LeoG

He was pointing out the channels that he thought were in that range, all of them are 467MHz channels and none of the channels in the radio were 467MHz. His mistake was he looked after the decimal and matched up the 467MHz frequency when there are also 462MHz frequencies with the same decimal frequency. There are no .5 watt channels in the radio.

The guy in the video made a mistake. He confused the 467Mhz channels with the 462Mhz channels with the same frequency past the decimal. As long as the radio is used on the 467Mhz frequencies the 2 watt output is legal. It might not even be capable of accessing those frequencies.

Go to your membership account and change it from there if you worry this is a information grab from a 3rd party trying to steal your information. I changed mine through the pop up and so far nothing nefarious has happened.

16' between ground rods. Putting a coax in a glass jar etc. Lighting is going to do what it wants even with grounding. The grounding is a preventative measure to take care of as good as it can. There is no 100% it's going to follow any cable, it's the least path of resistance but because of the huge voltage potentials it can leave that path. Certainly better to have grounded the crap out of something than nothing at all. But it doesn't mean the lightning is going to go where you want it. I pretty much figure a direct hit is a death strike most of the time for equipment. Near misses is where the grounding really shines.

Lest you forget that a lightning strike starts on average about 20,000 feet in the air and travels to the ground with air as an insulator. Arguing about a couple feet is moot.

Lighting is just like tornadoes. Destroying one while barely touching the one next door. Could have been grounding, or just dumb luck. People struck by lighting can survive or become crispy kritter piles of dust.

That right there should protect the radio. But I know nothing will protect with a direct hit. Dissipating charge should be accomplished with the wire sizes as they are. I'm just thinking about my situation. The main electrical connection to all 4 bays in the building I'm in is at the opposite side of where my antenna is. That's 170' of conductor needed to make the connection from where the cable enters the building to the bond where the electrical box is. 25'+100'+45'. And as to having a ground rod for each leg of the tower why can't the 3 or 4 legs be connected by copper wire and then go to a single ground rod? The ground loop around the tower is doing essentially just that but just increasing the cost substantially. And would that change between a steel tower and an aluminum tower since aluminum conducts better?

So why isn't the tower bonded to the electrical ground through the coax which is attached to the chassy which is grounded through the ground line in the power outlet? No matter how much you ground anything because of the resistance of wire they'll always be at a different potential?

Can't you just go to map and zoom in on your area to see the repeaters that are there?

Depends on where you are. Around here it might not be so bad. In LA it's already worthless without an emergency situation.

Still normal for me on FF and Chrome

Well I'm not putting a 1/4 wave antenna up on an 80' tower. That would look silly. LOL

As long as it doesn't say "shall be". Should and must can be gotten around legally.

Also if you do a ctrl F5 it will clear your browser on that website and reload it. Maybe something wonky happened with some data. Not sure if that's universal, I know it works with Firefox

Works on Chrome for me also.

Ya, that's not happening. That's just causing trouble for myself. I'm sure if there were regulation violations Btech would be the first to know about it. I'll keep the box output under 50w and it's not going to bother anyone.

And it would make sense. You can have a 50 watt radio and put all kinds of doodads internally but as long as it all complies with part 95 and is 50 watts or less out the connector they probably don't care. Btech made a big deal out of it being an all in one unit along with being able to output close to 50 watts. You know people are always miffed when it says 50 and you only get 40 even though it likely won't even make a difference. But it's the thought that you paid for that output and it comes up short. As long as I can make it to my house I'm pretty alright with it. And I know that 25 watts from my house couldn't punch through the leaves and 50 watts does it in spades. So power can matter.

Manufacturer says the whole setup is Part 95 compliant. Pretty sure as long as it's designed and built as an all in one unit the output at the connector is what is limited to 50 watts.

This is what I have in Firefox. Looks normal

This is compliant with part 95. Because it is sold as an all in one unit the output at the antenna connector is limited to 50 watts max. It has nothing to do with the internal components. But if you had this same transmitter and hooked it up to an external duplexer it would be against regulation. It's just like buying a 50 watt mobile radio. The output of the radio is 50 watts (or less) at the antenna output which falls within part 95. The duplexer needs to be inside the system and specifically designed to be an all in one system to comply. I think it's a 65 watt transmitter. I can't get it to go below 60 watts with the voltage on the power supply dialed down to 11.5 volts and I think it went up to about 71 when it was dialed up to 13.8v. I've never had it higher than that. This is what I bought, not something I made.

So far my wideband duplexer is working fine. Maybe the out of tune lets you throw more power at it. IDK. Looks like Btech will let me purchase another one of the newer Duplexers. It's the one I'm currently running and has been able to take the 70 watts in so far for about a year with no degradation. Not sure if they'll send it tuned to my spec or just send me another wideband. In which case I'll get it tuned. I have to go to their link they made specifically for me because the duplexers aren't in their catalog to sell.

This was the duplexer that came with the repeater originally. It was suppose to work with the transmitter power they had but obviously they were mistaken because they had to replace them. The duplexer they replaced it with seems to have the same power rating but has been working well since I replaced it. Most of the ratings I've seen on duplexers have a range rating and then a listed rating like this 40w-80w (50w). Before I toss it I'm going to pull it apart to see if there's any scorching of the internals. I don't expect anything to be wrong on the high (receive) side but on the low side there might be issues.

Swapped the wideband duplexer back in and did my test loop. Pretty much back to normal. I think yesterdays test was slightly better but not by much. Had trouble in my usual spots. But I had trouble in a reliable spot too. Looks like for now this duplexer is staying put.

Well the news is anything but exciting. Reception is markedly worse. I only had one spot in my loop that I was able to communicate through the repeater. The rest of them either kerchunked it or didn't register. Very disheartening. I thought this would be much better than the other duplexer and right now it's looking like it is reacting like it was when I first got the repeater. I can contact it with my 50 watt. And I have a guy 2 towns up that I was communicating with before with good clarity, R7 and now he's barely an R5. Lots of background noise and very low modulation. Worked but you had to concentrate to hear what he was saying and even then it was hard. Since tomorrow is a bust for things to do at work I'm going to swap out the duplexer tonight and make the rounds again. It's always possible it's atmospheric and not the single channel duplexer. Or maybe it just can't handle the 65 watts in like the 2nd one they sent me. Either way it's getting swapped out for now. Thank you very much for the effort Marc

Oh it absolutely was. Noticeably so. I wasn't able to contact the repeater from my area with the original duplexer and when they sent me the newer one I was able to connect somewhat reliably. Still pretty iffy and right on the fringe. But communication was acceptable.