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Truly the best solution is a rig built as a repeater rather than a home-brew setup. The key piece is the duty cycle of the repeater transmitter. It has to be active for both people and that means it is transmitting throughout the entire conversation. Your typical base station is designed around a 20% duty cycle which means you spend 80% of the time listening and less than 205 of the time talking. A 5 minute conversation is only a couple minutes for each radio but double that for the repeater.

I recently built a 50W repeater with two Wouxun KG-1000G radios.. It worked pretty well, but because the radios are not well-shieleded I got a lot of "desense" so my range was not as great as I'd hoped - It wasnt "cheap" either. I then got a used "real" repeater - a Vertex VXR-7000. You can find them from $400 to $1000 depending on the options, age/condition.. It works GREAT.. I live at the top of a hill so I get a huge coveragare area, about 40-60 miles in each direction. Bang for the buck, a good used "real" repeater might be the best bet.. although, I will be testing the Retevis RT97 soon to see how it compares.

I recommend giving BTWR a call. They should be able to give you a pretty good idea where you stand in the queue. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

I have one that I ordered from BTWR in my hands. It is a nice unit as far as build goes. I have not cracked it open though. Waiting on a new power supply to program it via PC. I will try to give a review soon.

I just ordered one, so I'll give my thoughts on it once I get it rolling.

I put in an offer on that MH25 listing, exactly what I need, otherwise I'll bid on it towards the end, 5 days left. Also, I figured out the software only after I built a Windows XP Virtual Box.

Myself I'm leaning towards DMR. Fairly cheap hardware is available. You can get reasonably priced Chinese radios. Then move up in performance to the commercial vendors, Icom, Kenwood and Motorola, yeah they cost more but have less issues than the Chinese ones. I have a collection of radios for D-Star, DMR, P25 and NXDN. Nothing for Fusion yet. If one is interested in P25 or NXDN your only real choice is getting a commercial grade radio. As far as I know there are no "amateur" level radios being sold for those two. Around the Detroit area, where I'm at, there is very little P25 and NXDN activity. In fact there is exactly ONE repeater in the whole state that is listed in "Repeaterbook.com" as being NXDN enabled! I don't think it's even networked. https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeaters/feature_search.php?state_id=26&type=NXDN Around the west coast area of Florida NXDN seems to have a fair bit of activity. https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeaters/feature_search.php?state_id=12&type=NXDN There are a few P25 repeaters around. https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeaters/feature_search.php?state_id=26&type=P25 Most of the digital voice modes seem to be mostly used on UHF. That's fortunate since its far easier to find used commercial radios that do analog/digital in the UHF versions. The VHF models are not so common. And, in my case, the VHF Kenwoods seem to be expensive relative to their UHF versions of the same radio model, particularly for hand-held radios. At lest all of the digital radios I own can also do analog FM too. Not everyone has a digital radio you're going to talk too. The CON to the whole digital voice mode is if you want to use a different mode you're likely stuck buying another radio. Yes there are some out there that do more than one digital mode, and have a huge price tag, but none do all of the modes. You want to talk D-Star hang a radio for it on your belt, want to do DMR get another radio and hang it next to the other one etc. Petty soon your waist line is going to look like a Batman's utility belt full of HT's.

Dang this thread is picking up! Way to go LScott... G.

I would like to see a buy and sell section here on the forums.