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Last week we got 8-10 inches. The highlands are still solid white, as is the continental divide about a mile east of me. Rivers went out a month ago. Two pictures to demonstrate how quickly things change.

Yea, it's one of my 2 major pet peeves with GMRS and the two are linked by those who claim to understand but don't really know any more than the rest of us. There are some differences in equipment. Handhelds are even defined by equipment, and per FCC as Steve also suggested, handheld is a sub-type of mobile where regulations don't specify separate rules, Base stations have an antenna in a fixed position. Mobile is normally straight forward but can get a little fuzzy in some circumstances. To me, their clarification indicates it's the linking itself that is not intended, not just use of phone or internet. Linking by any technology has a lot of the same drawbacks (tying up channels, potential for interference, etc.). It's not just PSTN or internet but the linking itself that is a concern. True that they didn't update the regs, but interpretation by FCC is a lot better IMO than interpretation by Billy Joe and Bobby on the internet. For those who want to challenge it because the clarification wasn't incorporated into the wording in the regs, y'all go ahead and see what happens.

The self fusing rubber tape definitely leaves more glue residue on the surface when removed compared to electrical tape. Here is a good video about wrapping connections. The RIGHT Way to Seal Coax – Lasts for YEARS!

I don't think any antenna would survive that kind of abuse. Think about a 1/4 wave stubby like a Laird or similar that's about 6" high. They're relatively inexpensive but work well.

Does the board have reverse polarity protection? Here’s a data sheet for that regulator: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm2576.pdf Trace the voltage coming in on the red wire all the way to pin 1 on the voltage regulator. If you don’t see voltage there the problem isn’t the regulator. In that case look for a circuit breaker or fuse that might be tripped or blow for reverse voltage.

The KG-UV980P is a great radio. Basing the KG-1000G on that hardware platform was brilliant.

My repeater's station ID has a polite mode whereas, the ID will stop when there is traffic and resume from the start.

Yes I have watched those videos along with downloading all of the instructions.

We have one RC-210 currently connected to our 2m repeater and an Allstar node and we have been pleased with it. And good to know they work well with Bridgecom repeaters.

We are going to connect our Bridgecom repeater to one of the Arcom RC-210 controllers to take care of the ID issues. We already have two RC-210 controllers at the repeater site and one will have the GMRS and 70cm repeaters connected.

There is also the Bridgecom BCR-40U that costs the same as the Baofeng repeater. We have been using one for about 1 1/2 years. The downside to the BCR-40U is that it does not transmit the CW ID with PL tones. This means that if you have receive tones set on your radio, you will not hear the repeater ID. Otherwise the repeater works well. We bought our Bridgecom without the builtin duplexer since we had a spare one that is better than the builtin one. Now if I remember correctly the Bridgecom repeaters actually use two Maxon radios inside the case.

Wrapping the connections won't have any effect on the SWR. I wrapped the joint on my CA-712EFC along with the coax connection with Scotch 33 tape a layer of self fusing rubber tape and then another layer of Scotch 33. I tested the SWR before and after wrapping things and didn't notice any difference. Using marine grade heat shrink will work fine too. It's just harder to remove if needed. I use marine grade heat shrink to cover my clamp. on ferrite beads that I use for common mode chokes on the coax near the antenna connections. The main reason I put a layer of Scotch 33 on first is it is easier to get that off of the coax connectors compared to the self fusing rubber tape. And I always seal the joints on the Comet antennas I have even though they do have rubber gaskets. It's better to be safe than sorry.

I'm asking you guys for your input. This Repeater was someone's ideal. I'm not familiar with is setup. Here another repeater system that was brought up to use. Any opinion on this?

Repeater says the in and out tones are the same but did not want to work with tone set on RX.

It worked. Midland told me I had to have both TX and RX tone set. Thanks so much for the help.

What about a Midland MXTA 25 Phantom antenna?

And have you programmed one of the handhelds to receive on the repeater input frequency (467.xxx MHz) with no RX tone? Then listen to see if there’s any signal when you PTT the Midland MXT 575.

Hi Frank, I can understand your frustration but try to not get discouraged and stay excited. Things will get resolved. A random consideration: In many areas, depending upon the number of GMRS / FRS users in the area, communicating via simplex can be a real challenge. The 462Mhz/467Mhz frequencies used for GMRS channels are typically only capable of line-of-sight communications. Factor in buildings, trees, foliage, terrain and other things that tend to absorb signals in that frequency range and distance for 2 respective ground stations becomes quite limited. Obviously, this is why so many GMRS users tend to focus a lot on mountain/tower/building top repeaters. But in terms of getting an accurate signal check and test of your equipment, you are, IMHO, probably better off using simplex because when you do, people will be hearing your radio signal directly and not the signal of some presumably higher-powered, elevated repeater. If you can hear people talking on the non-repeater channels 1 thru 14 then you are almost certainly hearing simplex radio transmissions and chances may be good that if you are in range to hear them, they would be in range to hear you! If you hear someone on a simplex channel and attempt to communicate with them but do not get a response (assuming they are not just ignoring you!) the issue may be the other operators are using CTCSS or DCS sub-tones. IOW, it may not be your radio that is the issue, it may be the other person's radio that is the issue. The use of these sub-tones or "privacy codes" as they are often improperly called, restrict the user's radio to only hearing (breaking squelch) when that specific matching sub-tone is detected by the receiving radio. This creates the illusion that the conversation is private because unless the transmitting radio is sending out the correct matching sub-tone the receiving radio won't open squelch and play any audio. The majority of repeaters require a specific CTCSS or DCS sub-tone. So, your radio may be transmitting just fine in terms of distance, but the other GMRS users are not hearing you because of a specific setting on their respective radio. While the use of CTCSS or DCS codes on simplex is routinely discouraged many people do use them because they think it makes their conversation private. Additionally, some radios ship from the factory with CTCSS or DCS codes pre-programmed, so people just take the radios out of the box and start using them having no idea that these sub-tone codes are in use. So don't get discouraged too quickly. Some GMRS radios or scanners have the ability to display if a CTCSS or DCS tone is being transmitted by another radio and if you can detect this, it may allow you to set your radio to use the same sub-tone and make it "heard" by others. Doing tests of your mobile equipment with another handheld radio and a friend where you control the settings is the easiest path to take. If you need to rely on the assistance of other random people, then you must consider how the other person's radio might be configured. Good Luck! BTW, there is nothing wrong with talking to random people via GMRS! A random person may turn out to be a friend you just haven't met yet.

In that case your calculations would be 4.30 db too low. An isotropic antenna is theoretical, a single infinitely small source with a gain of 0, meaning multiply the input times 1 to get the output when working with linear values. Having a dBd gain value for an antenna is convenient but for a calculator like this you always want to take the antenna gain back to dBi so you’re not inadvertently throwing the output value off. Maybe a better way to explain it is that the dBd value is only useful for comparing an antenna to a dipole. For purposes of calculating total gain you always need to start at 0 which is the dBi number.

Hi Paul, Many radios on the market, including the Tidradio H8, ( I own one too) have the ability to receive on frequencies or bands that they do not have the ability to transmit on. This is why you were able to program frequencies into the radio that you can only receive and not transmit and it allows the device to be used as a frequency or channel scanner. At the risk of stating things that you may already know, here is a bit more explanation. The transmit frequency range(s) are locked by the manufacturer in the firmware or software of the radio. This is most often done so that the radio remains compliant with the certification for that device which has been granted by the regulatory agency for your country under their respective rules. I am not familiar with the regulatory entity in Australia so I cannot speak to that entity or their rules, but for example here in the USA frequency allocations and things such bandwidth, as how much transmitting power may be used etc. are defined and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, aka the "FCC" and often radios sold here in the USA are FCC certified for use in a specific band that is defined by a "part" or section of the FCC rules code. For example, a GMRS radio here in the USA would be authorized under part 95 of the US FCC code and in order for the device to be Part 95 compliant or certified the radio would be required to adhere to certain frequency restrictions, band widths and power levels, etc. In many cases the radio might be capable of transmitting on other frequencies or bands or use more power etc., but these software imposed restrictions prevent that from happening so that the device can be compliant with those rules associated with specific uses. Some devices can be "Unlocked" to remove these artificial, software imposed, restrictions. You mentioned that you were considering getting your HAM radio license. In the case of the Tidradio H8, if you purchased the HAM version of the radio and not the GMRS version, that specific device does have the ability to be unlocked (Google it). However, while unlocking the device may allow it to transmit on the HAM frequencies and GMRS frequencies (or as you referred to the CB frequencies) that does not mean that the device is certified or authorized for such use by your communications regulatory authority, and you may or may not be licensed to use all the frequencies that the device is capable of working with, so be sure to do your homework about your local rules and requirements.

Sounds good for me. In reality 0.01 is not going to make any difference in the calculations. That's like arguing over the differences between 20 watts output and 25 watts output.

So we can call it 2.145 to make it more complicated.

Yes, you need the forum software to recognize that you are a premium member in order to create a club. Rich will have to fix your account. I’ll report your post to catch his attention.

I'm not even close to Montana but we just got our 2nd round of small snow in a week. Thought spring had come and we were done with winter. 1st one was just enough to get some on the windshield And the 2nd enough to cover some ground, roofs and cars

I bought one of these, but I haven't installed it yet. I need to get a mast up for the antenna. For now, it's going to be a 30' flagpole because my budget won't allow a real tower. However, I've mentioned before that my house is in a very good location for radios, being on an elevated position above a river. I have a buddy who lives on the other side of the river in a simplex "dead zone". Based just upon the distance, we should be able to talk simplex, but his home is blocked by terrain. We can talk on my base unit with a Comet 2x4 on a pizza pan about 9' off the floor, so I think getting the antenna up 30' will make it possible for us to talk HT to HT pretty much all over the area. I'm less optimistic about my friend who lives in a city about 20 miles north, but I used one of those online terrain calculators, and it looks like it's not impossible. It has 16 channels in the software, but you can only enter data into 8 of them with one weird exception. Using the BTech software, if you checkmark channel 9, it automatically enters values to transmit on 440.0000 MHz and receive on 450.0000 MHz. You can change the tones but not the frequencies. I haven't tried to find out if it actually functions in that mode, but it seems like a strange thing to include. At first, I was like, "Whaddaya mean I can't use all 16 channels!" Then I remembered it's a repeater. It will probably spend its entire life on the same frequency. I entered 8 just because I could, but it seems unlikely I'll use more than one. BTech says you can use it as a base station with the supplied mic, but that's not exactly true. Apparently, you can transmit and receive on any of the 8 programmed channels, but the rest of the GMRS band isn't available. That isn't really a big deal because most likely I'll only use the mic to respond to traffic on the repeater when I'm at home, but being away from home is kinda the point of a repeater. I may program them to some local repeaters that are a bit too far away for my base unit and see if the taller, higher-gain CA-712 antenna will let me reach them.

Why is he being an ass again? He may always be one of those "Some People" who is not every ones favorite person, but was his post asinine because the context of the post does not have merit or is inappropriate, or just because of who he is on the forum? His post is a valid question and it amazes me why people with limited funds continue to waste their money on cheap inferior products that have a high risk of failing and if they would have spent their limited monies on a product that is of a lower risk of failing would be further ahead in not wasting their monies and their valuable time. If the said repeater is for a community to have some type of an emergency communications net it should be with a known reliable product and not be a high risk with the possibility of the system failing and being unreliable. Cheap Pandaland products have no place of being used in any important system that need to be reliable and robust for any emergency type of communications involving the preservation of human life or property.

i have a similar setup up, two Maxon 8402's in a Fat 50 Ammo can, duplexer mounted on the exterior and she works fantastic for my portable camping operation. Any pair of decent radios and a controller if needed should be fine. although you may have to shield for descent. Im sure you know, your antenna is going to be the main factor. get her going

You're BEING an ASS AGAIN !!

I am pretty old, and stuck in my ways, but I'm pretty sure that a "simplex duplex box" that doubles as a "GMRS specific box" requires about twenty some 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows, and a paragraph or two describing what each was to be used for. I'm thinking your description is a simplexer with delayed audio being re-transmitted back out on the same frequency it was received on. But I'll wait for those photographs and a clear description of the function of each magic box. Enjoy.

Ma'am, this is a Wendy's...

As others have mentioned, there is no difference in physical hardware as you move from one station type to another. Station type is established based on how it is used, and can be classed as any other station type simply by changing how the radio is used. Thise use cases are explained in the rules, as mentioned by others. @UncleYoda you're kind spicy today! LoL For what its worth, ther is absolutely zero regulations and zero statements of clarification that was released by the FCC that says GMRS repeaters can't be linked. The rules contradict themselves, which is why the FCC released a clarification that repeaters can't be linked over a network for the purpose of expanding coverage. As it stands right now, there is no prohibition on linking repeaters for the purpose of extending range over an RF link, because an RF linked is not a network under any definition.

and they alwasy say they are going to investigate insider trading. More flap gaben

I am pretty certain I hear legacy business fixed stations transmitting business data

In fact I am personally against linking repeaters for wide areas. I’ve said that numerous times. But what you and I posted are interpretations, not regulations. The regulations definitely prohibit using the telephone network and arguably prohibit using the internet or any other network for carrying GMRS communications. But I’ve never seen anything in the regulations that prohibit radio links. For someone who wants to do repeater voting schemes I could see it being done and I don’t think that the regulations prohibit it.

Some of the frequencies are shared with FRS which doesn't need a license, just a type approved radio. Weekday afternoons there's a lot of itinerant traffic on .700 which seems to be school bus dispatching (I'm within 2 blocks of several schools). There are also some legacy business GMRS licenses. Although new ones haven't been issued in years, they're still renewable as long as they haven't lapsed. You can always set a tone if you don't want to hear unrelated chatter. I recommend to my users that they don't set a RX tone so they can make sure the channel is clear before transmitting, but that's a decision each of them can make for themselves.

Actually, a square has four sides of equal length. I would say this is a rectangle. However, you are right. It is definitely not a circle.

Had the first visitor on my GMRS RPT-50 this morning. A Paramedic that lives in my neighborhood. I can’t think of a better contact to have Also, integrated a Sony Digital Voice Recorder into my mix. It plugs straight into one of my BTech GMRS Pro’s and only records when there’s activity. Photo of my “shack” attached. @OffRoaderX I hope some day you have another opportunity to look at this repeater. Maybe we can get BTech to send you one. You already did the pay to play option. If they want to sell more units they need to go the extra mile here.

ANd NO window filter on the RX or running the TX into a combiner or other filtering of any kind?

The short answer is, yes... you can use two antennas instead of a duplexer. The long answer, you can, but you need a separate transmitter and receiver that are directly coupled (linked) with some type of cable to manage keying, audio transfer, etc. (See KG-1000G, for a less than perfect example). Transmitter power levels, antenna types, cable types, etc., will dictate how far apart the antennas need to be, what the elevation differences need to be, and what the gain/sensitivity of the transmit and receive sides should be. If the antennas are not spaced properly, the transmitter can make it so the receiver doesn't hear well, it could cause a transmit loop, and could also damage the receiver. If you make the antennas to far apart, now you're dealing with transmission line losses causing issues instead. There is some art to it, as well as the science. If you are at a stage in learning where you have to ask this question, chances are you don't want to try setting up a repeater right now. This is not ment as an insult, either. If you don't know what you're doing, you can waste a lot of time and money before you learn enough to get a good system stood up. I would recommend finding someone local to you who has a good working repeater and is willing to spend some time teaching you about the details and why things are the way they are.

Hey folks. I have had a small group of people ask me about tones and GMRS/FRS basics in the past week. I figured I would take one of the conversations here and share it for people new to the service. Hopefully it will help you understand Private Lines, Privacy Tones, sub-channels, tones and squelching methods, in general. I am only covering the two most popular in GMRS and FRS, but there are many others available as you move into different radio services and technology. Before we get into what all that stuff is, lets talk about why it exists. Per NOAA and the US Census Bureau, the lower 48 states is approximately 3.1 million square miles. Also, 83% of Americans live on 10% of the total available square miles and 40% of all US citizens live on the east and west coast in counties touching oceans. Following this logic, about 500,000+ licensed and unlicensed operators (estimated by me) are sharing FRS and GMRS radio space, in roughly 310,000 square miles. So, how does 500,000 people in close proximity, sharing 22 channels, all use their radios at the same time without interfering with each other? Motorola brings you PL tones! Lets get this out of the way... regardless of what the manufacturers may tell you or how they label their products, there is no privacy. Period. Private Lines (PL), Privacy Tones, Sub-channels and any other name for the same service, does not stop people from hearing you, it stops you from hearing them. I know... seems like a day in Opposite World, but that's how it works. I suppose the first thing to do is explain what the PL tones really are, what the more common types are and what each of them do. A traditional squelch is a signal level squelch. Meaning, no audio will come out of the speaker until a strong enough signal is received. Then there are also user squelch types. With analog radios, the most common type of user squelch uses encoding called Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS. This feature is defined as being used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio channel. So, as mentioned above, its not that you as a person speaking have any type of privacy, but rather you don't have to listen to everyone on the same frequency. Hopefully the third time is a charm. Many GMRS and FRS radios only have simple CTCSS functions called Tone Squelch, often displayed as TSQL on the screen when enabled. This means two things. One is, regardless of what you do with your squelch knob or set your RF squelch to, no audio will come out of the speaker unless the tone you selected is embedded in the signal you are receiving. The other thing it does is, when you transmit, what ever tone frequency you have programed gets transmitted with/in your signal to unlock or open the squelch of other radios configured the same way. There is another method of CTCSS called "split tone". This means that you can use one tone when you transmit and another for your receive. This comes in handy when repeater owners are trying to limit who can access the repeater, as higher cost radios typically have split tone capability, compared to poorly built and inexpensive radios that would be problematic on a repeater do not. Also, this makes it a bit more difficult to "discover" the input tone by using scanning tools. Another function of split tone CTCSS is that you can also set your radio to transmit a tone to unlock a repeater or other radio, but leave your receive tone set to null (nothing). When this mode is enabled, there is typically a display on the radio that either reads TN or TONE. That means you can bring up a repeater or unlock a radio squelch, but also hear everyone else regardless of what tones they are running, if any at all. This is actually a great feature for GMRS radios since Repeater Channels share FRS frequencies and GMRS simplex frequencies. So you can tell if the frequency is in use as well as being able to talk to others who many not be using the repeater. CTCSS is an analog squelching system. There is also a digital squelching system called Digital-Code Squelch or DCS. It has similar use cases as CTCSS, but it is sending digitally embedded numeric codes instead of a sub-audible tone. I apologize in advance, but this next portion may get a little confusing. If you have questions, just ask and myself or one of the other knowledgeable members will be able to help. All of the numbers below are simply random samples I selected for example. Last I checked, there are 38 standard tones and an additional 13 expanded tones (not available on every radio) for a total possible 51 tones and 83 DCS codes. Along with the use examples above, you can get creative with DCS, because we are dealing with binary numbers instead of a tone. You can have the numbers used in a bunch of different combinations. For example, the number 411 (or 4 1 1, three separate numbers) in binary would be transmitted as 100 001 001. The reverse of this would be 011 110 110. So we are swapping the meaning of a 1 and a 0. So the combinations could be as follows: Normal-Normal = Transmit sends 411 and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in the standard format 100 001 001. Reverse-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 reversed (or bit swapped) and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 reversed, meaning 011 110 110. Normal-Reverse = Transmit sends 411 standard binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a reversed binary format. Reverse-Normal = Transmit sends 411 in a reversed binary format and your radio squelch only opens when it receives 411 in a standard format. Unfortunately, I am unaware of any radio's that have a DCS option to leave your user squelch open while transmitting a DCS code. If DCS is enabled, you cannot hear anyone else unless they are using the same DCS number and binary combination. CTCSS tones can also be "reversed". CTCSS tones, since its analog, we have a phase reversal, often called "reverse burst" when it is only reversed at the end of the transmission. (Something to Google in your spare time.) On some high-end radios, squelching can get really exotic. You may be able to create your own custom tone instead of using one of the standard tones. You may also be able to combine CTCSS tones and DCS codes. For example: User-CTCSS = Transmit 2600Hz tone, squelch opens with 2600Hz tone. (random number example) T-DCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 code. DCS-T = Transmit 411 code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone. T-rDCS = Transmit 141.3 tone, squelch opens with 411 bit swapped code. rDCS-T = Transmit 411 bit swapped code, squelch opens with 141.3 tone. Now, here is the kind of disappointing part. Some manufactures try to make their equipment sound like something its not. They will use things like there own custom number code to identify a traditional CTCSS code. For example, Midland uses code number 22 (also known as a sub-channel) to indicate the tone 141.3. This makes coordination on tone selection a bit cumbersome between some brands. It also means that if your radio doesn't display the actual CTCSS tone or DCS code, you need to keep your owner's manual handy for reference. So... I don't know if that explanation made things better or worse. LOL Anyway, some companies use verbiage like "Privacy Tones" which adds to the confusion for some people. If you are using a true full CTCSS, it just means you are limited to whom you can hear, but everyone can still hear you. The examples I provided above for DCS are not what actually gets transmitted, but rather a conceptual process to help understand at a very basic level of what occurs, simply to understand the difference. DCS adds a 134.4 bps bitstream to the transmitted audio. To move past concept to the weeds, this video does a great job.