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I will bite again too. Repeaters are private property. If you have one in your area and you have the repeater owner’s permission to use, consider yourself blessed, and respect it as such. No one said that you (or I) will actually have access to someone else’s repeater. What the GMRS does allow us all to do is share the airwaves and it extends us the permission to put up our own repeaters for our families use and to freely share with others as we see fit. On the flip side, if we decide, as a prospective repeater owner, to publicize that we have repeater and allude to the fact we may give permission upon request then it would seem equally respectful to honor the requester with a response. As old saying goes, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” What we owe each other is respect. One final thought. Locally there is a repeater owner that had really hoped to have a repeater in service for area residents to use. The repeater owner listed it on myGMRS. I was gracefully granted permission early last summer, yet a repeater useful to me never materialized. It is online now with about a 1-2 mile working radius. Perfect for the kids in the neighborhood or the neighborhood watch. The person no longer responds to any inquiries. This could be perhaps because he did not achieve the 10-15 mile radius alluded to on myGMRS that he thought he would achieve, or perhaps he did not realize the cost and burden of repeater ownership. Conditions change. Be respectful of that too. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

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.

Only got my GMRS license a while back after learning there were several gmrs repeaters in my area and one in my town. I contacted probably seven or eight under an hour's drive from me, using the links on mygmrs. To my surprise, virtually every one of them came back to me within a day or two. One informed me that the repeater was presently down for a bit. All others gave me permission to use any time. I guess I was lucky. Tested the gmrs repeater in town just today, actually for the first time. It's just over 2 miles from my house, according to google maps, and I was using a Wouxan KG-905G from inside the house on the 2nd floor. Radio report came back that signal was clear and strong. Sweet. Now to get the wife to try this once I put a mobile in her car. I expect my luck to turn some then.

Glad it worked. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Success! Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

I'll bite on this one. I cannot speak for everyone but I know for me during the week during normal business hours (M-F / 9-5) I am quick to reply back to everyone that has requested use of my machine. The weekends can get dicey as I'm busy with family and the kids but I always reply on Monday morning when I get back to my shop. I'm in front of a computer all day and my email is always up so there is never a reason for me to not reply. As far as backup power, my system has enough backup power for 48 hours with my testing I've done before the batteries run out. I also have a generator on standby ready to go for something longer than a 4-day outage. I'm fortunate to be on a tower site which is in the same farm as Comed is where they have their own tower too and their main com systems are located so the power nearly never goes out and if it does it's not very long! I also have my machine set up to run at only 25W when on backup lithium power to conserve power too! That being said, the fact of the matter is that there are a *LOT* of low-height, home-brew repeaters which aren't going to reliably (I’m talking driving around and talking) cover very much anyways or maybe they don't want you using it because it's a small family repeater for local family only usage. With a repeater running at a house that only has 3 - 5 miles of reliable coverage, what would be the point of replying to a person that is 10 or 15 miles away that cannot get into it no matter what anyways?? Which leads me to my next point… I know that before I went on a commercial tower site, when I had my machine at my house at 47', I received TONS of repeater requests and I gave my tones out but I put an * on it that stated "This is at my house and only reliably covers 5 miles tops. If you are outside of this, there is no way you will be able to get into this repeater and use it reliably" The other thing I see every day are over-inflated coverage bubbles. I see TONS of home brew repeaters listed (There is one right near mine for example) that's running at a house that claims to have a 15 mile coverage radius when you cannot even get into it 5 miles out on a 45W commercial grade Kenwood with a $200 commercial roof mount antenna. Hell, I can BARELY scrape into it at my house on my base which is 47 feet tall 8.41 miles away and I have a DB408 antenna. In my opinion I see lots of repeaters that show a far, FAR, greater coverage ring than they can *ACTUALLY* reliably use so when people get on the map and see that massive coverage ring, you would think/assume that they are more tempted to request access to it which inflates that email flow asking for access to a repeater they’ll literally never be able to get into unless they happen to be travelling in that area. That would be my biggest guess as to why repeater owners wouldn't reply. The other fact is that everyone is busy with work and kids so emails get missed/buried. Thanks!

It often prompts for a reduction of image resolution to one of three different sizes. I always choose the largest of the three and have been content with the outcome. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM