LeoG

If you put an antenna up and they put an antenna up on their roof you might be able to contact each other. Everything depends on what's in the way. If there's a hill/mountain it's not happening. If it's a bunch of trees it's possible, if it's flat country and open then it shouldn't be an issue at all. Is there a member of your family that is in the middle of all of you? That would be the ideal person to house the repeater.

Depends on who you are trying to contact. If you are trying to contact your house you don't need a repeater, just the antenna setup. If the repeater setup is 1/2 way between where you will be and who you want to contact that's a good reason for a repeater. In my case I've setup at my shop which is a couple miles from my house. Not exactly a good place normally but my house is in a valley and my repeater has a 100' higher ground level. So when I am a town or 2 away I can still talk with the little woman whereas if I just set up an antenna at the house it wouldn't have made any difference. There is a mountain range about 5 miles east of my shop I'd love to setup on. I would have access over the mountains and be up 500' higher than my shop. But that's a pipe dream.

So the area I'm trying to get to is 6.35 miles away, there is a 120 ft difference in height and it has line of site. So the angle of incidence is 0.21º. So it seems I'm basically near the center of the lobes. Guess I don't have to worry about this since my 80ft above ground ain't no mountain.

So how do I read this? Is this an approx to what this says? My numbers other than beam width/angle. Is this a 3dB width meaning the 9dB angle would be less?

So what happens if you put a high gain antenna like the 9NC on a mountain top 1000 feet above the floor? Does it skip over a lot of nearby area? Does it not reach down at all? If your antenna is up that high do you use a lower gain antenna so the beam of radiance aims more downward?

That's the thing I worry about is the pattern missing the low areas.

Figured they were mostly used to cheat on tests.

I bet the teachers don't have to give up their phones during the day.

So what about my hilly terrain? I know you live in the land of the flat and that would absolutely work for you. Not so sure around here. But that's why I'm asking, because I really don't know. The mast, in theory, will be on a hinge so I can take the antenna up and down, but that is only going to be for a rare reason I hope. It's probably going to be more like a total of 70' of Hyperflex 13 with 2 runs in between the lightning protection.

Rule of thumb is to have 3 days reserve when it comes to solar. I myself would start out with 100Ah LiFePO4 battery and see how that works in the next emergency. Hopefully it'll sit there unused for years.

Running a 50w repeater right now putting out about 40w after the duplexer. The antenna is only about 40' above the ground which is 100' above sea level. It's below the tree line which I think is what's killing me. But the plan is to get the antenna above the tree line, and it won't be by much. Right now I'm using a generic dipole with a 7.2dBi gain. I've seen the same type of antenna sold by many companies so I'm sure it's probably just a generic make and relabeled. This particular one was sold by Retevis and is their MA-09. Not sure how much I want to spend. But I live in a treed and hilly area so what I've seen is I don't want a really high gain antenna because the pattern won't work well with the hilly terrain. So should I just stick with this antenna or is there something else I can use. Not looking to put a really long antenna up like I seen with one of the Comets. I've also seen some folded dipoles but don't know enough abou them to know if they'll work better than a straight dipole. The mast will likely be 70-75' tall and the antenna on top of that. We shall see. Enlighten me please.

The battery will be in my shop. Although it's on the side that I don't heat often because it's storage. I've seen it go below freezing one year but besides that I think it doesn't go much lower than the 39º that I've seen. It's right next to a room that never goes below 60º and if I have to I can put it there and run cables through the wall. But I'd rather not.

Gonna be a LiFePO4 battery so that won't work for me, thanks for the link. I looked around for a relay but all I've found have a 40 amp rating on the NO contact and only 3 amps on the NC contact. Was planning on plugging the coil in and as long as there was power the relay would be closed cutting off the battery power through the contacts. And as soon as AC power died so would the relay connecting the battery to the repeater. 12-15 amps is what the repeater draws on transmit.

Do you have a suggestion for a regulator?

Only on a radio forum would you have guys asking what radio they used before they were "blowed up"

You mean like the US buying their computer chips from chyna and putting them in war equipment?

The DC-DC converter is essentially a voltage regulator +. Takes in 8-17v and outputs 10-15v. Has the advantage of boosting a lower voltage to required voltage. Main problem is the 14.4v charging the battery is way out of spec for the repeater. Most car regulators are 13.8v or more. Not usual to find something that puts out a true 12 volts these days.

They've claimed it was impeding an officers work or some crap like that. They gave out tickets around here years ago for flashing your lights to warn of speed traps.

Pretty sure the police will disagree with that. Maps got in trouble for ratting out their positions. Then it went to court I believe and they must have won because using my phone gps I get warnings for speed traps.

That's something I'm currently working on now. Not to worried about the home base station because I have a mobile in my truck. Plus I have a small solar system with a 3KW inverter to power 120v stuff. But the repeater needs backup and I haven't got that done yet. The repeater needs 12-13.2 volts so the battery along with the charger is too much for it so I need a DC-DC convertor or just build a relay system so when the power shuts off it automatically switches it to the battery. But I don't even have the battery or charger yet so as of now it's a moot point.

Exactly. But who wouldn't want to receive some warning that some traffic even is up the road? Guy sounds like he is unhappy and needs to may others feel the same.

What they don't tell them is the 72 virgins are other suicide bombers so they're all guys.

I think the only thing that might not be legal would be to give a police officers position to help others evade an operation such as a speed trap.

There's almost always someone on the air around here. They usually stay quiet until needed. I was trying to get a hold of my wife on a repeater I don't use much. Tried a few times and then went to another repeater channel and got her that way. But on the original channel someone broke in and told me he heard me fine. The base has a great connection to that repeater so it was weird my wife couldn't hear me. Got home to find out the PL had been changed somehow. So obviously she wouldn't be able to hear me.

I stole this.