warthog74

Well, i know people still using the original 6666 that came out a decade ago. In todays throw away world, i say 10 years out of a CCR is pretty damn good. Also 90% of the President radios now come from China. Only a few “flagship” models still come from Vietnam. At any rate the QT80 is a great rig. Just talk some SSB DX and you’d be amazed how many are using AnyTone/Radioddity products because they are spot on frequency with great audio for a respectable price.

The QT80 is just Radioddity’s rebrand of the AnyTone 6666 Pro. Not a cheap radio at all. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. I have the AnyTone AT5555+N and the Radioddity QT40 (rebranded AnyTone Ares II), along with both the smaller AM/FM versions (AT500M II and CB500). Great radios for the money. I would have bought direct from Radioddity.com though instead of Amazon as they offer a warranty and support. Amazon retailers don't.

Similar around here as well. Lots of terrain issues. To the west/northwest of me is the city which is down in a valley some 300 feet below me and to my southwest is a 892 foot ridge that kills me. To my northeast, east and southeast is nothing but farmland mainly and that’s where i get my best results. Now if i could only rent a space on that 892 foot hill….. Pardon my crude photo editing skills. Lol.

There is a big difference between just transmitting to another station vs running your own repeater. Transmitting to a station 40 miles away doesn't necessarily mean your repeater will cover the same 40 miles using the same antenna and coax. There are a lot more variables involved. Great to see you ordered some better coax though. Let us know how it works out once in operation.

Agree with the others. RG8/X is fine for 10/11 meter, but your repeater will suffer massive line loss on GMRS. Also only 30 feet high with RG8/X coax will result in horrible repeater performance. You'll be lucky to cover 2 miles. I use LMR400 on a 50 foot run. I had my neighborhood repeater antenna at 30 feet for a while, but coverage wasn't that great. I recently popped it up another 20 feet to 50 feet and i more than doubled my range that's now averaging 10 miles on a 2 watt repeater. Notice that i now am higher than most the trees around vs at 30 feet i was being blocked by trees. The higher you can get that antenna the better your results will be. You also asked about antenna recommendations. I personally use a copper j-pole tuned to gmrs frequencies. Durable, light, cheap, effective. There are better and more expensive antennas, but for home / non commercial use, these work very well.

I run one of these that i got as payment for helping somebody out. I then sent it in to Ritron to get reprogrammed, had the duplexer retuned (it was on a business band originally), and had them enable the auto id function with my callsign. They are high quality USA made repeaters. They are low wattage 2- 5 watts, but i get 10-15 miles with an antenna only 50 feet high running at 2 watts. The other nice thing about them being low power is that they draw next to nothing for amps. I run mine with a 10 watt solar panel and a small 7ah lifepo4 battery. It's always on even during power outages. Anyway, i see them on ebay every so often for $250-$500 (compared to over $1200 new). Just make sure its one of the 450-470 MHz models. The cost for Ritron to retune/program is less than $100 with shipping and is much cheaper than buying the software and programming cable for it.

The Comet GP-9NCA is probably the best you'll find specifically tuned for murs/gmrs. It's not cheap though.

I use a loop on all my base/repeater antennas. The main reason besides routing water away is that the loop also acts as a strain relief that prevents the weight of the coax from constantly pulling on the connection at the base of the antenna. Good coax is quite heavy and will eventually slip out of zip ties, tape, etc from wind, water, age, etc. If your coax is thick and not easily bendable (like LMR-400) make a "C" shape. I look at it as "better safe than sorry". It certainly doesn't harm anything. Below are images of my base antenna and my neighborhood repeater antenna.

Being that i travel quite often, i still find it useful. A lot of truck drivers still use them to inform other drivers of accidents, lane closures, dead deer carcasses in the road etc. I like knowing this stuff and reroute as needed. As for "skip" or the "over powered stations", most aren't overpowered or illegal. Those guys mainly stay on 6 or 28. It's just the atmosphere playing games with us that makes every normal "legal" user boom in from 10 states away. Soon enough the solar cycle will be over, and the cb will be back to dead silent and boring again for another decade. Annnnnd "i'm back to the bench".

You could always use the flag pole idea. Just put one up in your yard, attach a 5 foot mast to the top, add your 5 foot antenna to it and it'll be up about 40 feet. Now attach the flag. Nobody will really notice its "hidden purpose". Edit: They even make telescopic flag poles. Easy up, easy down.

That's way more expensive and involved than mine. Lol. The long and short of it.... I put mine together on the ground and lifted it all as 1 solid piece. I cut the top off the 30' flag pole (3" at the bottom that tapers to 2" at the top). I then slid the first 10' section of 1" electrical conduit about 8" in and drilled through both and used 1 1/2" metal screws to secure them together. Then i used a clamp like they show in your video to attach the last 10' pole. I also drilled through that clamp and added a few screws to help secure it even more. I then wrapped all those connections good with Gorilla tape. Then i mounted the j-pole, ran my LMR-400 and zip tied it all in place. The hard part. Being a holiday weekend nobody was around to help. So i grabbed my extension ladder, propped it up against the garage, and pulled the whole 50' mast up little by little until i had about 20 feet resting on the roof edge. Grabbed another ladder and climbed up on the garage and lifted and pulled until it was 90% erect. Got off the garage and lifted the rest of it up and in to the base of the mounts. From there it was just tighten up the mounts, fill my hole for the base and done. Probably not the best way to do it, but it worked for me, and is budget friendly.

No it is not. We had some good storms over the weekend and it held up fine. Minimal sway at the top. It probably helps that it's all aluminum and the antenna is a copper J-Pole that weighs 1.5 lbs. So the whole thing might weigh 35lbs and is not top heavy. I lifted it up there by myself. I buried the flag pole 6 inches down, and drilled the mounts in to the studs of the garage. It's solid.

Great write up. The only thing i would suggest (living in a heavily wooded area just outside of town myself) is to get that base antenna as high as possible. 30' might not get you very far. I had my repeater at 30' with subpar to OK results. Over the weekend i got it up to 50' and man what a difference. I used a 30' aluminum flag pole as the base, then attached 20' of 1" aluminum electrical conduit to that, and mounted the whole thing to the back side of my garage. I now easily get 10 miles out of it. Not too shabby for a 2 watt solar powered neighborhood repeater. Have fun with your new hobby!

That's part of the fun. When the band is open a lot of us enjoy "shooting skip". It really has nothing to do with overpowered stations. I mean they do exist, but due to atmospheric conditions you'll even hear people on stock radios as well from all over the country and/or world that sound like they are next door. Luckily (or sadly depending on how you look at it) it doesn't last forever. Generally 11 year cycles, then the CB will be mostly dead silent again until the next solar cycle.

You do already have a nice repeater in Wausau that covers about 25 miles. It may or may not be close to where you are located, but it's there if you need it. https://mygmrs.com/repeater/8068 The owner of that repeater also owns about 18 more scattered around Wisconsin. I'm just outside of Green Bay, and he owns the Depere 600 system that's up on Scrays Hill. It says it does 25 miles, but i've already hit it from 40 miles away while mobile.

For the CB side i'm just using a plain jane 2' Diesel fiberglass whip on a hood mount. For the scanner the 885 came with a wire antenna with suction cups on the end. I ran it to the back window of my truck. I'm sure there are better ways to do it, but that stock wire antenna worked great this weekend picking up signals from 30-40 miles away, so i'll stick with it for now.

Coming back to this, and a little off topic, but... I recently picked up a NIB Bear Tracker 885 CB/Scanner combo for a steal (half off suggested retail price) off of marketplace. Yes, it's a CB and it doesn't have NRC, SSB or FM, but i don't care. I wanted it for the p25 scanner capability, weather alerts, and bear tracker. Anyway, i removed the ashtray and made a custom mount. The radio just fit width-wise. Sadly i couldn't get it flush as there wasn't a lot of room behind the dash. At any rate, i like it. It's clean, and all wires are hidden.

I recently replaced my aging 1977 Montgomery Ward 702 base station with a Radioddity CB-500. Let me tell you... for a compact little $89 radio it's an excellent bang for the buck! AM/FM, 10 and 11 meter capable (by moving a jumper), NRC, echo, talkback, ctcss/dcs, weather channels, hi/low power, 7 color display, etc etc. It's basically a rebranded AnyTone AT-500M II. I don't think you'll find better radios for the size and price honestly.

Fair enough. You do you. I'll do me. Just giving the OP another option so that he isn't disappointed when that $600 antenna might not perform as well as he'd expect. You can also clear coat a j-pole to minimize corrosion without affecting it's swr/range. I'll take that vs fiberglass that splinters and cracks, or crappy wire antennas encased in PVC. As for the j-pole I linked... Not slapped together. Thousands sold, no bad reviews. I'm not a hired sales person, but his j-poles and n9tax's Slim Jim's are well built and perform very well. I own many of both and they outperform dozens of other antennas I've used over the last 35 years. Even my old steel 102" whip still outperforms Antron 99's and the like on 10/11 meter. Some things just work, and I've never had a "dud".

Just because it has a "brand name" and costs $600 doesn't automatically make it commercial quality, or good. J-poles have been used for decades and are proven to be reliable and good performers. Go ahead, spend $600 on something that probably wont work any better than a "crap" $30 J-pole. Not my money.

You could save a crap-ton of money and get one of these: https://www.jpole-antenna.com/shop/462-mhz-land-mobile-gmrs-j-pole-antenna/ It's what i use for my small 2 watt repeater attached to LMR-400 coax. At a measly 30 feet at 2 watts with 2-3db gain, it does 5-15 miles in town with tons of crap in the way. I am in a horrible spot honestly. At 60 feet i could probably double my range. Best $30 i ever spent.

House Base - Leixen VV898S Garage Base - TYT TH9800 F-150 - Leixen UV998 Escape - Kenwood TK880H Repeater - Ritron Liberty RLR-460 Not currently in use - Kenwood TK880 Handhelds - TYT TH-UVF9, Tidradio H6, Baofeng F22 (x2) Antenna's vary, but most are J-Poles, Slim Jims, or various Browning dual band NMO mounted mobiles. Units that don't apply to this thread - numerous 10/11 meter and VHF only rigs.

If you are planning on that repeater to cover more than 2 - 5 miles you’ll want to get the antenna up at least 50ft. Otherwise you may be disappointed with its lack of coverage area. You said you’re on a hill. Are you higher than most everything around you? If so, then 25ft might be enough. The higher you get that antenna, the better your coverage area will be. Plain and simple.

I love my TYT TH9800. Great radio for the money. However, rumor has it that the 2021 and newer models are locked down and will not TX on GMRS and MURS frequencies among others. You'd have to find a seller with new "old stock" pre 2021 build dates to actually get a good one. I bought mine 9-10 years ago and it came unlocked. Hate to see you buy one and get hosed with a frequency locked unit. If you're on a budget, these radios are worth the price, and aren't restricted at all. Small too. Barely bigger than a deck of cards. I own a few of them, work well for what they are, but do have some of same quirks other cheaper units do. Here's some reviews.

I'm no math wiz, but it's probably a wash. The connector with an extra 18 feet (totaling 68 feet) of coax will probably suffer the same loss that a solid 100 foot run would. Just make sure to seal that up good if the connector ends up outside.