WRYZ926

While you will only hear the one repeater by doing that, you will still receive the signal from the other repeater. You can see it on your radio if it has a signal meter. It's the same way on a repeater channel with tones set and someone close by transmits on the corresponding simplex channel without any tones. You won't hear the simplex transmission but you will still see it on the radio's signal meter. Just because you can't hear one of the signals does not mean that it will not interfere with the other signal that you can hear.

Yes it will. There are two repeaters on 467.550 that are 100 miles apart. Now they do not interfere with each other since they are far enough apart. But I definitely receive both being half way between both repeaters. One repeater uses tones while the other one does not. I receive both repeaters but I never actually hear anything from the repeater without tones since I have tones set on my radios. If I were to turn the receive tone off on my radio then I would hear both repeaters.

I'm beginning to think that when brains were being handed out, Negative Nancy though someone said "trains so he said "no thanks, I'll take the (short) bus". Unfortunately I have had the same argument about GMRS repeater ID requirements with fellow members of my amateur radio club. I had to break the regulations down for them so they would understand that a GMRS repeater does need to ID per Part 95.1751 quoted above. When they kept bringing up family members I had to remind them that we are in Missouri and not Arkansas. Plus the fact that most people that use our repeater are NOT related and they have their own GMRS licenses.

You should not be transmitting in simplex mode. If you have your radio programmed correctly then you should be transmitting on 467.650 and receiving on 462.650. That is if you are talking about the Sara650 repeater in Florida.

I have only seen new butter bars do something like that . I received a lot of good training while stationed at Ft Devens in 1991. I went through Jungle Warfare in Panama in 1989 and combat lifesaver course while stationed in Germany in 1993. Like a lot of skills, using military radios is a perishable skill after a while. I doubt that I could operate a SINGARS radio now days.

I'll add to what @SteveShannon said. It is sometimes easier to keep antennas separated vertically versus keeping them separated horizontally. A lot will depend on your locating and setup. Think of the radiation pattern of vertical antennas as a beach ball. The lower the antenna gain the rounder the pattern will be. The higher the gain, the flatter the pattern will be. An example would be comparing the pattern of a 5 dBd antenna and a 9 dBD antenna. The pattern with the 5 dBD antenna will look like a donut while the pattern of the 9 dBd antenna will look like a thick pancake. Keeping the antennas separated vertically works. As Steve said, you can always move the lower antenna down some if you do get some interference.

@WRTC928 I tell people the exact same thing all of the time. One needs to practice and be proficient with the tools they plan on using in an emergency. That covers everything from communication, defense, first aid, etc. I went through the air crew survival training, jungle warfare training, and combat lifesaver course while I was in the Army. Even with that type of training you still need to practice to keep your skill level up. Even just picking up a radio once a week to talk to family and friends is enough to keep your skills up. One should trim with what tools they will need so that their use is second nature.

At least they are using their radios and practicing for when an actual emergency does happen. Radios are like firearms, people buy them "just in case" and never actually use them or practice with them.

I forgot to mention that fact. Thanks for bringing that up. You definitely do not want to transmit on the radio that is not directly connected to the antenna. So in the case of the repeater, I would make sure that transmit is turned off or just turn the repeater completely off when using the other radio. I know most radios will cut the output power down when the SWR gets too high but why take the chance of burning up the finals.

Yes it does.

You will definitely want a coax switch. A duplexer will not work for using a repeater and a mobile radio on the same antenna. I have had good experiences with the Diamond brand of manual coax switches. I have a 2 port and 3 port switch. While they are not top of the line, they work well. The Diamond switches are definitely cheaper than Alpha Delta switches. Here is the 2 port coax switch I have. Diamond Antenna CX-210A Heavy Duty Wideband Coaxial Switches CX210A

Here is what we have experienced with commercial farms in the mid Missouri area and it isn't good. The area commercial farms will only have a single license in the owner's name while letting every non related employee use their call sign. That's if they even use call signs at all. We have also had commercial farms not even bother with having any license. Then they will try to use repeaters owned by others without bothering to get permission. Plus there is no etiquette and lot's of cussing by the farm employees. Most of the local GMRS repeater owners have banned any type of business/commercial farm use on their repeaters because of this. You don't dare run a repeater without tones on both receive and transmit. Otherwise you hear all of the local farm workers on the corresponding simplex channels cussing. And again most never use call signs and probably don't even have licenses. Yes I know they could easily find the repeaters' tones, but most are too lazy to do that. If farms want to invest their own time and money putting up their own repeaters then that is fine as long as they aren't interfering with the existing repeaters all ready in place.

The few Tram antennas that I have dealt with all need tuned. And they come with the directions on how much to cut off for the frequencies you want to use. It's pretty simple especially if you have a NanoVNA or antenna analyzer. Though you can use the SW-102 also, it will just take a little longer since you have to test at different frequencies to see where the SWR dip is at. I always cut slightly long and then test the SWR and adjust from there in small increments. The last Tram antenna I cut/tuned was the Tram 1174. I cut it close (long) and then made 1/16" to 1/8" cuts until I got it where I wanted. I tuned mine for 467.600. My SWR is 1.4 at 467.600 and 1.2 at 462.600.

I have two Xiegu G90 radios. The first one I bought directly from Radioddity and I won the second G90 in Radioddity's 12th Anniversary raffle back in September. Both radios work great and shipping was very fast both times. I had a technical question and their customer service was very quick to answer my question. The G90 I purchased was one of their bundle deals that I just could not price match anywhere else. That being said, I will buy from Amazon or other venders that have better customer service and better/easier return policies when possible. And I am will to pay up to $20 more for the peace of mind. Now if the difference is closer to $50 or more is a different story. I have paid 10-20 dollars more for amateur radios by ordering from DX Engineering, Giga Parts, and R&L Electronics over finding the same radios elsewhere. Those three companies have great customer service and easy return policies. I avoid eBay, especially for amateur radios since there is a good chance that you will get a Japanese or European version that doesn't work on US amateur radio bands.

While the Comet CA-712EFC is a good antenna, it might be overkill and too big for what the OP needs. Especially since he is using a 30 foot telescoping flag pole. Plus we don't know what the local terrain is like where he lives. He might be better suited with something with a little less gain than the CA-712EFC. And yet again, not everyone lives in a flat and wide open desert where they can tx over 200 miles. That kind of distances is quite rare for most of the country.

No it's not but the name does fit him.

A few of us let Negative Nancy distract us. As far as the OP, I'm sure that he would have better luck doing a local fund raiser instead of asking total strangers on the internet.

@SteveShannon I agree that $1000 seems like a fair amount to request for a repeater, coax and antenna. And they should be able to get good coax and a quality antenna to go along with the Retevis RT97L repeater. I wish the them luck in getting what they need to get back on the air.

I'll be standing by to hear where these mythical Motorola repeaters with warranty can be found for $1000 We recently replaced an older Motorola 2m repeater with a used Motorola Quantar 125 that was $1100 and it sure did NOT come with any type of factory warranty. And $1100 was on the cheaper end of the price range that used Quantar repeaters go for. You can find even older Motorola repeaters for less but you will need a Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS computer to program them. Plus those are quite a bit bigger than a 1U or 2U rack mount repeater. The Bridgecom and Baofeng GMRS repeaters are 3.5" tall which is 2U while the Quantar is 5U. A single unit for rack systems is 1.75" or 1U The 5U Motorola Quantar weighs 55 pounds while the 2U Bridgecom repeater (no internal duplexer) weighs 18 pounds.

Just as @Jaay mentioned, some CCR radios have a fake MDC1200 signal that sounds like a duck quack.

Here is a good read on common mode chokes. The article talks about 2m VHF but the principal works for HF bands and UHF bands too. https://w6nbc.com/articles/2020-TBDcoaxchokebalun.pdf

Normally putting loops in, especially loops at certain diameter for the frequency along with certain number of turns can actually reduce noise as the loops will act like a common mode choke.

Sometimes paying a few extra dollars is worth the peace of mind.

I'll second what @SteveShannon said. You can use an adapter or you can change one end of the coax. I will give one word of caution, get a good quality adapter and/or a good quality connector. While you don't have to buy a top of the line Amphenol connector/adapter, you do want to stay away from the super cheap stuff from Amazon and eBay.