LeoG

Ya, I can't even touch the repeater from inside my house (aluminum siding doesn't help) but step outside and it's a pretty good connection. No problem with the 20 watt base and antenna.

I have a plan with the family. We have the repeater that we would go through picked out and a simplex channel that we would use when closer. Plus when I get my repeater up to snuff the plan will change to that. I'm not worried about me or the wife at all. The rest of the family doesn't practice at all. My son and DIL told me to go to Lowes because I have the truck in the family. I brought a talkie and my mobile. I went into the store looking for them and no luck. I texted and got nothing. I called and it went to VM, meaning no signal for them. Mine was pretty poor. If they had the talkie it would have been simple. On the way back to their house I gave them the talkie so they could keep in contact and keep an eye out on the load in the truck as we went back to their place. She seemed to enjoy it. But she was the one who put them away immediately because they had no room to keep the 2 talkies out. Like anything, training is key.

I have two repeaters, 17 miles and 21 miles that I talk on. Usually the 21 mile repeater. We just had our net and I confirmed the base and it was R9 and then I confirmed the talkie and it was an R7 into the repeater. Both are up about 750' on mountains. Or big hills if you live in real mountain areas.

Praise Oh Xenu, for thou have thwarted thy torture of driver hell.... Amen.

You know. If I'm in a situation and the only thing around is a HAM station and I don't have a license for it guess what? I'm going to be calling out on that radio because at that point it was my only communication available. That's just real life.

I have 10. 1 was bad. It was the first batch I bought. Lowest output is 4.5 watts and highest is 4.7 Didn't have problems programming any of them using ODMaster or by keyboard. I like the radio. It's very compact and still has nice features. Battery life is 2 days for the most part. The bad one was replaced without a fight and instead of just giving a new radio they gave me the kit of 1. So extra battery, charger, cords and two more antennas. I say they compensated me for the bad talkie. And they didn't ask for the old one to be returned. I'm pretty happy with all of them.

It's what happens when you put yourself up on a pedestal to look down over the little people.

I'm betting they plan on doing that anyway.

But how would they charge you for each test then?

Because it's a great little radio. Sucks if you have to return one because of a defect, but such is life. The company responds quickly and replaces the defective radios without any issues. Quality control could be better, I agree with that.

Clone the good radio to the bad. Before you turn the radio on push the lower button below the 2 PTT buttons. It usually turns the light on. While holding this button turn the radio on. It will display "Wireless Copy" Do the same for the other radio. On the radio that works press the same button again and the cloning will begin. Takes about 30 seconds. Keep the radios about 1' apart with antennas attached. When it's complete you need to turn both radios back off, and then on again to complete the cloning process. This will copy the good radio to the bad. If it still doesn't work then the bad radio is indeed bad.

If they are setup the same you may have a bad radio. Try simplex between the two and separate them by about 1/3 mile. If one can contact the other and not vice versa then you have a bad transmitter.

Yup, great little radios until they go kaput. Then they are throw aways. Can't fathom in my mind how they can make it for so cheap. I guess $2/day for slave labor has it's advantages...

Contact the seller. It happens. Usually they respond by sending you a new single kit. I had a pair and my wife's radio could easily reach me and I couldn't reach her at about 1/4 mile. Sent the Amazon seller a note and they replaced it no questions asked. I checked it on my meter and I don't know how it transmitted that far. It read zero output. Not even 0.1 watts.

Sounds like a rough morning after a long weekend...

Or maybe the tow truck company owns the repeater.

Most repeater owners won't let you on them if you aren't licensed. It goes against them too. And why not? It's $35 for 10 years. It about the best license bargain the govt has. Lots of people running no license might actually be legally using FRS and since you are nearby you can hear them. But they have no real distance capabilities. Other than that, no real reason if you are operating an HT because it would be nearly impossible to track you down unless you never shut up.

They clarified the rules for a reason. They were confusing. So swearing to rules that can be read as ambiguous means the people who wrote the rules are on the losing side. After clarification, is a different story.

Mine is grounded. I used the Melowave MTA-3000.

I don't understand why they shut them down instead of just unlink them. The NY Reliance repeater system did the same thing months ago and haven't been put back on air. 3 independent repeaters are certainly better then no repeaters.

I just put a new roof on and I wasn't going to put nails or screws through it so it left me pretty much the one option because the big vent made it so I couldn't put a soffit mount up. Mast is two ten foot sections of 1 1/4" EMT. I used a pc of 1 1/4" copper tubing to join them. ID of the EMT and OD of the copper was 1 3/8" then screwed them together. No idea how much it weights, maybe 10 lbs per length. No it's not guyed. I do worry about that. Had some brief 32 MPH gusts and obviously it's still there. It would actually be kinda difficult to guy it but it's doable. Originally I had the 10' length up there for the cell phone repeater antenna and I borrowed a bucket lift and made the upper assembly and slipped it into the top of the original to extend it's length.

Closer the antennas are to each other, the more possibility they might interfere. When you have a repeater without a duplexer the antennas are usually put at different heights along with keeping the space between them as much as possible. The height part makes a big difference.

I did

I set up my work truck with solar and an inverter setup. Not exactly a big power source but it works well. I have a 105Ah AGM battery that I've been running for about 8 years now and I've swapped over from four 30 watt panels and a 10A SolarEpic controller to two 100 watt BiFacial panels and a 15 amp Victron controller which does so much better. My original controller had a bug in it that the manufacturer refused to acknowledge even though I sent them a video of it with the active problem. My battery never really charged fully for years. It still worked and I had power on my tailgate. I swapped over to the Victron controller and within a week or so my battery was revived and working much better. Plus it has a bluetooth management system with a 30 day recording of what is going on with the controller. So if I have my truck I have a somewhat unlimited source of power withing the confines of my battery and panel output. This is the original setup with the SolarEpic charge controller and panel. That was swapped out for the Victron controller. Black box to the right is a shore power charger in case I go through the battery during the day and have to charge it up overnight for the next days activities. That doesn't happen very often in the new setup. If I run the inverter and the sun is beaming well it can keep the battery fully charged with the 2 amp draw from the inverter. Then the occasional use of a chopsaw or belt sander when needed and usually it works all day. I've run my house on it several times in the winter keeping the fridge, freezer and oil burner chugging along without incidence.