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Okay, this might seem unintuitive, but on the Digital Channel information screen, where you have the DMR ID of the repeater: 310402, you need to have the Talk Group ID, so if you're trying to get into TG 3104 (AZ Statewide), that's the number there. Try that and let us know if that works better.

Thanks! I live in a GMRS vacuum near Fall Creek Falls state park in Tennessee and I have a difficult time hitting repeaters around me. I figured I would get the RT97L to help out the park and the community.

Yes, i've used all of them. They are all great portable repeaters. IMO the new RT97L gives the best bang for your monies because of the higher power which helps make up for loss in your coax compared to the low power ones. ..and unless things have changed, the Midland is much higher priced, but does not offer much more than the Retevis models.

I like to think of him as the Don Rickles of GMRS.

I've experimented a little with it on my HT and I can hit the repeater from my living room with the counterpoise ON, cannot with it off. The voice clarity is in my opinion, about 50% cleaner with it ON. I haven't tried it on Ham, but GMRS it's a game-changer for my HT

Has anyone used the Midland or the Retevis repeaters? Just curious...be gentle...

I downloaded 2 lists of simplex channels. They have different time slots listed but I also read that some radios will allow both time slots on simplex. Guess I need to look into that.

That’s right. And as you discovered there’s a list of simplex calling channels (frequencies). Sooner or later you’ll want a hotspot too.

Here's the CodePlug. Analog.4rdmf

You can have a custom welcome screen on the DB20G as well.

TalkGroup 99 Color Code 1

Not to totally change the subject but I understand I can also do digital simplex with a DMR radio. I even saw a channel list for it. I guess when funds allow I could get another radio and use my 2nd ID for it and talk digital simplex with them until I get the other stuff figured out.

Here's a link to the Repeater. https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeaters/details.php?state_id=04&ID=8513 I'll get the codeplug at halftime.

I’ll look at it when I get home and have some time but a copy of your codeplug and a link to the repeater would be much easier to diagnose.

Here's a video I made of the CPS settings. If anyone sees anything out of place or anything that should be different please let me know. DMR1.mkv

You just gave me a great idea! I want to try and hook up a spark plug to my 1 KW amplifier and see if the spark plug Sparks with the amplitudes! How Wild would that be?

Not exactly. The Kracken SDR has amazing selectivity. I've used mine literally at the base of the tower and was tracking a signal no problem.

See above But as my post continued RT Systems makes it less tedious and OpeGD77 removes the tedium completely.

Another question, do I need to put the repeater in for each talkgroup or do I stack the talkgroups under one repeater entry? I'm pretty sure I'll have to put the repeater in twice for each time slot.

If you are trying to track someone on the repeater frequency while the repeater is operating right near by it'll detect the repeater, not people talking into it.

I wasn't going to brag, but I have a ghost antenna that will handle 1kW.

My analog signal is nice. I wish I had a DMR repeater closer but the White Tanks and South Mountain are where most of them are located and both are 16 miles away. I might have to break out the 9db Yagi and see if that'll help.

And it may require the older version Windows XP Prolific driver which means if you don't already have it, you won't find it. In some cases, some radios do not like the newer Prolific Windows XP driver.

@amaff and @OffRoaderX, All I can go by is what the other club told us when we asked about the Kraken system. They did have all of theirs mounted on towers with a bunch of other radio and cell services. I don't know if that had any effect or not. It is quite possible that they did not have everything setup 100% correctly. We were considering getting the Kraken system for a couple of our repeater sites and knew the other club had them already. SO we reached out to the other club to get their experiences with Kraken.

Can you get closer to the repeater? With analog you can still understand a transmission even though some noise. Digital is sensitive to signal to noise. When it can’t understand the bit pattern it is completely useless even though you might still be able to hear the conversation in analog. However, 16 miles really isn’t too far. If your analog signal is pretty clear at that distance you should be able to connect to the digital side.