GMRS Lic'ed Now what?

[bmalone667]

Hi all,

My brother and his family are going on a cruise in Aug. We are going to caravan down to the ship and he wanted some walkie talkies. So I went out and bought some then I discovered that GMRS you're "pose to" have a FCC Lic. So I've done that to cover us just for the sake of argument. So now I have this Lic and I'm thinking to myself what all can I do with this stuff? I've got my programming cable and i've setup the tsql freq on the radios to hopefully filter other people out.

But until the cruise I'm wondering what else I can do with these things. I hear you can connect to repeaters and such.

I suppose I should get my Ham tech lic. in the near future as well.

Anyone got any advice?

Bryan

 

[rfradioconsult]

What radios did you purchase?

 

[mmckenna]

There are GMRS repeaters out there in some areas, however they are considered private property and accessing them needs to be coordinated with their owners. There are a few "open" GMRS repeaters out there, but they are in the minority.

You can try looking here to see if there are any repeaters in your area: myGMRS.com - GMRS Repeater Directory There will also be information there regarding if a repeater is "open" or requires permission from the repeater owner. Contact information for the owners is usually listed.

Other than that, simple radio to radio communications is what you've got. Playing around with different antenna set ups can change your coverage quite a bit. You might find that if you can't access a repeater in your area you can improve coverage with external antennas.

Other option (depending on the radio and location) would be to study for your amateur radio license. Often commercial grade UHF radios usable on the GMRS band can be programmed to work on the 70 centimeter amateur radio band. Often there are many more open repeaters available there.

You could also check the data base here and see if there are any UHF frequencies you'd be interested in monitoring. Setting up your radio for receive ONLY on any UHF public safety frequencies in your area might provide some additional interesting listening.

Posting your location and which radios you purchased would help us make some recommendations.