JeffRandall

These folks are good people if you need a source for everything: http://www.mrsolar.com

I just finished up an off grid project on our classroom. My advice would be to always oversize what the calculators say you need. You will lose efficiency over time on both the planels and the batteries. I have three 200 watt panels on the roof with 560 Ah of wet cell batteries. It runs everything I need for 3 days of classes (lights, computer, big screen TV for power points, on demand water pump, etc. but bad weather and winter reduces its capability. I started with 400 watts of panels and that wasn't enough so I added another. I live in Alabama so that's an advantage over higher latitudes.

Vertex VXR-7000

Yep, got that but still a bit confused. If I can put two tones in a repeater on the same TX and RX frequency can a group operating on one tone hear the conversation of the group operating on the second tone? I understand about the privacy thing that's why I put "private" in quotes.

Ok, I have a dumb question since I'm new to this repeater business. Can I set two different tones in the repeater. And if I can, will one be a "private" tone for the use by only the folks on the farm here and the other public so other folks can use the repeater also? And if that is possible can these two different tones be used simultaneously? In other words, can my private conversation be used at the same time as the "public" conversation? I know this is probably a dumb question to all of you who know this stuff, but I'm new here so go easy on me

I believe he and I spoke on the radio this morning, as well as having some email comms. Wanted to make sure I could reach him from the area the repeater is going in. Like I said, I'm new to this whole thing and the more I research the more confusing it becomes, esepcailly when you start reading all the FCC rules and regs. I always do things "by the book" so it's taken me some time to dive into the repeater but well on my way now. As soon as I get it up and working I will post it here on the site. Much thanks for the welcome!

I'm the new guy, both to GMRS radio and to these forums. We will be installing a repeater on our farm soon. My main reasons for it is to have good comms all over the farm and to also make it available for emergency uses. I doubt we will make it public since we already talk a lot on GMRS simplex for farm use and to communciate with our instructors during a class we may be having. I don't need too much of a social life when it comes to communciating but it will be nice to reach out to other operators in case of bad weather or some other emergency. Repeater will being operated from a completely off-grid cabin we have here on the farm.