Welcome to the Idaho Society of Radio Amateurs
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Our purpose is to advance the radio art and skills, help club members and others, and have fun doing it.
We meet weekly on our 2 meter net, and monthly in person at our club meetings. Feel free to participate.
Club Update:
Greetings,
Greetings,
We had a great meeting last night (26 March 2026) for the monthly ISRA Club meeting. Our presenter was Bruce Hall. He brought with him Randy Alley, Ray Booth and Lance Price. These individuals are the prime movers behind setting up a resilient radio communications network in Garden Valley Idaho so that folks have a way to communicate in the event of a loss of power, cell service or find themselves in need. The basis of their radio communications is GMRS. General Mobile Radio Service. One can get a license by simply applying and paying $35. GMRS is similar to FRS with two major exceptions. GMRS can use repeaters and have 8 Repeater “channels” available and GMRS allows up to 50 Watts of power.
Bruce led the discussion and he covered why they chose GMRS, the challenges the group faced and continues to face with regard to getting people on the air, and a few of the technical challenges as well. GV GMRS, as they are called, meet monthly at the library in Crouch to talk about the group, program user radios and help those who are technically challenged with getting on the air. They host a weekly Net at 8:00 PM on Repeater Channel 27 as well as Channel 19 Simplex. One note, the GMRS Repeater has a Tone of 127.3 in case you want to join in if you find yourself in Garden Valley on a given Saturday. No tone is used on Channel 19.
You might ask why we had a GMRS presentation instead of some other topic more focused on Amateur Radio. What Bruce and the group found is that there are a lot of folks that can and would use two way radio in the manner GV GMRS is doing but don’t have the technical skills or the desire to get a Ham Radio License. Bruce mentioned that a third of the group do have their Ham Radio License though and that in doing so, GMRS provides the local radio net capability while Ham Radio provides a county or regional radio communications capability, basically a two-tiered emergency communications radio construct.
Many Thanks to Bruce and company for driving down here and talking to us.
The next meeting is the 23rd of April. Nils, W7BFM, has graciously agreed to present on DMR. The Star Ham Radio Community is heavily into that right now and he is one of the leads on that effort.
Reminder, we now have club patches! If you want a club patch, see Alicia at the next meeting. Here is photo. It has an iron-on backing. Price is $8 each.
Our Weekly Radio Net is doing well. We are still averaging about 22 Check-Ins week to week. If you haven’t checked in and would like to, the Frequency is 146.94 with a PL of 100. We do the net on Sunday night at 7:00 PM.
If you have an idea for future presentation topics or would like to present something yourself, feel free to email K7BSE14694@gmail.com.
Again a Reminder: we have a weekly ISRA Club Radio Net on Sunday nights at 7:00 PM. All are welcome to check in. The ISRA Repeater is 146.94 with a PL of 100. We look forward to hearing you on the air!
73, Bart
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