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MXTA26 is not a CB antenna.... Browning BR-140 is an NMO CB Antenna - round about $50-$60 online... 49" length

I have a similar sense of being lost whenever I work on my wife’s Mac.

There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy. Secrecy is when people don’t know what you’re doing. Privacy is often used to mean that, but can also mean that you reduce the chances of being disturbed or interrupted. The way the question was answered in the “test” makes it obvious that’s the meaning the OP intended. That’s why there’s a classification level of “Top Secret“ but not “Top Private.”

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.

Has anyone bought a Retevis 900MHz two way? Update from Retevis: Hello RT10 900MHz radio only is used for three countries, America, Mexico, and Canada Attached the detail specs for reference, could you tell me how many pcs you need and where you will use? ------------------ Thanks and Regards, Lewis (Customer Manager) 900MHz.docx

Here’s a link to the video:

No worries!

Thanks. My mistake. I read poorly.

The mount should work fine. Decent NMO CB Antenna is the Browning BR-140 - 49" length, runs about $60

Once in a while, I can hear traffic on the southeast hub...but nothing on any of the others.

The only reason for me not to play with the internals is the warranty. If it was out of warranty I'd be in there like nothing. And I do agree that it's unlikely that the duplexer has slipped. And what I mean by that is one of the adjusting screws got loose during shipping and has been slowly moving taking the duplexer out of tune and bringing the receive/transmit ratio out of whack. This repeater shouldn't be able to output 8.5 watts from the duplexer. And the wattage shouldn't have increased since I tested it at the beginning. I've double checked with a couple of HT which I marked their output wattage on the inside of the battery compartment when I got them, and they are the same as before. Tells me the power meter is still working right.

1. Yes the mount will work. 2. My mistake. I read the question incorrectly. I don’t know.

Measured the cable with no antenna and it's a total open, which it should be. Ya, I think it's gonna have to come down. Maybe I'll email Retevis and see what they have to say about how their antenna might react to a dc ohm test and other such related questions. Because after doing the 1.5 mile test with the HTs, I don't think this has been working right since the beginning.

It essentially doesn't work. I can get 1/4 mile out. I can get a mile and a half with the HTs with 4" antennas going through a forest and a highway embankment. So I think their just might be a slight problem.....LOL

All of what you said are how I've based my thoughts, back from my knowledge of installing CB stuff. Other than not realizing the RG8 cable was more waterproof than the LMR400. I expected quite a bit of protection from the tube. I made sure the coax was centered and had no contact with the tube also. I thought it would be very difficult for water to actually get into the fittings with the setup they provided. I thought maybe air moisture might be able to get in there eventually but not physical rain getting into the connector itself. As for grounding my thought was it's mainly for lighting/static protection and not really an antenna ground. That the ground plane provided what the antenna needed to function properly.

Are you able to read data from the radio? (rule out something like the wrong com port or bad com port drivers) If so, a few things to keep in mind on the VXR-7000 1st) If you can read the radio and it shows Rx Freq in the 150-170MHz range, you have the VHF version and not the UHF version of the repeater and won't work on GMRS. 2nd) Modify the program startup for dealer mode by adding a -d to the end of the program to enable dealer mode (ie "C:\Vertex Standard\CE27 for Windows\CE27Win.exe" -d"). This will allow you to change the CW-ID of the repeater if you are going to use it. 3rd) Most GMRS repeaters run in wide band. Due to FCC narrow band mandates after 2003 the software forces you into narrowband (you will get a warning when starting the software). Change the clock on the PC to 2002 (make sure to disable clock auto set) and you can enable wideband. Below is a screen shot of one I picked up awhile back and donated. I setup the first 14 channels for every option I though he might need (Channel 1 CTCSS 77, Wideband, Hi Power - Channel 2 same but low power, Channel 3 narrow band, etc). Channel 15 and 16 are on the next channel up and down for testing. Then printed out the config and taped it to the top of the repeater.

Or program the 105 to the pre-programmed tones on the RT15's

One of the long running tenants of ham radio organization and protocols has been self-policing. Example of lack of self-policing is CB radio.

Device Manager.

Find out what com port your programming cable was assigned in Windows and manually change it to one that the software will recognize. That's it.

I suggest creating a new post/topic so as to not confuse/dilute/drive this entirely different question off topic.

@WRZB774 lots of us here have both a GMRS and amateur license. They both have their purposes and you may find one or both fit your needs. One thing to consider is who you want to communicate with and if they have the same interest as you in being licensed for whatever radio service you are using. You mentioned family and GMRS is ideal for this because they can use your license to communicate with you. It looks like you have a few repeaters around you that you may be able to reach. This can greatly improve the distance you can communicate. Some are open, some are members only. You may want to see if you can reach some of your local repeaters and if your family members can reach them from their locations. As for which radio, well that is a whole different thing but I personally started inexpensive while I got my feet wet and found what I liked and wanted in a radio. Then I started getting more radios. Then I got my amateur license and got even more radios. Beware It can be habit forming. Good luck and welcome to Mygmrs.

Repeater offsets are already done for you with a GMRS radio. You only program them when you have a ham radio/UV-5R. You just need to put in the CTCSS transmit tones. Usually there's no recieve tone.