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Can't believe I am gonna do this again.... especially after saying I wasn't... but here we go. First issue. WHO'S GONNA MANAGE IT? Who's gonna assign talk group ID's and radio ID's? How is it gonna be linked if at all? Are we gonna allow some form of trunking? Motorola has Cap Plus trunking, but those levels of trunking are tier 2 and proprietary. Meaning your 50 or 100 dollar cheapie radio ain't gonna work. Motorola radios only. And no linking with that. Unless of course you are gonna want to pony up the 2000 bucks for the license for EACH repeater, and the grand for the special router that's required. No old analog radios can be used. So all your analog radio's are no longer usable. Period. Buy new radios. The biggest issue, is management. Someone needs to create a database and keep track of all the assigned radio ID's and talk groups so that nothing overlaps. This is going to be really important with linking two or more repeaters together. Speaking of which, a maximum of 15 repeaters can be linked together. To exceed that, you need a D-Bridge to route the talk group traffic. Who's buying those? Ya'll are gonna get me banned off here posting this damn question over and over. You want DMR, go sit a test and get a ham license. They use it all the time, and they have this worked out. We (GMRS community) don't. There are requirements to DMR we don't have currently with analog wide band FM. The service works fine on analog. And even the arguments for area's that are using it for 'sorta' public safety like SAR and such. Go get a damn commercial repeater license and a couple simplex frequencies for your group and put in your own communication system. Because that's the nonsense that will turn GMRS into HAM radio and ultimately CB. I have been a ham for 30 years and watched it happen there with people having zero respect for the service get licensed for EMCOMM use for their SAR and CERT groups. Sure commercial is a bit more expensive, but ONLY ONE license needs to be obtained. If you set the license up right, and get national frequencies, then ANYONE regardless of the license they might have on another service can use your radios, or you can grant them access to program their radios to be on your licensed frequencies. It's really not that difficult to see it's a better option.

QFT! Talk with a frequency Coordinator, tell them that you want to put up your own Private Carrier system for "Part 90 eligibles" and license your DMR system as FB6 repeaters. Yes, it will cost you more than $35 up front, but now you have the keys to your DMR kingdom, and you can DMR to your heart's content, because every user on your FB6/M06 system now runs under your fancy Private Carrier license. You can (but don't have to) even collect user fees for the use of your system.

A VNA can be purchased for around $75 that will give you all the information you would get from a dedicated antenna analyzer costing over $300.

Well, this thread went exactly as I predicted. A very sincere thank you to everyone that posted helpful tips to get licensed, actually answered the question and stayed on topic - you guys give us all hope that ham has a future. But thank you even more for "some people" doing to this thread, which simply asked for some tips, exactly what "some people" do best.. Proving yet another of the things that I say so often, that "some people" keep declaring is not true/I make it up.

Well, while you seem to have some understanding of this from a high level, the repeaters have little to do with it. The linking happens at an IP level across the Internet, not RF site to RF site. Tenn, does actually have some linked GMRS repeaters but not on the MyGMRS system. They run a private system that I know for sure exists in the Gatlinburg /Pigeon Forge area at least and extends into two neighboring states. That being said, there is nothing restricting you from putting up your own repeater and linking it to the My GMRS system from where ever you land in Tenn. But, Tenn may NOT be considered a "MidWest" state and you may find out that the system fathers prefer you link to one of the eastern hubs and not 169. But that is not my call. Just a reminder before you go put a bunch of money down on a repeater system to find out you can't put it on MidWest. reason I bring that up is you specifically posted the linked "MidWest" repeaters on your attached photo. I would discuss with the major players of the MidWest system Your intentions prior to committing to purchase of equipment. I am trying to grow Ohio currently. I am actively hunting sites to install equipment on and look to put up at least two more repeaters in the central Ohio area myself this year. That being said, this is not an activity for those that are not well versed in radio communications equipment and the support of it. I work as a commercial radio tech. GMRS and Ham radio are my hobbies. But I can speak from first hand experience that finding assistance for repeater site support and equipment repair and maintenance if you can't do it your self to run right around 100 to 150 dollars an hour for that service. That is going to be a pretty consistent number. If you find a tower site and are required to have professionals (most always the case) do the climbing and installation of an antenna system. That cost can easily run 4 to 6 thousand dollars for a single days work. And we haven't talked about the cost of antenna's, feed line, duplexers, a repeater or any of the other costs involved including a mandatory requirement for an Internet connection at the site for the actual link. And the state to state, town to town communications that you see as being such a wonderful thing is only as good as the ISP level of service at your site and the site you are linked to. If either are down fro any reason, you will be down until the Internet service is restored.

It's horrifying. People can disagree with me and spread hate and disinformation??? They must be stopped to save free speech!

I'll have to look out for those models. In theory I have an NMO-mag-mount around here somewhere, magnetizes to the roof and has NMO for whatever antenna I would choose. But I can't find either it or my longer 2m/70cm high-gain rubber-ducky. I guess this is what happens when you don't operate for nearly a decade and lose track of where you've put stuff. If I can make GMRS work better than it did this last test then I might buy some mobiles for the truck, travel trailer, and my wife's Jeep, and have the handhelds available for hiking or otherwise when the group separates from the vehicles. But I want to prove it out for my application before I commit to spending hundreds of dollars.

I have a Laird 5 dB Omni hanging on the side of my garage connected to a 50 Watt Repeater Station using LMR400 Coax with a lightning Arrestor grounded to earth ground at the electrical panel.