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That sounds more like they were both set to narrow and the other radios were set to wide.

The only other thing I can think of is the duplexer is not tuned correctly on either side and the protective limiter circuit and the transmit radio is stopping it from transmitting so it doesn't break. You are going to need a VNA at a minimum to test. At this point I don't trust the duplexer. I'll kick some thoughts around, but without being right in front of it it's going to be hard to troubleshoot from this point.

Found a combination that works using the Tidradios. I’m not sure what was done differently other than using the H3 radios and trying a different frequency and the connection box. Even with the duplexer they’re putting out about 3W out of the duplexer to the mag base antenna. As a test I put the Boafeng in the exact same configuration. I could only get them to work on the .600 pair. But they were pushing closer to 5W out.

If you are looking for a way to use a "travel tone" on your radio when YOU travel, so you have access to the local repeaters, then I would suggest that you set up additional (new ) channels on your radio, with the same channel numbers that you use at home, but program these with the "travel tone" and use those when traveling. You can name the new channels as T-20R, T-2R1 etc. Whatever will help you differentiate them from your 'home' channels.

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.

Wait and save up some more money. $100 isn't going to get you a quality setup. It'll be more satisfying if you start off with a nice setup instead of replacing it a few time and buying the same thing more than once. I would start with an antenna with a 7.2dBi gain and some LMR400. Find out what it costs and save up for it. You'll also need a chimney mount or roof mount which is going to add to the price tag. Along with minor things like cable clips, water proofing, tools for installation etc. If you are insistent on getting something up now then go with some sort of a mobile antenna. Even something small mounted up high is going to be better than something inside the house on a lower floor.

Yes, I'm doing that as we speak, due to me going down south in a couple of weeks.

For a while there, IIRC, a lot of Midlands just *were* narrowband without an option to correct / change that. Were the rest of the group to set theirs to narrowband it would have likely corrected the issue.

Cable can detract from the best antenna. It’s guaranteed you’ll have too much attenuation with 50’ of rg8. LMR400 won’t hurt you so much. It’s possible to get a cheap antenna with decent gain. I would get the LMR 400 and shop for a decent inexpensive antenna with gain figures you want. N connectors shouldn’t cost much more and they are more water resistant than UHF connectors, but if you do a good job of waterproofing you can get by with UHF connectors. The losses through uhf or sma vs N connectors aren’t enough to worry about.

This is true. Out my window I have an MXTA26 antenna on a Midland magnetic mount, on a sheet of steel sitting on top of a window air conditioner. Fortunately it's not in a place where anyone would see it, because it does look janky. But it works fairly well, and the whole thing is antenna (70), mag mount (40), adapter (10), sheet of metal (had in the garage): $120. I really doubt you could do a base-station antenna installation with LMR400 for less. And with this, I have no problem hitting a repeater 64 miles away with a handheld hooked up to the antenna.

Ahh,, So if you access your contacts via your Phone Icon, you don't see the 'Share My Location' option.. You only see it when you select your 'Contacts' Icon... I've always accesed my contacts via the phone app.. Interesting.

@SteveShannon, self-explanatory they largely are—I guess my bleary-eyed brain at almost midnight eastern last night hadn’t thought of the dropdown in the repeater creation page. Thanks for posting that for us all!

And far more often than not, user error / misconfiguration stemming from not understanding how 'privacy tones' (I know, I know...) work.

Welcome!! Scan the 8 repeater channels for local activity Use the Repeater Map and Database on this website

I am thinking you need to swap radios on the duplexer ports. Like, I think they are labeled backwards. It would make sense that the case of the HT is letting enough RF leak in to trigger a receive light, but there is not enough of a signal to create usable audio output to trigger the vox operation. If its not labeled wrong and it is wired correctly, you could just be washing out the systems due to being to close to each other and too close with the test handheld. I have seen some HTs so sensitive to RFI from other HTs, that we had to separate them by 75 to 100 yards before the RFI and desense was small enough for the radios to work correctly.

This is not how we radio in a polite society.

This! Absolutely nothing unusual about the results.

Rather than call you names, I will simply point out that no one on this thread, including you, has reported hearing “Los Angeles rioters on GMRS!”

You seem reluctant to disclose the Ham frequencies involved.

I don’t think people understand that the gps is just a receiver. Although it’s possible to see where a person has been if you have access to the phone’s data, the gps in your phone transmits nothing by itself. If you’re in airplane mode the phone does not “ping the towers” regardless of what ChatGPT says.

Ya, lithium ion and other lithium derivative batteries have an onboard Battery Maintenance System to make sure the cells stay balanced and don't go over any specs. Prevents over charging and bad events such as fires and explosions. It's what turns the charging off when the battery is full.

Just as a quick update: I contacted TIDRadio about it and they sent me a new unit. Confirmed the new one outputs 5W with a dummy load and a 771 antenna. If nothing else, their customer support was pretty responsive and got this handled in a reasonable timeframe.

I've been thinking of turning access request off on mine.. My repeater is open with no tones. It's there for anyone to use as advertised. Of course, rules apply. Only had one problem early on when a local guy insisted on belching every other day on the repeater, until i actually busted him doing it as he was sitting in his mini van in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Kind of funny when you roll up on someone and you nail em .. Never had a problem since. Nuff said.

There are some that are listed as Open but have tones unlisted and the request button enabled. Shouldn't @rdunajewski set up the site so that combination isn't possible, i.e. should be Permission Required in that case? There is/was one, now offline, that was Permission Required and Request Access disabled - shouldn't that be Members Only Free? These options need to make sense and apparently leaving it up to the repeater owners to choose sensible options is a failed exercise.

I have tried everything from firmware, to reset, to ptt+Star+power on reset, to using cps, and chirp, and copying the files from my only working tdh3. Nothing fixed my transmit issue. The dead or no output radios will work a few hundred feet apart but they all register no wattage on my meter. Learn from me!!! Don’t waste your time on trying to get them to work. You won’t. I’ve wasted HOURS messing with mine and still no joy.

Staff Memo - The subject of this thread is important enough, for newly licensed user reference, to pin it to the top of this posting area.

Ultimately, my goal with a garage repeater is essentially a chunky base station radio with a pocket-sized "terminal". But I live in a coverage gap between all the repeaters in the area. When conditions are good, I can occasionally hear one ID. 95% of the time, I hear nothing from them; 100% of the time, I can't open them up. I think there's a role for the garage repeater, but that role goes away if there's preexisting good coverage.

Your radio - mxt105, isn't repeater capable. You can monitor the frequency the repeater is broadcasting it's id on with Morse code; that's what your hearing but you can't talk or bring up the repeater because the radio you have doesn't transmit the alternate frequency required to key the repeater and make it rebroadcast your transmission on the same frequency you hear. Two different frequencies 1. broadcast and 2. transmit. There are lots of radios that are repeater capable. If you're coming from cb radio you have been talking on what called simplex - one frequency (channel). When you start getting into repeaters to extend your range you use two frequencies - transmit and receive. Be cautious how you spend your $ on radios it can really put a drain on your wallet but not necessary give you what you want. I would suggest you look into getting a ham radio license if you like radio talk especially in Maine, you can easily talk for 100s of miles over the network of repeaters. Most amateur radio operators are welcoming to new hams, we even have nets(group talking sections on the air -like meeting up on the repeater to chat) that help newbies learn. Last night the Portland repeater - 147.090 group had the newbies roundtable net at 7p.m. to talk about grounding your station. It had about 10 check ins. The technicians(beginners license) is pretty easy to pass with a little study and opens up a world of bands and fun. Check it out - lots of clubs and activities for amateur radio or send me a pm if you want more information on getting licensed.