Another HAM vs GMRS question

[KonzaLander]

@Billy Hung - If you are only wanting radio to communicate with your buddies on the trail, you should use the same kind of radio service they use otherwise you will not be able to communicate with them.

The GMRS license is $7 a year. payable in 10 year increments; meaning that you pay for 10 years at a time which is $70. It allows multiple family users and GMRS Radios which means those covered can each operate their own radio.

It is important to note that as a ham, a 3rd party may transmit a message with your radio while under your direct supervision and you maintain control of the station. This means your co-pilot can transmit while you are driving. While this doesn't give your entire household a license to transmit whatever or whenever they want, it does make using ham radio on a trail that much easier.

Part 97 → Subpart B → §97.115

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) published by the Government Publishing Office

www.ecfr.gov

 

[M Rose]

I have been considering this topic for a few months now. My 4X4 club (Trail Seekers, Wenatchee, WA) is heavy on HAM because the founder is a HAM enthusiast and promoter. I have yet to understand the disadvantages of GMRS. There are 22 discrete channels of GMRS with 8 of them authorized for not more that 50W operation. I am often told that channel crowding can be an issue with only 22 channels yet when I am off pavement I have not experienced this. In addition, each GMRS channel has a range of 38 "privacy codes" which causes transmissions on the channel to be ignored (squelched out) if not set to the same privacy code. This in my mind is the same as more channels. The General Mobil Radio Service seems to have the same power that most mobil HAM units are operating on. Frequency setting is for sure offers more channel choices but why is that a real advantage? I may yet get a HAM license but remain somewhat convinced that GMRS is going to become the common mobile communication system because it is equal in practical use and family groups can use the same $7/year license.

One problem with GRMS I see VS Ham, is the repeater coverages... out here o. The east side GMRS repeaters are few and far between, the closest one to me is 100 miles away and a huge mountain between me and it. Repeaters are only allowed to send a message so many times before the message is terminated (iirc the third repeater terminates the signals). While Ham repeaters out here are everywhere... I can visually see 2 of them from my front door the closest 2 miles from my house, the furthest one I can see is about 4 or 5 miles away... and that is only 2 out of the 5 I know I can hit on a 5 watt hand held. With a 50 watt mobile unit sitting on top of the mountain that the 4 mile repeater sits at I can hit towers as far as 80 possibly 90 miles away... then bounce that signal once on a repeater and hit the west coast. Sitting at the gun show today we had a unit set up broadcasting on 100 watts over 20 meter hitting Main with a 5/7...

You stated GMRS works out to 7 per year, Ham works out to $0.67/ year and free after the first 10 years... if my whole family got their Ham it would work out to $2.67/ year for 10 years and free from there on out...

As @Greg Eigsti , @Prerunner1982 , myself, and several others stayed, Han only starts with the vehicle to vehicle coms and doesn’t end there like CB and GRMS. Ham also has the capability to send out digital packets that hold all kinds of information like gps coordinates, time, power outputs and inputs of other stations on the net, and so much more I can’t even remember everything I saw splashing a crossed the monitor and over the interface screen.

There is enough information sent in digital packets fore a person in Baker City, Oregon to coordinate a marine rescue in the Mediterranean Sea from his basement. Can’t do that on GMRS or CB Bands... So if a guy in his basement can coordinate a marine rescue, what can some one sitting at a RACE or ARES net watch do for a distressed overlander... think about that one for a minute.

Last food for thought... how good are your land navigation skills? Can some one blind fold you in the middle of the night and drop you off in a remote location 200 miles from your home and leave you with a paper map and a compass and a GMRS radio. Then tell you while unblindfolding you “your extraction point is 45.18258, -117.39925 and you have 2 days to get there and a helicopter will be waiting for you”. Will you make it? (Dumb situatio that would never happen to any one in the real world ? Happened to me 32 times in my lifetime, but I was given 18 hours to make it 15 miles and instead of a helicopter it was a truck waiting with food and coffee. I never relied on my radio, I was able to always make my pickup point ahead of schedule... usually 2 or 3 hours early.) Now same situation and swap it with a Ham Radio, and you wouldn’t even need to walk more than 5 miles to get to the bird because a rescue team could use the ARPS data to send a rescue team to your location, and instead of being trapped in the wilderness for 2 to 3 days without food or water, you would be home within hours.

 

[TerryD]

Along with this... that is why we have a dedicated Overland Channel 146.460 then once you make a connection you have 146.461-146.469 to and even further

You actually need to leave about 30KHz between frequencies because of modulation so you'd want to go from 146.460 to .490 then .520 and .550. Otherwise your modulation will interfere with others on nearby frequencies.

 

[JeepGuy91]

One problem with GRMS I see VS Ham, is the repeater coverages... out here o. The east side GMRS repeaters are few and far between, the closest one to me is 100 miles away and a huge mountain between me and it. Repeaters are only allowed to send a message so many times before the message is terminated (iirc the third repeater terminates the signals). While Ham repeaters out here are everywhere... I can visually see 2 of them from my front door the closest 2 miles from my house, the furthest one I can see is about 4 or 5 miles away... and that is only 2 out of the 5 I know I can hit on a 5 watt hand held. With a 50 watt mobile unit sitting on top of the mountain that the 4 mile repeater sits at I can hit towers as far as 80 possibly 90 miles away... then bounce that signal once on a repeater and hit the west coast. Sitting at the gun show today we had a unit set up broadcasting on 100 watts over 20 meter hitting Main with a 5/7...

You stated GMRS works out to 7 per year, Ham works out to $0.67/ year and free after the first 10 years... if my whole family got their Ham it would work out to $2.67/ year for 10 years and free from there on out...

As @Greg Eigsti , @Prerunner1982 , myself, and several others stayed, Han only starts with the vehicle to vehicle coms and doesn’t end there like CB and GRMS. Ham also has the capability to send out digital packets that hold all kinds of information like gps coordinates, time, power outputs and inputs of other stations on the net, and so much more I can’t even remember everything I saw splashing a crossed the monitor and over the interface screen.

There is enough information sent in digital packets fore a person in Baker City, Oregon to coordinate a marine rescue in the Mediterranean Sea from his basement. Can’t do that on GMRS or CB Bands... So if a guy in his basement can coordinate a marine rescue, what can some one sitting at a RACE or ARES net watch do for a distressed overlander... think about that one for a minute.

Last food for thought... how good are your land navigation skills? Can some one blind fold you in the middle of the night and drop you off in a remote location 200 miles from your home and leave you with a paper map and a compass and a GMRS radio. Then tell you while unblindfolding you “your extraction point is 45.18258, -117.39925 and you have 2 days to get there and a helicopter will be waiting for you”. Will you make it? (Dumb situatio that would never happen to any one in the real world ? Happened to me 32 times in my lifetime, but I was given 18 hours to make it 15 miles and instead of a helicopter it was a truck waiting with food and coffee. I never relied on my radio, I was able to always make my pickup point ahead of schedule... usually 2 or 3 hours early.) Now same situation and swap it with a Ham Radio, and you wouldn’t even need to walk more than 5 miles to get to the bird because a rescue team could use the ARPS data to send a rescue team to your location, and instead of being trapped in the wilderness for 2 to 3 days without food or water, you would be home within hours.

I think that is what sparked my interest in APRS. I could care less about constantly beaconing my position around town... I want it in case I need it to share my location when I don't have cell service and/or to be able to send text messages out to give people an update on my well being or ask for help.

 

[Prerunner1982]

I think that is what sparked my interest in APRS. I could care less about constantly beaconing my position around town... I want it in case I need it to share my location when I don't have cell service and/or to be able to send text messages out to give people an update on my well being or ask for help.

Unfortunately there are many places with sparse or non-existent APRS digipeater/Igate coverage, many of which are National Forests.
Colorado has pretty good coverage, the Rubicon trail has good coverage, Moab has some coverage. I went on my annual camping trip to SE Oklahoma last year and on my way down there my last packet to make it to the internet was about 60 miles away from my destination. I kept APRS running all weekend and did not get a single packet out. It wasn't until I was leaving that I got a few more packets to the internet closer to the area I was at, but they were lucky shots as they happen to hit digipeaters over 100 miles away. If those wouldn't have gone through my next packet was until 80 miles down the road.
So while it can be a fun tool, it's no replacement for a satellite device.
I didn't try to hit any of the APRS Sats, maybe next time though.

 

[JackA]

Thanks for providing the technical details of what can be accomplished via HAM radio. The "repeater" issue is interesting. I tapped MyGMRS.com and found the attached map which is not all inclusive but does show a lack of repeaters. Those listed seem to be operated by individuals or clubs. Because GMRS has become of interest in the last 40 years and of growing popularity in the last 5 ~ 10 years I wonder how many GMRS repeaters will be operational in the next 10 years. BTW; Mike Rose OB 20990, in my 33 year military aviation career I have in fact been in that land NAV situation and am here to make this post.

 

[M Rose]

Thanks for providing the technical details of what can be accomplished via HAM radio. The "repeater" issue is interesting. I tapped MyGMRS.com and found the attached map which is not all inclusive but does show a lack of repeaters. Those listed seem to be operated by individuals or clubs. Because GMRS has become of interest in the last 40 years and of growing popularity in the last 5 ~ 10 years I wonder how many GMRS repeaters will be operational in the next 10 years. BTW; Mike Rose OB 20990, in my 33 year military aviation career I have in fact been in that land NAV situation and am here to make this post.

Sorry, Jack I wasn’t implying you personally, I tagged you in the first part of the post to straiten our any miss conceptions you, or any one else might have had about GRMS repeaters. While they are out there, like you pointed out they aren’t necessarily open. To the GP...

Thank You for your service from one vet to another. Look forward to seeing you on the trails this summer... better have a cb though if you don’t have ham. Otherwise we might have to just use hand signals to say high. :)

 

[HIALT2D]

Billy, Like you I needed to try and understand at least the basics. Although a way to just get through passing the test, memorizing the answers wasn't the way I wanted to go. That being said, I'll admit I did have to use a combination of both as some of this stuff is still over my head. I took the Technician test 2 days ago and passed. I credit most of my success to reading the book "Ham for Dummies", Gordon West's "Technician Class" study book and a practice test app I downloaded onto my phone. I also picked up quite a bit reading through the forums and asking questions. In the end, it wasn't as bad/hard as I thought it would be.

Jon, First let me say that you are a fantastic source of help & information, and it is greatly appreciated. I've learned a lot just reading through your posts. For now, I'm going to use my BaoFeng handheld with magnetic roof antenna while I get my feet wet & start researching a quality mobile unit for my van. It kinda seems to me like DMR & APRS capable radios are the wave of the future. It also seems like this is a fast growing area of HAM radio & I would imagine more and more of the repeater folks/clubs will be getting into this area as well, which should increase the number of repeaters capable of handling this kind of transmission. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this & if you think it might be worth it to wait a bit before upgrading to a fixed mount mobile radio?

 

[JeepGuy91]

Unfortunately there are many places with sparse or non-existent APRS digipeater/Igate coverage, many of which are National Forests.
Colorado has pretty good coverage, the Rubicon trail has good coverage, Moab has some coverage. I went on my annual camping trip to SE Oklahoma last year and on my way down there my last packet to make it to the internet was about 60 miles away from my destination. I kept APRS running all weekend and did not get a single packet out. It wasn't until I was leaving that I got a few more packets to the internet closer to the area I was at, but they were lucky shots as they happen to hit digipeaters over 100 miles away. If those wouldn't have gone through my next packet was until 80 miles down the road.
So while it can be a fun tool, it's no replacement for a satellite device.
I didn't try to hit any of the APRS Sats, maybe next time though.

Good point. There's definitely gaps in terrestrial coverage, so it shouldn't be relied upon solely. I'm definitely interested in working satellites for it as well, but I need to order a cable so I can use my ftm-100 with my mobilinkd2 and APRSdroid, since the 100 doesn't have the ARISS path available from the factory.

 

[Prerunner1982]

Jon, First let me say that you are a fantastic source of help & information, and it is greatly appreciated. I've learned a lot just reading through your posts. For now, I'm going to use my BaoFeng handheld with magnetic roof antenna while I get my feet wet & start researching a quality mobile unit for my van. It kinda seems to me like DMR & APRS capable radios are the wave of the future. It also seems like this is a fast growing area of HAM radio & I would imagine more and more of the repeater folks/clubs will be getting into this area as well, which should increase the number of repeaters capable of handling this kind of transmission. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this & if you think it might be worth it to wait a bit before upgrading to a fixed mount mobile radio?

Thank you for the kind words Glen.
Unfortunately the APRS wave has been going on for 28 years now.
When I first got licensed I thought about using an HT with a mag mount external antenna. But I didn't want to have to take the radio out and charge it, so I would need a battery eliminator to plug into the vehicle power port/cig lighter.
And I didn't want to have to hold the radio to my face with coax and the power cord hanging off of it, so I would need an external mic...
And then I decided that I didn't want all those cords running around the inside of my Jeep and waited to get a mobile radio.

Boafeng HT: $30-$60
Dual band mag mount: $25
Battery Eliminator: $15
Mic: $20
Total: $90 - $120+ depending on what version of the radio you go with.

At that point you are about halfway to a nice name brand dual band radio, though you would also need antenna, mount, and coax.
Yaesu FTM-7250DR - $200
Yaesu FTM-100DR - $275
Icom ID-4100A - $285

You can get Chinese dual band mobiles for $80-$150

 

[Prerunner1982]

Good point. There's definitely gaps in terrestrial coverage, so it shouldn't be relied upon solely. I'm definitely interested in working satellites for it as well, but I need to order a cable so I can use my ftm-100 with my mobilinkd2 and APRSdroid, since the 100 doesn't have the ARISS path available from the factory.

That's interesting, I didn't realize that you only had certain path options you could choose from.

 

[JeepGuy91]

That's interesting, I didn't realize that you only had certain path options you could choose from.

Me either! I was a little disappointed to discover that after getting the radio, but I still really like it!

 

[HIALT2D]

Unfortunately the APRS wave has been going on for 28 years now.

Only 28? Should be catching on any day now

 

[Ratthew]

Also the Dual Band feature so you can use your HH to talk to your vehicle to repeater is another feature.

I cant wait to learn how to do this. This would be so friggin cool

 

[J.W.]

I cant wait to learn how to do this. This would be so friggin cool

I think he was actually talking about “crossbanding.” Dual band is simply that the radio will operate on 2 different bands (such as 2m and 70cm). Crossband is when you use a radio to relay a signal from one radio to another, or a repeater. I’m usually not a stickler for terms, just wanted to make sure you look for the right feature when looking at radios.

 

[Ratthew]

I think he was actually talking about “crossbanding.” Dual band is simply that the radio will operate on 2 different bands (such as 2m and 70cm). Crossband is when you use a radio to relay a signal from one radio to another, or a repeater. I’m usually not a stickler for terms, just wanted to make sure you look for the right feature when looking at radios.

Thanks. Yeah learning fast but this is very helpful. Crossband seems great because as I understand it, I could be out hiking in range of the truck while waiting for friends, which would then have more power to transmit my 3-5 w Hand held signal to a 50W mobile that repeats it way farther.

 

[1Louder]

Along with this... that is why we have a dedicated Overland Channel 146.460 then once you make a connection you have 146.461-146.469 to and even further

Problem is most people never switch frequencies. Especially those that are unlicensed and have no clue how to use their radios.

I will say Ham is what you make it. There is the traditional at home base station crowd, the around town mobile crowd, the folks on the trail crowd and probably a bunch of others. In my circle we never use 146.46 but we do monitor it in case someone might be looking for assistance.

GMRS has been gaining a lot of popularity IMHO because of the lack of a required test and cost of radios vs HAM. I don't own one yet. If we could get everyone off of CB and on to GMRS it would make my day. I hate CB. Too many issues with bad antenna setups, poor range, and so forth.

 

[Chris Ludwig]

GMRS is best if in a convoy with other like-equipped trucks simply because it is less formal and more accessible to all that would be in your group, and that statement is a from a General class ham of about 10 years. Simply put, in a convoy of a dozen trucks, you'll find that a HAM license is out of reach to some of the drivers. They might be able fix your truck when it breaks, but might not be inclined to take and pass a tech exam.

HAM is a great if travelling alone in places like the Rockies. The mountaintop repeater networks give you range across the state (or multi-state in some cases) if you can get line of sight to one of those peaks. There are even some mountain repeaters with 911 dispatch patch capability, but I've never tried such a thing. I carry a 409MHz beacon for real send-the-helicopter situations, and an FTM-400 for everything else. My FTM-400 has the MARS mod so it can transmit and receive on FRS and GMRS in an emergency. The radio isn't type approved for those frequencies, but it can be configured in such a way to comply with GMRS standards and limitations. So, while not legally approved, someone receiving would not know if you are on an FTM-400 or a Midland. I also applied for a GMRS license. So, my FTM-400 is configured for GMRS, and I am licensed. I never travel in convoys though so GMRS is of little use to me. APRS is very valuable in the mountains as well as many (not all by any means) mountop repeaters have an APRS beacon co-located with them. So I drive around with APRS receiving. When you need to call out, first check the recent receive list and start calling on the last seen repeater. In Utah, if I can get to the mountain Intertie system, then I'll be heard anytime from about 6am to 8pm. There is always a HAM somewhere listening as long as there is one awake.

CB is obsolete; don't waste a dime on it. Transmitting on those frequencies with 5watts AM is next to pointless. The FCC should have shut it down and switched truckers over to UHF years ago, more like what they use in Australia.

For solo vehicle travel in the mountain west, I'd say carry either 409MHz beacon and a HAM radio OR a 2-way satellite messenger of your choice. If in a convoy, someone in the convoy should be thus equipped, but use GMRS for truck-to-truck comms.

 

[Ubiety]

And to beat a dead horse yet again. APRS is neat and cool and fun and has had my attention for decades (just like @Prerunner1982 stated - it aint new).

Please - if you are considering APRS as a lifesaving comm link when you are in the wild places DON'T DO THAT. In my experience coverage is sparse enough in the wild places that you will be lucky to get packets gated as @Prerunner1982 has also experienced. Bouncing APRS off of ISS or a HAM sat is neat and fun but cannot be relied upon in a situation where time is of the essence. If you plan on going to truly wild places consider a satellite communications device as your primary.

 

[1Louder]

And to beat a dead horse yet again. APRS is neat and cool and fun and has had my attention for decades (just like @Prerunner1982 stated - it aint new).

Please - if you are considering APRS as a lifesaving comm link when you are in the wild places DON'T DO THAT. In my experience coverage is sparse enough in the wild places that you will be lucky to get packets gated as @Prerunner1982 has also experienced. Bouncing APRS off of ISS or a HAM sat is neat and fun but cannot be relied upon in a situation where time is of the essence. If you plan on going to truly wild places consider a satellite communications device as your primary.

InReach. Most people’s lives are worth $350 and a few dollars a month. There are cheapper alternatIves but have much less in way of features.
I like APRS but it is old as mentioned. It is a convenience item (is someone nearby? Maybe I can reach them) and novelty more than anything else.