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I would still clear out the receive tone to see if you hear anything.

The green circles on the map are just a very rough estimate. I live 20 miles outside the circle for a large repeater in my region and can use it just fine.

I am going to look into that Ryobi suggestion. That might be just what I need. Thanks for the help.

To answer yall's questions: The repeater uses the same tone for both TX/RX so I set them both to the CTCSS tones he indicated. Neither one of us can hear any traffic on the channel. I thought 100 feet apart would be enough I think I'll try to hear some traffic by myself. I was in town by myself this morning, my wife over 17 miles away (that should be more then plenty but the repeater doesn't cover my house). I did a few test but nothing came back, not even the "kerchunk" According to Google Maps I was about 9 miles from the repeater which, according to the repeater coverage on mygmrs is well within his coverage area. We are both going into town on Monday so we'll try again without the receive tone. I'll also try with wife's radio off. We are using the Btech GMRS Pro which is suppose to put out 5 watts. I think I can put it on low power (0.5 watts) when we test it in town again. I was able to contact her this morning on GMRS 18 about 3 miles away but, as it was pointed out, that was the simplex channel. At the house it's no problem while I'm working outside contacting her but it's mostly line of site. I don't think a lot of people are on GMRS in this town. It was a small town but is growing rapidly. Musk put his Boring Company out here and is trying to create his own town. They are trying to put an Airport out here but people are fighting it. My wife an I say there's too many people moving out here so we need to move further out. I appreciate your help/comments. alfie

I haven't tried one of those jump packs for starting a vehicle but they have a large amount of stored power. I have used a Ryobi battery converted to power up a 20w mobile device (need to find that thread from last month).

LOUISIANA NEEDS GMRS/HAM users.. Yes

If we are discussing simulcast, and lora back bones/ radio. Why is the group not talking to the local pd. Who probably has simulcast already set up. Old gear that can be repurposed, get potential federal grants and be administered ( really only sounds like you need 1-2 tac groups). As well as the license for the extra frequencies. Probably can be encrypted as well. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

My first thought is how close to the repeater are you? Do you know for sure that you are in range and that no hills or mountains or large buildings are in between you and the repeater? GMRS is line of sight and if anything substantial is in the way you will not get through. Can you drive close to the repeater so you can test it?

No, you’re correct in using one of the repeater channels instead of the simplex channels. 15-22 are simplex. REPT15 - REPT22 are dedicated to repeaters. Could either of you hear any repeater traffic? At first it’s a good idea to leave the receive tone empty so you can hear everything on the frequency but you must have the correct transmit tone. Also, if you and your wife were too close to each other it’s possible that the receiving radio was desensitized. Normally I would not expect that if you were 100 feet apart but it depends on the radio. Welcome!

Rept18 should be the correct slot for the site you are trying to access. The question I have for you is what mode are you using to send the tone? If the repeater uses the same tone both in and out, the Tone Squelch is the correct entry. If the repeater uses only a receive tone, the you need the tone on your transmit and the mode as Tone.

Gmrs 18 should be simplex. Rept 18 should be the repeater pair. Which is what you should be using to try communication with a repeater. Well that is how most radios are set from the factory. So radio to radio it should be on gmrs 18. The map view of the map on this site is not very good when it comes to repeater footprint. Well hell accurately measuring footprint kinda sucks to begin with. I would kinda ignore it. Do you have the proper tones set? Where you trying inside of a car? If in doubt get as close to the repeater as as you can and high as you can. Try again at that point. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

Hi ya'll I've searched the mygmrs database and YouTube but could not find a solution to my problem. We've received permission to use a local repeater, Rept18, so I've programmed the tones to the correct frequency per the owners information. My wife and I were both in town, we both have the Btech GMRS Pro, and were tuned to REPT18. We were about 100 feet apart and I tried to contact her. According to the coverage area on the mygmrs web site we were well inside it's coverage area. I know we can't receive it from out house because because I'm out of the coverage area. But that is a different issue I'm working on, get a base station or install my own repeater. I've done other tests and could not hear the "Kerchunk" from the repeater. I've sent an email to the owner to see if I did anything wrong. I have received a reply yet. So the only thing I think I might be doing wrong is trying to communicate being on REPT18. Do I need to be on GMRS18 to use the repeater? That wasn't clear on any of the YouTube videos. I still consider myself new to GMRS/Repeaters so if anybody can help I'd appreciate it. Thanks

Regarding the usb battery pack chargers. They are not really designed to be used as power supplies. They are for charging small batteries. They can power small devices but it is likely they just don't put out the current needed to run radio equipment. You would be better off using a larger 12 volt battery.

Tony: You should consult with the Sonoma County Communications Department. I'm not sure if the Sheriff is still on UHF, I believe their system is still a simulcast system.

I will start with the 4 port USB charger. I initially posted that I had a baofeng UV-5G plugged into a cell phone battery charger and a SR-112 simplex repeater plugged in. Every time I tried to use it the SR112 would lock up on transmit and stay that way for a while before it quit transmitting. The guess was the battery pack did not have enough horse power to support to devices. So I got a 4 port USB hub and plugged both directly into it. Sure as the sun rises the SR112 locked up again on transmit. So I put the radio on the 4 port USB hub with a laptop and a phone and the SR112 on a single USB charger and it worked perfectly. I have no idea why, when both devices are plugged into the same USB port or the same batter pack that the SR112 locks up. Now for the simplex and duplex repeater. I live in a very woody area with lots of hills and ridgelines. I setup an RT97 repeater on top of one ridge and I could talk to the person on the other side of the ridge. When I went two ridges away and was down in the draws I could not hit the RT97. So I decided to take a baofeng UV5G and flip the frequencies from what the repeater had and put it on the second ridge. I was surprised but from the draw after the second ridge I could hit the simplex repeater and it keyed the RT97 and we could talk just fine. Repeater frequencies in the RT97 and the radio stayed the same. Before anyone starts in on why this is not legal, I will say this was testing just for emergency purposes. Just thought I would share

Simulcast is not cheap. You can "roll your own", still about $1000+/site with https://allstarsimulcast.com/. Note, you cannot link into Allstar/Echolink. Second option, which is widely commercially available is JPS: https://jps.com/products/snv-12/ I would also suggest you reach out to your Motorola vendor and discuss if there is a Moto solution to simulcast on analog for your chosen hardware.

They might want to mail them all a letter asking about any interest in forming a GMRS club.

The Southwest Community Radio System (SWCRS) has two separate simulcast systems. I believe both are a three site system with one in the Tucson Area and one in the Albuquerque Area. You can reach them at swcrs.org or tucsongmrs.org for the specifics of their systems. They have the Tucson system phased pretty good very seldom do I here any wah wahs and warbles.

Thanks Unc! I Set everything to Specified Frequency Channel 16. Now, Im able to hear the momentary squelch after letting go of the PTT Button(Kerchunk). Also Set Roger Tone off. So It Seems to Be Working at the moment. Thanks again!

Good day Fellow Enthusiasts, My name is Tony the Chief Radio officer for Sonoma County Neighborhood Auxillary Communication Service(non agency, volunteers). We have created a 20 plus repated system here using the Motorola SLR5700 series repeater. we have deployed 1000's of radios to neighborhoods and teach resilency and self preservation using GMRS/Amateur/Cup and string/smoke signals/bullhorns you name it we will try it, to communicate. I understand that we have very few GMRS frequenciesto use and we want to be good stewards to our neighboring counties. So i want to simulcast to minimize power output and fequency usage. We also plan to install backbone and redundancy using ubiquitous and LoRa radio. i am asking you good people for advice, reference material and/or experiences in how you have done this. Presently i am looking at using the RTCM thin client or a stand alone RPI. I know my way around a RPI enough to ge tmyself in trouble and would prefer a more plug n play approach. of course money is a big consideration since we are a volunteer group. i apprecaite you folks for doing what you do providing that redundancyfor your communities Tony Goodwin Chief Radio Officer: Sonoma County Neighborhood Auxillary Communication Service Sonoma County, CA.

Same here.

Agree. Not sure why one would want to know who is around them ? I wouldnt answer if someone called me on the radio unless it was family or close friend.

Channels 31 and above are receive only. It's described that way on the Amazon page, and it's the same for my UV5G. Typically for these GMRS radios YOU JUST ENTER TONES ON THE PRE-PROGRAMMED CHANNELS (1-22 simplex, 23-30 repeater).