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Travel Tone is when a repeater enables 141.3 Hz as an open tone for travelers to use when in the area. For example, you could tune your radio to each GMRS repeater channel with 141.3 as your tone, and the repeaters with a Travel Tone are open for temporary use without permission. Good for when you don't have time to program each repeater along your route. ORI stands for the Open Repeater Initiative which was created by Popular Wireless many years ago. It was a way to indicate a repeater is open for any licensed GMRS operator to use without having to ask the owner's permission. These repeaters you can just jump on and use as long as you follow GMRS rules and use your callsign.

Why does every new license holder want to setup a repeater? I would like to shed a little light on some of the important things to consider if you recently got your GMRS license and now want your own repeater. First thing to consider, are there any open well placed repeaters in your area that you are able to use? I can assure you most repeater owners want people to use there repeater. Owning several repeaters I can assure you all are welcome and encouraged to use my machines. Do you have access to a location to host your repeater? If your answer is your garage roof you should reconsider. Your garage roof will give you about the same coverage as simplex. Unless you’re on top of a mountain and all your users are at the bottom you will never be happy with this setup. GMRS is not as popular as one would like to think, unless your repeater covers 20 miles or more you may find you only have 1 or 2 users in the area. Unless you already have a group of friends together you may want to consider this before spending money on a decent well positioned site to install your repeater. So you found a nice high site and the price is right, all you need to do is get the repeater installed, sounds simple right? Some thigs to consider first and foremost are the costs because they can add up quickly. Are you on a commercial tower that requires a license and bonded climber? If so this could be by far your largest expense depending on your area. I have spent $600 to $1200 on a climber; I have had quotes as high as $2500 depending on the amount of work and heights involved. Keep in mind commercial sites require certified mounts, hard line cable, cable clamps, engineered grounding solutions and commercial grade antennas. No tower owner is going to let you install a comet antenna and 200’ of braided shield coax. This brings me to my next point, the antenna. Because of the costs involved with climbers you will want to expend your budget on the antenna. Remember a $2000 repeater on a $200 antenna is going to work about as good as a $200 repeater. Whereas a $200 repeater on a $2000 antenna is going to work like a $2000 repeater. On my first repeater I was gifted use of a 150’ tower, I installed a DB-420 on the top and 160’ of 7/8 hardline. Total cost of equipment for the antenna install was $2500, with the climbers labor coming in at an additional $800. This left me with enough to purchase an old Motorola R100 repeater running at 25W. To my surprise it had 30 miles of coverage, all due to the cash spent on the antenna and waiting for a decent spot. Things happen, more so if you have an antenna 200’ in the air with a conductive cable connected to sensitive electronics. Antenna issues, feedline issues, repeater issues all cost money and I promise at some point you will have issues that need repair and require your money! It is my opinion that the GMRS community does not need another 2 to 5 miles repeater as it just becomes background noise. What use is a public listed repeater if somebody in a mobile can’t use it 5 miles away while moving or the portable coverage is only a mile? If after reading this you are still going to build a repeater for your garage more power to you, just don’t expect 20 people to show up if it only reaches a mile. As the owner of several GMRS and Commercial repeaters I can attest to the amount of money and effort go into my repeaters. I have only touched on the basics, if you add in any kind of testing services, duplexer tuning, addition of a combiner channel to an existing tower system, RF engineering, rent and insurance your costs can sky rocket. The best advice I can give any new licensee is to try and use the available systems in the area. Take the time to learn a little about what you’re doing and to assess the usability of the service before investing in a repeater for the sole reason of saying you own one.

Thanks for the question and thanks for the great answer! I am learning too. I put that in my School notes!

Found it looks like minimum audio volume is set at 8 in the Chirp software will set it at 3 and see if that function works, still will get the Kenwood software. Thanks.

Yes. The default volume(s) can be set. It's in the Common Page 2 tab in the Optional Features screen.

If it is configurable the Kenwood software will let you change it. I think on some of my portables I have that option in one of the menu tabs. The reason why it is an option is so a user doesn’t accidentally turn the volume control all the way down thus missing messages. Setting a min volume level prevents that from happening. With a radio hanging on a belt its easy twist the volume knob and not realize it. At least for the channel selector it has detents so that’s less likely to happen.

I would recommend you use the official Kenwood software to program the radio. I’ve had problems with Chirp and the TK-270G/370G wide/narrow band 128 channel radios, VHF and UHF. For the older TK-370 wide band only 32 channel radio it seems to work OK. Reporting Chirp bugs is fine, just don’t hold your breath waiting for them to get fixed. Seems some never do get addressed. One of the main problems with Chirp is not all of the radio’s features are accessible. That’s why the manufacturers software is necessary. Before I even consider buying a used radio I’ll search for a downloadable version of the programming software. Second is getting the programming cable. If I can’t get both I won’t buy the radio. I don’t know about other people but I’ve had much better luck finding the above for Kenwood radios verses Motorola radios.

Heat has not been an issue with my Kenwoods. They will not get hot enough to set anything on fire, or melt plastic. They will need a bit of airflow around the heatsink however, so don't bury them under anything, or mount them in an enclosed area without ventilation.

Lots of great repeater information on here. As for myself I will stick to the ones that are open for now and then way later down the road I will ask to use someones repeater possibly. As for building one out from what I see on here that can get expensive which I would have no clue how to at this time . Wealth of information on here. I look forward to eventually having a repeater later down the road. For now this is all new for me and is great.

Corey is dead on. I spent many thousands of dollars on each repeater system i have online and have money sitting in new repeaters waiting for towers. It is not uncommon to spend upwards of $10,000 if buying all new gear. My last repeater that went online was a MTR3000 ($6500.00), Duplexer ($1800.00), 7/8" Hardline (175' @ 2.50'), DB408 - ($800.00), plus connectors, hangers, cable pulls, ground kits, ground wire. Yes we can all do this stuff for a lot less but it really depends on what you want out of the repeater. If you start your post with "Currently running on two Baofeng 5R with limited range" then its not a repeater that we should be putting in a database nor one that will benefit you or others. The goal is to have a repeater that is beneficial to the end user. Since I moved south I have 2 repeaters, antenna's and hard line. Neither are up yet as i want it to be worthwhile. One is waiting on a tower for my house and the other will be on a 400' tower if i can ever work out an agreement with the owners.

Staff Memo - The subject of this thread is important enough, for newly licensed user reference, to pin it to the top of this posting area.

Amen, Corey.