Back in the early and mid 2000’s, a group of GMRS licensees based around the now defunct Popular Wireless Website as well as the Personal Radio Association came up with the idea of an Open Repeater Initiative. It was designed to get repeater owners to open up and share resources instead of locking down valuable spectrum, thus reducing unnecessary and difficult hoops to follow to get access to a GMRS Repeater system. As a result, it was thought it would make it easier for the “average” GMRS licensee to use available resources as, at the time, most polled repeater owners didn’t mind sharing their repeaters. The founder of the Arkansas GMRS Repeater Group was one of the founding members of the Personal Radio Association and fellow architect of the ORI.
The ORI standards were simple:
- Repeaters that were open to all users regardless of a club/group membership or not.
- Implementation of the 141.3 CTCSS/PL as a “travel tone” that people could program into their radios as a standard when traveling or visiting different areas.
- Originally, the repeater pair 462/467.675 was cited but morphed into ANY repeater pair using 141.3 as a standard PL access and did not require prior permission.
With renewed interest in the Open Repeater Initiative, we share this information with everyone AND officially support this Initiative.
This day, we support the Open Repeater Initiative, both in idea and CTCSS. This CTCSS will be opened on repeaters as available but we want to just simply have Open Repeaters. Tools people can use as they visit with readily identifiable access information via web or contact. Repeaters that participate in the Open Repeater Initiative that are in the Arkansas GMRS Repeater Group will be notated on their individual repeater pages.
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