in, it takes some sort of enforcement action in only about 9% of them.

(PopWireless: This is consistent with GMRS licensees and Amateurs. In 2006 the open relationship we were getting used to ended. The FCC is far more secretive about what they will act on and when. GMRS licensees have been grateful to be sure that serious complaints eventually get handled but on some complaints no action has been seen in years and no status reports are shared with licensees.  This article is not about GMRS but about everyone else the FCC serves. It appears the rest of the country is in the same boat. Oh that reminds me, FSI. Foreign shipping Interference on GMRS remains a serious problem and whatever steps were taken in November 2006 by the FCC seem to have worn off.  A US military vessel went by Plum Point on Saturday March 15, 2008 using a GMRS input frequency! Click read more below to read the original article.)

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Those of you that lost RSS should have it back.  I found the cause of three bugs that surfaced after the last Woprdpress upgrade.  Two lines ere missing in a config file. Once those lines were placed where they should be the RSS feature started working again. Two other nasty issues were also fixed.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sprint Nextel posted a $29.45 billion quarterly loss as the wireless carrier took a massive charge for its 2005 acquisition of Nextel. Sprint said it would quit paying dividends and warned subscriber losses are accelerating. Oops. (Click “read more” to go the Wall Street Journal article on the SPRINT situation.

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The news for Sprint Nextel just keeps getting worse as the company struggles to rebuild its business and its reputation.
On Thursday the third-largest wireless phone company in the U.S. announced a $29.5 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2007 and warned that the company would continue. (Click read more to read the News.com story on the SPRINT financial situation.

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