E1654: 3 GMRS Repeater Linking Comments That Will SURPRISE You

The same gentleman who made that proposal to the FCC to add new channels to GMRS also made a proposal to keep in place the restriction on disallowing GMRS repeaters to be linked. In other words, he is against repeater linking over the Internet. So I made a video about that, made a video about that, and I called it three critical risks of GMRS deregulation you must know, And I asked during that video, I was like, so what do

you guys think? I was like, you know what, Generally speaking, I'm against the FCC restricting GMRS users and repeater owners from doing everything from doing things. I'm against more restrictions. Okay, I say, lift as many restrictions as you can just get rid of them. Okay, for the most part, that sparked some comments, which is great. I really enjoyed the discussion. I don't really care which side of the fence you on.

Thank you for commenting on that video. But I decided to make another video about comments from the first video because the comments were not going in the direction I

expected them to. So let's check this out real quick. Okay, We're just going to start right here at the bottom, and these are pretty much the oldest comments right here, and this one right here says the first comment says, now, I say yes on being able to link repeaters together, and it should be repeater's own responsibility to control it,

which it already pretty much is. And then this guy, the only comment to that, says, yeah, that has worked so well with the North Georgia and similar groups, hasn't it? Eye roll? Okay, So a few of the comments in this video specifically talk about n GGMRS North Georgia GMRS group okay, and some other comments talk about I think that group but several groups that have put up GMRS

repeaters and started to charge people to use them. And yet another set of comments Another theme of comments I've seen is that people are linking multiple GMRS channels together. So the theme throughout this video you're watching right now is current repeater systems that are still linked even though the FCC has come down and said not to link them anymore. Pay to play, pay to play on If you don't pay, then you're not allowed to use this

GMRS system. And thirdly, linking multiple repeaters in the same metropolitan area metroplex metropolitan area, linking multiple repeaters together into the same network using multiple channels. Okay, so those are the three things we're gonna talk about today. We'll come back to this North Georgia GMRS because there's a lot

of comments about that. So this guy agreed with me linking, and again I mentioned in the video, I said, hey, I said, generally speaking, I prefer that we are allowed to link GMRS repeaters together, and this guy came along linking should be allowed. If they are freaked out about too many link repeaters in congestion, put a cap on it similar to the maxi number of mestastic note hops. I believe there are more positive aspects when LINKDN GMRS

prator repeaters than any theoretical negative aspects. Repeater operators should be allowed that option, even if that is limited to a few channels. I also think it is very poor argument against repeter linking the arguments that were made against linking in the previous videos. What he's referring to, I think you can still link repeater's question mark. I know, I know that's a pet peeve of mine and most

of people. Most people don't probably read it that way, but this guy is asking me what he thinks because he put a question mark at the end of a statement. Moving on, okay, GMRS only has eight frequencies. We have a guy who has several repeaters using different channels in very high places and basically started interfering with other repeaters in the same channel. There was a complaint by several repeater owners and we have told him to stop by the FCC. On personal note, I have zero interest to

conversations one hundred miles away, okay. Conversations one hundred miles away okay. And I did a quick search just to clarify, just to confirm. I was like, hey, groc, because AI is the answer to everything, right, what is the purpose of GMRS radio? Right there? And GROX says the main purpose GMRS is to enable personal and family communications without relying on sollular networks, especially in remote off gride areas. It fills a gap between unlicensed FRS radios short range

low power and amateur HAM radio, which requires testing. Unlike FRS, GMRS requires a simple tenere licensed thirty five dollars feeno exam that covers the license holder and their immediate film, making it accessible for use. But let's not listen to GROC. Let's not listen to AI. Let's go over here to Wikipedia, which GROC just pulls from multiple websites, and it will tell you which websites is pulling form Wikipedia. General Mobile Radio Service Land Mobile FM, UHF radio service designed for

short range to a radio voice communication voice communications. Some people have mentioned APRS. Some people have mentioned digital keyboard to keyboard designed for short range to a voice communication and authorized under Part ninety five US USFCC Code. It requires a license in the United States, but some GMRS compatible equipment can be use the license free in Canada. The US GMRIS license iss for period to ten years.

United States permits the use by adult individuals who possess a license, as well as their immediate family members immediate relatives gmrs. GMRS radios are typically handheld portables, much like FRS. Gm RISK licenses are allowed to establish repeaters to extend their communication range. However, RepA cannot be linked together over the Internet nor connected to the public switch telephone network. So somebody got on Wikipedia and made some updates. So good.

So it does say in the FCC documents that GMRS is meant for localized, localized traffic where cell networks might be spotty or not exist at all. It doesn't say anything now if you dig down into it a little bit. I'm not going to read the entire part ninety five document right now, but I can link it in the description. Blow you guys, let me know what you think. One

of the themes another one of the things. One of the subset themes in this comment section of this last video I made was MCom Emergency Communications, and GMRS was not really ever made for MCom. Sure you can use it. I'm not saying we shouldn't use it for that, okay, But a lot of people are coming along saying we

should allow linking. We should do this because during emergency situations, gmrs can or can't be used for this, And I'm like, not really what it was meant for, not really what it was not meant to do, skyworn or storm chasing, weather spotting. National Weather Service doesn't get on gmrs and use GMRS to communicate with spotters, not to my knowledge. If that happens in your area, please comment blow I'd

like to know about it. I'd like to do a whole other video on that topic, but suffice it to say, this is not one of the things that they really originally sought to do with gmrs. So maybe that could be another video. GMRS as MCom and see what we're talking about there. Well, let's move on to the three themes of this video. I have to agree with you. I live in a national radio quiet zone. Okay. I like the idea of link repeaters. There used to be a DMR repeater for GMRS in Pennsylvania, but it was

an experimental repeater. Some people have talked about DMR on GMRS. Okay, I am for linking and the use of things like Zelo to connect to Okay, not really what we're talking about today. Here in Los Angeles, there are two repeaters that use the RPT six hundred, but with different tones. One of them always bleeds into the other. I think it's running one hundred watts. Okay, do you think the FCC comes up with VHF frequencies that the price of

the radios can increase? Possibly? Yeah, possibly? Okay, here we go here, so everybody up until now, up until now, I said, yah, yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree linking should be allowed. Okay, so let's take a let's let's take a small turn here. No to linking. I operate three GMRIS peeters in different areas with only eight pairs.

Linking different pairs hogs limited resources. If someone linked multiple machines on one frequency pair and used a voter and remote receivers, then that would be less of a problem. That is true. So one theme that I found is that people in fact, during the premiere video, somebody was talking about how somebody in their area had linked multiple channels together. There are sixteen visual frequencies that make up

eight repeater channels. I support the ability that we have the ability to link repeaters, but as you said, linking GMRIS reators will require FCC to designate certain channels for linking. Well, maybe wrongly disagree There are not enough GMRS duplex channels to support it. Your idea to designate a couple of GMRS channels for link is the best idea I've heard. I said that in the last video, So I said, so here's the thing, Okay, I said, I was going

to talk about three themes today. Number one multiple channels. So during the premiere video of this last video that we were watching, one guy came along and he's like, no, this shouldn't be allowed, because when it was allowed, someone in my area had all eight channels linked together. So there's eight designated GMRS repeater channels, and you can use those same frequencies as simplex, but there are offset five

megger Hurts offsets for the repeater channels. And I don't know about you guys, but I live in Dallas Fort Worth, which is a pretty big metropolitan area. There are places bigger. Houston Metro is bigger than US, Atlanta, you know, New York City, of course, La San Francisco. Okay, so I don't live in the biggest metropolitan area in the United States, but I don't live in the sticks either. Okay. We have like four GMRS repeaters throughout Dallas Fort Worth there

used to be two in Dallas. There was one in Fort Worth, one in Bedford, maybe one in Arlington. And these are not really close by to one another, okay, But in the major city of Dallas, the largest city in this area, there was only like two maybe three ever at one time. So you would need someone to set up a link and have a repeater on like channel eighteen and another repeater on channel nineteen, another repeater on channel twenty and link all of those repeaters in

the same system. So I had said on my last videos, like how about designating like a single channel or a couple channels? Channel twenty one and channel twenty two. Just off the top of my head, those are link channels. Everything else is just for standalone repeater traffic. That would be okay. That would eliminate the problem with linking. Linking channels together anyway, I have never seen even when linking was allowed. We had one repeater in Dallas that was

linked into a Texas system. We did a net. I say we I checked into it like twice, didn't I wouldn't part of the net. They did a net once a week. I want to say it was on WENSDA. I could be wrong. About the date though, But they would do a net and we would talk to other GMRS users throughout the state of Texas, and that where I thought that worked well? Okay, but it was just one channel. It was one channel on one repeater in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and you had to tune

over to that channel to get into it. Where in the world are there enough GMRIS repeaters put up where every channel is being connected to a link system and they're all so close together to one another that you can't turn your radio doll without hearing the same traffic on all eight GMRS repeater channels. Where does that happen? If that's happening, then one of two things is happening. Either one GMRS repeater owners are ignorant. In other words,

they don't know. They don't know that they shouldn't be doing this. Okay. Why would you put up repeater on channel eighteen and link it into a system when there's a repeater two to five to ten miles from you on channel nineteen that's already the same part of that system. Okay. Are we looking at sad Ham's here, because that's something a sad Haam would do. Why I'm not using that repeater. I'm gonna put up my own repeater and then just do the same thing over again. That's stupid. That's stupid.

Anyone who's doing that is dumb. Okay, Now it could be that they just don't Maybe they don't know, but how would you not know If a common user can get on GMRS and tune through all eight repeater channels and hear the same exact traffic linked traffic on all eight repeater channels, I've never heard of such a thing before making this video last time, I've never heard of such a thing before reading that in the comments section, I've never heard of that, and I've never experienced that

because I've driven around with my GMRS radio, scanning through the channels well on road trips and talking on repeaters here in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and I've never seen that before ever at all. Thanks for the video, Jason. Just by the nature of only eight channels, if linking becomes a big thing, those channels could be very very busy. Note to linking for me as well. If the FCC wants to add a few channels of why linking, than

good yep. GMRS Repeater Lincoln should be absolutely be allowed just like HAM repeaters. See this is the comments that I was expecting to see on this video. I own and operate community gm rsipater and often collaborate with my local HAM GMRS repeater owners to ensure no interference by existing gm RS peters and expand our radio coverage areas responsibly. We learned anything for the events of western North Carolina during Hurricane Lean is that any communications? But if it's

all when it is needed the most. Giving the ability for families, not just individual operators to talk to others family members outside the area should be an FCC priority. That is an FCC priority for hams, but not gmrs, because, like I said, I don't really think GMRS was ever really supposed to be used for InCom I would love someone to point out an article where that's wrong. And again I haven't read through the entire document in part ninety five, so maybe it's in there somewhere. I don't know,

Maybe I should read that. I've read pieces of the document, but not the entirety thing. Now, all this talk of what you can and can't do and all these restricts, is all this limited bandwidth on gmrs. Yes, that's true, and that's one reason why this low band proposal has been mentioned. But if you really want to expand your horizons, and you really want to go get a lot, a lot, a lot more places to talk digital CW, digital voice, keyboard to keyboard, whatever, check out Ham Radio Prep and

go get your first Ham Radio license. Ham Radio Prep offers classes for all three courses. They offer classes for satellites emergency communications something which again I don't think GMRS is really meant for. And they offer baffing basis class HF classes whatnot. They're working on some really new classes for next year as well. Buy their packages today. They never expire even when the question pool updates. Save a twenty percent discount on everything for ham Radio Prep with

the coupon code Jason twenty. Go out there, get your HAMM Radio license and go be able to do all of these things that GMS is trying to do but was never designed for. In New Jersey, we have some large linked repeater systems. This was written eight days ago. At the time of this recording, you still have this, Okay, One in particular has been trying to monopolize itnopolize Dot six hundred for years. They are now spreading to other pairs. It is a huge problem as they have areas where

they're stepping where they are stepping on everyone. You can't even use GMRS in some of these areas. The FCC does not have the bandwidth to police this. GMRS has become the very bottom of the priority. As you said, all of this can be done on the handbands. My opinion after seeing firsthand what happens, is that they should

not allow linking in gmrs, keep up the handbands. There's no reason that these folks want to build a link repeater system and what he and someone comes along and asks what repeater system is this exactly referring to Jcaes thinking more of the lines of blue coom interesting, okay here it is okay, so here this is one of the themes I said. We were going to talk about three different things, linked channels, which I mentioned that a minute ago, pay to play, and which systems are currently

linked together. So we talked about this one in New Jersey. Who knows about the North or the North Georgia GMRIS system which apparently is still linked together, and who knows about this one in New Jersey? There is a group here that has all eight pairs tied up, linked and paid to play, enforced the rules you have before you make more rules. And again I replied, and I said, it is stupid to link all eight frequencies together. Jason. But Jason, you told me in the live chat that

doesn't happen. I've never seen it happen. I've never seen that happen. Where is this guy? There is a group here, he doesn't say where he is. Where are you that you are linking channels together? Okay, let me explain something. Linking repeaters together and linking channels together is not the same thing. Okay, Yeah, you can do it, Sure you can. Okay. Linking repeaters together means I have one in Dallas, I have one in Houston. There's one in Oklahoma City. There's

one in uh Elpaso. There's one in Atlanta, there's one in Podunk, Arkansas. And these are all linked together. They may be on different channels, but there's one in the Dallas area on Channel twenty or whatever channel, and all the other channels are free and not linked into the system. So what people were saying in the premiere comments of that video were that there were people in a certain area all in the same area, all the same and

I didn't really get the area. So where is this happening? Okay, there are people in the same area linking eight repeaters together, each eight repeater, each of the eight repeaters is on a separate channel, and they're all tied into the same system. That's dumb. Why would you do that? Why would anyone do that? I hesitate to believe that actually exists. Number one, I hesitate. Please. People have a way of exaggerating, especially in YouTube comments. I have a way of exaggerating. But

maybe it is. I'm not saying it's it's not impossible. But who does that? Again, I live in a huge metropolitan area and I've never seen anything like that happened. Who does that? And that's what they're talking about right here in this comment. There is a group here that lists all eight repeaters tied up, linked and pay to play. I said, it is stupid to link all eight frequencies together. But Jason, you told me that doesn't happen. You told

me in the live chat that doesn't happen. I said it, Yeah, I did. I did say that. I did say that it doesn't happen because I've never seen it happen, okay, and I would think that people are smart enough to understand the difference. The North Georgia GMRS group is doing it as well. Indian somebody says, Indianapolis, question of Mark. There's a group here that's tied up four pairs linked and pay to play, but they won't even respond to request to pay them, Not that I was going to

as far as I'm concerned, that's interferenced. Yeah, how are they pay to play? It? Just top on them? What's the barrier? Yep? Look up North Georgia GMRS group. Pretty ugly stuff. Okay, I'm gonna have to look that up and do some reading on that because that's one of the link systems that is apparently still together. I've tried all the pl tones, they're using dcs. There's a lot more to go through. One day, I'll give it a whirl, all right, So once again, what who is doing that?

Who is doing this? Who is linking multiple channels together? So as a general rule, I don't I don't like the FCC giving us more rules and regulations, but perhaps since there are only eight repeater channels, perhaps they should say, okay, you want to link doing on channels twenty one twenty two. But that's all, and don't do it anywhere else because apparently people like this can't be trusted to actually put together systems that work for everyone also pay to play.

What is up with that? What? Yeah, GMRS reputers are open to everybody. They're open to everybody. Now. There is such a thing as a closed repeater system in ham radio, okay, but it's not closed like you have to pay to be here. It's usually like a close to a group or a club or a group or somebody who has a closed repeater pair, and there's not really anything any way they can enforce it, other than to just jump on there and say, hey guys, this is a closed repeater.

Oh okay, yeah, well move off. I was talking to a friend on a closed repeater one time. We didn't know it was a closed repeater. It was listed as in repeater book as an open repeater. So we are talking on it for probably twenty or thirty minutes, and some guy gets on there and says, hey, guys, this is a closed repeater. Oh okay, and we moved off, no problem. I found out like a year later that that guy was wrong nobody's talking about because that was

not a closed repeater system. But even closed repeater system and HAM Radio is not pay to play. We don't have to pay for that. Sometimes, I guess in theory you could. You could say only club members can use it, and you have to pay to join the club. Okay, that's cool, but it's not like a it's not like like you're getting a lot of other stuff by joining the club. Then just the repeater system, it's not a paid repeater system specifically and individually. I don't think paid

repeater systems should exist in GMRS. GMRS is the General Mobile Radio Service. I don't think there should be any paid systems at all. You don't want to spend money put up a repeater, don't do it, No one's forcing you to. You want to put up a repeater, start charging people before I get a commercial pair. That's what commercial pairs are for. Okay, don't do that. So I don't think I think that should be disallowed. I think a pay to play system pretty much everywhere should be disallowed. Okay.

And I don't know what's going on with these guys that where they claim in these comments more than one place that they're linking multiple channels together. Who's doing that? Who's linking multiple channels together? And why would you do that? And that this is dumb. That's just really, really really dumb. Okay, here's one right here, look up n GGMRS North Georgia gm RS. They step on everyone across nearly four states

with their linking. I'd be okay if they had a larger bandwidth, so I've dedicated TRX frequencies for repeaters, it'd be okay. You do have the option to use one of the other seven repeater channels that are not being covered in your area. There are other channels you can use. I don't think people are replying to you realize exactly how many repeaters these guys have spread out across all the South. All eight channels are theirs where I live NGGM and they're monopoly on the frequencies. Is why I

don't get a GMRS license. I'm not paying a guy ninety dollars to hear his talk to his friend. Yeah, yeah, so this guy's so apparently he's claiming this guy's pay to play. This North Georgia GMRS repeater system is pay to play, and they've got so many repeaters tied up that it is going across. But again, you know here talking about I guess you're probably talking about repeaters on top of a mountain range, okay, and bleeding over into four states. Okay, But why would you tie all eight

channels together? You want to monopoly? Why would you want to monopoly? These are these guys. For all the talk about I get in all the comments, all the talking comments I get about sad Hams, that's what these guys are doing. These guys are acting like sad Hams. They want to tie up GMRS repeaters and make them far reaching and time all together on all the different eight channels. Yeah, that should be discillt Yeah, so FCC should go after

those guys. Maybe we'll do another video about North Georgia GMRS. I'd like to see some comments in the video, in the in the in this video below about North Georgia GMRS group, and I'll go look them up and do some reading on them as well. But I think the best solution to this link because I was getting I was getting some positive saying yeah, yeah, yeah, linking should be allowed. Linking should be allowed, But once it becomes

a monopoly like what's being described here by some people. Yeah, I don't agree with that, so so I think there needs to be some compromise. Okay. Number one, I don't think pay to place should be a thing. You should not be able. You should not be able to legally allowed to charge people to talk on GMRS because GMRS is a limited number of channels and it is open to everybody. You don't own that frequency, so that pay to place should not be a thing. You say, well,

but I bought the repeater. Well, nobody forced you to buy the repeater system. You don't like it, go sell the repeater or get your money back. It's not your frequency. If you want to tie up your own frequency and pay and charge other people to use it, get a commercial frequency pair. That's what they're for. Then you do anything you want to do, all the data you want to, You do CW, you do digital digital voice modes, you do whatever you want. Encryption, you'd all the encryption you

want to on a commercial prayer. Okay, but GMRS is for everybody, and you shouldn't be able to monopolize a number one. Number two, how are these link systems still together? I mean the FCC, Whether you agree with it or not. The FCC came down several months ago earlier this year and said linking is not allowed, and as of today, linking is still not allowed. So why are these systems

still being linked together? And number three, anyone who is ignorant enough to tie up all eight repeater channels in an area. Now, if you wanted to put up eight repeaters across your state and make them all on channel twenty and link them together across your state, cool. That means wherever everywhere you go in your state, you can kee up Channel twenty and they'll be linked into every other repeater on Channel twenty in your state. That would be a good use of GMRS linking. That would be

a great use of GMRS repeater linking. Excellent, very good. But it's all on channel twenty or whatever designate channel. So maybe the answer here is for the FCC to say, yeah, you can link, but you have to do it on this channel, on these two channels and nowhere else. And of course they would have to enforce that apparently, unlike they are enforcing North North Georgia GMRS group and maybe one in New Jersey that someone mentioned also, So I

don't know let's kick the hornet's nest and see what happens. Guys, put your comments below, love to know what you think. Don't forget to check out Ham Radio Prep because if you want access to a lot more spectrum and a lot more repeaters, and a lot more frequencies and a lot more power and many more bands, go get your HAM radio license because we can do all this stuff without any regular except for charging. Except for charging, No, can't charge. It's an open system. Seventy three guys put

your comments below. Love to know what you think and we will catch you next time.