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I know a few members do emergency volunteer work. Anyone have a legit portable repeater setup? It's been about a year since I setup my portable "shack". Since the weather was nice today and I have a new repeater to field test, I figured I would do a dry-run at home before I setup in an actual emergency. It takes about 3 hours to deploy the portable setup with HF, VHF, and UHF amateur radio and GMRS. So, needless to say, unless it's a multi-day drill or real emergency, I'm not going all out, but it was time for that dry-run. I have a dedicated mast for the homemade 80m/40m/20m/10m OCF dipole, and then an additional mast for the VHF/UHF antenna(s). In these pictures, there is a Yaesu DR-1X and a Icom IC-7300.

I'm on a Mac, Chrome or Firefox, the streaming audio feeds for the nets do not play at all. They THINK they are playing, but they have no sound. Any troubleshooting ideas?

The repeater is on Santiago Peak, overlooking the slums below.. and the "owner" on 700 seems to be very confused, as 700 is not "his" frequency.

In my opinion, the Icom IC-7300 or the Yaesu FT-991a are your two best options. The 7300 has better receive sensitivity and a better display but the 991a has 2m and 70cm.

When plugged-in for programming mine says CLN.. But after programming i always have to re-set the Repeater/base button to light up "Repeater".

Phelps-Dodge is/was a quality brand product. I wouldn't throw it away. I would returned it and use it.

Look on the repeater page for repeaters near you, then request access to those. There isn’t one single repeater for the forum, just a whole bunch of individual repeaters owned by people. Welcome to the forum.

"can it?" - Depends on the repeater "may it?" - yes, it is allowed by the GMRS rules. AFAIK, there are no rules/guidelines on what tones you can or cannot use, but there are standard ones, which inverted tones are. Further, there is no advantage (none that matters in the real world, for most people) to using inverted versus normal vs DTC vs CTC ..

That is true, but doesn’t matter. The “effective” radiated power (ERP) is the product of the power input to the antenna, times the gain relative to a half-wave dipole.

You answered your own question. An amplifier is a transmitter which requires FCC certification. I care because I don't want GMRS to turn into 27 Mhz. There are too.many CBers already on GMRS trying to ruin it. Sent from my SM-S911U1 using Tapatalk

Sometimes I have to open Firefox with an adblocker to see repeaters on my phone. I agree that it's design is sometimes website breaking.

Nicely done. [emoji106]

I play solar all the time. I have a system in my truck I use to power tools and if needed I can power my house. Depending on what you can keep the temperature of the battery at when you put it into a hole you might consider a LiFePO4 battery. They also have self heating batteries that will make sure the battery will stay warm enough to allow charging. Not sure if you are limited by size of funds but if I were to do this I would use a 50 or 100Ah battery with a Victron 10 or 15 Amp controller and a 100 watt solar panel. Or possible a pair of 50s in parallel to try to avoid shadows from killing power output. One of the main issues with a LiFePO4 battery is it's low temperature charging. Usually 32ºF is the low limit, which is why I suggested a self heating. It will deliver power until the temp gets to -4ºF but won't charge until 32ºF. Or you could stick with the AGM battery, but make it much larger so it can hold more power so it doesn't get to a low enough discharge that it stops producing power for the repeater.

Dunno, but Mav got inverted once and saw a MiG close up.

Every station is required to ID once every 15 minutes and at the end of the conversation whether you’re on a repeater or simplex. You are not required to identify as different units when the call sign is shared amongst family members, but you might want to. In reality very few people follow the identification rules and nobody has died as a result.

During those situations, you'll have more important things to worry about than trying to communicate with someone several states away. Why would your communication contact with someone several states be more important than an immediate local public safety needs? Stay off the airwaves unless you need to report or seek emergencies services if a person's life is in peril. Don't think about your selfish self, think of others that may have a more dire need.

I use Windows and Mac, Chrome and Safari, and have never been able to hear the streaming audio.

I am assuming he means you aren't getting more actual "watts" from gain which is true. That's why it's called "Effective" Radiated Power and not True Radiated Power.

Gain does not increase power would be correct. Gain does increase where the power goes. Zero gain is an antenna that radiates equally in a 360º sphere. Most antennas don't do that. An "Omni directional" antenna is really a lie, but in a good way. It still radiates in a horizontal circle (approx) but the beam of energy radiating from the antenna is cut off on the top and bottom so that power is all included in a beam that is 20 or 30 or whatever degrees in the vertical thereby increasing the effective power in that area. You aren't wasting it going straight up or down. It is being put to better use in the horizontal plane that it will be received in "effectively" giving you the result of more radiated watts. Gain doesn't multiply your radiated power, it directs it to a more useful area. Better?

Dude's just trying to go by the rules. No need for snark.

An amplifier is a transmitter and transmitters sold for the GMRS service are required to be certified for part 95e.

I am impressed! You’ve certainly gotten the most out of that combination and in a heavily wooded, high humidity area with an antenna lower than the canopy. The use of the amplifier is something I haven’t seen others do; good job! The 200 mile range mentioned by wrxp381 is highly unusual except between high elevations and across deserts, which bear no resemblance to your swamp at sea level. As long as you’re epoxying the radome, you might consider drilling and epoxying (or screwing) in some pins to prevent the halves from separating. I would not worry about tuning that antenna. You’ll truly never notice the difference between a VSWR of 1.5:1 and 1.3:1. As you know, your feedline is attenuating quite a bit of signal though and in both directions. That’s your most easily identifiable avenue to getting more power, but it could also be expensive. Again, I’m impressed!

Well, the audio on the Midwest Hub is no longer there for me. I haven't changed anything on my computer.

I'm on Windows 10 and have never been able to get the sound to work.

None are 100% fail-safe.. If you want to 100% fail-safely hide your information from any person, agency or situation, then the only way to accomplish that is to go off-grid, not get a license of any kind, and do a whole lot more stuff. If all you want to do is prevent the average lazy radio-stalker from easily and quickly finding your home address when all they know about you is your callsign, then a PO Box or HamRegistry is plenty good enough.

As an internet legal scholar and couch-based constitutional expert, you should know that complaining about it here is not going to accomplish anything other a bunch of back and forth verbal & grammatical masturbation.

Congress gave the FCC the right to get involved in local wireless communications, as well as justification to exist as an agency when they passed the Communications Act of 1934. And just FYI, complaining/arguing/chest-beating about it in an online forum wont change anything - If you really want to change/eliminate the FCC start by contacting your congressman or an attorney.

That’s amazing! How do they know when to stop?

He comes across with big "I'm not DRIVING I'm TRAVELLING" energy.

That's flat out wrong. You have to be very careful reading posts on the 'net. There is a LOT of old and outdated information to be found. For example I still read posts out there claiming FRS is limited to 1/2 watt, which it hasn't been on most of the channels, on 1-7 and 15-22 it's now 2 watts, since around 2018. The few main things with GMRS repeaters are: 1. You observe the power limits set by the FCC on the repeater channels. 2. You operate your repeater(s) on the FCC list of frequencies reserved for repeater operation. 3. You use only the approved types of emissions, typically normal FM, and so have used narrow FM, in the transmitter section. 4. If there is any interference with other repeaters YOU and the other repeater owner(s), NOT the FCC, have to work out a solution to eliminate it. About number 3 above this subject comes up often enough with people new to GMRS. NO digital voice modes of any kind are permitted. Yes it would be nice if the FCC would just let people use DMR, which seems to be the favorite mode if it was allowed. Maybe at some point the FCC will change their mind, but so far the answer is a big fat NO when it's brought up with them for consideration. But, hey, they finally gave in to allowing FM on 11 meter CB recently, after some decades, so who knows.

If your friend has his FRN he can do the search using it and the results will be any licenses issued under that FRN.