SvenMarbles

Well them I'm about this Mesa Crest Repeater! lol.. But i'm nowhere near that region of the the country.... But if you're telling me that this group built this repeater sort of "on my type of crusade" then I support it...

Also,.. Stop erecting new repeaters for the sake of it.. Just because YOU want to admin a public repeater. If that metro area is well covered by other machines, what even is your motivation for doing a new one, and to the extent that it's annoying another one? It wreaks of a person just wanting to have a "thing to lord over".. Stoppit.

I got into GMRS so that I could have sort of a family radio situation. Big home radio and mobiles in the cars. It would be cool to be able to use it for that, if it weren't full of 40cm ham radio like traffic. Kind of makes it intimidating for the wife or kids to hop on and raise me on my way home with plans, grocery list, or any other pertinent info for a 3 minute radio exchange.. In one case my wife being chastised for "interrupting a conversation" (about nothing in particular). I'm not going to pretend that radio isn't a hobby for me as well, and I definitely nerd out on it and appreciate why everyone else does as well. But guys,.. TECHNICALLY "all of this" isn't the correct use of GMRS.. It's not a coincidence that GMRS is FRS adjacent. The technician ham ticket is super easy to obtain. It's 26 right out of 35 multiple choice. It's like a driving license written test. Just read the pamphlet a bit before you take it and you'll pass. Now you've got endless 440 and even 2 meter repeaters to do the radio guy thing on... The repeater situation is a mess. I appreciate the effort and money that individuals choose to spend on erecting them, but I also worry that they might do it with the mind of the aforementioned "ham type activity". There's some AWESOME repeaters out here, and I love to use them (unlinked). But then made to feel like an intruder for wanting to use it for the purpose I am trying to. The sentiment is then, "well it's their machine".. That's true but it's not their repeater pair. If I were inclined to put something up high myself, like one of those Retevis things, WHAT FREQUENCY PAIR AM I TO USE? Because they're all used up with this kind of stuff... I don't want to fight, but what's right is right (and I'm about 85% certain that I represent righteousness on this issue lol). There's clearly a place for hobby radio and we all know where that is. GMRS is more of a practical use band. When the people trying to use it practically are being made to feel out of place from the ones doing ham radio lite, I think it's a problem.. I don't think "the framers" of this GMRS thing envisioned enormous repeaters, and even linked ones. That's why our current 8 allotted is getting slammed. It was probably more along the lines of a Retevis thing, and in that case, spread around the country it would've never been a problem.. There's a gentlemens solution to it. Yield to the family or group users and be nice. They're the ones actually in the correct spot. Just keep that in mind. Otherwise, it's really easy, inexpensive, and nearly impossible to solve the issue of a person whose decided to wage a war on an obnoxious repeater, and I'll let you interpret that any way that you'd like... So let's all just be a bunch of Fonzies..

It looks like the metro Los Angeles area is pretty well covered under some monsters atop of those mountains.. It there any particular motivation for wanting to add redundant repeaters for the area, to the extent that you're bugging another one? Aside from just desiring to be an owner of a public repeater?

Out of curiosity, is your repeater a public one and does your new repeater provide a new coverage bubble for people in your area that some other repeater didn't already provide?

It truly doesn't matter. I actually don't think there's any reason to have more than a 20 watt GMRS radio under any circumstance.. But it might just be annoying to think your radio wasn't doing what it was sold to you to do...

I can't explain the science of it, but I've noticed that what you have connected downline of your meter matters on your power readings. For example, radio-coax-meter-coax-antenna.... You'd think that the power readout would only be influenced from radio-coax-meter.. But in time with messing with these radios, the things that are connected AFTER the meter have caused variability in the output wattage readings.. I think it has to do with impedance mismatch on the antenna/coax end of the arrangement. If you've got some other antennas, try them and you'll likely notice different output results when intuitively you wouldn't expect that to be the case.. On my current setup, I get 39.7 on high at 467... Through a 50ft run of LMR400 and into a yagi antenna on a pole.

I'd be curious to know if there are people currently that it DOES work for..

I was between the two and decided to go with the RA87 when I found out that you can't alpha program the channels and that the mic keys weren't backlit on the DB40G.

There are actually 0 means of reliable long distance radio comms in a grid down scenario, ham radio included. Key word being "reliable".. Even on HF, you're completely at the mercy of the swirls and variations of ionospheric conditions. When you key up that transmitter on 40 meters, the sky gods either permit it to bounce down 2 states over, or a continent away. It's out of your control. It's not to say that such radio doesn't have utility in a grid down scenario. But if you have Ideas of picking up the trusty radio to raise "Bob" a state or 2 away as though you were making a phone call, it's not a thing. There IS a scenario perhaps where you laid out a "bread crumb trail" of lora nodes between you and him, you'd have something. But that's going to be a lot of pieces of equipment, opportunities for failure, upkeep, needing to stay charged/powered, staged in opportune and safe places.. It'd be a lot to manage just to maintain that capability.. I'd propose re-thinking your priorities. When it's that bad day, IDK about anyone else but I'm not going to have much use for a guy 2 states away... I'd have much more use for a solid and reliable "bubble" of 30 or so miles radiating from where I am located. If we're talking legit Mad Max, end of days, I'll switch on HF pretty much to monitor it and get information. I do keep a QRP inexpensive HF rig and a 40 meter resonant wire stored away. I'm not licensed, but in dire straits I know I can set that up and call on it..

Thank you!

I got an easy one. How do you simply engage the scan? lol

That's literally my setup. 50 ft run of LMR400 on a mast very similar to that..

Thank you for doing that scan. It really informs what I might choose to do..

Oh that really isn’t bad at 151.94 (our neighborhood channel). I wonder if I’d actually get that after my install and coax though.. you know how it is..

Shortly after posting this I did find the GP9NCA. I’m considering it. My only hang up is that it’s a complete beast of an antenna. I’ll need to guy my mast if I stick that thing on top of it. Also I like to keep my antennas sort of discreet from the curb view as well. But the gain and dual banding that it does fits exactly what I am looking for. I guess that’s just what an antenna of those parameters needs to be lol. The GP6NC has that same issue with the VHF side being a bit above MURS. Maybe it’s still usable? IDK. Anyone ever put one on a VNA? Is the 151-154 still in the neighborhood of 1.5?

I'm curious if there is a good quality base antenna with high gain that is GMRS and dual bands with MURS? I've found LMR antennas but the VHF is a few MHZ high for the PS fire band. I'm trying to just have 1 antenna on my mast and I use both services regularly..

I've got channels programmed to 37. They load in and work on the radio.

Well I used to use it all the time, and I haven't made any changes on this end of things. Just one day I click play and get no audio despite having the traffic on the radio, and seeing the nodes go red.

I just have all of those slots skipped. First thing I did was wipe the default channel programing. Put my repeaters at the top few channels and then the rest of the GMRS band plan below skipping 8-15. It doesn't matter what the radio channel numbers are because I just alpha tag what the channels are anyway, and like you said the blanks just skip over when tuning the knob. I have the left and right side programmed the same way except for programming my "OFF" channel to #1 on the right side.

This is literally what I do. I load in an arbitrary FRS frequency and then set a high numbered iDCS tone, and then alpha tag that channel as "OFF". It's my saved channel #1 on the right side... Works as though it were a baked-in feature..

Am I having a browser compatibility issue or are the streams for the linked system streams not working?

Some people don't agree with how repeaters should be used. I actually don't really care for these linked repeaters that give a lot of traffic from 2 people 8 miles apart in Indianapolis. For some reason I have to listen to that in the Chicago area. I might be compelled to put a louder one over top of it if I were independently wealthy... There are only 8 repeater channels and they fill in metro areas.

Here’s a simple way to explain antenna gain to children. take a garden hose and turn it on upright in your fist. The water will gush out as you’d expect it to. That’s a zero gain scenario. Now put your thumb on it to spray it further. That’s antenna gain . There’s no net increase in water volume, you’ve just concentrated it in a direction, and in doing so it’s pretty effective.. ERP is a metric to assume how, that now more concentrated and directed water, is behaving supposing that you hypothetically accomplished that same “splash out” by increasing your net power instead of concentrating it…

Very interesting. It seems like most radios of Chinese origin seem to be pretty wide open radios by default, and only set “boundaries” with software. It wouldn’t surprise me if the 87 is perfectly capable of doing VHF as well and that Retevis would release a new variant of it, but it would just be the same radio with those code parameters changed up a bit.. There actually is an option on the Retevis software on the very first prompt that has a drop box to select UHF or VHF. I tried selecting VHF when I first started playing with it, but it just doesn’t work. It just won’t read the radio/programming cable anymore if you switch that. So that’s a bit of a give away right there that they intend on future expansion with this radio.. I didn’t do my little write up/review of the radio yet because I kind of struggle to really have a great deal to get into with it. It’s just kind of a very simple and straightforward GMRS radio. It’s a good radio that “radios good” . I’m told that I sound nice from others on the receiving side. Mic gain audio seems perfect out of the box. It definitely pumps out very near the 40 advertised watts. Mine is 39.3. It’s got a good and loud speaker. It’s a heavy and chunky steel radio that feels quality. The programming cable that is included works. I like that it can stay plugged into the radio and computer all the time because it’s a separate jack on the back. I can be in the middle of using it, open chirp, change something, and upload and the radio doesn’t even mute or anything while it happens. It’ll just power off and on again when finished and just right back to being used… It’s a nice feature for if you use it as a home/base radio on your desk right by your computer. So I mean, yeah.. It’s just kind of a simple and good radio. There isn’t really anything that I find to be a shortcoming. Maybe just that the radio face and menu logic/buttons aren’t that intuitive. I haven’t figured out how to make it scan . But I also don’t really need it to, so I haven’t spent much energy on looking into it. I wish the alpha tagging allowed more characters.