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Popular Wireless Magazine
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August 17, 1999
We will not be assimilated.No way.
1) The purpose of GMRS and Amateur Radio and how each service differs. 2) The interest that a few Amateur Radio Operators have toward changing the character of, as well as the basis and purpose of GMRS to suit their own special agenda. 3) The determined monopolization and control of GMRS channels by a minority of licensees by enabling all tones. 4) Building GMRS systems for the express purpose of providing communication for public service activities and not for directed family communication.
Apples and Oranges: There is no comparison.First the Apple The Basis and Purpose statement (FCC R&R 97.1) of the Amateur Radio Service includes the following bullet item in a list of several definitions: "The rules and regulations in this Part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles: (a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications." Now the Orange The General Mobile Radio Service on the other hand is defined (FCC R&R 95.1) by the following simple paragraph: "95.1 The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS). (a) The GMRS is a land mobile radio service available to persons for short- distance two-way communications to facilitate the activities of licensees and their immediate family members. Each licensee manages a system consisting of one or more stations." Except for the provisions in the various Communications Acts and the GMRS rules that require all radio operators in all radio services to stand by for all emergency communication, there is no defined Basis and Purpose for GMRS to be anything but a two-way radio service for families using mobile radios to coordinate their own purposeful activities. Any comparison between the Amateur Radio Service and the General Mobile Radio Service is a comparison of apples and oranges. Despite the differences, and despite the definitions, some Amateur Radio enthusiasts have built GMRS systems to suit their own unique hobby related or public service related agendas. These systems seem more like apples than oranges. Apples and oranges are fruit. Amateur and GMRS are radio services and that is where the comparison should end. The services are not the same and were never intended to be the same. Why point this out? A GMRS repeater licensee that I know was contacted by another repeater licensee to negotiate repeater-input tones. The same tone is in use by at least three repeaters.. Using this frequency pair can be an intolerable nuisance when attempting to communicate from overlapping coverage areas. My friend has used a single tone system for the last five years with no complaints from anyone, until now. The person my friend was contacted by expressed his displeasure that his repeater was being brought up by unauthorized signals, but at the same time he refused to negotiate or affirm the need for input tones he wasn't using. Despite the fact that this repeater is quiet seven days a week, except for stations attempting to use other repeaters with the same tone, he stubbornly insists my friend change tones to mitigate the interference. To make matters worse, this licensee has virtually every CTCSS tone and DCS tone enabled on his repeater. But wait, it gets worse. This same licensee (also a Ham) claims a special affiliation between his morbidly silent GMRS repeater and a local Red Cross chapter. The claim is the GMRS repeater must be available for the Red Cross so many tones are active. I say hog wash, balderdash, no way Jose, sorry buddy, it cannot be so! The Red Cross has it's own VHF low band channel and is eligible to license in the Business Radio Service. The Red Cross is also supported by the Amateur Radio Service through Memorandums of Understanding with the American Radio Relay League and the various Offices of Emergency Services. There are hundreds of frequencies available to Amateur Radio Operators working on Red Cross activities and most chapters in the San Francisco Bay Area are adequately served by Amateur Radio, CB, Red Cross radio, and yes even cellular phones! The Red Cross does NOT require the limited resources of GMRS and the Red Cross should certainly not be used as an excuse to avoid coordinating tones in this very limited UHF community repeater resource we call GMRS! In the early eighties I served as a Red Cross Disaster Communication Volunteer and Assistant Emergency Coordinator assigned to my Red Cross chapter with the local ARES/RACES group. (I earned my Red Cross 5-year pin by the way.) I also wrote the first RACES plan for my county based on the State model. During my service I took the courses and became certified in other disaster related Red Cross activities. I built a Red Cross radio station that Amateur Radio operators used to support our local chapter. I also participated in a few flooding disasters in the Sacramento Delta. We used Amateur Radio and Red Cross radio to coordinate our efforts. In my personal opinion there is NO pressing need to affiliate Red Cross with a community repeater populated largely by persons with no interest in or mandate to perform public service communication! I know that every GMRS licensee would make their radios and repeaters available in time of need if that need occurred. There is however no requirement at law or even a provision in the FCC rules mandating that GMRS licensees conduct exercises, drills, nets, and tests related to public service. I also know that GMRS channels cannot be reserved for use by the Red Cross. Nothing in the GMRS rules gives the Red Cross any such standing above the routine activities of GMRS licensees. It certainly shouldn't prevent one GMRS licensee from working out tone related problems with another. All GMRS licensees should be required to coordinate the use of tones amicably without excuses. There is no law specifically related to tones per se, but my contact with a source at the FCC provided me with these words of wisdom: "The FCC doesn't regulate PL tones directly. The Policy on PL tones is that the last one to put it on his system changes. However, you cannot leave a tone installed in your system to "hold" it. There must be a current user for each tone. If one changes users, the date the tone was placed on the system is the date the newest licensee with that tone was placed on the system." "If the Commission were to become involved we would probably ask for a list of all call signs/users, their PL tones, all PL/ DPL tones activated in the system and the date a call sign was placed on the system for both systems. If there were unused tones we would request that they be removed. Whoever had the specific tone first by this criteria would keep it. However these are things we expect licensees to do on their own." GMRS is a scarce radio resource. Families in many areas want to use GMRS. Preventing others from using their repeaters by enabling all tones is not neighborly but I am hearing that this behavior is way too common. The FCC doesn't endorse all-tones-enabled and this magazine certainly doesn't and neither should you. The Amateur Service has its good and bad elements. One of the bad elements are the self appointed elite that consumed all of the repeater frequency pairs in the 440-450 mHz repeater band. These hams maintain repeater systems that are completely closed except to a very select group of friends. I'll never forget the exchange I had on an Amateur UHF repeater with two hams I thought were my friends. I attempted to join them in conversation, and one of them turned the repeater off under me as I spoke. Why? Well I later found out I was on the control operator's private, personal, oh-so-secret, super-duper, very special, my-very-own radio channel. An example had to be set, so I was squashed like a bug before I could finish my sentence. Access terminated. Private nothing, it's public spectrum available to anyone that can pass the test! My license doesn't say access to this repeater is denied. I have a problem with closed systems in the Amateur Service and I have a serious problem with like-minded-Amateurs encroaching in the General Mobile Radio Service with the same elitist mentality! GMRS channels cannot be closed. GMRS channels cannot be reserved. GMRS channels cannot be owned or controlled as some Amateurs would like. GMRS is NOT Ham radio! Just because there are no longer channel pairs in the Amateur Radio Service to dominate and control does not mean Hams can do it in GMRS! Hams cannot reserve a GMRS channel as their very own. Shutting out the rest of us by refusing to coordinate tones is improper and may unfortunately attract Commission attention if there is no resolution. But you read what the FCC told me, "However these are things we expect licensees to do on their own." Situations like this should never come to Commission attention, period. This selfish behavior that is so pervasive in the Amateur Service cannot gain a foothold in GMRS. GMRS is a very limited resource for family communication. (Eight repeater pairs.) It was not created as an auxiliary hobby service for the Amateur Radio Service nor for any other radio related organization, that wishes to conduct as its primary mission, public service communication. Those activities are incidental to, and not the primary purpose of , GMRS. There is no excuse for any organization to deny GMRS resources based on an agreement with an emergency provider or based on the potential for using that resource in time of disaster. There is just absolutely no excuse. When public service teams use GMRS they must also stand by while I call my wife about the grocery list. That's just the way it is. GMRS licensees that want to conduct drills and tests and be public service affiliates must remember that GMRS was not created to fulfill a routine emergency need or handle scheduled public service events. The Amateur Radio Service was expressly created with these things in mind. Persons interested in serious disaster communication and public service work should become hams and use the ham bands for organized public service. The process for licensing in Amateur Radio has been changed significantly in the last several years. There is no reason someone wanting to be Ham cannot become one. Just so I'm clear about this, it is my firm belief that in most cases REACT has shown that their primary interest is in monitoring 462.675 for GMRS licensees needing to report emergencies from their mobile units as well as to provide travel related tips for travelers. That is a commendable public safety service under which we can all organize. What these organizations have also done is maintain their repeater systems for the personal and family use of their members. That's the way it should be. You don't create a GMRS repeater so you can use it like a ham would. It is patently unfair to hog limited spectrum space for an activity that is not included in the primary definition of the service. It is also unfair to restrict access to a frequency over a wide area by enabling all tones or operating in such a way as to preclude anyone else from using the same resource because you don't want them there. We will not be assimilated.
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Last updated August 19, 1999 GMRS Web Magazine / gmrs@gmrsweb.com |
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