The General Mobile Radio Service is made for marine use but it hasn’t caught on. How come? Are boat owners aware they can use this UHF radio service with up to fity watts of mobile power to communicate with home and friends also on GMRS? Are they aware that a GMRS FCC license covers all of their relatives including those not living in their own household? Are they aware that using a marine radio on land is against FCC rules but a GMRS base station on land is part of the deal when you get your GMRS license? Sounds like lots of marine users are missing the boat. Maritime communities that need a way to communicate with friends and family on the boat from land should look closely at the GMRS as a communications option.  Don’t waste time looking at the chew toys sold in your local electronics stores. Look at commercial two-way UHF radios avaialable from companies like NSI a PopularWireless.com advertiser. GMRS could be an option for you!

Are you on the Chesapeake Bay? I maintain two GMRS repeater stations located at Plum Point, MD. Perhaps your family could take advantage of thopse systems? Contact editor@popularwioreless.com!

Don’t miss the boat on GMRS!

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!

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.

,,,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.

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.

On January 14, 2008 the Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau, Northeast Region, Philadelphia Office issued a Notice of Unlicensed Operation (NOUO)  to the Harrison Township Water Authority for operating an unlicensed GMRS repeater, mobile units and control station on 462.650/467.650 MHz.  The Field Office acted on a complaint received on November 21, 2007.  Case number EB-07-PA-396.

(See the complete text of the complaint here.)

The FCC Field Office also issued an official Citation to the township’s radio vendor in this case. See the article below this one.

On January 14, 2008, the Philadelphia Pennsylvania FCC Enforcement Bureau Field Office cited WestCom Wireless, Inc., (westpenncomm.com) located in McKeesport, PA, a mobile radio sales and service company, serving public safety and business users In the Pittsburgh, PA area, for programming General Mobile Radio Service frequencies into radios operated by the Harrison Township Water Authority, licensee of Land Mobile Radio Station WQCC972. See EB-07-PA-397 Citation No.: C20083240001.

The FCC made a departure from past practice in this citation. In the past the FCC had not taken action against the radio shops programming GMRS channels into customer radios but rather cited or fined the shop’s customers for operation on frequencies on which the customer had no license. The FCC said in the citation:

“Section 90.427(b) states “[e]xcept for frequencies used in accordance with S: 90.417, no person shall program into a transmitter frequencies for which the licensee using the transmitter is not authorized.” WestCom Wireless, Inc. programmed eight Kenwood TK-8160K mobile radios with a frequency for which Harrison Township Water Authority is not authorized.”

Full text of the FCC action is available at the FCC website at: http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-279730A1.html

Recently readers of the PopularWireless.com GMRS forum were asked why what they refer to as “real GMRS radios” make the difference between success or failure of a family communications system. A real GMRS radio is defined as a commercial grade radio, generally identical to two-way radios used by industry or public safety professionals.

Persons interested in GMRS for the first time often ask why the cost of real radios at real-radio dealers is higher than the twenty-two channel bubble-pack radios available at consumer-electronics retailers. The following is a summary of the reasons offered by our readers:

• Long term reliability – The inexpensive bubble-pack radios are not built to the same rugged commercial standards. When you make the investment in a commercial grade radio you make the investment in a radio system you will use for a long time. The radios will hold up well for a long long time.
• Accessory selection – Commercial grade radios have a wide range of useful accessories most often also available at the dealer that sells you the radios. You are usually lucky of a bubble-pack retailer even knows what an accessory is. Radio cases, speaker microphones, antenna adapters, extra batteries and the like are usually available on the spot at your real-radio dealer.
• External antennas – Because twenty-two channel bubble-pack radios include FRS channels eight through fourteen FCC rules prohibit attaching an external radio antenna. Lack of an external antenna dramatically reduces effectiveness and performance. Your use of the radio is limited. Real radios allow attachment of mobile and base station antennas giving your system better options for extending communication range. Consumer electronics retailers make up for this drawback by making outrageously inflated claims regarding the effective range of their products.
• Receiver sensitivity and selectivity – A commercial grade radio is a better radio. It is on frequency, the receiver is sensitive enough to hear weaker transmissions, has circuits built in to limit desense by radios on adjoining channels. It is going to receive better.
• Better power consumption characteristics – The advertised output power is generally going to be accurate over a longer period of time and the supplied batteries can actually deliver long reliable performance. Years ago the magazine did a review of a bubble-pack radio. It did operate at the advertised two-watt level but only for a few seconds after the input voltage was cranked up too high. The radio self destructed.
• Rugged construction – Commercial grade radios are made for rough service. A quality radio is more likely to survive the abuse and active family is going to give their radios.
• Simpler to operate – In most cases a commercial grade radio is far simpler to operate than a bubble-pack radio. Marketers built in a host of useless functions that are far too complicated to access for most persons. Most commercial grade units are set up once by a computer program and only basic functions of volume, squelch, Push to talk, and monitor are available to the user. Bubble-packs fast became full-featured toys that no one could get straight if the wrong button was pushed.
• Repeater capability – Commercial grade radios can be programmed to use GMRS repeaters. Locate and share a GMRS repeater near you and you may wonder why you ever purchased a bubble-pack GMRS radio.
• No call tones – The bubble-pack call tone button has been a curse to the GMRS. This is especially true of the radios designed with musical call tones. This stupid feature has caused GMRS licensees countless hours of interference. Call tones are typically only used to harass and annoy. It’s a feature for the immature and serves no useful purpose. You will not find cute musical call tones in commercial radios.
• Available technical support – This is timely. Yesterday I received a telephone call at the magazine from a reader who wanted to know how to perform a function on an older FRS radio. While I appreciated the thought that I was an expert in such matters I had no clue what to tell him. I had never operated one of these radios. Somewhere there is a manual but the retailer is long gone. When you buy radios from a real-radio dealer you have excellent technical support and repair and adjustment capabilities available to you. Bubble-pack radios are throw away toys.

The durability, usability, and performance of a real-GMRS radio cannot be beat. PopularWireless advertisers like RadiosOnline and NSI as well as your own local commercial radio shop go out of their way to make sure you understand the benefits of your real-radio investment. Let them help you decide which radios to purchase. You might get by with a bubble pack but your options are sorely limited and you may be buying new radios more often as the bubble-pack wears out.

You read the article about a simple portable RDF antenna for the GMRS licensee. I also suggest that licensees have a small UHF Yagi on an antenna rotator at home. The antenna is connected to a radio with a signal strength meter at the operating location. This allows the licensee to take a bearing using this Yagi. The Scala Yagi pictured below was purchased on eBay. These are the antennas in use at PopularWireless HQ.

Here’s what I learned investigating how to get more range (legally)! (PopWireless – It’s not every day we find good on-topic articles for GMRS but here is one. The writer even doesa a good job with licensing. Click read more and visit the blog at linquist.net)

read more | digg story

As a GMRS licensee you purchased a significant amount of radio equipment, perhaps even an expensive repeater, to build a family communication system. You might even share it with other families and of course I hope you do.  But there are trespasser, unlicensed pirates that operate on your output or your input or cause interference operating on adjacent Family Radio Service frequencies. The trespasser can however be found and reported to the Federal Communications Commission, found through simple radio direction finding techniques.

The idea here is to give you a list of simple relatively inexpensive radio-direction finding tools along with a few simple techniques. Licensees must assume responsibility for locating and identifying the source of most interference before the FCC gets involved. It is not as difficult as it appears. Radio direction finding or RDF gives you a bearing to the suspect signal. using bearings taken from a few high locations you determine the area to be searched.

The following list list of equipment is taken from the Arrow Antenna Company.  You might find similar items elsewhere but I recommend Arrow Antenna after having purchased and used a number of their products over the last ten years. You can also manufacture most of these items yourself.

The first piece of gear you need is a UHF receiver preferably one with a signal strength meter. When you cannot locate one with a meter use your GMRS radio or a simple radio scanner being careful not to transmit through your RDF equipment if you use your transceiver. Next you need a reliable compass, a basic understanding of compass theory, a chart or map of the area being searched, a protractor and a ruler.

(My source for maps and charts has always been REI. These folks know orienteering, hiking, kayaking, backpacking, all activities that require a compass. No REI near you? Visit an excellent sporting goods store. AAA, the auto club, also is a an excellent source for road maps which is one big reason I have been a member for over thirty years. GPS is nice but a map gives you a visual indicator of your bearing which you must trust. More on that later.)

Connect to this receiver a hand-held Yagi like the three-element special order Arrow Antenna built for 462. MHz. I own one of these Yagi’s and keep it handy when I travel. It is lightweight and has a handle that you quickly use to scan an arc in front of you for the strongest possible suspect radio signal. You will need 58 ohm coaxial cable with BNC connectors for the antenna, BNC for most scanners, and perhaps mini-UHF, Type-N, or PL-259 for most transceivers.

In the simplest possible terms you take the Yagi connected to your radio and wave it around in a circle to locate the strongest signal. When the signal is too strong to suggest a good bearing you insert an attenuator  between the Yagi antenna and the receiver adding attention until the signal is only strong enough to get a good bearing. Arrow Antenna has an excellent 75 db attenuator in their on-line catalog.

You can do quite a bit more with RDF but the simplest set up uses a portable directional antenna, and antenna, and some ability to use a compass and a map to follow a bearing. One thing I have learned the last ten years doing RDF is to trust my bearing particularly if multiple bearings point the same directions or more than one has been from a high location. When you trust your bearing you find the target faster.

You will encounter  multiple peaks and nulls in signal strength while scanning an area with a Yagi.  This is where the learned skill of knowing the difference between a true bearing and a signal reflection comes in. You have to experience it. Generally if you try to null a signal as well as peak it the signal should be coming in the opposite direction of the strongest null. I say generally. Reflections close to the target can get confusing. 

Now that you have the basic equipment you can assist in the identification of unlicensed commercial users of the GMRS and FRS. Just like the Neighborhood Watch cares for the community in which you live a GMRS licensee cares for the radio community he or she uses.

One caveat while you wave your Yagi in circles. be careful what you point at and where you point it. Security is heightened in our country at the moment. People will not understand what you’re doing at first. Be ready to explain what you are doing and why. Avoid RDF in high security areas unless you have permission and never trespass on private property.

Visit the RDF Forum here at the PopularWireless.com Personal Wireless BBS to learn more about basic RDF and obtaining that bearing or ask questions as you comment on the article. Once you have the bearing it is much easier to find the pirate.

Senior Technical Editors of PopularWireless are looking more into this issue but appears that despite previously voiced concerns by two-way radio groups the State of California went ahead and passed a law requiring hands-free devices on two-way radios. It appears GMRS licensees may no longer use a microphone after July 1, 2008.

See this link at the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

An initial look at this new law makes us believe that police are going to have to determine who is driving a commercial vehicle or have to go through a list of special exemptions. Apparently there are some types of exemptions for two-way radio users in commercial vehicles but we also read this from the DMV site:

“Q: I drive a commercial pickup truck, may I use a two-way radio while driving?

A: No. The exemption does not apply to drivers of pickup trucks with commercial plates, even if the pickup truck is used for commercial purposes, for example, a contractor, landscaper, or other business.”

We would appreciate hearing from anyone in California that is familiar with this law and its evolution.

More to follow.

(New Jersey/New York) – PRA members  in New York and New Jersey heard a steady carrier on 462.700 MHz for about two days, January 10-12,2008. The signal showed no signs of going away so members put their RDF capability to work. In a stunningly short time,  just thirty minutes,  the repeater site was located. The member locating the repeater determined that there was no signal on the repeater input causing the repeater to hang. The probable cause was believed to be a defective repeater controller.

The owner of the repeater could not be immediately determined by making calls on the repeater itself. Not a soul was listening on any active tone. There were an astounding number of CTCSS tones active on the system which begs the question are these tones all necessary?

The repeater antenna was located on a tower belonging to a television broadcast station. Contact was made at the station and the situation explained. Station staff were very helpful providing the telephone number of the manager for the station technical staff. Station staff did not know at the time who the repeater belonged to but assured the PRA member it would be turned off by Saturday morning.

The repeater did turn off finally and is no longer causing interference. The PRA Enforcement Teams would like to remind all repeater owners that you have an OBLIGATION to monitor your GMRS system to PREVENT such occurrences. Situations like this should not take days to resolve by other licensees.  The repeater itself had no control operator on duty to monitor it’s functions  and control operator is REQUIRED.

When no one is using a GMRS repeater system it should be turned off by a control operator to prevent unauthorized operation or malfunctions when no operator is on duty. This is particularly true in areas like New Jersey and New York where there are numerous GMRS repeater systems sharing the same frequency. It is the polite and courteous thing to do.

(PopularWireless.com) A member of the Personal Radio Association’s Enforcement Team for the State of Virginia found this parking-lot call box and several others like it broadcasting on General Mobile Radio Service frequency 462.575 MHz from a college campus. An official complaint was filed with the FCC Enforcement Bureau office in Gettsyburg, PA. by the PRA after units were found in multiple campus locations.

Two of the call boxes attracted considerable attention after broadcasting recorded emergency announcements every few minutes, one after the other, twenty four hours per day for over a week in November 2007. The call boxes were heard from a considerable distance and did interfere with licensed GMRS users attempting to use their family’s repeater in the vicinity of the college. At least one of the boxes was off frequency tolerance as measured by a sophisticated two-way radio measuring instrument. Subsequent to filing the complaint the Commission contacted the college administration. Transmissions from the malfunctioning boxes ceased after that contact was made. The FCC is currently investigating.

The college had no FCC license to operate the call box transmitters on the GMRS frequency. These call boxes have manufacturer identification plates indicating the boxes are CALL24 brand, a division of RCS Wireless Technology. The identity of the company that sold and installed the boxes is not known to the PRA as of the date of this article.

General Mobile Radio Service frequencies require an FCC license. Organizations, companies, schools, or associations have been ineligible to license in the GMRS since 1989. Only individuals are eligible to license in the GMRS.

Schools are eligible to license such devices within a large pool (hundreds) of radio frequencies set aside for commercial or local government use. Obtaining the proper FCC license does require the expense of a frequency search and use of a frequency coordinator as well as an FCC license fee.

GMRS licensees share just eight repeater output frequencies. Across the USA GMRS licensees have found unlicensed use by commercial GMRS pirates as they were coined. Presumably unscrupulous radio shops put unsuspecting victims on GMRS channels to reduce the fees charged to their customers and to maximize their profit.

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