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[Thursday, 7 Aug 2025] Group, In recent days I have heard chatter on Blue Mountain '600 and Warrenton '725 re. a new repeater to soon be commissioned. Purportedly, such repeater will have a significant RF footprint. Can anyone add more info on this news, particularly: • What County it will reside in? • Projected commissioning date? • Availability: Public / Private? • Planned channel? • Planned PL or DCS code? • Predicted coverage (rough)? • Etcetera ... ? ___________ Thanks & regards, Peter | WSIC582 | NWDC

I think it largely depends upon the repeater. Most are maintained by an individual or group. Ascertain from the owners what the their terms of usage are. If it is a repeater listed here, contact information can be found by clicking on the repeater. The more, I suppose, unpopular answer is that you really don't need permission. Certainly civil behavior might imply that you should obtain it, but there's an equally salient argument that "mUh fReE aiRwAvEs" or something.

How do you get permission to use a repeater

Yup,, i did and had a save before the radio arrived. I did load a factory file i got from one of the videos on the readio.. I think it was the guy that showed how to set up encryption.

If you are familiar with the DMR CPS, that should be enough to evaluate if the radio will be a match for you.. It's all in the programing and so far thats a good experience. I did read up on OpenGD77 and Baofengs DMR CPS surpasses options to Open GD77. IMO, $75 bucks is defiantly worth the investment for a DMR radio.. Even though i won one in Baofengs contest, i did also purchase one and have no regrets. Does the DM 32 compare well to my Hytera DMR radios?? Pretty close, enough to impress me..Front end programing on the radio itself is much easier than Hytera, but i prefer to use CPM anyway. I haven't tested out the encryption yet, planning to do this when i get back from camping. I did program and test some ditial channels in MURS and found programing pretty straight forward.. Setting up call groups, private contacts is also straight forward... Heck,, you should try to enter Baofengs monthly contest and try to win one..

Exactly!!

Cover the driver/power supply with tinfoil to see if it reduces. If it does put it in a metal box. Unless it's already surrounded by metal cause in that case you're done.

Direction set to "+" correct? I had a few issues with the offset not saving and I realized that I had the direction set to "-." Not sure if it will help, but that was my (limited) experience. Best of luck to you!

My initial set up involved the top of my Big Green Egg, a cookie sheet, and the mag mount antenna. I was able to hit the repeater but my traffic was unintelligible I was told. That's when I went to the Jeep hood. It terms of elevation, the repeater is roughly 800' higher than I am at about 40 miles away. Looking at a topographic map, I was surprised this morning to see that I do have a relatively unobstructed line of sight to it. I mean, Obviously I can't see it 40 miles away, but from my elevation at about 800' and it's elevation at about 1600', there's not much between us and with the 3db gain on the Motorola stubby, I guess it gets "up" there well enough. I'm still in shock, honestly. I had zero idea that GMRS could go that far....especially not a 5W HT and slapdash mag mount on my Jeep in the driveway.

Yes, I saw the need to delete channel, I tried that also.

Some of the “UV-5R” style of radios require you to actually “delete” the channel before going into VFO Mode, reprogramimg the information and then saving this information into the same channel number.

LEDs are known to cause interference. The cheaper ones are worse. I have some Amazon 4 foot LEDs along with some cheap screw in LEDs from Walmart in my garage. all of them cause a lot of interference on my dual band and GMRS radios when the lights are on and I have radios on inside the garage.

Can’t you download the CPS even though you don’t have the radio so you can see what you think?

Not sure what the system is. Everything I've been listening to has been in the 150-155Mhz range so far. It's been very clear and has amazing range 15-30 miles I've heard it. They just built a new police station and have been moving in. I hear them doing lots of radio checks and sending out the EMS and Fire tones. I've noticed that some of the communications have gotten weaker and have hiss and scratchiness to them when it use to be nearly perfect other than HT inside buildings. Recently the traffic is down from what I'm used to and the wife isn't to happy about that as she enjoys listening to the chatter. Like to keep the little lady happy and keep receiving the communications. I believe the old system was 3 transmitters on a single tower but that's just a guess. The new system on top of the new building has multiple antennas that I haven't gotten a good look at yet. All in a row, maybe 8 of them with a short (24"?) blue dipole on top. Haven't noticed if they have a folded dipole on them or not.

I am very familiar with Baofeng DMR CPS programming and how OpenGD77 (only available in a “limited” number of DMR radios) improves upon that experience. I have no experience with either Hytera or Harris DMR CPS software. Since you express so much enthusiasm about these Hytera and Harris programming benefits, that you say are now being utilized by Baofeng in the DM-32, I was hoping you would share those benefits with us. You assert that the “new” Baofeng DMR CPS software is a game changer on the DM-32 and I am trying to access whether another $75 purchase for this game changer is worth it.

You need to check the reception with the Ditch Light activated to see if the LEDs will interfere with your signal.

After the controller receives a valid / assigned ID for the unit transmitting (P25, LMR or conventional 800/900 trunking) - It allows the received transmission to be sent to the next available repeater for re-transmission, in that assigned talk group. One station (except UHF LMR) is commonly used as a control channel / station to continually communicate with all valid units for use in the system. P25 systems also evaluate the signal strength & may move the received transmission to a different tower location in the system, still in the same talk group for re-transmission.

WOW, I think your muffing got burned in the oven...

Are you familiar with either Hytera or Harris CPS? I'm refereeing to the layout and flow of Baofeng CPS being very very similar. The menu tree, function settings, Zones, Talk Groups, Digital Contact etc. is very similar to Hytera or Harris, even the radio settings. It's a very simple layout, I would suggest downloading the free Baofeng DMR CPS and give it a whirl in programming. If you need help, i'm happy to assist.

The antenna mount doesn't look right. Those teeth should be smack into the steel bracket. Can you get a better picture of your mount assembly ?

Sorta yes. In a P25 MSI system you would have 1 control channel that is alwasy control. Then the remainder of the system is available for voice traffic. However depending on the system channel capacity this gets challenging. For a 6 channel TLMR system you could have 3 channels set for control channels, 1 channel for BSI witch leaves 2 that are first used for voice or data calls. In reality you have 5 channels for use but it is managed to use certain channels before others. Now DMR is different but most P25 stuff is similar.

So frequency hopping to boot?

No, Heliax isn't very flexible. It's intended for fixed antenna connections. You could do two runs, one outside. one inside./

That's correct. Trunked systems pick an unused channel for each transmission. A conversation can have multiple transmissions. l

Just curious at what they are. I've been using my radio to listen to the local police, fire and EMS frequencies that I've gotten off the interwebby and just recently they put in a new police station and the calls on the radio have decreased. I see most the other towns are using a trunked system. Not sure if I understand what it is. Is it where they have a pool of frequencies and when there is a communication need the trunked system picks out a frequency for the system to use that isn't currently busy? If they had 10 different frequencies usually lets say the first 3 are normally used but when they are in use the system will send it out on an unused frequency? I'm sure the receiving radios are setup to receive the communication from whatever frequency likely designated by some tone or digital system. So if I wanted to listen and get all of the communications do I have to find out what all the trunked frequencies are and then scan all of them? Or is this just way off base?