(Plum Point, MD) A GMRS pirate with several radio users operating as an unlicensed ineligible entity was identified by the Personal Radio Association on the evening of Friday, September 28, 2007. The pirate was operating a GMRS repeater located in the vicinity of Cambridge, MD on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. As of Saturday morning the same organization is operating the illegal radio system despite having been warned that they are operating without a license and may cause serious interference to GMRS licensees. Radio operation is occurring at a park on the Choptank River.

An organizer of the Chesapeake Man Triathlon event in Cambridge, MD was contacted on his cellular telephone. He identified the Race Director as Robert Vigarito. A law enforcement agency on the Eastern Shore provided the telephone number. The contact the PRA spoke with refused to shut down the radio system or to call the radio company that rented them the system citing safety concerns as their event was already well underway and would continue on Saturday, September 29.

GMRS licensees in the DelMarVa area including other unlicensed persons using GMRS are requested to avoid interfering with the event’s communications on 462.675 MHz. The Columbia Triathlon Association, Inc, appears to be the victim of their radio provider as is the case with most instances like this one. The United States Coast Guard is providing law enforcement support on the river and the the Cambridge Police on land near Great Marsh Park. This is a large event. The pirate repeater may only be in operation one more day.

The PRA has filed an FCC complaint form regarding unlicensed use of GMRS by an organization ineligible to license in the GMRS naming the Columbia Triathlon Association and the radio company that rented the repeater to them. The radio company information was provided by the association organizer contacted by the PRA.

A GMRS Pirate is a person, organization, or business that operates two-way radios on the General Mobile Radio Service without having first obtained the required license from the Federal Communications Commission. Organizations and businesses have not been allowed to obtain GMRS licenses since 1989. Only a few grandfathered business users remain that have since renewed licenses obtained prior to 1989. The General Mobile Radio Service is regulated by Part 95 of the FCC Rules and Regulations. Individuals are permitted to obtain GMRS licenses for their personal business and that of their family.

An all too common GMRS piracy problem has existed across the United States for years. Radio companies seeking to avoid paying license fees and performing frequency coordination filings put temporary and even full-time customers on GMRS frequencies hoping no one will ever notice. This fraudulent practice was pernicious enough to encourage GMRS licensees across the United States to form the Personal Radio Association Inc., a Maryland not-for profit corporation. The PRA actively reports GMRS rules violations and unlicensed users to the Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau.

GMRS licensees authorized to use GMRS channels pay a license fee and observe radio regulations designed to facilitate channel sharing of the eight repeater frequency pairs allocated to the service. The business radio services have hundreds of channels to choose from but also have specific rules to follow under FCC Rules Part 90. It is not uncommon for a GMRS licensee to have spent thousands of dollars on their own repeater system that they in turn share with other area families. GMRS licensees are forbidden by rule to rent or to take any renumeration other than actual operating costs to/from others.

The unscrupulous radio companies rent radios on channels they are ineligible to use at the expense of those licensed to use the channels. When a local radio shop breaks the rules to put a pirate on the air the pirate is often uncooperative with GMRS licensees pretty much clueless and unaware of any rules or licensing regulations. Pirates typically operate with unacceptable radio practices causing harmful interference to licensed users of the same channels. Pirates are a persistent nuisance in the GMRS. More information on this topic can be found using our blogroll in the Bubble-Pack Pirate FAQ and GMRS Intruder Help. The PRA website is http://popularwireless.com/blog1/go

UNIDEN now offers the MHS550 Marine radio with the license-free Family Radio Service channels. This very unique dual-band VHF-UHF radio gives a boater the ability to use marine VHF for essential boating safety communication and his or her family the ability to chat about family activities on the water or on land without worrying about the on-the-water-only operation restrictions of VHF marine (See FCC Rules Part 80) or the license requirements of a twenty-two channel General Mobile Radio Service radio. (See FCC Rules Part 95) Compared to most of the bubble-pack 22-channel radios the boating family will have fourteen channels on which to operate without a license instead of the seven available on most new 22-channel bubble-pack GMRS radios. The bubble-packs, as they have come to be known, offer a GMRS power level on FRS channels one through seven since the licensed GMRS service allows up to five watts Effective Radiated Power on FRS 1-7. Those channels are actually part of the GMRS shared with FRS. Marketing and sales deficiencies of major retailers over the years since the FCC’s unilateral approval of the 22-channel bubble packs have made unwitting radio pirates of many families using 22-channel bubble pack radios. Uniden has given families back that piece of mind that the radio in use is legal to operate on FRS without a license. It was the right thing to do. You can purchase the radio on line at RadioShack.com.

(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.