Radioguy7268

I also have a hard time believing that a speaker hidden behind the keypad & LCD will deliver better audio, but I can tell you that the front & rear facing dual microphone setup should deliver outstanding noise cancellation and clarity. Speaker mics that have that feature certainly do.

Nobody has asked the area where you live or where you plan to use the radio. A properly designed and functioning Superheterodyne receiver circuit will out-perform a Direct Conversion (the typical inexpensive Radio on a Chip design) receiver in areas of high RF and competing signals. If you live out in the sticks, you would probably never notice the difference. A Direct Conversion receiver does tend to be a bit more sensitive - but isn't nearly as selective. I'm a fan of using surplus Commercial Radios, but then again, I'm not spending your money. I've also got most of the software, and plenty of experience programming my own stuff. Most of the radios I use for GMRS cost me less than $50 - used. Is Ed Fong still selling his antennas? I haven't seen his stuff on Ebay since Covid hit.

To quote my teenage daughter: "What's a pager?" I used to see thousands of dollars in monthly income from paging companies. Now I see zero. I had an abandoned 900 MHz Glenayre cabinet for years that I kept around due to the 300 watt amplifier it had. Finally got a hammy to buy it for $75. Paging is dead.

Stico makes disguised antennas that mount underneath the molded bumper covers (either front or rear). I've also done stuff for UHF where we just formed an angle bracket that used the license plate mount, and then ran a standard NMO off that. Works if the plate isn't recessed very far. Doesn't get the antenna up, but gets it out... Just looking at the car, I'd be tempted to buy a replacement passenger side mirror, fab a mount for an NMO with a 6" hatpin into that mirror with some copper sheathing molded to the underside behind the mirror assembly for a ground plane - then run the coax down into the door and through the existing loom into the dash. Call it a day. Easy to return to stock when it's time, and should work well.

I'm prohibited from disclosing dealer costs, but I can tell you that the R7 isn't all that much more than the XPR7550e. Less than a 10% boost in dealer cost over the comparable XPR's. The $1716.00 is the List Price for a VHF/UHF full keypad "enabled" model with standard accessories. The R7 does need to "phone home" in order to set the region it's going to operate in. It appears that once you do the initial programming, the radio will operate offline. For now. The "vision" is that radios should be sold to organizations with a 5 year timeline for replacement/upgrades. Mixed fleets are a thing of the past. You're just not going to have XPR6550's or plain 7550 (non 'e') radios sharing channels or systems with the R7. Phased implementation is out. Forklift upgrades are in. Better hope the IT department is on site and engaged. Would you like a system lease quote? 5 year terms work out to just (a few hundred) pennies per day per unit to operate. The R7 is not a radio intended for hobbyists. That won't stop some people.

I haven't sold anything off on Ebay in almost 2 years. For me, it was mostly the ever-increasing seller fees. Lucky for me, I had already sold off most of the oldest junk that was just taking up space. I'm thinking someone will eventually create a new version of the Silk Road where we can barter radios for crypto...

I'd say that the NX-1200 is closer to being equivalent to the CP200d - especially since the NX-1200 is about 1/3 the cost of an XPR7350e! You know I don't disagree with you about the receive sensitivity on the XPR "e" series, but I found the DMR audio on the NX-1200 to be exceptional out of the box. Then again, I wasn't trying to mix & match within an existing fleet of Motorola units. Motorola is painting themselves into a corner with some of the Software Update Management subscription things they're doing on the DMR lineup - so I'm glad to have Kenwood as an alternative.

In the Part90 world - and in the world of FCC Licensing, I think you'll find the FCC's answer: An FB2 is a repeater. FB is a Simplex base - aka a Base Station in the techspeak of older (now mostly dead) Technicians. They would also refer to the downlink frequency (or lower frequency in the repeater pair) as the "Base" - with the uplink frequency referred to as the "Mobile Transmit". When those older techs talked about a mobile radio in a tray - often located at a business office or dispatch center - it was always a Control Station - and sometimes a Fixed Base - which is referred to as an FX1 in the FCC Licensing database. It was NEVER referred to as a Base Station - except by Salespeople, who would always get corrected by the older techs. You might be able to get away with saying it was a Base - but never a Base Station. To them, a Fixed Base was a non-movable radio which transmitted on the uplink frequency to operate a Repeater. A Base radio that operates in Simplex to any other unit on the lower side frequency (462.xxx for GMRS) was also a Fixed Base Station. That is consistent with the definitions I was taught. I was also taught that it used to be illegal for a Fixed Base to talk to another Fixed Base. People went to great lengths to make high power radios "mobile" in order to meet the definition of an MO mobile designation. Not sure when it changed - but I'd guess early 80's with deregulation.

Right, but you didn't indicate why you thought it might need adjustment, or if you just wanted to verify proper operation for your own piece of mind. The FCC removed annual station maintenance checks back in the 1980's for a reason.

Over in Ivyland there's a place called Control Dynamics. The owner there is a Ham, and I don't know if he wants to get involved with your GR1225, but I do know he's got a boatload of experience with them. 215.956.0700 Most dealers don't want to mess around with unsupported products - they would rather just sell you a brand new unit. You didn't mention if the unit was giving you problems, or if you just wanted to have someone put it on a station monitor and verify it for alignment. Once the GR1225's go bad, there's not much in the way of parts or replacements, and the cost of (paid) repairs will quickly exceed the value of the unit.

There are 2 "Ed Fong" antennas that are often used in GMRS. 1 of them is his 5 dB "Non ground plane" intended for 460-470 MHz. That's a decent antenna for the price. There's also the Dual band VHF/UHF that is built out of ladder line. That antenna can be ordered to split VHF commercial & GMRS 460. That antenna is not so great for GMRS - but it's a decent scanner antenna. It will also work for a base station/control station uplink to a Repeater. For the price, there are better options in single band. I consider Comet/Diamond/Tram to be the lowest end of antennas you can buy. Building your own antenna out of lightweight PVC (like Ed Fong's) might be as good as some of those. Single band Commercial antennas by Laird or PCTel aren't that much higher priced than any of the previous, but they are better built and will probably hold up well for a decade or more in service.

It sounds like a good use case for a small portable repeater. Not sure how far away the "hill to the east" would be, but if your max range is 5 miles, you probably don't need to get too carried away with picking out the exact perfect spot. Something closer to the center of your operations might work just as well and be less of a hike. Not sure of the size of your rockets, but have you ever messed around with a LoRaWAN tracker? They are relatively small & light weight (two AA batteries).

You will need to use the driver for the FIF-12 in order to make it work with v 1.03. If the cable you're using has the same chipset, then you might be able to skip purchasing the actual FIF-12 cable from Vertex/Motorola. I tried mucking around with a few different cables trying to get the FIF-12 driver to recognize them, but never had any luck with it. I had success using the older version with a generic cable for programming, firmware, and wideband recovery - but it didn't work with v 1.03

There are 2 versions of the Wideband Recovery Tool. Version 1.01 which does most of the older Vertex line. That should be available online if you search it. Motorola/Vertex never charged dealers for the Software. I have successfully flashed older analog VX-231 radios back to Wideband using 1.01 with just a standard (inexpensive) generic USB programming cable. If you're trying to recover newer radios like the EVX series - you're going to need Version 1.03. That isn't nearly as easy to find online, and you also pretty much need to invest in the FIF-12 programming box/cable setup from Vertex to make that work with newer radios. The FIF-12 runs about $150 to $200 new. It really does depend on which radio you're working with - as mentioned above.

Price is a signal to the marketplace which indicates opportunity for those who are best able to meet the demand. If you're a consumer, you always have the choice to walk away from an over-priced product. If you claim that you "NEED" this product - then why did you not purchase more of it while the supply was available at a price that you could afford? After all, that's what the Warehouse did - and that's why they actually have a supply. If you wish to punish those with foresight to purchase products in advance of need - then you deserve to end up in a country full of empty shelves. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. That's what sensible people do. People in a panic will always pay $50 for a snow shovel that they could have bought for $10 the week before the storm hit. Then they'll try to blame someone else for their lack of planning.

Even though we like to think of RF signal as "line of sight" and always traveling in a straight line, the reality is that the signal will bounce, refract, and even bend as it passes through and between free space (air) and objects on the way to your receiver. To understand why you're seeing differences in signal strength while you are moving (even slightly) - you need to understand multi-path and nulls. Basically, you are hitting spots where the signal is partially cancelling itself because two (or more) wavefronts are reaching the same point (your receiver's antenna) and they are out of phase with each other. When they're exactly 180 degrees out of phase, they'll cancel each other completely. The opposite is also true. When two wavefronts reach the receiver at the same time in phase, the net effect can actually be an increase in signal strength. That's part of the reason you'll find "sweet spots" where the radio works best in that exact location, even though you're miles from the transmitter. If you ever suffer from insomnia, feel free to Google up Multipath and Diversity antennas and phase shifted noise cancellation. There's some interesting stuff that goes on in those areas, especially when it comes to data and higher (mm) frequencies.

Add in the Motorola M1225 and P1225 radios for dual Part 95/Part 90 certification. They're out of production for almost 20 years now, but I've still got a few hundred M1225's running in daily commercial service. I wouldn't call them rugged, but they've certainly been reliable.

You're also going to need FAA clearance being that tall. I'd recommend getting a consultant like Steel in the Air to do a feasibility study. They can give you a realistic idea of what the market is in your general area, what the going price is for cellular, and they can also tell you about any local towers that might be your market competition for leases. If it's all owned by American Tower or Crown Castle, you've probably got some room to maneuver and get under their pricing. There's an aspect of "if you build it, they will come" - but most people building new towers have one or two carriers in their pocket, meaning they're guaranteed some income right from the start and they won't go broke if they don't load the tower to full capacity within a year or two. Most of the cellular carriers aren't interested in huge coverage areas any more. 4G and 5G start to drop their data speeds once you get more than a few miles out. I'd be surprised if they're interested in going any higher up than 150 -200 ft. Not sure what the zoning is like in your area, but I'd want to have a conversation with whoever is in charge and take their temperature before you commit to anything. I've seen zoning stuff add years to a build timeline. Especially if you need to get lawyers involved. 40 years ago, it wasn't too hard to put up a tower where you wanted it. Now, it's hard enough to put up a tall tower at all, let alone put it where you actually want/need it. Good luck with it.

It's worth repeating. If you're running a compact "flat pack" duplexer - and you're pumping out over 20 watts, there's a real good chance that your system's measured desense is 1.5 to 2 dB. Seems like a small amount, right? However, if you can improve your receiver performance by 3dB -you have effectively doubled the area of coverage that your portables can talk back in from. One of my first Ah-Ha! moments in 2-way radio was when an old timer took me out to a tower site where a customer on the repeater system was complaining about poor coverage with their hand-held portables. When we got on site, he spent a bunch of time setting up his test equipment and taking measurements. He already knew what he was going to do, but he took the time to educate me. He showed me the performance of the system as it was and showed me the measured desense. He let me listen in to "weak" portables that were operating on the edge of the system. The customer had been sold a brand new high power 100 watt "high performance" repeater, but was running it all through an existing flat pack 6 cavity notch duplexer. They spent their money on more POWER, not on the duplexer - they already had one of those. Long story short, after showing me the system performance as it was - he turned the power down to 10 watts. Suddenly, the units "on the edge" were coming in much more clearly, and users that had not been able to get in at all were now using the system, but still were scratchy. He then added a tuned bandpass cavity between the duplexer and the repeater's receiver, and WOW, now they ALL sounded good. Then he went back and showed me what zero desense looked like. Couldn't even see a difference in the noise floor when the transmitter was keyed up locally. Now the repeater had good ears - an ability to listen that matched it's ability to talk out. Balance.

Yes, it is bad. You'll probably create massive desense in the receiver, and do nothing to create robust repeater coverage. Want to improve repeater coverage? Improve receiver performance. 9 times out of 10, that's where the system is lacking. Horsepower makes all the headlines, but there's more to the story when it comes to real world performance.

... and some sellers will include basic programming for free w/ purchase. The trouble is that most used radios in the $30 to $40 range will not include fresh batteries, and with Vertex, you need to make sure that you have a battery that will match up with the charger.

You would also have to realize that in order to bump up your transmit power by just 3dB - you would need to double the transmit power up to 36 watts. How high did you plan to go? Is the transmit power where your system is lacking? The old GMRS rules specifically ruled out using external power amps. Not so sure that the newer revision still does. You also need to realize that most cheap amps will amplify noise as well as signal across a broad range. In short - if you're throwing off some spurious birdies - the amplifier is going to increase those spurs as well as your desired frequency. It's not going to make you popular with your frequency neighbors. As BoxCar said - invest in a higher power mobile if you truly need more power. Or just get a better antenna. Or better coax. You're probably losing 1 or 2 dB just in your cheap coax - not to mention any poor connectors or adapters you might be using.

Count me as not being a fan of Bridgecomm. It's just two mobiles in a box. They used to use Maxon mobiles, not sure if they still do. My direct experience with Bridgecomm was getting called in to troubleshoot a Hotel's repeater. Unit had been in service less than 3 months, and the original seller had walked away from it, telling the Hotel that they were on their own. The trouble described was that the repeater was "intermittent". When I arrived, I quickly diagnosed that while the repeater was functional, it was having trouble with the receiver. If I kept a strong -85 dBm signal generated directly into the front of the receiver, it worked well, but once the signal level dropped below that, the repeater would drop. Much further diagnosis led to this only happening with DPL - regular Tone PL codes carried through to -110 dBm. There was also about 3dBm of desense in the unit, so a receive signal on the edge of opening the repeater would quickly lose out once the transmitter kicked in, leading to the repeater cycling back and forth, and the customer's complaint of an intermittent operation. Phone calls to the company for tech support were quickly answered, firmware upgrades were emailed, problem persisted. The duplexer was eliminated, the trouble still continued. Bridgecomm technical support suggested re-programming the customer's entire fleet to eliminate DPL. When we asked if Bridgecomm would be paying for the cost to reprogram the fleet - crickets. After 3 weeks of back and forth, the repeater was returned to Bridgecomm for a partial refund and the customer purchased a new (at that time) Motorola XPR8400 repeater, and the problem disappeared. No portables were reprogrammed. I suppose I could have just played nice and reprogrammed the entire fleet to Tone PL, but I didn't like the internal desense - which would have still been present even on Tone PL. To me, that's just poor design. An acceptable level of desense in a repeater is Zero. That's been my only direct experience with the brand. I don't know if they've greatly improved since.

There were 2 versions of the R1225 made. The "High Power" version did 25 (low) or 40+ watts (high). Don't run an R1225 on high if you want it to live. They're famous for burning up. The high power versions are pretty easy to distinguish because they've got a pretty large set of cooling fins as compared to a typical MaxTrac or GM300 mobile. Model number M44GRC90C2AA. The lower power versions would run from 1-10 watts. They had a smaller set of cooling fins - similar to a typical Radius mobile. Model # M04GRC90J2AA If you have the 1225 CPS Software, and the proper equipment, you can tweak the radio's output power for the high/low settings, but I wouldn't recommend going below 23 watts or so on the High power version. Trying to put it down to 15 watts is asking for trouble. Repeater-builder is a great resource for Motorola repeaters. http://www.repeater-builder.com/motorola/gr1225/gr1225-overview.html

50 watts is probably overkill if you're talking about just covering 400 acres in a valley - and you're planning to talk back into the repeater with 4 or 5 watt portables. Less power is more forgiving if you're planning to use solar. You'll be able to get away with smaller panels, fewer batteries. A trailer setup sounds like a good way to do a temporary site, and have the ability to move it around to find your sweet spot - a combination of sun/coverage. If you're trying to cover a smaller area using portables, I like the idea of a Unity gain antenna. Especially if you're not up on the top of the ridge. Top of the ridge would probably give you the biggest bang for the buck for total coverage area, but you might over-shoot your desired area of coverage down in the valley. As far as equipment - do you want new? or used? Quality new repeaters from Motorola or Kenwood are pretty tough to come by in today's semiconductor shortage world. Used is still available. CCR's are still available. Do you plan to put everything together yourself, or are you looking for a local provider who can do all the work? Final note, the price difference in licensing between GMRS and a 10 year Business/Commercial license is negligible compared to the overall cost of equipment. GMRS might be good for what you want to do, but a Business/Commercial license covers more potential users, and has more available channels - with Frequency Coordination. That doesn't guarantee you exclusivity, but in a rural area, there's a pretty good chance you'll have a business frequency that's not being used the next town over, and not having to share space with FRS equipped hikers/hunters. A Business/Commercial License would also allow you to run Digital and enable Privacy/encryption - which you can't really do in GMRS. Good luck with it.