GMRS radio piracy - A real problem

I work at walmart and I kept telling customers, if they were interested in the long range radios, that they need a licence.. I just didnt know how much.. now I do..

I plan to get one myself. I recently learned about this when I was looking into getting a long range radio for use in convention convoys. Unfortunately I won't be making AC this year because of medical bill from earlier in the year. But when a few local furs were talking about using GMRS at AC this year, I realized that this could be a problem for the con.

And yeah, the noise on those is insane in big cities. The FCC has totally lost control of this. What they really ought to do is just ditch the FRS/GMRS scheme and reclassify those frequencies for digital radio use and have digital GMRS that can be used at the long range power levels, but with radio groups that can be keyed together so that you have no interference from other talkgroups. That would eliminate this problem completely and give the public a nice easy to use radio system that would not need a license. The only problem I can see with this is that it would render all current FRS and GMRS radios out there as useless.

Some problems with cell phones are they don't get good reception inside buildings such as convention centers or hotels. Some do, some don't. It's a crapshoot with cell phones. These radios are good for driving and keeping a convoy together as they are less complicated then a cell phone and you can talk to multiple people at once.

Now while packages say that you need a license now, they didn't always in the past. Also some people get their radios from yard sales, friends or ebay, or they didn't read the fine print on the box. I just wanted people to be aware. I don't know if the con has had problems in the past with FCC complaints and I'm certainly not about to generate one myself. But as one guy pointed out, downtown will have a lot higher density of radio users outside the convention area and those with licenses may get upset and complain as this has been a growing problem. I only learned about the restriction when I was looking into getting one of these for keeping convoys going to cons. I had a friend get lost on the way back from Morphicon and he was quickly out of range and his cell phone was not turned on and when he did turn it on, he was dialing my home # instead of my cell for help. I located him finally, but it made me look into longer range radios. I was researching the best brand when I came across this restriction and I realized it could be a problem for the con. I see a lot of people with these at AC and I have a feeling a ton of furs don't realize that some of the radios they have come with FCC restrictions on use.

In Canada you don't need a licence to use an FRS radio thats got a very long range :3

Well Giza pointed out the con doens't use them. However my worry is that people using these and causing a nuisance to those with licenses in the area could cause the FCC to come in and force a radio check. That would mean every gopher and con staff member having to bring in their radio to a central point and have it inspected. The FCC has the power to do that. Hopefully they would be reasonable and realize it isn't the con's fault. But I wanted people to be aware that the potential for trouble exists. More people are just using cell and text messaging, but these radios are still popular. Long as people stay on FRS channels, which should be enough for covering the con anyway, all should be well.

So yeah, not trying to cause a panic or lobbing accusations, just making people aware