[MobilePRwire] – Independent developer, Batuhan Akalin, announces today his Holiday Edition release for the addictive iOS hit Melon Truck HD. With the new Holiday Edition release, Melon Truck upgrades graphics, lets users have two different ways to control the game, allows players to unlock all regular levels free of charge.

Down from $0.99, Melon Truck HD is now FREE For Limited Time!

30,000+ Downloads and 5,800 Players to compete against in Game Center!

Melon Truck HD game-play consists of shooting objects, snowmen and pumpkins for holiday edition, to various baskets that are either standing still or on the go. Melon Truck HD challenges players to use the correct angle and speed combinations to gain the most possible points. Each level must be completed with a minimum score of 1600 in order to proceed to the next locked level. However, bonus levels offered by Melon Truck require gamers to pass all levels with a score of 3000 or better. While game play is designed to challenge the users, Melon Truck provides a fun, soothing game tone to entertain everyone.

Melon Truck has been featured in “What’s Hot” Family and Puzzle Games category since the initial release of 4/15. There are currently 20+ media reviews, including iPhoneLife Magazine, all hailing Melon Truck as a “Must-Have” app in your game collection.

Other Games by Batuhan Akalin include; Melon Truck HD Free, Physics 21 HD, and Physics 21 HD Free.

Batuhan Akalin, an indie programmer, is the sole creator and developer of the iPhone Games Melon Truck HD and Physics 21 HD. Copyright (C) 2011 Batuhan Akalin. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Read the full press release at MobilePRwire.com

There are many areas of the United States still considered rural and very rural. Residents are isolated from civilization and often each other by choice. Living this way can present communications difficulties when land-line or cellular telephone services break down in inclement weather or, perish the thought, don’t exist at all.

The General Mobile Radio Service can be a viable communication tool in rural areas particularly if neighbors build a radio system together. Multiple families can purchase and install a repeater system with back-up battery power to use in the event of a communications outage. During the rest of the time the two-way radio system serves to link families and friends for social and business purposes. The family radio is a link to another family group since neighbors often count upon each other just for company as well for emergencies.

This is where everyone is reminded that the GMRS is more than just the two-way radio chew toys for sale at big-box stores. GMRS can be a sophisticated yet easy to use communication option complete with base stations, mobile units and hand-held radios. Let’s look at some possibilities.

The Family Farm

GMRS is a radio service that the licensee can use to conduct his or her personal business. As long as the licensee allows his or her immediate family to use the radio system and not unlicensed employees the family farm or ranch can use the GMRS system for the family business. Individual employees not related to the licensee can use the same system as long as they too are licensed and use their FCC assigned call letters.

The General Store

Wouldn’t it be great if you could call your general store on the two-way radio to give them your shopping list? As long as the store owner and his family have a GMRS license he or she can use their radio to chat with customers, friends and family.

Rural Churches

Rural pastors can use GMRS to stay in touch with the flock as long as each family has the appropriate GMRS license. Rural churches are important centers of activity and support for families living in isolation. As long as everyone (individuals) are licensed properly members of the church could sponsor and share a local GMRS repeater so that everyone in that area had a lifeline to one another.

Travel in Rural Areas

There might be cellular coverage problems traveling in rural areas that GMRS could solve. A well placed local system might provide families with communications on long or potentially hazardous local road trips in rural areas. Where conventional communication fails a GMRS system built by neighbors might provide two-way radio communication to people that travel.

Your own monitoring network.

It is certainly conceivable that neighbors who count on one another could establish a local monitoring schedule so that anyone traveling actually had someone to talk to. When you set the expectation it is a very good idea to make sure someone is actually ready to respond. It might not hurt to get important local folks licensed and equipped with a GMRS radio so that communication is even more meaningful. How about the local sheriff’s deputy and his family, local volunteer firefighters and medical personnel and maybe eve the country doctor. As long as these individuals license as individuals they can use the GMRS to be part of the community back-up system.

(Huntingtown, MD 080307) – GMRS is not Ham radio. It is also not the private playground of hobby buff groups, long-winded super heroes with a delusional sense of self importance, or national public service organizations that consider family communication ((FCC 95.1(a) The General Mobile Radio Service.)) unimportant on their own radio-activity scale. But today I wondered.

Tropospheric ducting ((See William Hepburn’s Tropospheric Forecasts)) is in big time this morning. I can hear the illegal periodic Morse ID’s (( Repeater ID not required see FCC R&R 95.119(e) )) from free-running automatic GMRS repeaters ((Automatic operation prohibited. FCC R&R 95.103(a) )) ((FCC R&R 95.171 Station Operator Duties. Control operator required)) and then comes the DX’er from Virginia. In a blaze of glory and with great enunciation and fanfare he announces his call sign, his national public service affiliation complete with unit number (in the single digits wow!) as though it gives him some special right to access a repeater for which he happens to have the squelch access tone — a repeater hundreds of miles or more distant. ((GMRS repeaters are private property see FCC R&R 95.103(b) )) He’s DX’ing! (Amateur radio lingo for talking by radio to distant stations.) Woo hoo! Look at me I can talk long distances on a radio intended for short distance family communication! Wowee zowee!

It’s one thing to be using your GMRS radio and find that during tropo you are accessing the wrong or multiple repeaters. It’s another to go fishing for QSO’s. ((FCC 95.33 Cooperative use of radio stations in the GMRS.)) The multiple repeater problem occasionally happens to me and my wife as we use a local 575 repeater. When we find ourselves bringing up more than one repeater we leave the air very quickly so as not to compound the obvious interference problem.

Today, the entire East Coast of the United States of America had to listen to what amounted a Ham radio QSO on 462.550 MHz between two hams that happen to also use GMRS. ((FCC R&R 95.181 Permissible Communications)) ((FCC R&R 95.7 Channel Sharing))

I believe that hams should take advantage of UHF tropo on 440, 220 or 2 meters. Hams have MORE THAN ENOUGH SPECTRUM to enjoy their hobby. That said how about knocking off the repeater DX’ing done solely for self aggrandizement and curiosity. It makes you look foolish and silly and it accomplishes nothing, nada, zip. You make it harder for the rest of us and our families to use our family communication systems.

When tropospheric ducting is active, GMRS licensees should make a conscious decision to reduce their talk time with their local users. ((FCC R&R 95.7(a) Channel Sharing)) Keep transmissions to the point, communicate and leave the air. Use common sense. Be polite. Remember that our rules require all of us to share a VERY TINY resource among thousands of families, and hundreds of UNCOORDINATED repeaters and simplex operations. If you can be heard across thousands of square miles while you discuss the health of a mutual acquaintance maybe you shouldn’t be talking! ((FCC R&R Part 95.7(b) ))

I’d like to know what others think of this. Should we add an item to the PRA GMRS Operator’s Code of Ethics that spells it out? What should our reaction be?

It is hard to take the national public service groups seriously while their members and leadership are DX’ing on GMRS. Those groups should consider a POLICY STATEMENT forbidding repeater DX-ing and insisting their members follow the GMRS rules. It’s the courteous thing to do.

Flash! A repeater owner in New York state sent the blog a recording of this same person’s access to the New York repeater. Hard to believe.