Live audio GMRS

[wrft459]

I was told by a "Live audio admin" that GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) was not allowed to be streamed on Radio Reference, and yet this feed was allowed?

WQGU515 GMRS repeater on 462.675 PL 141.3 in Williamsport, PA atop Bald Eagle Mountain just south of Williamsport. This repeater uses Allstarlink/Hamvoip/Raspberry Pi 3B+ as the repeater controller.and is connected to the internet which allows weather alerts and other radio traffic both of the hobby and day to day chit chat. Many of us are also licensed ham radio operators as well. The repeater is connected to the mygmrs.com network. There is a Eastern Regional Net on Sundays at 7 PM eastern time. The repeater is open to all licensed GMRS operators. Some of the things GMRS does is gets people on the radio and hopefully interested in the radio hobby, but also used for many other things since the license covers your family, it is used for a variety of communications. Its a good stepping stone to get interested in ham radio as well. There are FCC rules that are to be followed which can be found on fcc.gov but that is only for transmitting not receiving like yours doing on here but if you decided to get your license you would want to be familiar with things. (GMRS) General Mobile Radio Service

Visit WQGU515.com

John - KB3AWQ / WQGU515

Williamsport GMRS Repeater WQGU515 Live Audio Feed

Williamsport GMRS Repeater WQGU515 Live Audio Feed on Broadcastify.com

www.broadcastify.com

 

[blantonl]

I'm guessing this feed was grandfathered in.

I can't find any justification for providing GMRS feeds going forward. There is really no audience. Sorry but I would just move on.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

I'm guessing this feed was grandfathered in.

I can't find any justification for providing GMRS feeds going forward. There is really no audience. Sorry but I would just move on.

You could make the same argument for many ham radio streams though. I would say GMRS should be allowed if it’s busy enough or as part of some ham radio feeds (some ham clubs support both) or if it has enough of an audience.

 

[n0esc]

You could make the same argument for many ham radio streams though. I would say GMRS should be allowed if it’s busy enough or as part of some ham radio feeds (some ham clubs support both) or if it has enough of an audience.

I think that's exactly the point though. There really isn't the interest there to make it worthwhile. Just looking at Texas as an example, there are ~650 feeds in the state, 76 of those are Ham, and less than half of those even have a single listener. A single one has 2. Austin TX. In the Top 50 Feeds site wide, every single one is Public Safety. Hams provide an ever increasingly questionably necessary community service, but the bottom line is the rest of the time spent talking about bowel movement regularity and how much time they've been in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly waiting on their wives just isn't interesting to enough people to dedicate the resources Lindsay maintains running Broadcastify for other services.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

I think that's exactly the point though. There really isn't the interest there to make it worthwhile. Just looking at Texas as an example, there are ~650 feeds in the state, 76 of those are Ham, and less than half of those even have a single listener. A single one has 2. Austin TX. In the Top 50 Feeds site wide, every single one is Public Safety. Hams provide an ever increasingly questionably necessary community service, but the bottom line is the rest of the time spent talking about bowel movement regularity and how much time they've been in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly waiting on their wives just isn't interesting to enough people to dedicate the resources Lindsay maintains running Broadcastify for other services.

Then they should stop allowing ham feeds then. I just think it’s ridiculous to differentiate them really. If it were up to me, I’d just say they are allowed but unless you can meet some metric for number of transmissions and also listeners per hour, it would be removed after 90 days or so. I’d also generally not have an archive for them to save resources.

On the flip side, it’s not hard to setup a private feed using something like zello or shoutcast, either self hosting or through a provider.

 

[vagrant]

This is the way

On the flip side, it’s not hard to setup a private feed using something like zello or shoutcast, either self hosting or through a provider.

 

[kenh2os]

People should try to attract more to the GMRS channels. It's a much more adult and responsible crowd, and many Hams are on the frequencies. Here in the Dallas Texas area, we have several great repeats and we have a few GMRS clubs that operate a net control call-in we talk about more GMRS and getting more people to take their ham tests for the furthering of their radio interests.

But just Dismissing GMRS is not right, this is a great place for people to be introduced to the way they will be expected to communicate when they get their Ham License.

But for someone to say "I can't find any justification for providing GMRS feeds going forward. There is really no audience. Sorry but I would just move on." that shows a bit of bias if you ask me.

Maybe try a few local repeaters in your area for a bit, and see how it pans out. Maybe you might be surprised by the interest. I know I would like to see this in the Dallas area. That way when I am out traveling I can keep up with the local chatter and clubs' upcoming events.

Just my 2 cents worth

 

[n0esc]

People should try to attract more to the GMRS channels. It's a much more adult and responsible crowd, and many Hams are on the frequencies. Here in the Dallas Texas area, we have several great repeats and we have a few GMRS clubs that operate a net control call-in we talk about more GMRS and getting more people to take their ham tests for the furthering of their radio interests.

But just Dismissing GMRS is not right, this is a great place for people to be introduced to the way they will be expected to communicate when they get their Ham License.

But for someone to say "I can't find any justification for providing GMRS feeds going forward. There is really no audience. Sorry but I would just move on." that shows a bit of bias if you ask me.

Maybe try a few local repeaters in your area for a bit, and see how it pans out. Maybe you might be surprised by the interest. I know I would like to see this in the Dallas area. That way when I am out traveling I can keep up with the local chatter and clubs' upcoming events.

Just my 2 cents worth

I'll continue to be the contrarian here. I, like Lindsay, just don't see the point. Point one is that at the end of the day this is a privately owned site, and since it's his to do with as he pleases, the answer of him not seeing a point dies at his feet alone. I am sure he has the numbers and data to justify the decision.

Personally, with GMRS, CB, or in most cases Ham (Aside from the debatable utility of ham emcomm and Skywarn activity), by design are personal communication tools. They aren't intended for a wide audience and I think that is where Lindsay is coming from and like I said in my first post, the site infrastructure and resources dedicated to hosting the Winchestertonfieldville, Iowa GMRS repeater so that the Dawsons can ragchew about their small town goings on has very very little general public interest. While your local club may be interesting to you, even in the highly active DFW metroplex, I would be incredulous to find that the topics discussed have value outside of users already active on the system, unlike the public safety and other general interest transportation and service traffic that impact a much wider slice of the population.

 

[jeepsandradios]

Its bad enough GMRS is already ham lite we really have no need to stream it. If you need it so bad send it to zellow.

 

[wrft459]

Broadcasters - radio.de corporate

corporate.radio.net

radio.net said they have no problems with GMRS stuff

 

[pandel]

I've got a GMRS license, I've also held a Ham ticket for over 20 years. There is defiantly a difference (at least in my area) in what is heard on the air. All I EVER hear on the 2 GMRS repeaters here in the Tampa area are people repeatedly asking for "mic checks" or "radio checks" and then nothing after receiving a reply. I've tried multiple times to engage these folks in a conversation... What type of radio do you have? What type of antenna? etc??? Nothing, dead air. If that is all you are going to do, why did you buy a radio and get a license?
On the flip side, amateur is slowly dying as well. Cell phones and texting have killed the hobby. No-one wants to take the time to learn anything about theory or the equipment they are using.
Just pick it up and use it.
If you like GMRS God bless you! Please continue to use it but TALK, use the radio as it was intended. Communicate. Please, don't be one of the mic check morons!
Personally, I'll stick with HF.

 

[Radioflow]

I'm guessing this feed was grandfathered in.

I can't find any justification for providing GMRS feeds going forward. There is really no audience. Sorry but I would just move on.

When is the last time you have polled the users on what is of interest that isn't public safety? I'm genuinely curious as it could be more popular now than it has ever been. It certainly seems that way to me currently.

 

[n0esc]

When is the last time you have polled the users on what is of interest that isn't public safety? I'm genuinely curious as it could be more popular now than it has ever been. It certainly seems that way to me currently.

Talk about bringing a thread back from the dead. But I'll jump back in.

I'm still going to side with BCFY / blantonl here and maybe give you a bit of a different perspective. GMRS is hyper local by design. It's you, your family, and whatever other handful of licenses are in an area. There is going to be no one reporting on what's going on on GMRS, and for the most part, the number of listeners is going to be consistent. Obversely, if a major event happens in a city, the media picks it up locally at first, and depending on scale, maybe it makes state or national news, and users start tuning into feeds / calls nodes to see what's going on from all over the country or maybe even the world to specifically hear public safety agencies providing real time information from the scene. GMRS is going to be general chatter, and if in the same area of said incident, the same speculation and rumor mills flying around on Facebook. That chatter is also not going to be anything outside of what the people in your immediate area are likely to care about. I believe it was offered earlier that to "extend" your reach to people that may have an interest like family out of range, Zello or similar would be a much better fit.

Now for some numbers. In my state, there are ~3500 active GMRS licenses. I'm certain we can agree that a not less than significant sum of those are inactive. There are ~12700 active amateur licenses. Same same as above. Geographically the distribution is pretty consistent too, as there are 5 active GMRS and 50 active ham, but with the knowledge that one GMRS is itinerant only, and at least 10 of the ham licenses are dormant, probably more, but those are the ones I personally recognise as either deceased or not using their ticket.

And as stated last year, really the "value" of amateur repeaters being included in feeds is specific to Skywarn, or other affiliated public safety liaison work that hams contribute to, and not the Sunday night ragchew net or Tuesday morning bowel movement updates while the wife shops at the Goodwill.

BCFY made their opinion clear that they don't see a value in it. It wouldn't interest enough ears to generate enough revenue in return via audio or landing page ad impressions to pay for, nor would there be a statistically significant number of people that would sign up for a BCFY membership to listen to a GMRS feed. I am aware of more than a few people that have gotten memberships just based on either live major incidents, or the desire to access an archive of a call or event in their community. Much smaller number that want to re-listen to Jerry and Cletus field dressing a deer last Saturday morning. I'll get off my soapbox again by ending with this, at the end of the day there is a Jerry Maguire moment here.

 

[blantonl]

You pretty much nailed it. Amateur Radio repeaters is where I draw the line… I just don’t see any redeeming value in broadcasting GMRS repeaters. I’ve yet to see a use case made to me where it really makes since.

 

[egftechman]

Broadcastify has set their rules, respect them. If you want to stream GMRS, you can run Icecast, RdioScanner, and/or OpenMHz on a Digital Ocean droplet for $5/month and you get to set the rules and also take the responsibility. Some people do continuous Youtube Live streams (although that is a lot of wasted bandwidth on meaningless video)...

 

[egftechman]

Broadcasters - radio.de corporate

corporate.radio.net

radio.net said they have no problems with GMRS stuff

radio.net is a directory of streams and does not do streaming themselves (i.e. they ask for your streaming URL to put in their directory)
Also, the "message by message" nature of two-way radio traffic is not well served by linear streaming. The Calls/RdioScanner/OpenMHz approach is much more appropriate for "scanner" traffic.