LeoG

Well I did an experiment. I'm still waiting on the base antenna to come, probably tomorrow. I put the mobile antenna up on the top of the metal building which is about 26' off the ground which is at 162' ground elevation. Lots of trees everywhere. Be pretty tough to get above them without going up 75' or more. Had a small issue with the repeater. It changed its PL tone. I had it on 100hz and I couldn't connect. I used a different channel that I programmed and it worked. SWR of about 1.3 and 6.04 watts out with the setup. Turns out it flipped to 67hz. When I read it with the program, it said 100hz but wouldn't connect. I rewrote it and it was back to 100hz. I started heading home (east), which is 2 miles by road and probably pretty close as the crow flies (1.9m). I got as far as 1.3 miles and no more hookup. Mind you I'm in my truck using a handheld with the OEM antenna inside the truck. Came back up on the next road over (south then west) and it hooked back up pretty much at the same road I lost it at, 1.35 miles. So I got up past the shop and headed north and got 2.2 miles when it quit. Went around those roads and it never hooked up again til I got 1.4 miles away pretty much at the same road that goes east west. So it's a puny little 19" antenna with no gain. On the wrong side of the building it looks like. IF I decide to put the bigger antenna on the shop I'm not sure if it'll reach the house because of the hills and trees. The antenna is about 5' tall so it's not that hard to put up and take down. It's easier to do it at the shop than my house.

Since I need a place to store all this stuff I put it into a box. Harbor Freight to the rescue and got one of their Apache boxes. Really wanted the orange... But figured this would be much better to keep it out of view instead of screaming here I am. Storage/camping/bug out box, call it what you will - it keeps things organized.

Well there are some people who can only think in big, commercial ways. If you are putting up a repeater it has to be on a 60' pole up on top of some mountain. And while I'd love to do that I'm not in mountainous territory and I don't really want to spend lots of money putting up that type of equipment for something that may end up just being a dead end hobby. I got the 2 talkies for my birthday. I asked for them. Normally I ask for tools for my woodshop and my family kinda frowns on that because they think I work too much (I do). So this time around I decided to just get something that I can play with and tinker around. I'm not trying to be this big community member and solve everyones repeater problems. I'm doing it so I can communicate with my family and friends and just have something different to do that doesn't involve wood working.

Mostly just screwing around. There is no repeater in my local area and it's not like it's a lot of money to put out to have some fun. Hoping I can convince some of my friends and neighbors to join in on the fun. It's kinda hilly over here and I live by the river so I'm already in a low spot. I'd like to be able to communicate with the wife from the shop which is about 2 miles away and then with my buddy in his wood shop which is 2 miles away in the opposite direction and he will be about 10' above sea level. I know all about the restrictions of line of sight which is part of the challenge to overcome in my area. It's more of a toy for me at this point. And at anytime when I finally get my antenna up if I find the repeater doesn't work out I can put in a 50w base station.

Got a pair of Tidradio TD-H3's a short while back and I'm pretty pleased with them Still haven't really tried them out a great deal. Wife took a walk with them to the park which was about 1/3rd mile away and they did well. Still, new toys to play with. There is a repeater about 6 miles from me that I can connect with, it's open which is nice. But it's still kind of far for the HTs to sound good. I decided to look into a repeater for myself just for something local. There is nothing nearby. I found the RT97 and started looking into it. It's a compact package with a somewhat low wattage transmitter. But it's pretty inexpensive and an all in one. Looking around I found it had been updated and now sports a DB9 connector that a microphone will interface with so it can also be a base station. The DB9 can also be used to interface with a computer or other hardware such as a Auto ID. I've had the RT97S for a few days but the antenna I got in the kit got separated by the Memorial day holiday as DHL doesn't do weekends and I'm sure doesn't do holidays. I ordered a Nagoya UT-72G Mobile antenna that I could get here quick so I could play. The programming is slightly different from the RT97. With the RT97 you use the power DIN connector to interface with the computer. And all of the videos I saw with the newer RT97S also showed the same thing. But when I got my unit it came with a USB to DB9 connector for programming. The instruction booklet is absolutely worthless as it doesn't mention how to program, what software to use, where to get the software or the sequence to program. All the videos I've see you plug the USB/DIN connectors into your computer and the repeater, fire up the program and the repeater takes power from the computers USB port to power the chip in the repeater. So this is what I did except plugging into the DB9 connector. No joy, the program wouldn't read the repeater so I couldn't even get started. Tried several times with no luck. So I decided to plug the repeater in by using the power supply and the DIN connector. Well that did it. Got my repeater programmed to what I wanted. It was setup with all 8 channels on high power, narrow band and PL encoded for 136.5Hz. So finally today I got my Surecom SW-102 SWR meter so I could make sure the antenna was OK and check the power output. The Nagoya seems to be tuned much closer to 467.5Mhz as I got a near perfect SWR, a 1.01 when I was using my TD-H3 transmitting on RPT1. When I hooked it up to the repeater I got a 1.28 SWR after moving it around on my truck to various spots. Settled on the center of the roof. I was also able to get 6.25 watts out of the duplexer. I guess I got one made on Tuesday morning before lunch LOL I wasn't able to do a real test of the repeater as of yet because the wife is away right now and the neighbor I am friendly with wasn't around. So best I was able to do was to walk around my neighborhood and use my call sign and repeater test so I could hear the squelch tail. I live in a crowded somewhat hilly area. The antenna was only 6' off the ground and the direction I walked in put it behind my aluminum sided house. All pretty poor conditions for testing. But off I went anyway. The farthest I walked was 2850 ft from the repeater but of course lots of houses, trees in the way because the antenna was essentially on the ground. I was always able to connect with the repeater. I have the antenna coming from Retevis and it's a fiberglass antenna, it didn't state what model number. The cable came in the repeater box and it's a disappointing RG58/U cable so I ordered some LMR400 and that won't be here til next week. I have one of two spots for the antenna. On my house chimney sharing a cell phone antenna mast that I have up already. Or at my wood shop with the same situation, a cell phone antenna on a mast. The house ground elevation is 62' and the shop is 162'. But the shop is also 2 miles from my house and I'm not sure how effective that'll be for covering the area near me. Not much of a review, for now. As I learn more about it I'll post it here.

New comer to the forum... I got my H3 in the Ham version and reprogrammed it to the GMRS version and the weather channels, 11 of them were right after the 8th repeater channel (RPT8). I actually took them out of the scan function because I have 2 active ones and it would always break up the scan. I didn't have to program anything to get them in there. GMRS Version 240229 on my H3 (setting 42).