Hit my first GMRS repeater. A problem and question.

[California Overland]

Like the title says, I was able to hit my first GMRS repeater today. It was a neat experience.

My problem: I was told by the owner via email that I needed to change the duplex to +, which I did. However, after doing this, I was initially unable to reach the owner. I would go back to check the settings and the duplex was reverted back to OFF all on its own. So I went to the next setting, which is offset, and I changed the offset to 005.000mhz which enabled me to reach the repeater.

I looked in the BTECH manual and for my particular unit, the 50x1, the manual says for duplex "unused setting in GMRS-50x1." But it says the same thing under offset! So I don't know why one allowed me to reach the repeater, while the other one kept reverting.

Has anyone experienced this sort of thing with their GMRS or ham units, irrespective of brand?

Unless specified by the repeater owner, does offset always stay at 000.000mhz? I ask because the stock GMRS repeater channel came with a preprogrammed offset of 004.350.

Thanks for helping me make heads or tales with this.

 

[Prerunner1982]

@Downs do you have any knowledge regarding this issue?

 

[Downs]

The repeater channels should be locked in the software of the radio on those GMRS units. All GMRS repeaters are + offset. On the non GMRS versions of those radios you set the +/- to which ever direction you need the frequency to go when you key up then set the "offset" setting to whatever that setting is.

Typically in the HAM world on 2m it's 6 khz (000.600) and for 70cm it's 5mhz (005.000).

For GMRS they use 5 mhz as well and all of them are + offset.

Example my local GMRS repeater is on repeater pair 15/23

So when I'm not keyed up and just listening on REPT15 on the Btech radios ("Channel 23" on the radio with stock programing) the radio is tuned to 462.550, when I push the PTT key the radio automatically switches to 467.550 and when I let go of the PTT it switches back to 462.550.

This throws a lot of people off when they get the BTECH radios because they didn't remove the menu options when they program them for GMRS use even though you can't really change anything related to offset in there.

If you stick with the stock programming all you should need to do is change the R and T CTCSS or DCS codes as needed. You can change up the channel names as well as you see fit in CHIRP which I think we went over in your other thread.