85gijunk4x4

ok, i was thinking of outfitting my crew (the off road patrol) with land mobile radios because if we have a repeater we should get better reception when we are at oppisite ends of town, and they are more coppish, i was wondering if a lisence is needed for this application, even if we tune the radios to a fequency that is far away from civilization, and barely ever used, or close to a cb/family mobile radio or general family band or whatever the walkie talkie frequency is called. using cb's we have problems reachin eachother, and truckers always walk on us, or people evesdrop on our stealthy operations, so im llooking for a privater frequency band. any help will be appreciated, thanks

dropzone

iTrader: (6)

FCC
stealthy operations? yep..

85gijunk4x4

i checked the fcc website, but they dont mention any of the frequencies i want to use, just police/fire/ems. im looking to use something around 23.500

Merlin

FRS = no license required, iirc

GMRS = license required

you could also consider 2m or 10m ham radios, which are fairly common mobile apps. license required.

if you have cbs with SSB, you could operate on a sideband with a little more power and a little more privacy (although anyone else w/ a sideband radio could listen in, if they found your channel and wished to eavesdrop). this would still be legal, afaik.

if you have export radios, you could use other frequencies that require a ham license (you could legally listen but not transmit) but be advised - if you get caught, the FCC doesn't look kindly upon cb operators freebanding.

and yes, some export cb radios can also operate on FM frequencies. private? yes. illegal, last time i checked, also yes.

a long time ago the general FCC rule of thumb was "if you even have it in your vehicle, that is proof enough that you used it (or intend to use it), and are subject to prosecution/fines/confiscation of equipment".

long story short, there are ways of getting more "private" communications for free (i.e., not having to pay for a cell phone, or a license, etc...) and ways of communicating w/o the required licenses, but in the long run, better not to take chances.

Merlin

if you're worried about truckers walking on you, you've got 39 other channels (not counting upper/lower sideband) to choose from.

*caveat - stay away from 6, 9, 11, and 19 and you should be fine, unless the truckers are running linears or clipped modulators and are just bleeding over all the channels.

85gijunk4x4

yeah theyre pretty much bleeding over the channels, not so much truckers, but thoseguys that just babble on and on, most comminly coming from mobile alabama. i forgot about ssb, isnt it true that you can use 12 watts on ssb? my base has ssb and i can get well over 40 miles, so maybe ssb will get me around 10 miles in a mobile application. and i just thought of another thing, could i tune my lmr to operate on the upper side band, or does that only work if you have the cb channels tuned also?

Merlin

if your radios have SSB, then i believe they run 12w (barefoot/stock) on SSB. range depends on many things - no guarantee you'll get 10 miles. could be more (lots more) or less, if your antenna setup isn't ideal or tuned properly.

as far as "tuning" a lmr, i'm not sure if you're referring to trying to get a ham radio or gmrs to work on the SSB cb bands or having a cb radio work on the SSB bands (or if you're referring to freebanding).

if you all have ssb capable cbs, then you're set - all you need to do is find a channel to use as your home channel. they're set from the factory, so no need to tune them unless you need to use the clarifier to clear up the signal.

if you are trying to get a gmrs or ham radio to work on the cb ssb, i'm really not sure how you would go about doing that or if it would be even legal (might have too much output power).

and freebanding, fm operation, etc... is generally a no-no from the FCC perspective.

having said that, yes, there are people that have illegally modified radios for sliding, freebanding, operating on freqs that their gear was not originally equipped to operate on, etc... and many, many folks that run illegal linears (in some cases, HUGE linears - we're talking over 16k watts here). it's possible, but not really recommended unless you're willing to have your expensive gear confiscated, pay hefty fines, and antagonize the FCC.

Ripcord_4Runner

I would definitely recommend getting a 2m ham radio. My father has one and when we were scouting for elk in the mountains in southern New Mexico last week, we were listing to people in eastern Colorado while using a repeater that was 150mi from our location. Signal was clear as could be.
Made me want to get one also, I'm working on my license.