what about gmrs? anything interesting with that?
Not really. Most areas tend to have some GMRS repeaters. It's kind of like ham, except you buy a licence instead of earning one by passing tests of radio/electronics knowledge and you're limited to those few channels. Repeater owners there can be quite territorial. You're supposed to obtain permission from the owner before using it and many would refuse to all except their special clique. You'd hear them talk about radio crap, like they do on ham repeaters but since the licence is good for the whole household, before cell phones were commonplace you'd here a guy's wife yelling at him over the radio to pick up milk from the store or whatever. You could piss off repeater owners by using their repeater without permission, transmitting without a callsign, tieing it up with useless stuff. These days since GMRS use is down so much (thank cell phones, FRS radios, etc) they'd probably just thank you for testing out their repeater system for them since no one's used it in so long. Also, GMRS operators seem to be very pissed that FRS manufacturers have commonly added GMRS channels to their radios only tacking in an application for a GMRS licence and few words about the licence requirement in the manual. Of course, no one reads the manual and promptly tosses it into the garbage can and people just think WOW I have a radio that works on 22 channels instead of 14 and uses the GMRS channels just like the FRS channels but without a licence. The GMRS folk call these people the "bubble pack pirates" and some of them spend a lot of time and effort trying (in vain) to track down 8 year old neighbourhood kids operating without a licence when they paid money ($80/5 years) to be able to talk on those channels. If you have one of these types of people in your area, they could be fun to provoke.
