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Today, I put together a new portable repeater antenna setup together. I do a lot of work with Amateur Radio Emergency Service. Often, we need a repeater setup so our people can run around with HT's and still be able to communicate direct with everyone. The antenna is setup for 2m, 70cm and GMRS. In all services, the SWR is 1.2:1 or better. It's sitting on top of a fiberglass mast. The total height is 47 feet from the ground to the top of the antenna. The bottom of the antenna is 40' from the ground. My son Nick is next to it to use as a reference. I tested it out on 2m. Full quiet to another station 40 miles away, with only 5 watts. I'm pretty happy with that. On 70cm and GMRS, I was full quiet to a repeater 22 miles away with just 2 watts. I am pretty happy with this setup. I am going to be doing a training drill on March 28. We'll see how it goes. http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/HAM-GMRS/Pot_2m-440_Repeater_Antenna_2.jpg http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/HAM-GMRS/Pot_2m-440_Repeater_Antenna_3.jpg

I have two of the fiberglass tent pole 32' sets that I use to support a G5RV Jr (52' long) dipole here at my home antenna farm. Two of them split on the female end so I had to cut them just above the splits and I added some stainless steel radiator hose clamps to prevent the other poles from splitting. For field use, I have two fiberglass pushup masts (48') with lever action compression locks, and two of the giant (6') MFJ tripods. I hang a full-sized G5RV between the masts with three sets of guys on each of them. Marc, you ain't kidding that it can get expensive real fast! The field equipment set me back nearly $700...

Height is everything. The further up in the air you can go, the better, and longer range you will have. On the roof would be ideal, if you can hide it somehow. ...perhaps connect it to a vent pipe on the roof, and paint it some flat, light gray color so it doesn't show up unless you are looking for it. The attic would be OK, as long as you don't have those metal-backed shingles on your roof. Those will kill the signal.

Yup he is pretty firm on his price. We were able to get a donation to help out and get it. May be worth grabbing a 4'x4' sheet of 3//4 plywood to throw on the ground first and screw or bolt it to it. Then throw some blocks or something heavy on it ? I had spikes pounded in the ground on all three when ours blew over. They were about 16" long but the ground was mostly sand and didn't help much.

They're far, far better radios than anything Midland or BTECH sell, sold, or will sell for the foreseeable future. WRAK968 is about right as far as pricing...880s are a commodity, nothing more.

Nice setup but watch the Tripod you have. I tried similar setup for our SAR team in the past and it didn't last well in some wind even with guy wires up. We since switched to a military style mast kit we found here - https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTENNA-TRIPOD-29FT-ALUMINUM-PORTABLE-TOWER-MAST-KIT-NEW/361384099911 It is night and day better and faster to set up that what we had before. It cost a bit more but in the end it was worth it. The selling point of the tripod is the custom "tripod" adapter he ships with it. Here it was last summer in the national park. This was hooked up to a mixed mode Quantar for an event we handle comms for.

Whats the chance we can get a chat room? Is that even a thing anymore? I like the idea of ad supported, and yes I would pay 5 bucks a month to not see them! 1. Expand our repeater linking project!