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Only the SHARP site says they use the same PL of 136.5 on the repeater and there is no statment of input vs output on their site. so the norm would be input. I maybe wrong but I think when he says it dosen't use an input he means your radios recieve. It just dosen't make since to me to do it the other way but hey it's his repeater. I remain skeptical though. If the SHARP team used an input and everyone else used only an output I could see an issue where they would be using the repeater and others would be unaware. I love a mystery, please test and report back.

learning a little more and I think I understand some. I also read through the comments on his repeater. he uses an output tone to separate the repeater from channel 19 because a group of local volunteers use it. That's his explanation anyway.

This is a great question. A little background: I worked at Motorola for over 30 years and asked this very question to some of the RF guys there. The resounding answer is to "go high baby". Well, in a case like yours where your high-gain and low height option is not really very high, then yes some extra maybe 10-20ft with a somewhat lower gain will be better. Now if you were already at 100ft with high gain and could go up another 20ft with low gain, this could be a different story. That would depend on the surrounding terrain. But in short "go high baby". As evidence of how this works, I too ran a repeater during the above mentioned time period, that being a 450MHz ham band repeater at my house. I lived on a small hill in the Chicago suburbs, maybe a 40ft above average terrain. Sounds like not much, but in the Chicago suburbs that's all you get for a hill I chose to go high baby, and put a 6dBi gain antenna as high as I could get away with, about 60ft above the hill. I was afraid to put a larger higher gain antenna at that height due to tower strength limitations. And wow, did it have great coverage for being just a home brew repeater. In the direction where the land sloped down slightly it easily had a 40 mile mobile coverage and I had people 80 miles away using it from simple base stations. Now granted this was one high performance repeater: 25 watts TX (yea, not huge I know) but the receiver was souped up by me, being an RF receiver guy, it had less than 2dB noise figure counting the duplexer loss (for those who don't get noise figure, 2dB in that case is outstanding). Hope this helps.

I have the KG-UV9PX and this also works in Chirp. That said I chose it because I have my ham. @WRWE456 has a good recommendation though if you just want to be able TX on GMRS. It's essentially the same radio but certified for GMRS.

I recommend you try it. I have used other emulation solutions and they were all far too fiddly and a PITA, but Parallels made the entire process so easy, painless, and idiot-proof I was very impressed and ended up buying it and finding other reasons to use Windows programs on my Mac.

I programmed one of mine (which I use for ham radio) using the software, but I don’t remember for certain whether power output can be configured on a per channel basis. I’m thinking it must be in order to accommodate the different power outputs for different frequencies in GMRS. That would definitely be a good idea. MURS is limited to low power anyway. You don’t want to get on there at 20 watts.

Most modern transceivers are capable of reducing their power if they detect that they are transmitting into a high SWR load, so an accidental brief PTT probably wouldn’t damage your radio. I have the same radio and I definitely have transmitted into a high SWR antenna. Once I realized my mistake I repaired the antenna and there doesn’t seem to be any damage. Steve

As @Sshannon mentions no tones would be required because if you don’t set a receive tone you’re going to hear everything. Hmm so why would someone that didn’t set an input bother with an output tone? You got me. Most repeaters have both an input and output tone. Though some have an input tone with no output tone, which makes sense to me… but one with no input tone and then have an output tone? I haven’t seen that before. I’m not sure why you would set one up that way. I looked at the repeater page and even reading his answers to people asking about his set up it appears that’s what he is saying he did. I would follow @Sshannon’s recommendations, get closer to the repeater and test accordingly. I would be interested if this is really how it’s set up or if there’s a misunderstanding in how the repeater owner has posted his set up.

Sheldon, On the Receive side, if you leave the CTCSS or DTCSS tone empty, or set the radio tone mode to Tone instead of TSQL, you will receive everything transmitted on that frequency 462.650 MHz. I recommend that you do that at first. Once you are certain that you are able to hear transmissions from the repeater, and if there is other traffic on that same frequency that you would like to filter out, then you can always put the receive tone back in or switch to TSQL (which is the same thing). As far as output versus input tone, the convention is that the Repeater INPUT tone is the OUTPUT tone of your radio, which is the way you have it. But it’s not really common for a repeater to leave it’s input tone empty AND have an output tone. That implies that it will re-transmit everything on that 462.650 MHz frequency. It’s more common for a repeater to filter access with an input tone. It’s possible that the person who put the repeater into the database made a simple mistake and put the input tone into the output tone field of the database. If that’s the case,and you’re not sending a tone when you transmit, the repeater would ignore your transmissions. Finally, don’t be afraid to get closer to the repeater. If it claims a 10 mile range and you’re at 30 miles you could very easily be completely out of range. So, here’s what I would do: Make sure your radio is set to a repeater channel, not a simplex channel. Otherwise the repeater will never hear you. Get to within a few miles of the repeater. Clear out the receiver CTCSS tone. Double check with the repeater owner to see if it truly expects a tone on the repeater input. If it does, use it. Listen. Try transmitting your call sign and ask if anyone can hear you.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

There’s nothing special about the cable; it’s just a USB A to USB B cable. The software alone sells for $25.

When you get it and programmed let us know what you think about the radio.

Thanks! I’m ordering one right now!

The "big deal" is that a Booofwang programming cable WILL work. PERIOD! The cables with chips in them are interchangeable. The only thing you need to have is the proper driver for you PC and OS. Many CCRs use fake chips anyhow so, again, you have to have the proper driver even if you have to use an old driver.

Maybe this would be a better option for you. It's still a GMRS radio. https://bettersaferadio.com/wouxun-kg-uv9gx-gmrs-two-way-radio-shtf-scanner/

I am not familiar with that radio, but I own the KG-UV9D Mate, and I enabled GMRS via CHIRP. It seems like it would be pretty similar.

Yeah, the cost is what’s keeping me from trying it, $99 a year for something I may use a handful of times per year is hard to swallow.

Steve, I didn't realize that some radios did this, makes good since though. Not having this radio (yet, haven't stopped collecting) but I was wondering if the programming allows you to preset power levels for individual channels or do you change all via the face. Obviously this doesn't help the antenna tunning issue but I was thinking this could also help in @WRYY390's set up but I am unsure.

Several in the ham clubs I belong to have the Cotre 001D and the 004D we use on our local DMR net. They aren't the best on the market with a very low power output (around 2W) but they can access the local repeaters most of the time. They don't replace a good DMR radio, but they are fun to play with.

I found this thread via a search-- I have the same radio with same issue. My issue popped when I was trying to add in ALL the repeaters in my area which worked fine until I got to CH-40. The solution shown here seems great for GMRS but I also have some channels programmed to receive the five MURS channels. I bought a Browning antenna that I tuned to an SWR of 1.01-1.2 over GMRS freq's . If I open up the radio to transmit on all channels will I run risk of damaging radio if I inadvertently hit the PTT while on a MURS channel?( I'm aware this is also against FCC rules) I'm sure the SWR in the MURS range(150-155) would be sky high. Thanks..

What has Talkpod support had to say about all this? Surely you contacted support for help?

You want to set the tones and talk on the repeater channel. Repeater channel 6 is setup with the correct offsets whereas Channel 20 is not since it is a simplex only channel.

@ADVBikerRadioGirl welcome! Important work you are doing. Be safe.

Not all repeaters are configured to send any kind of acknowledgement or squelch tail. Some places there’s just nobody comment on a transmission.

I've had one for a year or two. Wouldn't be my primary DMR radio, being without a display or keyboard, but i use it for testing. It works and the audio is fine. It's only a couple of watts output which is good for use with a hotspot. I'd print the memory contents onto a business card (or the like) and keep it affixed to the radio.

I agree with this however many manufacturers have sone this in the past and are doing some again. Motorola for instance is doing APX and XPR free. The problem is folks complain about the cost of the radio. Cost of a radio can be argued to death but engineering costs and many other process's dictate price. Way more than we need to discuss here. But its also a supply demand situation. IF folks aren't buying new radios it doesn't bring funds into a manufacturer. In the end if you want a quality radio you research as you said and find out if you are capable and comfortable with the purchase you intend to do. Purpose built equipment, ham, gmrs, lmr is jsut that. The CCR world has caused most of the issues with all those services. Good or bad can be argued but the mentality of cheap stuff is much larger than 10 or 20 years ago. I go back to my first HT, HTX202 that I put on layaway at Radio Shack and paid $325.00 for and had no software or any of the stuff anything new has to offer. Our first GMRS mobile was a Uniden Xstal Radio with 2 channels. It had a button with RPT and TA. It was close to $500 which was about what Dad paid for the AMC Hornet that it was installed in !

Not only is it not allowed (as normal practice), the only way to use the repeater in that configuration would be to use non-type approved hardware or otherwise type approved hardware with a configuration that invalidates its certification and legal use. So, it would be a double no.

Hi Sam, Yes, we are a network of linked repeaters so, when someone it transmitting on say the Live Oak (NE) Repeater, all the other repeaters and nodes connected to the hub are also broadcasting that transmission. You can look at our status page and see what repeaters are connected and when someone is transmitting. http://www.alamocitygmrs.com/supermon/link.php?nodes=1510,1512,1513,1680,1684

Hey Folks, Sam here New to radio in general, got my GMRS a few weeks back, going to work on the HAM here soon. Would anyone be able to give me a quick crash course on how the Alamo GRMS network works? Again very new to this, so not sure if the network implies that a transmission going to one repeater subsequently repeats across all of them?

One of my favorite hobbies: go war-driving for GMRS/Ham repeaters and decode their input codes! ?

Added our 6th Repeater, the Media Lake 675 is now connected!! Also note, the LaVernia550 is now the LaVerina600 and was upgraded to Bridgecom 40W 100% duty cycle repeater. Still some bugs in the local RF audio but still very usable and seems to be performing better then the previous repeater setup.