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I was licensed for operations on two of the Part 90 frequencies using AM - just above 'CB' and just below 31 MHZ for many years. It was OK, but during the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle, the frequencies were a bit noisy with other stations from all over the US "skipping" to my location. That is the primary reason that most Public Safety agencies that were on low band in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, went to VHF. I still have the commercial EF Johnson Messenger radios and even though they are tube type, they are still type certified and still operate as designed (into a dummy load for testing only). These days, with very few stations using low band - it might be a good place to go for Part 90 licensing if you want to be under the radar for some reason. My equipment was AM and worked better than some, because the AM system did not demodulate skip FM signals very well, so the interference to my system was minimal. Mobiles with a 5/8 wave base loaded antenna would net roughly 20 to 30 miles mobile to mobile and 40 + miles mobile to a simplex base. Never needed a repeater with that type of local coverage.

Thats nice but pricey lol. Also I don't have a MOL account (I cant even figure out how to get one) making it difficult to get software, but it is nice to hear Motorola finally moved forward with their software accessibility lol. I still remember the DOS window and the big black box that needed its own power supply.

I do have the repeater channel turned on. It is showing rp beside channel 21 and also has a plus sign above and display shows also, T and SQ

I got all my guys.(all of two of them) there GRMS license.

Adding T-Band spectrum to Part 90 use comes at a huge cost to broadcast services, which is why T-Band is only available where necessary. Broadcast spectrum won't be released unless the buyer can afford to give the FCC the money that spectrum's worth. Whitespace devices are Part 15 and have several restrictions on their operation to reduce broadcast interference; they aren't high-power, fixed-frequency narrowband voice solutions. Lately the telecom industry has been leading a crusade against 'underutilized spectrum', eyeballing 9cm, 6cm, and 3cm Amateur bands along with the bottom of 70cm in hopes of getting free 'whitespace' spectrum (which is subject to the fundamental flaw of the hidden-node problem, particularly on duplex links). In October, 462.5375 and 462.7375 became available for allocation with a 4K00 mask or narrower per FCC-18-143. Those licensees are paying far, far more money for that spectrum than we are, and our use case barely justifies what we have now (see FRS 22-channel expansion). We aren't going to get more than we already have.

Motorola gear is a pain to get programming software for but not impossible. I can take a week or longer to navigate Motorola's process but in the end you will have legal software and you can get the entitlement for wideband operation for free after some quick online training. I use Motorola for the options alone, in the truck I run handheld control heads and a long range Bluetooth speaker mic so I can use the trucks radio well in restaurants our friends houses. The same mic is also on my base paired with a desktop mic, its nice being able to go anywhere in the house and just carry a small mic that allows the use of the base. This gear is a little pricey but can be found used on ebay reasonable, its all comes down to personal preference. Bluetooth Mic that can be attached to most of the newer Motorola XPR radios including portables. http://mwgmrs.com/mygmrs/handmic.jpg This is the handheld control head, it is also the speaker and mic, 4 years old an not a single issue. http://mwgmrs.com/mygmrs/truck1.jpg Radio Head unit is installed under the back seat. http://mwgmrs.com/mygmrs/truck2.jpg The control head cable comes thru the map pocket allowing it to tuck away nicely out of sight. http://mwgmrs.com/mygmrs/truck4.jpg Simple 1/4 wave gives great performance, i am able to hit repeaters 30 miles away and simplex 10 miles easy in the freeway. http://mwgmrs.com/mygmrs/truck3.jpg

Oh god, I will have to put my flame suit on. Here it is. I am a licensed ham, have been for years and have pushed the state of the art in many venues. Built an amateur radio satellite station, worked the world, constructed a 98 foot tower etc. Spent a lot of money at AES. However every so often I get the bug to build a repeater. I am building a repeater for GMRS and not for ham as my immediate family will not benefit. This is something my neighbors might benefit from as we are in a hurricane area and power and communications are out at least a few days every year. So I am building a 50 watt (wide band ) GMRS repeater with quadruple receiver diversity. Yes folks I intend to push the state of the art forward. All parts will be Part 95 certified. The four receivers will each have a separate diversity antenna mounted with separation to exploit the uncorrelated multipath signals. One of the four receive antennas will be a horizontally polarized loop to exploit angle diversity. Why am I doing this? To improve the reception form a 5 watt handheld so that talk back reliability approaches talk in. The heart of this is the repeater shelf I am assembling and the brains are a surplus JPS SNV-4 voter which has DSP S/N voting and DSP noise reduction. Will it work well? I think so, that is part of the fun. Once the fun is over I will have a powerful GMRS repeater in my town.

Free is ALWAYS the right price. ...and if your 213 is free, then you can afford to buy a slightly better antenna to make up for the loss.

I understand that. I can deal with a little loss for the price. Lol. I was on a text line loss calculator and played around on it with different feedlines. I should only need about 60'. If I remember right the loss was between 1.7 and 2.1 at that length. Free is hard to come buy for feedlines. Lol. As I get more into it, I'll upgrade too. Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk